Mait's Garden 🌿

Riding the Tiger

2 min read

Summary

Ahmed Askary argues Islamic civilization must engage constructively with industrial modernity rather than withdraw from it. The pre-industrial “moral economy” was actually subsistence poverty (Malthusian trap). Three borrowed critical postures Muslims use — Catholic distributism, perennialism, Frankfurt School critique — all produce the same failure: no constructive orientation. The Muslim world lacks process knowledge, the tacit embodied understanding of production, and must build it.

Key Claims

  • Pre-industrial “moral economy” was a Malthusian trap — actual subsistence poverty
  • Industrial revolution produced: Haber-Bosch feeds 4 billion extra people; life expectancy 30→70; infant mortality 40%→single digits; maternal mortality 1000-1500→single digits
  • Three borrowed postures Muslims use to reject modernity:
    1. Catholic distributism (Chesterton/Belloc)
    2. Perennialism (Guénon/Nasr, Abdal Hakim Murad’s “riding the tiger”)
    3. Frankfurt School critique
  • All three postures produce no constructive orientation
  • Dan Wang’s three forms of technology: tools, instructions, process knowledge
  • Process knowledge is tacit, lives in people’s heads, cannot be stolen or purchased
  • US example: lost ability to produce classified nuclear material because everyone who knew had retired
  • Britain destroyed Egypt’s nascent industrialization via Treaty of Balta Liman (1838)
  • The Muslim world lacks process knowledge
  • Three existing nodes of industrial civilization: N. America, Europe, E. Asia — a fourth could emerge
  • Goal: “mastering the tiger,” not just riding it

Named Entities

Key Concepts

  • process-knowledge — Dan Wang’s concept: tacit embodied production understanding; cannot be purchased or stolen
  • Industrial modernity engagement — constructive participation vs. critical withdrawal
  • Malthusian trap — pre-industrial subsistence poverty reframed against romanticized moral economy

Relevance to Maitreyi

Intellectual frameworks for civilizational analysis and technology history; process knowledge concept is high-utility across many domains.

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