Tuesday, August 23, A.D. 2011

Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science

Hillel Ofek published an interesting article in The New Atlantis, “Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science.” The article is informative, though not without fault. For instance, it contains a ridiculous quotation by an Islamic Studies plant, Jamil Ragep: “Nothing in Europe could hold a candle to what was going on in the Islamic world until about 1600.” Even if we grant the Dar al Islam Averroes and Maimonides, since they inhabited that civilization, we should not underestimate the splendor of Western intellectual achievement in the scholastic age and afterward. Albert, Thomas, John Duns Scotus, Dante Alighieri, William of Ockham, Desiderius Erasmus, and Niccolò Machiavelli are just some of the illustrious minds in the West before A.D. 1600, and who were their Arabic counterparts to whom they could not hold a candle? Moreover, the article betrays the typical Western ignorance of intellectual activities in the Eastern Roman Empire. Nonetheless, the essay poses an interesting question—one that Averroes answered nine centuries before when he warned about the corrupting influences of Mohammedan theologians.

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, August 23, A.D. 2011
Religion | Muhammadanism • Permalink