And I won't doubt al Farabi's contributions to Islamic thought as it applies to some twisted form of political science. Although I would ask you exactly how al Farabi's sense of a perfect society would be Muslim and one of its main purposes was bringing about salvation of the citizens applies to 'freedom'...
I can't speak on al Ghazali as the name is not familiar, although I will research it and get back to you
It was you who were talking about contributions to thoughts on freedom, not I....... although, I would submit that thoughts on righteousness as related to God have everything to do with freedom. I never made any insinuation that Arabic philosophers contributed to democracy.
btw, it was meandog's derision of my comments to which I was mostly responding.
When ignorance (i.e. meandog) derides knowledge (i.e. ME), I find it most amusing.
And from what I've seen of meandog, he makes a habit of ridiculing people out of his abject ignorance.....
Read up a bit more on Islamic philosophers. You may be surprised that the stereotypic belief about Arabic people is quite wrong.
(And I am speaking as an Evangelical Christian, who believes that Islam is a false religion).
And just for the record, philosophy was/is considered to be a science to Greek and medieval scholars, so mathematical, scientific and philosophic contributions from the same thinkers would not be unusual.
Only in recent history has the subject of metaphysics been removed from the science of philosophy.