The reformation that transformed the intellectual landscape of Europe is dated from 1517. In 1515 the Ottoman Sultan Selim I, persuaded by the influential clerics of the realm, issued a decree that imposed the death penalty on anyone using a printing press, invented in Germany in 1455, to print books in Turkish or Arabic. Christian Europe aptly used the print media and its power to educate their nations, whereas the Islamic empire covered its face with multiple Fatwas.
The ban remained in force for the next 270 years, till 1784, except for an attempt to circumvent the ban in 1729. It was only in 1838 that, the Ottoman bureaucracy came to the conclusion that: “Religious knowledge serves salvation in the world to come, science serves perfection of man in this world.” Islamic Reformation is not even on the agenda of any of the Islamic movements till now.
Power balance tilted to the white Christian world from the Ottoman Empire.
Tags: Muslim