Matthew Melvin-Koushki is “Associate Professor of Islamic History at the University of South Carolina.” He “specializes in early modern Islamicate intellectual and imperial history, with a focus on the theory and practice of the occult sciences in Timurid-Safavid Iran and the wider Persianate world to the nineteenth century.” He has a couple of books in the works about Islam and the occult, and he is “also cofounder of the international working group Islamic Occult Studies on the Rise (IOSOTR).”
A busy academic, Melvin-Koushki is also a canny self-promoter, saying in his bio that his work “constitutes a new analytical framework for the study of early modern Persianate societies specifically and Western early modernities generally—one that retrieves Islamic Magic as ultimate stumblingblock and hence weapon and pharmakon against the violently colonialist yet still endemic story of the Rise of the West.”
Got that? “Islamic Magic” is a “weapon” against the evil colonialist “story of the Rise of the West,” which is “still endemic.” Apparently Matthew Melvin-Koushki means by this that the West, where he makes a comfortable living as a professor, is still “violently colonialist,” and that “Islamic Magic” can still be used as a weapon against this violent colonialism. If he has any plans to move to place where a practitioner of “Islamic Magic” might be more comfortable, he has not disclosed them. Apparently, he intends to continue living right in the belly of the beast.
His bio goes on to explain how the Islamic world was far superior to the “much smaller and rabidly insular Latin Christian Far West” by the sixteenth century, but that “radically disproportionate, eurocentric, orientalist and occultophobic historiography of early modern science” maintains the hegemony of the inferior West.
Spanning fully two-thirds of the human race by the sixteenth century, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, the Islamic world was committed to Western, Neoplatonic-Neopythagorean cosmology as philosophical-imperial technology to a degree unparalleled by the much smaller and rabidly insular Latin Christian Far West, as Melvin-Koushki has shown. Yet the latter remains hegemonic in the radically disproportionate, eurocentric, orientalist and occultophobic historiography of early modern science, teleological touchstone for all other human (and nonhuman) ways of knowing and doing in the world. To break this colonialist curse, he has found several counterspells to be especially effective: Magic and the Weird, Persian Pythagoreanism and the Occult-Scientific Revolution, Occult Humanism and Islam-as-the-Greater-West, Cosmic Philology and the Superhumanities.
Islam in the “far vaster, wealthier and more cosmopolitan Persianate world” was so superior to the West that it even gave rise to the Scientific Revolution, leading to “transformations in everything from imperial architecture and ideology to astrophysics and computing”:
His favorite occult sciences are geomancy and lettrism, kabbalah’s twin. Indelibly Afro-Islamic, they are ideal decolonial windows onto early modern Pythagorean-Platonic mathesis, the new-old cosmology positing the world as a second mathematical Book to be decoded, then magically recoded, by the enterprising information scientist: the grimoire as grammar of being and becoming. Perniciously if predictably, this mathematization of the cosmos continues to be reduced in modern historiography to the basis of the “Scientific Revolution”—mother of all Kuhnian paradigm shifts—as an exclusively Latin Christian affair. Yet it began not in western Europe but in the far vaster, wealthier and more cosmopolitan Persianate world, culturally equally the West, where it helped spark other, more gorgeously revolutionary transformations in everything from imperial architecture and ideology to astrophysics and computing; its exponents occupied the same sociopolitical niche that Silicon Valley does today—and were even more devoted to entheogenic transhumanism. Hence the catchphrase running like a red thread throughout Melvin-Koushki’s larger project: Islam is Magic; Magic is Science; Science is Empire.
“Entheogenic transhumanism” refers to ingesting various psychoactive substances and imagining that you’re transcending the bounds of ordinary human perception.
It appears that Matthew Melvin-Koushki has already done that, as his Islamic Scientific Revolution is more imaginary than real, and once again leads to the question that dogs all such claims of magnificent Islamic achievements of the past: if they got that far, why couldn’t they follow through? If the Islamic world really was really the site of all this intellectual and cultural advancement, how did it happen that the vastly inferior West is not only the place where the Scientific Revolution can be readily demonstrated to have actually occurred, but is also the place where Matthew Melvin-Koushki himself lives, no doubt in large part because there are places such as Silicon Valley in the West and not, despite his claims, in Iran or its environs. Is the intellectual and cultural superiority of the West of the West really just the pernicious work of “eurocentric, orientalist and occultophobic” historians? If historians are capable of such a massive sleight of hand, Melvin-Koushki should be studying their magical powers, not those of Islamic shamans. The intellectual, economic, social and cultural development of the West, and the comparable lack of development of the Islamic world, is obvious even to the casual observer, as well as to the multitudes of Muslims who have made and are making their way to the West now in order to take advantage of the benefits of living there. If Islamic is magic and magic is science and science is empire, then where is that empire? Or is it simply an empire of his mind to which he retreats in pharmaceutically induced bliss?
Matthew Melvin-Koushki, like so very many other academics, is at war with reality, and reality always, in the end, emerges victorious. His academic house of cards stands now during our age of absurdity, but once the left’s cultural hegemony has receded, as it inevitably will, the self-indulgent madness of this sort of thing will be clear to everyone.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Those 4 things don’t go together. I’ll grant you that Science is magic, and that islam is empire (wannabe), but the first 2 have nothing to do with the latter two
Bexarkat says
Islam is an illusion.
KEVIN CLEVELAND says
Do You Believe in Magic? Magic is an allusion, Islam is a nightmare
SKA says
Islamicate(d?) and even Persianicate(d? Wait a minute! Shouldn’t that be “Iranianicate(d?)” Magic??!!
Sorry dude but neither of them stand a chance against our “Jew-do VooDoo!” – otherwise known as sane science based on empirical studies of objective reality!
Yaakov says
Ay Uslis do live in a fantasy World. This Advocate, Professor is no different. The regime in Iran is a messianic, Shiite cult, following a fatal attraction!
End PC says
IMO he’s yet another Islamic Bull-ShΪttεr , he knows it but it’s a good living compliments of SC taxpayers.
SKA says
Sayyid Hussein Nasr claimed that Mullah Sadr had proven the existence of “trans substantial motion while people in Iran told me about Shaykh Baha’i’s marvelous tiny fusion reactor that powered all the bathhouses in Shiraz – until the meddlesome British occupiers tampered with it and put it out forever! And of course MHMD was the first astronaut/cosmonaut with his flying donkey!
Yaakov says
Magic Professor Matthew Melvin-Koushki is Solomon’s ring given by G-d to summon and command the Zin!
Ben Smit says
……and his magic wand is jihad?
Emilie Green says
He majored in mumbo jumbo.
A+ plus plus.
Luchtpint says
Indeed. This is post-modernist BS to a tee.
Tim gallagher says
What a load of complete bullshit from this Muslim fuckwit. He plainly lives on planet insanity like so many other Muslims do.
JimJFox says
But… but… he’s a professor!
Joint honours in Bullshit & Twattery.
Tim gallagher says
Spot on description of this Muslim idiot. There seem be plenty of brain-dead people who somehow are professors these days. God help the students who are taught by them, jimjfox.
somehistory says
His photo and his foolishness, say he’s been “too long with the funny mushrooms.”
The Bible says people can be stupid for staying “too long with the wine.” But he’s been getting into something far worse and mixed it with the evils ….and stupidity… of islam.
FYI says
A note to any ex-muslims who know about the Scientific errors in the koran..
It is much worse than you may think..
1}allah’s misunderstanding of Astronomy is probably because it is PTOLEMAIC.from the 7th century
allah clearly does not understand Celestial Mechanics..or human reproductive Biology koran 86:6-7 for that mattter
“Astrophysics”;;sounds really super smart eh?meh..i have books on the Physics of Black Holes {which i find to be an amusing title} and Radio Astronomy…seriously don’t be impressed…i have always been into amateur Astronomy…but allah clearly DOES NOT UNDERSTAND Astronomy.If you thing Robotics is cool,fine,I know about Mechatronics and machine code but seriously..a robot walking around?..how about a troupe of Samba Dancers for complexity..a spider walking up a wall is a biomechanical engineering marvel…who cares about a song made by a robot …or AI imagery?
It is not just Science…..
2}allah confirms the Torah in koran 3:3 but completely MISSED the entire contents of the Torah and so the laws of Moses are missing in islam
3}allah’s EPIC misunderstanding of Christian Theology is hilarious in koran 5:116:THREE gods one of whom allah thinks is…MARY
On sale. at any islamic bookstore..’
Dr Zakir Naiks “5000 Brilliant scientific miracles of the koran”
Published by the Abdoolistan institute of koranic Astronomy
Nabil Bissada says
“University of South Carolina prof: ‘Islam is Magic; Magic is Science; Science is Empire’”
This professor looks like he has no idea what the true Islam is.
Shekh of El Azhar the head if the Muslims Sunny around the world “Dr. Ahmed El Tayeb” from Egypt feel shame, when he travels to the western countries for check medical to represent the true of Islam that he represents in Egypt.
Millions of Muslims quit Islam especial in the Muslims Arab countries. After searching and study Islam by his native Arabic language they found it cannot be used and practice as is.
‘Islam is Magic; Magic is Science; Science is Empire’, If anyone can believe in this sentence must be ignorant.
People need to think only for one minute and look in the map for all the Muslims countries who are practicing the Koran and the sharia law. What a miserable life under the Koran and the sharia law
Does professor at the University of South Carolina forgot what happened in Afghanistan after USA withdraw and been replaced by Taliban who are practicing Islam as is by the Koran and the sharia law.
Ten of thousands of Muslims from Afghanistan were afraid to live under Islam Empire.
https://youtu.be/FiRJRjsLx-M?si=iSqXWnuSFjdezMGg.
https://youtu.be/FiRJRjsLx-M?si=iSqXWnuSFjdezMGg
This video best evidence and witness that Islam and the sharia law can be only acceptable under threat or lie, or ignorant or money.
Every Muslim is a timing bomb.
Our enemies who are living in USA are more danger, than our enemies who are not living in USA.
Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.
Blougeoisie says
If empire is good, I’ll take the American one
and be proud of it thanks
Blougeoisie says
The tenured and champagne socialist class doesn’t realize that they are the modern equivalent of the French aristocracy that was overthrown in the revolution.
They are elitist, out of touch, and wear crazy costumes and the regular peoples’ expense and take our loans in exchange for gobbledygook
Jeppe says
I bet he has tenure. Otherwise he wouldn’t be bleating all this s**t. Which idiots made this guy professor?
Jack says
“The eyes never lie Chico” – Scarface reference for those who haven’t had the pleasure of watching that great movie. Nevertheless, looking into the eyes of Islamists reveals a great deal about them. The life is completely absent.
somehistory says
The “eyes are the windows to the soul” and the souls of mozlums are dead as to conscience and dark as to thought and behavior.
James Hoagland says
In the final analysis this is just another megalomaniac. Big words, empty phrases ramblings of a drug addict with corresponding empty eyes, dancing some where in the distant metaphysical universe this one has a title of an associate professor. So question is: an associate of what? Megalomania! Someone with a serious intention to study knowledge pays for these ramblings?
skeptiker says
Schon lange nicht mehr so einen Bullshit gelesen. Aber lustig. Und einen schönen Bart hat er.
James Lincoln says
I guess that the University of South Carolina is now a school of “lower learning”.
All the while, bedpan Biden pushes for more cancellation of student loan debt…
Charles Burks says
“Is the intellectual and cultural superiority of the West really just the pernicious work of ‘eurocentric, orientalist and occultophobic’ historians? If historians are capable of such a massive sleight of hand, Melvin-Koushki should be studying THEIR magical powers, not those of Islamic shamans.”
Great point, Robert!