- Islamophobes attempt to bury Muslim contributions to society.
- This article examines The Golden era and the amazing contributions Muslims made to society.
A false account of history
The heterogeneous and multifarious contributions that Muslims have made in the modern world are contributions that are imperative to the functionality of our society and have reverberated into the minutiae and mundane tasks of our everyday lives. The profusion of operational hats that have been entrusted upon developers, scientists, mathematicians, architects, and astute minds, have erupted waves of change in how natural resources engulfed by the human race can be used with efficacy and in an intelligible fashion. Moreover, in adopting a holistic approach to the observance of Muslim contributors to society, we are only then, able to comprehend the true impact of change which can often be subsided, for instance, the revolutionary, philosophical framework of thought in the Ghazalian era, which exemplified and intimately answered epistemological questions concerning Man, Life and the Universe; thus making mention of many Muslim individuals who not only superficially entered different facets of society but rather, became pioneers and specialists in their respective fields.
In light of the aforementioned, it is baffling how a fallacious postulation of there being a lack of Muslim contributions to society, in the works of more contemporary figures can be found today. Needless to say, paroxysms which hail from rambunctious and staunch Islamophobes such as Sam Harris, who’s erroneous statements compare Jewish contributions to Muslim contributions to mankind, eluding that Muslims have contributed very little in the “past ten or even a hundred years, a part from beating your wife or forcing her to live in a bag or killing victims of rape or performing clitorectomies on girls, you know the good stuff”, he remarks sanctimoniously, adopting a sarcastic tone.
Harris highlights how there are 15 million Jews and 1.5 billion Muslims (there are now over 1.8 billion Muslims, Alhumdulillah.
He goes on to list all the remarkable discoveries that Jews have made in the last 100 years in comparison to Muslims, such as curing diseases. He states that this has, “nothing to do with Muslims being mistreated by the west. Jews were exterminated and have yet managed to do more to establish our scientific worldview and do much for the creative arts…. Palestine can never be seen as an extermination of a people.”
The suffering of the Muslim world
Perhaps the most crucial component of the narrative that Harris conveniently misses, is that Muslim nations are in the midst of colonisation, turmoil and in the process of genocide and ethnic cleansing, prominent examples being, Kashmir, India, the Uyghurs in East Turkistan and indeed, contrary to Harris’s statement, Palestine.
As declared by the UN, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territory is apartheid.
“The world has been given a stark reminder on the eve of Nakba Day, the dispossession that began in 1948 is a process that continues to this day. As events in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem and Gaza have illustrated, today in Palestine, no home is safe, no civic institution secure, no holy site sacred as long as the promise of the Palestinians’ inalienable rights, including the right to return remains unfulfilled).
Not to mention, Muslim nations who are in the process of confronting the rippling effects of Western Intervention. The operative phrase here being “in the process”. In addition to recent transgenerational trauma of nations such as Afghanistan and Iraq, as opposed to the liberation of Auschwitz, which occurred some 77 years ago.
When considering the factors listed above, the reasons behind why there has been a stagnation in the flourishing of Muslim creativity, in comparison to the Golden era of Islam can be ascertained. However, the fabric of truth, being that Muslims have been at the forefront of combatting the Coronavirus pandemic, despite the many controversies of the vaccine itself.
Pfizer announced on November 9, 2020 that its COVID-19 vaccine has been found to be more than 90% effective in its recently concluded large-scale trial. The two key muslim scientists who developed this vaccine are Turkish-born Muslims named Dr. Ugur Sahin and his wife Dr. Ozlem Tureci. The couple started BioNTech, a technology startup based in Germany, to develop treatments using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.”
“Dr Sahin, 55, and 53-year-old Dr Türeci have dedicated their lives to medical research, with Dr Türeci once telling an interviewer they even made time for lab work on their wedding day……In creating BioNTech, they also aimed to pursue a much broader range of cancer immunotherapy tools.” There is no mention of the couple’s religion in this right-wing newspaper article, clearly not in the spirit of journalistic integrity.
Even though, the comments made by Harris regarding Muslim contributions was prior to the pandemic, he interestingly has not acknowledged any of the achievements made by the Muslims mentioned above in recent years.
Of course, the broad strokes ‘one size fits all’ instruction and narrative would evidently be a hindrance in understanding the tactics to demolish Muslims contributors, used by progressive Islamophobes in the 21st century. However, a crucial truth which all ’Four Horsemen of New Atheism’, Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins and Dennet, conveniently exclude from their narrative; is that the contributions made by Muslims are indeed the solid foundational blocks to any other out pour of creativity seen today; in the absence of, other continual developments would not have been made, for instance, the invention of Algebra and how this impacts the world today. Consequently, Muslim contributions are invaluable and cannot be dismissed as anachronistic due to the continual use of many of the inventions and systems created during the Muslim Golden era.
Similarly, Richard Dawkins in 2013, posted a tweet, stating how very few Muslims have won Nobel Peace prizes. Again, another redundant statement to ascertain truth. Nobel peace prizes are certainly not the yard stick for successive contributions to society. This evidently illustrates Dawkins visceral dismissiveness towards people of faith and the enormity of their contributions towards society and scientific works.
In dismantling the narrative posed by the aforementioned Islamophobes, I wish to take you to the period between the seventh to the fifteenth centuries, as is considered the ‘Golden age of Islamic civilisation’. During this period there was great emphasis on the pursuit of knowledge. Consequently, there were individuals, who contributed significantly to society that lived scholarly and pious lives, such as Ibn Sina, Al Khwarizmi, and Al-Biruni, who in addition to excellence in the study of religious texts also excelled in mathematics, geography, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and medicine. At this time Islam was not just a set of religious beliefs, but a set of ideas, ethics and ideals encompassing all aspects of human life. This resulted in the establishment of an Islamic civilisation. Thus the motivating force of this civilisation was its Islamic faith (used here both in the spiritual and temporal sense) and its language was Arabic’.
The Golden era occurred due to the teachings of Islam
The Islamic view of nature during the Golden Age had its roots in the Quran, the very word of God and the basis of Islam. Muslim scholars at that time were inspired to study nature in the context of the Quran. The following passages from the Quran illustrate the relationship between nature and man and how this relationship inspired Muslim scholars to study natural phenomenon, in order to understand God. The following verses also show the way the Quran presents the whole universe”.
“We created not the heavens, the earth, and all between them, merely in (idle) sport. We created them not except for just ends: But most of them do not understand, (Surah Al Baqara 44: 38-39). We see here how muslims are encouraged to be “thinking- people and are encouraged to ponder upon the creation of God.
The Philosophy of Imam Al-Ghazali
Let us now direct our attention to the eminent 11th-century theologian, jurist, and philosopher Imam Al-Ghazali and his impact on the world, “Al-Ghazali’s influence was deep and everlasting. He is one of the greatest theologians of Islam and his influence penetrated Europe, influenced Jewish and Christian Scholasticism, and several of his arguments seem to have been adopted by Thomas Aquinas in order to similarly re-establish the authority of orthodox Christian religion in the West. “The movement of Sufism was assuming such excessive proportions as to avoid observance of obligatory prayers and duties of Islam. Based on his unquestionable scholarship and personal mystical experience, Ghazali sought to rectify these trends, both in philosophy and Sufism.” (Heritage/Life and teachings of Ghazzali). More than 400 works are ascribed to al-Ghazālī. In preparation for this major treatise, he published an objective account of Maqāṣid al-falāsifah. This book was influential in Europe and was one of the first to be translated from Arabic to Latin (12th century). Most of his activity was in the field of jurisprudence and theology. Toward the end of his life he completed some work on general legal principles in which he defended Islam against such philosophers as Avicenna who sought to demonstrate certain speculative views contrary to accepted Islamic teaching.”
In his work, ‘The Alchemy of Happiness’, “Al-Ghazali teaches us the following about achieving true happiness, “Happiness comes from Self-Knowledge, the knowledge that we have a heart or spirit, that is originally perfect but has become obscured by passions and desires.”.
Throughout history, as a human race, man has been grappling with his place in the Universe and how to attain happiness. Ghazali’s work is inspired by the teachings of Islam, and negates the focus of materialism, the superficial, intoxicating, and distracting pursuits of this transient world. During the Ghazalian era, this work had an instrumental impact on the embodiment of these particular morals, of which are obtained from the Holy Quran and the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him).
“O you who have believed, do not consume one another’s wealth unjustly but only [in lawful] business by mutual consent.” [Quran 4:29] “[True] righteousness is [in] one who believes in God, the Last Day, the Angels, the Book, the Prophets and gives of their wealth, in spite of love for it, to relatives, orphans, the needy, the traveller, those who ask [for help], and for freeing slaves; [and who] establishes Prayer and practices regular charity…” [Quran 2:177]
When observing many of the mental health issues prevalent within the West today, “It is thought that around 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health condition each year in England”. The findings of Dr Williams, pertaining to mental health, were peer reviewed by Scientist, Emily Henderson, who also concludes that there is an alarming worry regarding mental health in England today.
We understand how if the crucial teachings of Al-Ghazali (many of his teachings on morality are derived from the Quran and sunnah), if they were embodied in all societies, there would be a more profound, meaningful, and achievable pursuit of happiness. Consequently, the contributions which Muslims thinkers have made over time, have been spiritual and impactful upon its societies.
Lessons from the Ottoman Empire teach us that “Ottomans had contributed to the development of hospitals and healthcare, and witnessed advances in medicine, mining and military technology. They also set up a leading observatory in Istanbul and had established more than 300 centres of learning known as medreses. Students from all over the world came to study and carry out research in arithmetic, astronomy, philosophy and faith (known as the ‘religious sciences’”.
Ibn Sina [Avicenna] (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) (980-1037) asserts that he, “devoted his life to the study of medicine, philosophy and other branches of science. Renowned throughout medieval Europe as Avicenna, he established free hospitals and developed treatments for diseases using herbs, hot baths, and even major surgery. His famous book The Canon of Medicine was translated into Latin in the twelfth century and it was used in medical schools throughout Europe until the advent of modern science”.
Did someone say coffee?
It is common practise for many city workers today, to start their days with the paper in one hand and a Starbucks in the other, rushing to grab the 7:45 train. However, it is interesting to note that all coffee plants around the world, did in fact originate from Ethiopia and coffee was discovered by a Muslim. In 750, an Arab Shepherd named Khalid, observed the behavioural changes on his goats when eating from a particular bush, he noticed that they seemed much more enthusiastic, these were named as ‘the dancing goats’. Following this, In the 9th Century Al-Razy began using coffee for medicinal purposes. Ibn Sina administered coffee for medicinal purposes around the first millennial and wrote about its effects in his book ‘Qanun al Tibb’. Coffee was then transported to the Arabian Peninsula. Active trade between North Africa and Egypt meant transportation of coffee (as well as other goods to Venice). This is how coffee arrived in Europe.
Aviation
‘Polymath, Ibn Firnas and his contribution to the aviation technology of the world, was at the forefront of his field, he was the 1st aviator to fly with a heavier-than-air machine a 1000 yrs before motorised aeroplanes were invented. He achieved this with the help of a pair of wings built by silk, wood & real feathers.’
Ibn al-Nafis, was the first person to challenge the contention of the ‘Galen School’, that blood could pass through the cardiac interventricular septum, thus discovering and contributing significantly to knowledge on pulmonary blood circulation.
The water pump
“Al Jazari pioneered in automata and automat. He created the first water pump and water and candle clock, he created internal combustion engines, paving the way for automatic control and other modern machinery such as the steam engine”.(Mahmut Dirik, Sırnak University, Turkey).
In Egypt, the first general hospital was built in 872 by Ahmad ibn Tulun. This hospital set out to treat mental illnesses, as well as other illnesses.
Surgical scissors
When delving into A Historical Glance at the Arabo-Islamic Surgical Instruments During the Ages, we learn that Abu al-Qasim Khalaf Ibn Al Zahrawi of Al Andalus invented “Miqass” (scissors)- this became an innovative surgical instrument for cutting. “Miqdah” (needles) were used for eye surgery, “midass”. Inside his book “Al-Tasrif” (10th C AD) there is description and magnificent illustration of about 200 surgical instruments, many of which are devised by Zahrawi himself . The finest surgical instrument, which greatly resembles modern one’s was the scalpel found at Fustat, known as “al-Zahrawi’s scalpel.
What legacy will you leave behind?
We see how Muslim contributions, in perhaps all facets of society, can be seen today. Those listed above are only a tip of the iceberg. However, what’s interesting to note, and what we as Muslims should draw inspiration from, is how many of these great figures in our rich history were polymaths. The sky was their limit and they never confined themselves to one area of expertise, hard grafting and dedication was seen time and time again to perfect their craft. Moreover, the knowledge which was acquired by them and was imparted onto the world, left legacies that can never and should never be forgotten.
Now it’s our turn, be it in Philosophy or innovation?, What legacy will you leave behind?.
