The Abbasi Islamic Golden Age and the Nobel Prizes

The Abbasi Islamic Golden Age
Facts and numbers. 

The Jews are about 15 million which is 0.214% of the world's population, yet they earned 225 (25% of) Noble Prizes for helping and advancing humanity. 

The Muslims are 1.6 billion which is 22.85% of the world's population and more than 1000 times the number of Jews, yet they earned only 2 (0.013%) Noble Prizes for Science. 1 in physics and 1 in chemistry. Why??

The Islamic civilization and scientific revolution were short-lived for only 200 years. The Islamic Golden Age died fast as the scientific method of thinking was rejected by the domination of Al-Ghazali Suni principal.

Mu'tazila

Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali 

Al Mu'tazila was a movement of Islamic philosophy originated in the 8th century and flourished in the Abbasi time. It declined by the end of the 10th century after a wave of persecution, torture, execution, and beheading of its philosophers and followers.

Among other principals, the Mu'tazila movement basically supported the use of reasoning and logic in judgment. One of its main principles was; If a religious text defies reason and logic, it should be rejected. Actually, this is the basic role of the scientific method in conducting a research. The Mu'tazila led to a surge of Islamic advance in Science, Chemistry, Astronomy, Mathematics, Algebra, Trigonometry, Medicine and so on in the 9th and 10th centuries. The Islamic world in the Middle East became far more advanced than the Christian world in Europe in the 9th and 10th centuries. This advance in science died after the death of the Mu'tazila movement and the rise of the Theological movements.

Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (874-936)

was a Mutazelit until he was 40 years old. Like St Paul who converted to Christianity after Jesus appeared to him, Al Ashari saw Muhamad 3 times in a dream during Ramadan and Muhamad told him to support only what is related to Muhamad which is Hadeeth and Sunnah. Al Ashari left the Mutazelit, opposed it, and established the traditional Theology of Sunni Islam.   

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111) was the most influential Muslim after Muhamad. He basically supported the belief in God's will or design as the only cause of and the reason for any observation and behavior. He wrote books about the incoherence of the philosophers and opposed the scientific method of searching and thinking. He declared mathematics and the manipulation of numbers is from the devil. For example, he explained cotton burns when it catches fire because God made it this way and there is no need to search a cause for this. His massive influence led to the submission to the Islamic God Design to explain any phenomenon and the suppression of the advance of scientific thinking. Many Muslims and Christians nowadays believe in Al-Ghazali's God Design principal.

In the 17th century, Europe adopted the scientific methods of the Mu'tazila hence the industrial revolution and the advance of technology and civilization took off. However and unfortunately, the Islamic world participated towards the advance of humanity with nothing since the Mu'tazila in 914 AD.