Posted on 01/15/2008 5:15:30 AM PST by forkinsocket
JEDDAH, 15 January 2008 — The history of science and civilization, as taught by many institutions in the West, often fails to include more than 1,000 years of Islamic heritage and civilization, according to Dr. Salim Al-Hassani of the UK-based Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilization.
“The Renaissance couldn’t have happened out of nothing,” said Al-Hassani while speaking at Dar Al-Hekma College here yesterday. “In the West, there’s total ignorance of the contributions of other civilizations. Did modern civilization really rise from nothing?”
Al-Hassani explained how many Western discoveries are of Muslim origin. There was a lost age of Muslim innovation and invention that Muslims are not communicating to the West, he said. It is not included in the their history syllabus or textbooks either.
During Umar ibn Al-Khattab’s reign in 634 A.H., Muslim women took the lead in different ways. He appointed Samra bint Nuhayk Al-Asadiyya as a market inspector in Makkah and Ash-Shifa bint Abdullah as an administrator of the market in Madinah. “Later, Ash-Shifa was appointed as the head of health and safety in Basra,” said Al-Hassani.
Al-Qarawiyyin, a spiritual and educational center that led the Muslim world for over 1,200 years, was founded and built in 859 C.E. by a young princess, Fatima Al-Fihri, who migrated with her father Mohammed Al-Fihri from Qairawan (Tunisia) to Fez in Morocco.
“Fatima vowed to spend her entire inheritance on building a mosque suitable for her community. This remarkable story is a typical example shedding some light on the role and contribution of women to Muslim civilization. Such a role is the subject of widely held misconceptions about Islam,” said Al-Hassani.
In 1993, Prince Charles said in a public speech at the Oxford Center of Islamic Studies that if there was much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there was also much ignorance about the impact of Western culture and civilization on the Islamic world.
“It is a failure which stems, I think, from the straitjacket of history which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from Central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished,” said Charles. “But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society and system of belief, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history.”
Al-Hassani founded www.muslim heritage.com attracting 60,000 visitors daily in order to change misperceptions about the role of Muslim inventions in today’s schools, universities, homes, hospitals, market, cities and the world. He was one of the key speakers at the first Arab Knowledge Economy conference that was held in Jeddah on Jan. 12-13.
The problems with this article should be glaring. The most ingenious of the innovations that came from Arabs, came before Mohammad.
Precisely who ever said that it did? This article is a piece of nothing.
“It is a failure which stems, I think, from the straitjacket of history which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from Central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished,” said Charles. “But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society and system of belief, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history.”
Don’t worry Prince, at the rate things are going you’ll soon get to celebrate its relevance to your future. Which sounds as if it would suit you just fine.
neither could have 911
Quite true. Were it not for Mohammedan violence and cruelty in the destruction of the Byzantine empire, Byzantine scholars would not have fled for western Europe.
‘Renaissance Couldn’t Have Happened Without Muslim Input’
These towel hats, currently living in the 6th century, have the nerve to imply they are the seeds of western knowlege.
What arrogant @$$wipes.
So she bankrupted herself by building a monument and traning ground to the Faith that made her a second class citizen and ultimately a pauper
It is absolutely true that Islamic science contributed to western society on some level. It is also true that the last contribution was over six hundred years ago, and the current technological/scientific representation of Islam is a pig turd on a hot sidewalk.
The Muslim contribution to the Renaissance is kind of like how good you feel when a headache finally stops. The Muslims were the headache.
When I am fighting with a rabid dog with my right hand, I don’t create any great works of art with my left. When the dog goes away, though, I have time for the better things in life.
People tend to forget that after the Western Roman Empire started coming apart, the Eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantine empire centered in Constantinople) was still going strong, until it fell to Muslim invasion
It was Muslim raiders, pirates and bandits who helped KEEP Europe in the Middle Ages. Muslim pirates stopped trade in the Mediterranean, cut off contact to India and China, and generally made a feudal existence necessary to survival.
And, no, the Arabs did not invent "Arabic numerals" or algebra. That was stolen from Indian mathematicians by Arab conquerers
what the Crusaders saw in the Middle East, and the scientific books they discovered there layed the groundwork, and the final impulse came from the foreign trade carried out by the Italian city states. if it had been up to the Muslims, there would have been no Renaissance, only Dhimmi...
unfortunately for Islam, it has progressed basically *zip* since the Middle Ages...
Put on your hipboots folks,its more BS from mad mo’s liers
What is "C.E."?
So, you know something. Every time my students complain in my Algebra class and whine about the subject, I’ll tell them to blame the Muslims.
To engage muslims in argument over anything is spitting in the wind.
"Christian Era".
Actually, it's some bass-ackward convolution meant to remove Christ from the calendar. Christians are taking it back.
Frankly, I don't put much stock into anything that uses the phrases "BCE" and "CE".
Lots of good comments! Imho, you’re all right.
"Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."
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