Women absolutely have a role to play in toxic masculinity. Not to take accountability away from the social conditions that men ultimately created and propagated.
Stoicism teaches us to focus on what’s in our control by either reframing or accepting our emotions based on rational judgment. The goal is emotional resilience, not emotional suppression. Pop culture has redefined it as you describe.
Interesting that googling would take precedence over UNESCO or Guinness in a science community of all places. Guinness particularly is known to have rigorous quality standards.
I’m going to trust actual organizations with institutional standards over a Google search. That’s just me though. Other readers can draw their own conclusions.
al-Qarawiyyin was started as a mosque-madrasa complex.
Science and spirituality were intricately entwined during this era. As an example, Dharmic concepts of sunya led to the conceptualization of zero and its use in mathematical operations which is foundational to many subsequent scientific advancements and necessary to our communication through this platform.
Part of what sets al-Qarawiyyin apart is that it offered degrees or certificates of scholarly achievement before other institutions.
This is why UNESCO’s World Heritage description of the Fez Medina explicitly calls al‑Qarawiyyin “the oldest university in the world,” and Guinness lists it as the “oldest existing, continually operating higher‑learning institution”.
Is it possible they did hear and it was not written down?
Or it was written down and someone had reason to destroy the evidence?
You’ve mentioned patriarchal orthodoxy. Could it be that there were powerful individuals that did not like the idea of a woman being credited with this accomplishment?
I appreciate your examples but there must be more to the story since, as another example, it is a Buddhist monastery in India that is often regarded are the world’s oldest residential university. Perhaps dormitory style living was not part of the ancient European model. I also wonder why Western founded institutions like UNESCO and Guinness would give this designation to al-Qarawiyyin when they would likely be more familiar with the examples (albeit nonspecific) you’ve listed.
I wonder why UNESCO and Guinness do not recognize those Christian monasteries then. Perhaps they did not confer degrees or certificates of scholarly competence (ijazahs) the way that al-Qarawiyyin did.
What if the truth can’t be known as Ibn Abi Zar only wrote on this 500 years later and archaeological evidence is not definitive but the story has inspired countless young women in the Islamic world to pursue higher learning?
If an unverifiable story accomplishes the outcome of improving the visibility of women in science and higher education in general, how should we judge that? Would only 100% verifiable truth still take all precedence?
Finally, we have to ask why did this story (if it really is just a story) capture so many imaginations? What cultural current at the time made this gain popularity? Was there a thirst for women to be seen in this light that he was looking to quench?
The humanities may be considered a soft science but it’s just as important as science in my view.
Difficult to verify does not mean untrue.
Al-Qarawiyyin is recognized by UNESCO and Guinness as the world’s oldest continually running institution of higher learning.
Al-Qarawiyyin is recognized by UNESCO and Guinness as the world’s oldest continually running institution of higher learning.
We can apply a purity test here (ie. what qualifies as a university) but… why except for pedantry? No matter how you frame it, it doesn’t take away from the scale or impact of the institution itself.
It was common for religious institutions to also be places of higher learning during this era.
The Nalanda Mahavihara (Buddhist grand monastery) is regarded as world’s oldest residential university. It is in present day India, though not operating today. Scholars such as Xuanzang (known as Mokṣadeva in Sanskrit) travelled from China (in his case Luoyang) to Nalanda for his studies and returned with thousands of sutras which were then translated. It was knowledge transfer through such universities during the Tang dynasty that brought the number system we use today (originally described in the Bakhshali manuscripts and further refined by Aryabhata and Bhramagupta) to China.
America was explicitly a racial caste state until the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964.
India similarly outlawed caste discrimination in article 17 of it’s constitution at its inception.
Of course laws cannot change centuries old social customs overnight. Which is why the US employs DEI to help equalize opportunity and India has gone as far as to implement quotas for the historically disenfranchised in the public sector.
It’s not like India has a particularly good economic outlook anyway
By which metrics?
Which region are you referring to and how are you defining success?
America has had a race based caste system for most of its history. It arguably still does today according to Pulitzer prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson (in reference to her book Caste: The Origins of our Discontents)
None of this stopped it from becoming the wealthiest nation on earth. It became the wealthiest nation on earth before it let black people use the same bathroom facilities as whites, before it let women acquire their own credit, even before outlawing marital rape.
Authoritarianism / subjugation of disenfranchised groups is not mutually exclusive to wealth, even shared wealth.
Saudi Arabia remains a monarchy to this day and is wealthy because 1) America had no issue with a monarchy holding power if it meant access to oil and 2) America spent decades helping extract and then purchasing that oil. You’ll see that social progress / lack of authoritarianism were not a part of the equation there.
Doubt they are of the size and diversity of India which makes things far from simple. Exaggeration aside, people are not chattel in India.
If you’re referring to the four Asian tigers:
Two received substantial aid from the US post WW2.
More predictable terrain and abundant coastline (relative to size) make an export based model (selling goods to the West) more feasible.
Small population size and less linguistic variability makes central planning (when it comes to education and skills building) more effective on a shorter time scale.
Ultimately India’s economic growth post WW2 was harmed most by
Did not the two wealthiest and most powerful nations on Earth today have the same trajectory?
Workers rights weren’t exactly pretty in the US in the early 1900s and we’ve witnessed the human cost of China’s development in our lifetimes.
The way I see it you have two (simplified) options. You can try to to go slow and do it a bit more perfectly or go fast and get there sooner.
India tried to go slow. It spent 40 years post independence being isolationist and quasisocialist. What did it get for that?
The Western capitalist/neoliberal world order didn’t see value in it so what India got was what was later termed by Indian economist Raj Krishna as the “Hindu rate of growth” ie. 4% GDP growth annually (underperformance for an emerging market).
India has since embraced the neoliberal world order which makes it a friend of Western nations economically. This means it’s now growing at a rate of 6 to 8% annually and on track to be a high income nation in 20-25 years. Millions have been pulled out of poverty and millions more will be still.
Do I like neoliberalism? Of course not. But the richest nations on earth make the rules and they’ve made it very clear that you can either play by them and have some of their wealth make it to you sooner or reject their framework and die in poverty and squalor.
Do I think this is an ideal situation? No its not. In an ideal world India could provide advanced economy level worker protections and still grow at the same rate. The problem is the richest nations on earth see India’s monetary value as its young, more affordable workforce. If India refused to bring that to the table, the timeline on which it would achieve becoming a high income nation would extend substantially.
Unfortunately being good / not authoritarian and economic outlook do not go hand in hand.
India has been the fastest growing major economy since it started aligning with the West and embraced the Western capitalist mantra.
Even with profound income inequality, the living standard for the average person in urban India is completely different from 10 years ago.
I doubt that rate of growth changes anytime soon with or without Modi.
The Berlin Global Dialogue was a few weeks ago. The CEOs of Airbus and BMW were gushing over entrepreneurial spirit in India and India’s demographic dividend (having more young than old people) which nearly guarantees economic growth over the next 10-20 years.
Economists globally have estimated India will be a high income nation by the late 2040s on its current growth trajectory.
If you’re a wage slave in an at will employment state you kind of are de facto lower caste though.
Not surprising since colonial violence is the foundation of capitalism.
This is cited from 2012 according to Wikipedia. Archived versions can be accessed in the citations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_al-Qarawiyyin
This article from BBC in 2018 also makes the same mention:
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20180318-the-worlds-oldest-centre-of-learning