Under Rating the Muslim Achievement

Underrating the Islamic Achievement

Published: 2002

Unfortunately, the West has persistently endeavored to underrate the achievements of Islam and Muslims.

According to Dr. K. Ajram in his book, “The Miracle of Islamic Science,” few, if any, of the original contributions of the Arabs are mentioned in the books of history and encyclopedias.

In his book, “History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,” John William Draper stated, “I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has contrived to put out of sight our scientific obligations to the Mohammadans (misnomer for Muslims).”
Surely they cannot remain hidden much longer. Injustice founded on religious rancor and national conceit cannot be perpetuated forever.

What should the modern astronomer say when, remembering Europe’s contemporary barbarism, he finds the Arab Abul Hassan speaking of tubes to which ocular and object diopters, perhaps sights, were attached, as used at Maragha?

What when he reads of Abdur Rahman Sufi’s attempts to improve stellar photometry?
Are the astronomical tables of Ibn Junis (A.D. 1008) called the Hakemite tables or the Ilkanic tables of Nasir-ud-din Toosi, constructed at the great observatory just mentioned, Meragha near Tauris (1259 A.D.), or the measurement of time by pendulum oscillations, and the method of correcting astronomical tables by systematic observations such things worthless indications of the mental state?

The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe, as Christendom will soon have to confess—he has indelibly written it on the heavens, as anyone who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe may see.

It is deplorable to underrate the discoveries of the early Muslims, but it is far worse to ignore the mere existence of science as a whole to the Muslims. Here is what Robert Briffault in his book “The Making of Humanity” states:

Our science’s debt to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture; it owes its existence. The Greeks’ astronomy and mathematics were a foreign importation never fully acclimatized in Greek culture. The Greeks systematized, generalized, and theorized. Still, the patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute method of science, detailed and prolonged observation, and experimental inquiry were alien to the Greek temperament.

Only in Hellenistic Alexandria did anyone conduct scientific work in the ancient classical world. We call science arose in Europe from a new spirit of inquiry, new methods of experiment, observation, and measurement, and the development of mathematics, in a form unknown to the Greeks. The Arabs introduced that spirit and those methods to Europe.

It is highly probable that, but for the Arabs, modern European civilization would never have arisen; it is certain that, but for them, it would not have assumed the character that has enabled it to transcend all previous phases of evolution.