The Impact of Muslims on Western Civilization

Yesterday I went to a talk on the history and impact of Muslims and Islam during their Golden Age (circa 700 - 1200) on the western society who lived in their Dark Ages during those times. The talk is part of a 4-series talks organized by the British Muslim Heritage Centre in Manchester.

Overall, the talk was very good, especially informative. The lecturer was Dr. Salah Al-Djazairi from the University of Constantine Algeria. Very knowledgeable on Islamic and Western history - facts, dates, names, places pour out from his mouth just like waterfall.

I'm not going to jot down a long entry on this, just want to write out some of the essence of yesterday's talk so I won't forget them 20 - 30 years from now. These I think is very important and redefines and strengthens me as a Muslim positively.

1. Muslim empire was vast during these years and their civilization was entirely based on the culture of learning and teaching. There are vast numbers of learning centres throughout the empire - in Middle East, across North Africa, and in Spain.
2. Toledo in Spain during the 11th century was an important Islamic center for learning and translation into Latin. Many European and English scholars (when their societies were still living in the dark ages) visited Toledo and translated vast amount of Islamic work in Arabic into Latin and brought these manuscripts back to their places to start building centres of learning, imitated on the Islamic learning centres.
3. One of the famous western translator was Gerard de Cremona, an Italian. His entirely life was devoted to translating Arabic scientific literature into Latin.
4. The Muslim's contribution on Western society has been largely ignored, denied, weakened and reduced to just being a compiler of Greek work, translated into Arabic, then translated into Latin by Western Scholars that came to visit these Muslim cities, without original contributions from the Muslims. This is just a cover up. There were vast contributions from the Muslims on science and the approaches towards doing and learning science. The Greek's scientific method was largely based on speculative science, while the Muslims developed an entirely new approach towards science, one that relies on direct observation, experimentation, and hard evidence. The Islamic work on many scientific fields are far more advanced than those produced by the Greeks, even though many of the works were based on the works by the Greeks. There were many devices invented by the Muslims, unthinkable during the time of the Greeks.
5. Another accusation on the Muslims was that they were just copying works from different civilizations - Greeks, Hindus, Chinese - and translated them into Arabic. That's just what the Muslims did, or so they claimed. But that's not entirely correct. It's true that the Muslims went to all different places to collect and gather knowledge, but they synthesized and expanded the knowledge and made original and important advances from them.
6. The culture of teaching and learning - gaining knowledge, or ilm in Arabic - was very important to Muslim societies throughout its empire during the Golden Age. Scholars and students were celebrated in their quest for knowledge. Kings and rulers and wealthy individuals funded and supported these scholars and students and the madrasahs, mosques, and all centres for learning.
7. The main drive for the Muslims towards acquiring knowledge came from strong faith and believe in God. They put their total belief in Allah that they can achieve whatever they want to do. The Quran and Hadiths strongly stress the need to acquire knowledge on every individual to strengthen faith and believe towards God.
8. There were many internal conflicts and wars within different Muslim groups following its Golden Age. These internal conflicts weaken the Muslim civilization as a whole, opening up opportunities for western nations to divide and conquer them - the main one being the Crusades, a series of religiously sanctioned military campaigns, waged by much of Roman Catholic Europe, particularly the Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The specific crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between 1095 and 1291 (more on the crusades in the Wikipedia).
9. Dr. Al-Djazairi found that in his research on the history of islamic contribution to the west, almost all of his reliable and accurate sources are from Western and Jewish scholars. Contributions on this topic from Islamic scholars themselves are almost none existent.