Carey said "no great invention has come for many hundreds of years from Muslim countries."

LONDON, March 26 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The former Archbishop of Canterbury criticized Monday, March 25, Muslims over under-achieving, raising a prompt outcry from British Muslims who accused him of "recycling" old religious prejudice.

In a lecture in Rome, Lord Carey argued that today’s Muslims had contributed little of major significance to the world for centuries, reported the British Daily Telegraph Friday, March 26.

He said that "although we owe much to Islam handing on to the West many of the treasures of Greek thought, the beginnings of calculus, Aristotelian thought during the period known in the West as ‘the dark ages’, it is sad to relate that no great invention has come for many hundreds of years from Muslim countries."

Carey denounced moderate Muslims for allegedly failing to unequivocally condemn what he termed as the "evil" of bombers.

"Sadly, apart from a very few courageous examples, very few Muslim leaders condemn clearly and unconditionally the evil of suicide bombers who kill innocent people."

The former Archbishop of Canterbury slammed the absence of democracy in several Muslim countries.

"Throughout the Middle East and North Africa we find authoritarian regimes with deeply entrenched leadership, some of which rose to power at the point of a gun and are retained in power by massive investment in security forces.

"Whether they are military dictatorships or traditional sovereignties, each ruler seems committed to retaining power and privilege," he said, according to the Telegraph.

Carey was speaking on the eve of a seminar of Christian and Muslim scholars in New York, led by his successor as archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams, according to the paper.

He argued that, while Christianity and Judaism had a long history of often painful critical scholarship, Islamic theology was only now being challenged to become more open to examination, according to the Telegraph.

"In the case of Islam, Mohammed, acknowledged by all in spite of his religious greatness to be an illiterate man, is said to have received God's word direct, word by word from angels, and scribes recorded them later.

"Thus believers are told, because they have come direct from Allah, they are not to be questioned or revised.

"In the first few centuries of the Islamic era, Islamic theologians sought to meet the challenge this implied, but during the past 500 years critical scholarship has declined, leading to strong resistance to modernity."

Muslim Swift Reaction

"Frankly, one is dismayed by Lord Carey's comments,” Sacranie

Muslims in Britain attacked Carey bitterly and accusing him of "recycling" religious prejudice.

Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, was swift to dismiss the former archbishop's words.

According to Somerset Website, He said: "Frankly, one is dismayed by Lord Carey's comments.

"One is surprised to find Lord Carey recycling the same old religious prejudice in the 21st Century."

Sacranie asserted that the "media often ignored statements condemning terrorist acts".

On his part, Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Federation of Muslim Organizations in the British city of Leicester where 40,000 Muslims are based, said Carey had fallen prey to the campaign tactics of British racists, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"His understanding is very poor and people are going to see the whole thing in a light which will portray him as a person who is ignorant in the true faith of Islam."

Moghal reacted with fury to Carey’s claim that very few Muslim leaders clearly condemn bombings.

"That is nonsense. We condemn suicide bombers, we go on radio, on television, we have made statements. What more can we do?

"We cannot be responsible for the criminal actions of others - they are not under our control," he said.

The BBC quoted its religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott as saying that Carey's speech had probably been more balanced than the impression given by the Telegraph.

"One of the things that underlines his concern is the growth of Wahhabism - a very radical part of Islam - which is becoming quite dominant in the developing world," Pigott was quoted by the BBC online news as telling Radio 4's Today program.

"There was also a sense when Lord Carey was archbishop, that he was growing increasingly frustrated by the problem in Islam, as he saw it, of there being something of a lack of a hierarchy where leaders could say authoritative things which could in some sense be morally binding for Muslims in general."