"Brain drain continues till date, anyway the Iranian community is a community which came out of Islam & is high achieving, but again a disappointing note for Islam.
Only 40% of Iranians in USA identify themselves as Muslim, another 40% have no religion, 20% are non Muslim minorities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_AmericanIran is 98% Muslim, a significnt % of Iranian Americans have apostatized, they're successful & wealthy."
Rashna, Iran still suffers from socio-economic problem and their security situation is .... well they are in the middle east that says it all.
"Nothing automatically associates Islam with retardation or success, but I'm saying that claims that Islam fostered some extra ordinary scientific achievements which were lost only due to some other non Muslim factors are not accurate.
As Baal said, all the lands which did well after Islam were doing great before, the lands which didn't do well before didn't do well after either, & slowly the lands which did well before also lost their edge.
One can draw many conclusions from this."
Islam is not the Islamic civilisation. Of course this religion itself ask for scientific investigation, something that moden day muslims tend to forget. But there are also all the side effects of the islamic expansion, arab as a common language for example wich were "multiplicative factor" wich accelerated technological and scientifical development. As for this statement:
" which were lost only due to some other non Muslim factors are not accurate. "
I said, many times, that internal doctrinal war was one of the main cause of the muslim world problem, that and all other factors.
@Kenan: That's a bipolar view of the world. Religious scholar were not automatically the "Bad guy". May I remind you that protestantism, wich see wealth as a gift from god, was one of the big reason of the development of capitalism and industry? And may I also remind you that some of the early Renaissance shcolar of europe studied avidly work from the like of Ibn rochd, who was a Qadi pronouncing fatwa?
As for Japan, it became a secular country only 60 years ago. It was just before a militaristic empire wich believed in a human-god. ANd were already a powerful industrial nation wich produced "marvel" like the Yamato battleship.
Topic: Islam's arrested development.