Answer
Short Answer: Primarily because Muslims stopped learning and improving themselves. People became afraid to think, worried thinking for themselves may lead them to arrive at a conclusion which might be deemed to be unorthodox. Muslims assumed all the thinking had been done for them, and all we need to do is follow what the previous scholars have said. When that happened, we stopped growing, and eventually Islamic Civilization died.
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Dr. Shabir Ally from Let the Quran Speak addresses this question in the video below.
Transcript:
Aisha Khaja: Dr. Shabir, so the question that I have for you is why did the Muslim world decline after its golden age?
And then, the viewer goes on to ask, “Is there a need for a kind of cultural enlightenment in the modern Muslim world?”
Dr. Shabir Ally: One of the reasons for our decline is in fact hinted at in the question itself.
Yes, there’s been a kind of an intellectual stagnation in the Muslim world. And this has a number of underlying causes.
One of the causes that Muslims tended to look back at Islamic practice as being something stagnant that is fixed in form.
And we just simply reproduce.
Moreover, Islamic theological thought was thought to be already defined for us in the previous centuries.
And so, [they thought] all we need to do is follow what the previous scholars have said. So, there’s no more thinking.
Afraid to Think
In fact, people became afraid to think because if you think you might arrive at a conclusion which might be deemed to be unorthodox.
And therefore, the best way to save yourself from a lack of orthodoxy is just sometimes to stop thinking all together.
And there were also cultural factors and geopolitical factors as demonstrated in the book “A World Without Islam” by Graham Fuller.
I hope this helps answer your question. Please keep in touch.
Walaikum Asalam
(From Ask About Islam’s archives)
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