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.
