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Entry: Inventing Islam Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/inventing_islam#15476 Post contents: You ask: "Such assertions only highlight the discomfiture of those who make them. For if Muslims really did make innovations in aerodynamics, astronomy, and other fields long before Europeans did, what happened then? Why were the Europeans the ones who made use of these discoveries for technological advancement? Even if Copernicus (who came from a devout Catholic family and may have been a priest himself) was influenced by Ibn al-Shatir, which is not universally accepted, why didn’t Muslims make use of his insights the way Copernicus did? (For more on this, see Thomas Woods.) Al-Shatir died in 1375, just under a hundred years before Copernicus was born in 1473. Yet in that century, and in the centuries thereafter, Islamic astronomers did nothing significant with their coreligionist’s discoveries. If Islam contained the seeds of the high level of cultural attainment that the Islamic world enjoyed at its apex, why has it been unable to reverse its precipitous decline from those heights?" Sir John Glubb OBE, CMG, KCB, and a convincing historian explains that the Arab Golden Age lost a lot of its steam when Baghdad, the Arab world's wealthiest and most sophisticated city, was sacked by the Mongols. Many a scholar was put to the sword, the libraries were burned, and even the irrigation canals were destroyed. Something else to bear in mind is climate. The planet's climate changed in about 1400. Until then, wine had been grown on Greenland. It's quite conceivable that the difference of a few degrees Fahrenheit in average temperature makes all the difference between a hard-working, prosperous, and educated populace and a desultory, poor, and ignorant people. Compare Arkansas, Mississippi, or Brazil, in 1930 (before the A/C was invented) to New York, Boston or Philadelphia. Why was Italy the leading scientific power in the early Middle Ages (Dante, Macchiavelli ,Thomas of Aquinas, Leonardo da Vinci, and others) and why did it lose its preeminent position? Is it because Italian culture is a second rate culture as you argue about Arab culture? Why is it that Italy most thrived roughly at the time when it had the most amount of cultural exchange with the Arabs? Doesn't this fatally undermine your argument? I am not sure that Bernard Lewis doesn't bring pre-conceived notions to his study of Islamic culture. An acquaintance who saw him testify on Capitol Hill told me he was clearly out to lunch. Rather than critique an exhibition that may or may not have been put to together too expertly, take the time to read wikipedia's article on Islamic science. Level-headed people like Will Durant and Alexander von Humboldt had nice things to say Islam and its contributions to science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_science Sent at: 2008 12 02