By: Bitethehand

Bitethehand
Sun, 25 Aug 2024 01:46:18 +0000

In reply to Amelia Scott.

We agree with so much and I suggest that any aspect of human progress could be described as “it wasn’t their own knowledge or invention”, in that the very essence of being human is that we learn from each other, sometimes through co-operation and other times by conquest and theft.

As of July 31, 2024, the world’s Muslim population was estimated to be around 1.9 billion, or more than 24.1% of the global population. I dare say that among that number we could identify many who would qualify as having a significant role in every aspect of human progress.

Having said that, Norman Berdichevsky in ‘The Myth of the Golden Age of Tolerance in Medieval Muslim Spain’ wrote:

‘Apologists for Islam never tire of referring to the “Golden Age” of tolerance that supposedly characterized seven centuries of Muslim dominated Spain. This fundamentally flawed assessment draws the wrong conclusion based on fragmentary evidence and distorts the larger picture. It ignores the reality of enormous destruction wrought by the three Arab-Berber Muslim invasions that repeatedly sought to hold on to control and rule over the indigenous peoples of Spain who had been reduced to second class citizens in their own homeland.

The desire to restore “Al-Andalus”, an Arabic corruption of the land they conquered that had previously been ruled by the Germanic Vandals (hence al-Andalus as “Land of the Vandals” in Arabic) and Visigoths has persisted to this day.

…The tolerant Spain of The Three Great Monotheistic Religions (often referred to as Las Tres Culturas) gradually contracted and was eventually extinguished as a result of repeated invasions of the peninsula from North Africa by severe Muslim-Berber tribes people who brought with them a fanaticism reminiscent of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

……The arts, sciences, technology, literature, architecture, navigation, mapmaking, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and art that flourished in Medieval Spain are often credited to Islam but this is a distortion of the role played by adherents of all three religions.