Turkey's Erdogan orders the conversion of Hagia Sophia back into a mosque

[polymath257]

I don’t think I have ever read an explanation as to why or how the Muslim community went from an enlightened, liberal society to the conservative dark alley of despair that we see today.

If it could happen to them, it can happen to America. Especially if these Republicans get their way.

Well, part of the problem is that Al-Ghazali won the debate concerning whether 'foreign' knowledge was acceptable or not. While some did do good work after that point, the dominant view was that doing anything not deemed acceptable in the Koran was anti-Islamic and reprehensible. This extended into philosophy and even theology.

Because of the position that Allah recreates the universe at every instance according to his will, the whole notion of causality, and thereby of the ability of people to find natural laws, was discredited. One famous position of Ghazali was that a beheaded person would not necessarily die: if God wished otherwise, the person would continue to live. So *all* events were seen as disconnected from previous ones *except* through the will of God to be 'consistent'.