The Islam of History
How ironic that today, Islam is perceived by many as reactionary, anti-intellectual, intolerant and violent -- when for much of its history Muslim culture led the world in intellectual achievement, progressive social policy and religious tolerance ... certainly relative to Europe and the West.
What is there in the buried DNA of historic Islam that could both allay "Islamophobia" among non-Muslims ... and open a new door for those Muslims who feel they have no recourse but piety and martyrdom?
First, we must all do a better job of recovering the lost history of our world prior to 1500.
The facts are these: From 800 to 1500 CE, most of the advances in higher mathematics, astronomy, medicine, chemistry, science and engineering – plus a rich infusion of philosophy, architecture, literature, music and art – came from the Muslim universe. These advances certainly built on earlier breakthroughs in Greece, Rome, Byzantium, Persia, India, China, Africa and elsewhere. But Muslim-supported thinkers like Jabir, al Khwarizmi, al Kindi, Ibn al Haytham, Omar Khayyam, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Maimonides and many others assimilated and expanded older knowledge. In doing so, they laid the foundation of modern hi-tech civilization.
Al Khwarizmi alone was the father of the Arabic numeral system, negative numbers, the zero, algebra, and his namesake the algorithm – all of which provide the math that drives software, runs Google searches, aids hedge fund management and unlocks genomic code.
Ibn Sina was working with early forms of psychotherapy 900 years before Sigmund Freud, and Ibn Firnas undertook a glider flight in Muslim Spain 1000 years before the Wright brothers did it with a propeller. Al Kindi voiced an unproven "theory of relativity" 1100 years before Einstein, while Jabir and his scientist contemporaries were toying with the idea of creating artificial life in the laboratory -- 1200 years before today’s cloning and stem cell research.
The implication of all this is that the dark, militaristic, reactionary image of Islam presented by extremists on both sides just isn’t supported by history. Not that there weren’t periods of reaction or violence. But there was never any Muslim violence to compare with the slaughters of the Holocaust or Stalin’s reign or the Inquisition – all done within the borders of "Christendom".
Classical Muslim intellectuals, much like today’s scientists, were trained to constantly question assumptions, and to accept no theory until proven. This enabled their 700-year intellectual explosion.
So what can be done to bring this tradition of Muslim intellect and achievement back to life?
First, there must be a shift away from the current fixation on politico-religious martyrs ... and a renewed emphasis on those Muslims who often risked their reputations and lives to expound radical new concepts of the universe, science, medicine – concepts that improve all of our lives, every day.
Education systems on all sides must teach that today’s global technological civilization is not just a product of the West ... that in fact, Muslims and others provided as much of the foundation as Europeans and Americans. Teachers and textbooks must give a fuller view to the interconnectedness of human development ... and how the artificial dividing line between Muslim and non-Muslim civilization is really artificial.
For young Muslims looking for sources of pride in their heritage, why not add in the brave thinkers like philosopher Al Kindi, who said in the early 800s, "We ought not to be embarrassed about appreciating the truth and obtaining it wherever it comes from, even if it comes from races distant and nations different from us." Or the brave warriors like Saladin who not only routed the Crusaders from Jerusalem ... but then paid out of his own pocket to ransom the 100,000 Christian prisoners he took, when everyone thought he was entitled to slaughter them in retribution for the Christian slaughter of Muslims when they had seized the city.
Though some in our world say that we have reached the end of history, in fact our sense of history, however incomplete or skewed, informs who we are and what we do. Could a simple correction of the shared historical record help to reframe our present ... and future?
Michael Hamilton Morgan’s newest book is "Lost History: the Enduring Legacy of Muslim
Scientists, Thinkers and Artists" (June 2007, National Geographic Books. He is President of New Foundations for Peace. His previous books were Collision with History: the Search for John F. Kennedy’s PT 109 (2002), Graveyards of the Pacific (2001), and The Twilight War.(1991). He is the former director of the Pegasus Prize for Literature.
By Michael Hamilton Morgan |
July 30, 2007; 7:21 AM ET
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Posted by: Gxzkifd | December 13, 2007 6:22 AM
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Posted by: Gxzkifd | December 13, 2007 6:22 AM
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Dear Mr. Morgan,
On page 3 of your book you write: But the Hugenots were driven away or converted by the Royal Edict of Nantes. Many took their textile skills to Ireland, France and Tours stayed predominantly Catholic."
From what little history I know, I think that it was the Edict of Fontainbleau (1685) that drove away the Hugenots, not the Edict of Nantes (1598) - unless you are claiming to have discovered some lost history in this case too.
Chezi Fine
Posted by: Chezi Fine | October 21, 2007 2:09 PM
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Dear Mr. Morgan,
This is what you write in Lost History (p.17 of the hardcover edition):
"This policy of interfaith tolerance will mark the beginning of a tradition of Muslim coexistence with Christians, Jews, Hindus, and other religions that will endure in many predominantly Muslim places until the 21st century." Aren't you ignorning a lot of recorded history to reach this astounding concusion?
Here is but one URL to click for the treatment of Jews at the hands of Muslims from Muhammad to the 21st century:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf15.html#c
Respectfully,
Chezi Fine
Posted by: Chezi Fine | October 18, 2007 12:33 PM
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Dear Mr.Morgan,
...And what about Islamic Imperialism? (v. Karsh, Efraim's book Islamic Imperialism:A History.) Very many mosques in the Islamic world are built on the sites of holy places torn down by Muslims.I think you are mistaken in your representation of Islam as a peaceloving and benign religion.
Respectfully,
Chezi Fine
Israel
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to Jennifer
The Mayas apparently did have the zero, though their geographic isolation prevented its wider propagation and so confined its impact to a small area in Central America; the Arabs and Persians were able to build it into a larger system that was the foundation of Western, and thus global, mathematics.
If you read my book you will see that I give full credit to the Indians including Brahmagupta for discovering the zero and creating the "Arabic" numeral system. What Al Khwarizmi and colleagues did was to assimilate all that into a higher system that yielded algebra, trigonemetry and algorithms and was the foundation of modern global math.
To Mary Cunningham
If you read my book, you will see that I note the fundamentalist Muslim dynasties and their more severe practices coming into al Andalus from North Africa, the Almoravids and Almohads ... as you say, the influence of the Islamic antiheresy trials could well have influenced the later Catholic Inquisition. So we really aren't in disagreement there.
It's just the conclusion that one draws from it.
As for the Holocaust and Stalin comments ... since people attacking "Islam" manage to roll it into a monolith and focus on the darker pieces at the fringe as representing the whole thing, it's only fair to look at the outrages committed within the borders of Christendom -- or maybe "the West" would have been a better label.
The slaughters by Stalin and Hitler were engineered and undertaken in culturally Christian Eurasia. Not that there weren't a lot of brave resisters and opponents, including those from within churches. But no matter the ideological labels of the perpetrators ... these unprecedented slaughters did not happen in Muslim societies; they happened closer to home. So before we start judging all of "Islamdom" on moral criteria, we need to look in the mirror first.
Posted by: Michael Hamilton Morgan | July 31, 2007 7:43 PM
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Mr.Morgan,
Among others, it is the absence of enlightened voices like yours in the West that contributes to the present unhealthy tension, especially post 9/11. It is the constructive and objective outlook such as yours-in your article and your new book-and forms such as this excellent forum provided by WP that will help bridge the gap.
Over and above what you said to bridge the gap, it is the removal of accumulated and concrete grievances inflicted by the West on the Muslim peoples that : from the Crusaders,Colonialim, Imperialism, to vulgar western intervention including political, economic as well as the employment of brute military force to subjugate Arab and Muslim peoples, the most recent of which is the invasion, destruction and occupation of Iraq on false pretenses; but just as importantly is the creation on and in the heart of Arab world of a racist mililtaristic,expanisionist,Apartheid jewish theocracy on top of an existing nation of Palestine and to its near destruction and negation.
Arabs and Muslims feel oppressed form within and wihout:an unholy allaince between brutal dictatorships at home and hegemonic intervention and support of dictatorship in the Arab/Muslim world by the west; US and Europe only pay lip service to democracy and human rghits:observe the denial of self-determination to Palestinians for sixty years, for Kashmir's Muslim majority and for Bosnian Muslims who were genocided in the heart of and while "civilized Europe” looked on, yet East Timor was allowed to secede for mother Indonesia-why else except that the former being a Christian community.
How to solve this tension: for the West not intervene in the affairs of the Arab/Muslim World, stop supporting dictatorship in the Arab/Muslim World and stop US vulgar support for the Apartheid jewish state-then "Terrorism" will be no longer.
Posted by: Asim | July 31, 2007 7:01 AM
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Check your historical facts, Mr Morgan!
The notorious Spanish Inquisition executed about 1% of the people it investigated: about 1,000 people. In one sense it was a legacy from the much ballyhooed, falsely exalted Islamic occupation of Spain.
During the 11th and 12th c. Sufist brotherhoods introduced puritanical reformation to Moorish Islam...this led to the institutions of Islamic courts to punish heresy--and also to the introduction of extremely severe methods of torture, used to extract confessions. When the first Catholic Inquisition was set up in Castile, in 1478, it employed, in addition to Roman procedures, well established in some European coutnries, practices already familiar and up and running used in the existing heresy courts of Islamic Spain.
Re: the slaughters of the Holocaust or Stalin’s reign" in Christendom.
Oh Please! The long dissolution of Christendom--however you define it--dates from at least 1500. Nazism and Communism were late Enlightenment creeds-- both atheist, political religions--set up in place of traditional Christianity.
Posted by: Mary Cunningham | July 31, 2007 4:36 AM
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Most conflicts around the globe today, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Sudan,Iraq(Sunni's V Shiite's),
are all being conducted by Islamist's, doesn't that tell us something?They all read from the same book, and all try and emulate the life of their prophet who had the mindset of a 5th century warlord.
Whatever contributions claimed by Muslims can usually be traced back to the nations they had invaded and conquered.
Posted by: Sanmanio | July 31, 2007 2:43 AM
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The Zero was aound in the Maya tribe in S. America long before 600CE but the theory of zero came from India and was just taken further by the Arabs who have this incredible idea that they invented so much that was previously known in those countries they colonised. However the truth is very different for many inventions that Arab folklore claims.
Posted by: Jennifer | July 31, 2007 12:17 AM
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Mr. Morgan,
As simple as your formula is in response to "ME", it is sadly that type of collective ignorance and hatred in the western world that will preclude anything useful like that to take place and thus we are doomed to repeat the process again, God save us from it.
I would just disagree in what you think the solution is. If you travel to most muslim countries you will see that they are mired in superstition and grave worshipping. All of this is a fundamental anathema to Islam. What started muslims on their journey to greatness was that they got rid of all those things in the beginning. They began to worship God alone. No more superstitions, fortune teller nonsense. You are correct in that the demand that statements and ideas have proof was the birth of the scientific method and muslims who care still follow this today, sadly though there are very few.
But it was a nice article overall.
Posted by: Ismael (Jonathan) Byrd | July 30, 2007 7:30 PM
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It will require a serious educational and multimedia campaign that will take a long time and cost money ... but a lot cheaper and less destructive than military action.
Posted by: Michael Hamilton Morgan | July 30, 2007 7:20 PM
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So what practical steps will be taken to counter the brain-washing, hatred filled, reactionary "education" going on in the Muslim world for the past 60 plus years?
How do you propose to keep the Taliban thugs from hi-jacking a country, and tearing down 1,000 year old statues of Buddah because they "threaten" their beliefs in some way?
Posted by: me | July 30, 2007 5:17 PM
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