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Is Arabic the language of science and modernity?
(Note: this entry includes a discussion about the ceaselessly repeated slogan that Islam was once superior to Europe.)
Ken Hechtman writes:
In the entry, “Sarkozy makes love to Islam … while Islam continues to take over France,” you wrote:
“In this off-the-planet statement (Arabic is the language of science and modernity?)…”
The State Department thinks it is. I Googled “scientific terms” and “Arabic origin” to find a list. I know a dozen or so off the top of my head. Pretty much any scientific or mathematical term that begins with “al” (“algorithm”, “alchemy”, “algebra” and maybe surprisingly “alcohol”) comes from Arabic. But I wanted to find a complete list. Top hit I got is from the State Department:
In medieval times, then, it was largely through French that Arabic words entered the English language. And perhaps the most noticeable thing about these words is that the majority of them are technical terms relating in particular to mathematics, astronomy, and chemistry. The word alchemy, which entered English in the 1300s, comes almost unchanged from the Arabic al-kimya, which itself is derived from Greek. Alkali, algorithm, alembic, and almanac entered the English lexicon about the same time. The syllable “al-” in these words comes from the Arabic definite article al (the). So, for example, alkali is derived from al-qili, defined as “the ashes of the saltwort plant.” An alembic is an apparatus formerly used in distillation and the word comes from al-inbiq, the still.
Arab-Islamic civilization was at its height during the Middle Ages, and for 500 years or so Arabic was the language of learning, culture, and intellectual progress. Most of the classical Greek scientific and philosophical treatises were translated into Arabic during the ninth century. From this groundwork, Arab scholars, scientists, physicians, and mathematicians made great advances in learning that were then passed on to western Europe via the Islamic universities in Spain. For example, we owe the decimal system of computation to Arab mathematicians, based as it is on the Indian concept of zero—a word that, like its synonym cipher, comes from the Arabic sifr, meaning empty.
Arabic learning was widespread in medieval England from the 11th to the 13th century, and indeed beyond. Abelard of Bath, then one of the foremost scholars in Europe, translated the astronomical tables of al-Khwarizmi from Arabic into Latin in the early 1100s. Two common mathematical terms entered the language in this way: algebra and algorithm. The latter word is taken from al-Khwarizmi’s name itself, while algebra comes from al-jabr, meaning “the reunion of broken parts”; it’s a word that features in one of al-Khwarizmi’s mathematical treatises, Hisab al-Jabr w’ al-Muqabala. Curiously enough, both the Arabic al-jabr and the English word algebra also refer to the surgical treatment of fractures or bone-setting. The Oxford English Dictionary, which lists definitions according to historical usage, gives the first meaning of algebra as “the surgical treatment of fractures” and quotes a citation from 1565: “This Araby worde Algebra sygnifyeth as well fractures of bones, etc. as sometyme the restauration of the same.”
One of the greatest contributions made by Arab scholars to the extension of knowledge was their development of the science of astronomy. If you look at a modern star chart, you’ll find hundreds of stars whose names derive from Arabic: Altair, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Vega, Rigel, and Algol, to name a few. The derivation of the last of these is intriguing: It comes from the Arabic al-ghul, a word meaning “demon,” from which the English word ghoul and its adjective ghoulish are also derived. Algol was named “the ghoul” by the Arabs because of its ghostly appearance, for, as an eclipsing binary star, it appears hazy and varies in brightness every two days. Beyond star names, many astronomical terms, among them zenith, nadir, and azimuth, also derive from Arabic.
The words talisman and elixir originate in Arabic alchemy, and the word almanac (al-manakh) comes from Arabian astronomy. Other technical words include caliper, caliber, aniline, marcasite, and camphor. We weigh precious stones in carats and measure paper in reams thanks to Arabic: Girat is a small unit of weight; rizmah is a bale or bundle. Two other words of interest in this category are average and alcohol. Average, our word for a commonplace mathematical concept, is in fact somewhat obscurely derived from the Arabic word awariya, meaning damaged goods. This came about because costs relating to goods damaged at sea had to be averaged out among the various parties concerned in the trade.
As for alcohol, this is derived from al-kohl, the fine black powder that is used in the Middle East as a sort of medicinal eye shadow. The relationship between the black powder and alcohol as we know it is hardly self-evident, but you can see the connection if you think of the powder—it’s typically antimony sulfide—as the essence or pure spirit of a substance. Even as late as the 19th century, the poet Samuel Coleridge, in one of his essays on Shakespeare, could describe the villain Iago as “the very alcohol of egotism.”
The preponderance of technical and scientific terms entering English from Arabic during the Middle Ages suggests accurately enough the general superiority of Arab-Islamic civilization in the area of scientific achievement during this period. Revealing too is the fact that the next broad category of Arabic words suggests an advantage in terms of luxury and creature comforts and, consequently, a higher standard of living.
LA replies:
Oh, the STATE DEPARTMENT! That reliable, critical source on the meaning of Islam!
Come on, you know the answer I’m going to give. In the fields of science, philosophy, etc., there was either copying and summarizing of ancient works, or new work that was done by non-Arabs (some of them Muslims, some not) living under Muslim rule. The intellectual work commonly attributed to Islam was not generated by Islam, but by non-Islamic sources working within the Islamic society but outside the immediate dictates of orthodox Islam. Further, as the non-Islamic populations under Muslim rule gradually dwindled, by conversion or other means, Islamic society reverted to the condition in which Winston Churchill described it at the end of the 19th century: the most retrograde force in the world. The fact that important concepts were transmitted in or even coined in Arabic words does not mean that Islam generated those concepts, which is what the dhimmis at the State Department and the Elysee Palace want us to believe when they say that Arabic is the language of science, and speak of the civilizational superiority of Islam.
So that’s the science part.
As for the modernity part, even the Islam apologists and romanticizers tell us that the world of Islam was “left behind” and has been a backwater for at least the last 300 years, meaning that Islam and the Arabic language have contributed nothing to modernity. So, even by the testimony of Islam’s relatively informed champions (i.e. not the State Department or Sarkozy), “Arabic is the language of … modernity” is an off-the-planet comment.
However, I must point out that even if you agreed with what I just said, it would doubtless make no difference to you. Your stated agenda of Islamizing the West is not based on some belief that Islam offers something civilizationally positive that will improve our society. It is based on your explicitly expressed desire to eliminate the West by merging it with the rest of the world.
A. Zarkov writes:
Ken Hechtman quotes the US Department of State as saying:
“For example, we owe the decimal system of computation to Arab mathematicians, based as it is on the Indian concept of zero—a word that, like its synonym cipher, comes from the Arabic sifr, meaning empty.”
This statement is absolutely false. Wikipedia quotes Georges Ifrah’s book “The Universal History of Numbers” as saying:
“Thus it would seem highly probable under the circumstances that the discovery of zero and the place-value system were inventions unique to the Indian civilization. As the Brahmi notation of the first nine whole numbers (incontestably the graphical origin of our present-day numerals and of all the decimal numeral systems in use in India, Southeast and Central Asia and the Near East) was autochthonous and free of any outside influence, there can be no doubt that our decimal place-value system was born in India and was the product of Indian civilization alone.”
Thus the Arabs did not invent, zero or positional notation or the decimal number system. This is horrible. We can no longer trust our government about anything. The State Department is obviously so compromised by Arab money and influence that it can’t help but spew propaganda for them. It takes about 5 seconds of Googling to discover the history of positional notation.
LA replies:
Thanks for this. I had half-consciously noticed that problem when I was posting the comment before, but didn’t pause over it long enough to differentiate in my mind the well-known “Arabic numeral” issue from the claim about the decimal system and zero. I certainly have never heard, even as urban legend, that the Arabs invented the decimal system and zero, and the fact that the U.S. State Department is now making such a claim shows that the manufacture of Arab/Muslim achievements has become an ongoing project of the leading institutions of the West, just as the manufacture of non-existent Soviet inventors and scientific discoveries was a project of the Communist Party during the Soviet period, or, more recently, the manufacture of civilizational achievements of black Africa by Afro-centrists, public schools, and museums.
A. Zarkov writes:
Drilling down I see at the bottom of the page the disclaimer:
“The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.”
So strictly speaking the assertion comes from author Alan Pimm-Smith and not the State Department. You can also see that the article originally appeared in Saudi Aramco World. Obviously Pimm-Smith was trying to curry favor with the Saudis. I have seen this piece of misinformation before.
Paul K. writes:
As you pointed out, to say “Arabic is the language of science and modernity” is nonsensical. One hundred years ago or so, it was commonly said, “German is the language of science,” because at that time the world’s most advanced scientific research was being conducted in Germany. To say “Arabic is the language of science of modernity” on the basis of a few etymological artifacts is mere pandering.
In this Wikipedia entry listing Nobel Prizes by country, I see one prize for Chemistry and one for Physics going to Arab nations in over 100 years. Not a very high batting average for the culture Sarkozy describes as our hope for the future. Meanwhile, I see two Chemistry prizes going to Israel alone since its inception 60 years ago. (I am only counting prizes for hard sciences, not the meaningless prizes for Peace or Literature.)
LA replies:
Let’s look at that more closely. The Physics Prize, which went to an Algerian in 1997, went to Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, an individual who is at least part Jewish. Further, Algeria, as indicated by the asterisk after his name, was only Cohen-Tannoudji’s country of birth, not the country where he did his work; he lived and did his work in France. That leaves only one science prize going to a person living in a Muslim or Arab country, Ahmed H. Zewail of Egypt, who won the Chemistry Prize in 1999.
Meanwhile, 309 Americans have received the Nobel Prize. 21 of those were for the Peace Prize, 12 for Literature. Thus Americans have won 276 Nobel prizes for science (including the dismal science). But hey, since France for the last 50 years has rejected the American “hyperpower” and the hated “Anglo-Saxons” in favor of Muslims, let’s pretend that Islam is the culture and Arabic the language of science and modernity.
RB writes:
You wrote:
“In the fields of science, philosophy, etc., there was either copying and summarizing of ancient works, or new work that was done by non-Arabs (some of them Muslims, some not) living under Muslim rule. The intellectual work commonly attributed to Islam was not generated by Islam, but by non-Islamic sources working within the Islamic society but outside the immediate dictates of orthodox Islam.”
That is a great summary of the reality of the so-called Islamic intellectual achievement as anyone who seriously and objectively studies its history will discover. What are called Islamic “golden ages” followed the re-establishment of peace and security under the auspices of the new regime. The time lag between the conquest and the peak of the golden age varied from a few decades through several centuries in different Muslim lands. However, these golden ages were a result of the parasitic exploitation of the intellectual and economic resources left over from the preceding civilization. When these were exhausted intellectual achievement went into a rapid decline.
Considering the extent of the Muslim domains, the wealth expropriated by the Muslim elites, and the number of technologies and variety of ideas available to them, it is remarkable how little in terms of human advancement and accomplishment was achieved by Muslims even at the height of their golden age. Muslim accomplishments were paltry when compared to what was achieved in the small and fragmented cities of Greece, in the divided states of the Indian subcontinent or in parochial and isolated China.
As for the ultimate origin of modern arithmetic numeration and algebra, according to historians of mathematics Boyer and Merzbach in “A History of Mathematics,” there are three schools of thought: “one emphasizes Hindu influences, another stresses the Mesopotamian, or Syriac-Persian, tradition, and the third points to Greek inspiration. The truth is probably approached if we combine the three theories.” The example of algebra is an ideal case illustrating the role of cultural cross fertilization in the short-lived period of high civilization under the early Pax Arabica. Algebra was derived from a combination of ideas developed by the oriental culture superseded by Islam, the classical learning of ancient Greece, and an impetus from a far-off land, in this instance India, which became accessible due to the vast extent of the Arab empire. And, of course, it reached its full development in a land that still contained a majority population of non-Muslims and recent converts who were well versed in their ancient traditions.
Paul Nachman writes:
You write:
Let’s look at that more closely. The Physics Prize, which went to an Algerian in 1997, went to Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, an individual who is at least part Jewish. Further, Algeria, as indicated by the asterisk after his name, was only Cohen-Tannoudji’s country of birth, not the country where he did his work; he lived and did his work in France. That leaves only one science prize going to a person living in a Muslim or Arab country, Ahmed H. Zewail of Egypt, who won the Chemistry Prize in 1999.
I met Cohen-Tannoudji very briefly in 1982, when he visited the University of Colorado. (He wouldn’t remember me from Adam.) He’s a Sephardic Jew. It’s from him that I learned that “Cohen” means the equivalent of “priest” for Jews (this though I’m half Jewish!). By no stretch of the facts is he an Arab.
And Zewail, the one—and only one—who immediately comes to my mind when thinking simultaneously about “Arabs” and “real Nobel Prizes,” did all his work following his undergraduate degree in the U.S., his Nobel-prize-winning work being a product of his faculty position at Caltech. (Wikipedia says he naturalized in 1982.) And his prize involved the application of laser technologies and techniques that are “pure Western civilization”—perhaps with a bit of heritage from Japan.
Similarly, Mario Molina, the only Mexican winner in the hard sciences, did his prize-winning work with F. Sherwood Rowland at the Univeristy of California at San Diego. (Their prize—in chemistry, I think—was for bringing up the ozone/fluorocarbon problem, a very worthy accomplishment.)
LA replies:
So, Wikipedia should have an asterisk after Zewail’s name as well after Cohen-Tannoudji’s.
Indeed, it would be astonishing if anyone living and working in the Arab and North African region won a Nobel prize in the sciences: is there a single research university or research laboratory in those countries, where first-rate scientific work could be done? Though perhaps there are such institutions in the non-Arab Muslim countries such as Iran, Pakistan, and Indonesia.
Alan Levine writes:
I thought you and Mr. Zarkov neatly disposed of the false claims for Arabic modernity, and “Arabic numerals,” but I would say that it is idle to deny that for some time (but ending no later than the thirteenth century) the Islamic world was a) more advanced than Catholic (but not Byzantine) Europe and b) most of what little advance made in science after the Hellenistic era was made there.
By the way, alcohol is not a Muslim discovery or probably even a true Arabic word, but is generally thought to be a “pseudo-Arabic” name coined when Arabic terms were still the “latest thing” in European chemical work. Arabic was the language of modernity—in the 12th and 13 centuries.
LA replies:
“… it is idle to deny that for some time … the Islamic world was … more advanced than Catholic … Europe…”
I am surprised that you would repeat this pseudo fact, or rather this cliche, as support for the supposed achievements of the Muslim world in science and “modernity.” It is ahistorical and misleading to say that civilization in Europe was “less advanced” than that of Islam. Civilization in Europe was not less advanced; civilization in Europe had ceased to exist. It had been destroyed in the calamity of the fall of the Western Roman empire, which was both caused by and followed by barbarian attacks that went on for half a millennium. The phrase, “Islam was more advanced than Europe,” suggests the image of two civilizational competitors in a more or less equal race, when in reality the Roman civilization had come to an end, Christian Europe, besieged by barbarians from the north and the east and by Muslims from the south, was hanging on by the skin of its teeth, and a NEW civilization was slowly growing out of the ruins, incorporating elements both of its predecessor civilization and of the cultures of the Germanic tribesmen who had destroyed it. Instead of being focused on this extraordinary civilizational drama, unprecedented in history, in which a wrecked civilization reconstituted itself in a new form over a period of 500 years, we’re focused on the irrelevant fact that while the West was painfully reconstituting itself, Islam, having conquered half the world and appropriated by force the wealth, skills and learning of its subject peoples, was “more advanced” than the West! It is not only historically inaccurate and lacking in context, it is perverse, it shows deep ingratitude toward our Western forebears, for us to think this way. It is a classic example of the “chronological snobbery” that is normally a hallmark of liberals.
My indignation is not directed at Mr. Levine, but at this thoughtless and damaging slogan that is universally repeated throughout the West.
As for Islam being the language of “modernity” in the 12th and 13th centuries, that, of course, is not what Sarkozy was talking about. He was talking about our modernity.
Ken Hechtman writes:
If you’re waiting for the State Department to claim no other culture but ours ever produced anything of value at any point in history, you’ll be waiting a while. Even if it were true—and I don’t believe it is—saying so would still be…oh, I don’t know… undiplomatic?
I’m not inclined to argue the specifics of which Arab scientist discovered what. You wouldn’t trust my historical sources, I wouldn’t trust yours. So let me step back and ask the question this way “Does it NEED to be zero? Does everything you believe about the relative values of the West and East today require that even 700 years ago, the total number of inventions and discoveries by the entire Arab race be zero?”
LA replies:
“Does it NEED to be zero? Does everything you believe about the relative values of the West and East today require that even 700 years ago, the total number of inventions and discoveries by the entire Arab race be zero?”
Of course it doesn’t have to be zero. But we have to start from where we are, and where we are is the massive, conventional lie about Islam’s achievements, and the massive conventional cover-up of the truth about the threat Islam poses to non-Muslims. The lie must be exposed and the truth brought out. Gosh, I thought leftists prided themselves on debunking popular myths and exposing hidden oppression. But it appears the leftist passion for debunking suddenly fades away when the myths to be debunked celebrate the West’s historic mortal enemy.
I have no desire to reduce Islam to zero. What I desire is that the massively concealed truth about Islam be brought out. For example, how many people know that all the wealth of Islam was accrued by theft and other forms of force and coercion? How many people know that Muhammad himself began this tradition shortly after he came into power in Medina, by leading raids against caravans? How many people know that the pattern established by Muhammad is sacred, since Muhammad is the perfect man who cannot be criticized? How many people know that expropriation of non-Muslims, in the form of the jizya tax, slavery, and razzia raids on the infidels, are all justified by the central Islamic teaching that all non-Muslims are enemies to be treated as such until they are subdued under the power of Islam?
In typical liberal fashion, you’re concerned that I, in my assigned role as the nasty, close-minded conservative, want to put down, diminish, and discriminate against a non-Western people. But, also in typical liberal fashion, you’re not at all concerned about the very unpleasant and dangerous truths about Islam that are being concealed.
As for genuine civilizational achievements by Muslim Arabs and Muslim non-Arabs that were produced within an Islamic context that was not directly dependent on non-Islamic sources, offhand I don’t have a list of such achievements in my head. My knowledge of these things is too sketchy and impressionistic to be of much value, but here are a few things that come to mind: The Islamic mosque, particularly the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which powerfully conveys a sense of the greatness and oneness of God. The mysterious Arabic script, especially when seen on the walls of a mosque, that seems to take one out of this world into an experience of the transcendent. The great Sufi writings such as The Conference of the Birds and the Masnavi, which are at a high level of spiritual wisdom, though of course Sufism is not Islam proper.
But whatever positive achievements we may attribute to Islam, the underlying problem is that these positive things are inseparable from the entirety of Islam, and the entirety of Islam spells for us political and spiritual slavery, civilizational destruction, and the extinction of the intellect. As I’ve said many times, I respect Muslims’ desire to keep their religion, which has been the basis of their way of life for 1,400 years. While I think it would be much better for humanity if that religion didn’t exist, the reality is that there is no power on earth that can make that religion go away, other than the Muslims’ own decision to reject it. So the bottom line is that I have nothing against Muslims practicing Islam, but only where their practice of Islam can have no effect on non-Muslims. Islam is and will always be an actual or potential threat to all non-Muslim societies, and therefore it must, to the extent possible, be locked up within itself where it can have no effect on the non-Muslim world.
RB writes:
“Christian Europe, besieged by barbarians from the north and the east and by Muslims from the south, was hanging on by the skin of its teeth”
Once again you have hit the target. Muslim apologists would be rather more convincing in their assertion, if the Muslim raids and conquests themselves were not a major cause of decline in the civilization of an already beleaguered West. The Arabs and the religion of Islam were a much more formidable threat to western European civilization and to Byzantium than the Vikings and the nomadic horsemen from the steppes. The almost permanent war, the disruption of trade and the sundering of the Mediterranean were a constant drain on the economy of Europe and retarded the full recovery of Western civilization right up to the time of the Renaissance.
Therefore, the temporary superiority of Muslim civilization in the seventh through the tenth century is irrelevant. Islam came into possession of the most advanced and civilized lands in the world. And after a brief period of high culture, Muslims squandered this advantage. At the same time, Muslim predation helped to cause and then to prolong the European dark ages.
Western Europe was not the only region whose civilization was retarded by Islamic aggression. Byzantium was also under constant pressure from Muslims. This may, at least partly, explain the long stagnation of Byzantine civilization. This Byzantine stagnation continued until the later middle ages. The late Byzantine renaissance that then occurred, ironically, may have been due to a deep recognition on the part of cultured Byzantines that their end at the hands of the implacable Muslims was inevitable leading them to devote resources to one final amazing effort. Without the constant Islamic attacks one can only speculate what heights the Byzantine genius might have attained. As it turned out the last Byzantine renaissance was effectively displaced to safer soil in Italy and the West. The unfortunate fate of the ancient Hindu civilization is still another example of the destructive nature of Islam with respect to adjacent cultures.
October 18
Julien B. writes:
A quick comment on Ken Hechtman’s post. KH says:
“If you’re waiting for the State Department to claim no other culture but ours ever produced anything of value at any point in history, you’ll be waiting a while.”
This is a really weird thing to say. The whole point of the discussion was that discoveries attributed to Arabs and Muslims were really discoveries of other people, none of them members of “our culture”: Indians, Syrians or Persians, middle-eastern Jews, etc. Obviously someone who has this view is not denying that other cultures have made valuable contributions to the world, and couldn’t coherently deny this.
I’m guessing the reason KH fails to see this is that, for liberals, to deny that all foreign cultures are perfectly equal in all ways to our own is the same as saying that they are all totally worthless. Liberalism, which is supposed to open our eyes and minds to cultural diversity and the value of the Other, actually makes it impossible for us to see anything. Since the Other can never be perfectly equal in every way to us, the liberal soon realizes it would be better not to look at the Other at all.
LA to Julien:
Great insight. A “VFR”-style insight, if I may say so!
Julien replies:
Definitely VFR-style. The VFR view of politics has been a massive influence on my understanding of the world, and not just politically. It was one the biggest factors in getting me to realize that I could abandon every liberal assumption without giving up anything important, and without being an immoral person. So thanks to you for getting me thinking along these lines.
LA replies:
Thank you. What you’ve said is perhaps the most important thing for anyone today to understand, that liberalism, the rule of non-discrimination, is not identical with morality—that there is a moral, Western way of being that is non-liberal. If enough people grasped this, there would be a chance for the West to save itself.
The key sentence in your original comment is:
[F]or liberals, to deny that all foreign cultures are perfectly equal in all ways to our own is the same as saying that they are all totally worthless.
There’s more to say about this, and I’ll get back to it later.
Sage McLaughlin writes:
You write:
“[L]iberalism, the rule of non-discrimination, is not identical with morality … there is a moral, Western way of being that is non-liberal.”
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. It is this that liberals deny with ever-increasing vehemence and presumption, and it is this that we must constantly offer as the alternative to left-wing despotism and civilizational ruin.
October 19
Michael D. writes:
In her note, Kidist Paulos Asrat expressed some of the same visceral reactions I have to Islamic architecture. While I find many of its tiling patterns interesting from a purely abstract mathematical perspective, but not often beautiful, the last emotions its mosques and gateways elicit from me are awe and reverence. I suspect, contra Miss Asrat, that they represent less an attempt to “barge in on Allah” than a psychological device for triggering an inescapable sense of “Allah barging in” on the observer, particularly for an infidel. If Miss Asrat finds the “mystery and transcendence conveyed by Islamic art to be claustrophobic and bewitching, and even frightening,” then the architecture has served well its purpose: preparing the mind for submission. This intent and attendant message are all too plain to see in the visually jarring mega-mosques now being constructing throughout the West.
Even the horror vacui evident in Islamic architecture’s internal wall patterns enhance this sense of “no escape” from Allah’s designs and whims; you cannot glance away without an immediate reencounter with another of Allah’s patterns, and usually one with no apparent logical relation to its preceding neighbors. This visual randomness and disorder comports well with the Islamic world view that everything about the universe can change in the instant Allah’s fickle will changes, but contrasts starkly and disturbingly with a Westerner’s confidence in an orderly physical universe reliably operating on timeless and humanly discoverable laws, albeit laws briefly and locally suspended by the occasional miracle or two.
Jonathan L. writes:
Just wished to point out that the Dome of the Rock is not a particularly authentic piece of Islamic artistic expression either:
Re the excavations at the Temple Mount: actually, it is the Dome of the Rock, so often assumed to be a Muslim structure, which is very likely not such. The Arabic inscriptions on the inside are not found anywhere in the Qur’an; the key phrase “and Muhammad is his Prophet” is, in fact, nowhere written on the walls.
Architecturally, the Dome of the Rock is a Byzantine martyrium. Writing in Arabic does not make a building “Islamic.” A little nunc pro tunc backdating has allowed Muslims to claim the Dome of the Rock as a clearly Islamic structure, but the evidence, when examined, is a good deal shakier than one might think.
Also:
As for artistic expression, neither paintings (of living creatures) nor sculpture are allowed in Islam …
There were two possible outlets: architecture, and calligraphy. As for Islamic architecture, so heavily dependent on Byzantine models (e.g., the squinch) and naturally on Byzantine workmen—for Arab tribesmen could not suddenly become experts in architecture. The Dome of the Rock is a Byzantine martyrium—there is nothing especially Islamic about it. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus is essentially built upon the vast Christian church that was there first, and much of which remains. There have been Islamic architects—Sinan comes to mind—and some beautiful mosques, mainly in Persia and Central Asia. But a good-sized city in Italy contains more art work than all of Islamic civilization ever produced. Surely that is worth noting.
LA replies:
I am skeptical of the argument that there is nothing distinctively Islamic about the Muslim mosque. If the Dome of the Rock is not distinctively Islamic, expressing a uniquely Muslim sense of the divine, namely of its absolute oneness and transcendence, then nothing is.
Alan Roebuck writes:
Kidist Paulos Asrat writes:
These excesses, in pattern and proportion, are Muslims’ way of trying to find him. And ultimately, I think they cannot.
Man, is she ever on to something. In the Old Testament, God appeared before the whole people at Sinai, and He spoke face-to-face with Moses. In the New Testament, God the Son was a man among us, and the Apostles went to their deaths rather than recant their account of having physically handled God.
Not so Islam. It’s all based on what God allegedly told Mohammed. No confirming miracles, no fulfillment of prophecy, no direct presence of God; in fact, no knowable God at all (those who have studied Islam report that Allah has no definite attributes, lest that limit his freedom.)
This is probably the main reason Islam advances mainly by force: it has little persuasive evidence other than the zeal of some of its believers.
October 21
Alan Levine writes
I was not online for some days and was too irritated to reply immediately when I read your answer.
Frankly, you partly misread my intention. I do indeed consider it “idle to deny” that, for whatever reason and however its achievements were attained, the Islamic world (by which I meant the “Mediterranean and Middle East area under the rule of Muslims,” as is conventional) was more advanced than the Catholic West. (Not, as I think I made clear, all of Christendom.) There are objective standards for such things, which enable us to conclude that the medieval Muslim world was ahead of the then West just as the latter later drew far ahead of the Muslims.
I do not credit the more advanced nature of the medieval Muslims to the greatness of the Muslim religion, but partly to the fact that the areas overrun by the Arabs, including Spain, were the least banged up parts of the Roman Empire, and that the Arabs, before they became Muslims, were more advanced than the Germanic peoples.
I was, of course, being sarcastic when I pointed out that Arabic was the language of modernity seven centuries ago.
By the way it is not true, as another comment suggested, that the Muslims were always a bigger menace than other invaders. Once the Arabs were stopped by Charles Martel, they were stopped. Arab attacks later were far less destructive than those of the Scandinavians and the Hungarians. [LA replies: But even though the invasion of Gaul/France was stopped, the Muslims from their base in Spain for centuries continued raids, sometimes very devastating raids, on Italy and other parts of Europe. Once they even attacked Rome and did great damage.]
Further, I fail to see why anyone should be bowled over by the fact that the Muslims were once more advanced, and made some contributions. So what? Hindu India made more important contributions to our number system and algebra. I can still control my admiration for a culture that burned widows.
It occurs to me that when the State Department referred to the decimal system, it may have meant decimal fractions. Unless I am mistaken, however, they were invented by Simon Stevins early in the seventeenth century. Will try to look this up.
LA replies:
First, I apologize for coming on too strong and getting in your face like that. I was aiming at this ubiquitous slogan, not at you, but my tone was a bit insulting.
Based on your reply, I feel I need to explain further the context of this discussion as I see it. The question here is not the bare truth of statements such as, “In the year 900 the Abbasid Caliphate was at a higher level of civilization than western Europe with regard to civilizational factors X, Y, and Z.” The question is, WHY is this type of statement constantly repeated by every college educated person in the Western world like the sleep-taught slogans in Huxley’s Brave New World? What is the intention of the statement, why is it said? As you yourself point out, the fact that Islamic civilization was for a period more advanced, and made contributions, is no big deal, it’s just a historical fact. True, in itself it is not a big deal. But then you fail to ask, “Why—if it’s no big deal and if it’s just a simple historical fact—is it constantly repeated in the manner of an automatism, by ordinary people, by opinion columnists, by Islam scholars, whenever the Islam issue is discussed?” So obviously, the statement plays some significant function in the contemporary Western mind.
And what is that function? It is to disseminate the message that the West is not so great as it thinks it is, that the West is not “superior” to Islam (or to any culture) in any way. It is thus to destroy the capacity of Westerners to form critical, decisive judgments about Islam and its relationship with the West, and also to destroy their capacity to identify with the historic Western civilization and prefer it to Islam. It’s function is, in short, to enforce the liberal, anti-West mentality that has paralyzed the West and made it incapable of defending itself from any unassimilable minority or foreign group, particularly Muslims.
That is the real intent and meaning of the statement about medieval Islam’s superiority to the medieval West, as distinct from its formal intent and meaning as an expression of an unobjectionable historical fact. And when I say, “intent,” I don’t mean the conscious intentions of the speaker. I mean the real meaning and impact that the statement has in the contemporary mind, regardless of the conscious intentions of the speaker. And that’s why the statement must be challenged. Once we have regained our sanity as citizens of the West who are able to took at the world from a Western point of view, then we can have all the historical discussions we want about medieval Islam’s relative superiority or inferiority to the medieval West in this or that regard. But that’s not where we are now. Where we are now is suspended in space, not standing on the ground of a particular culture, and thus unable to say “we”; and because we can’t say we, we have no identity as “we,” and because we have no identity as “we,” we have no existence as “we,” and because we have no existence as “we,” we’re unable to think logically and practically about ourselves in relation to others. You can’t think about the world unless you first are. And to be, is to be something particular. And the consciousness of having a particular identity and existence is precisely what liberalism systematically dissolves (if you’re a white Westerner, that is, or, in some cases, even if you’re a conservative nonwhite who identifies with the West). Therefore, in order to think about the significance of Islam in relation to ourselves, we must reject liberalism. Then we will recover our “we,” and then we will be able to think.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 16, 2008 10:27 PM | Send
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