Re: The Myth of the West's Intellectual Debt to Islam

"Abdalla Alothman" <abdalla_@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1150742096.393794.200990@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I forgot to mention some other pertinent citations from eminent historians,
James Burke and Stanley Poole (for the archives):-

"The Moors went to work building hospitals, massive libraries (some housing
hundreds of thousands of books) to eradicate sickness, superstition, blatant
ignorance, and illiteracy. (At the time of the Moorish invasion a whopping
99 percent of Europe could not read.) And while the whole of Europe had
managed to produce only two universities, there were 17 institutions of
higher learning in the Muslim city of Cordoba alone. " [James Burke]

"Of equal importance to the Arab-Islamic scientific discoveries on the
European Renaissance was the reintroduction of ancient Greece?s natural
philosophy by way of translations by Islamic scholars. The historian James
Burke identifies several knowledge shocks that ignited the Renaissance. One
was delivered by Ibn-Sina (Avicenna, 980 to 1037), whose Kitab Al-Shifa
(?The Book of Healing?) introduced medieval Europe to the principles of
logic and their use to gain knowledge and understanding of the universe.
Another major shock was delivered by Ibn-Rushd (Averroes, 1126 to 1198),
whose writings and commentaries reintroduced to medieval Europe the
Aristotelian approach to studying nature by observation and reasoning.
[James Burke]
"The misguided Spaniards knew not what they were doing. The exile of Moors
delighted them; nothing more picturesque and romantic had occurred for some
time. They did not understand that they had killed their golden goose. For
centuries Spain had been the center of refined civilization. The seat of
arts and sciences of learning and every form of refined enlightenment. No
other country in Europe had so far app-reached the cultivated dominion of
the Moors. Whatsoever makes a kingdom great and prosperous, whatever tends
to refinement and civilization, was found in Muslim Spain."[Stanley Poole]

But as a backdrop this is what Robert's single source, Jonathan David
Carson, wrote in his blog article "Hyping Islam's role in the History of
Science" about the erudite ?Science in the Arab World: Vision of Glories
Beyond? by Dr. Wasim Maziak in the June 3, 2005, issue of Science (the
largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the
world, with an estimated total readership of one million.) :-

"Thus when it publishes a politically correct history of the relationship
between science and Islam, as filled with errors as a garbage can left too
long in the sun is filled with maggots, its falsehoods enter credulous and
influential minds on every continent, including Antarctica." [Jonathan
David Carson]

Now, I wonder why I get the impression this whole thread (using Jonathon
David Carson's colourful language and histrionics) is motivated by grubby
"neocon" maggots and political ideology in the west, rather than Islam
itself? It's as if "credulous", "errors", "garbage", "falsehoods" isn't the
mainlining genre of blustering "myth" generating Islamic critics in SRI?

--
Peace
--
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive
themselves. [Eric Hoffer]

Zuiko Azumazi
azumazi@xxxxxxxxxxx

.

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