Past Muslims’ Progress Not To Be Forgotten

I was listening to 89.1 WPAS on the radio the other day. It’s a “Christian” station that broadcasts out of Pascagoula, Miss., and the radio host was criticizing President Barack Obama’s appreciation for the Muslim faith.

“Islamic people have never contributed anything of worth to the United States of America.” The host actually said that. And that’s why I’m writing this article.

I’m not a Muslim. In fact, I’m a white boy raised right here in Alabama. As a Southern white boy, I feel morally obligated to my Muslim friends to denounce that radio jockey’s idiotic comments. He isn’t speaking on behalf of anyone with half a brain, and certainly not of Christians.

Had it not been for Islamic civilization, many texts from Classical Antiquity, including the works of Aristotle, would have been lost to the world forever. Luckily, Islamic civilizations kept these alive by translating the writings from Greek to Arabic during the 6th and 7th centuries, leading to their rediscovery by Europe hundreds of years later. Therefore, that host can start by thanking Islam for the Renaissance.

The number zero and the decimal system were introduced to Europe through Islam, and these concepts became the basis for the Scientific Revolution. The Islamic mathematician al-Khwarizmi pioneered the study of algebra, and his textbook on the subject later became a standard in European universities for centuries.

They also made numerous advances in the medical field. Not only were physicians and pharmacists required to pass exams before treating patients, but every major Islamic city had a hospital with separate wards for fevers, ophthalmic, dysentery and surgical cases.

This is the basis for modern emergency rooms. Al-Rhazes, one of the most famous doctors and writers in Islamic history, discovered the origin of smallpox and showed that a person can only acquire it once. This demonstrated the existence of the immune system and how it worked. Hundreds of Al-Rhazes’ medical works were subsequently translated into Latin.

In economics, business practices such as partnerships, credit, and banks to exchange currency were developed to handle the trade increase.

Even the first colleges appeared in the Muslim world in the late 600s and early 700s. Early European colleges were funded by trusts similar to the Islamic system and the idea of the graduate (Sahib) and undergraduate (mutafaqqih) is derived directly from Islamic terms.

An article printed in the Islamic Herald points out that, “While cities like Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo and Cordoba were the centers of civilization, Europe was in the Dark Ages. It had no infrastructure or central government.

“To the Muslims, Europe was backward, unorganized, carried no strategic importance and was essentially irrelevant. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church (which at the time was the strongest institution in Europe), successfully convinced Christian Europe that the Muslims were infidels.

“This caused Europeans to think that Muslims were culturally inferior to Europe and thus Europe was unable to benefit from the new scientific discoveries being made in the Islamic lands before the 1100s. By doing this Europe kept itself in the Dark Ages while Islamic Civilization prospered.”

The radio host was not only dead wrong, but he is guilty of an abuse of power. Media professionals, especially commentators, should be aware that viewers of television, readers of newspapers and magazines, and even radio listeners rely on journalists to offer intelligent reports based on accurate information. 89.1 WPAS is not such a source and is in fact a threat to civil discussion.