islam the ultimate source of knowledge

Islamic Research Foundation International, Inc.
Seeking Advancement of Knowledge through Spiritual and Intellectual Growth

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Islam: The Ultimate Source of Knowledge

By Abdullah Smith

“Islam was the virtual creator of the Renaissance in Europe”
(Robert L. Gullisk, Muhammad the Educator)

The Islamic world has contributed too much, and these gifts are completely ignored by the world because of the hatred caused by the missionaries. The ‘Dark Ages’ of Europe was extinguished by the Light of Islam, and the entire world has ignored the historical facts of how Europe came to power, it translated the Arabic works of Muslim Spain and used the knowledge to attack Islam. A clear study of European history shows that Islam gave birth to the Renaissance, and the Muslim contributions were carried over to Europe. The ignorant Europeans of the ‘Dark Ages’ were civilized by the knowledge transmitted to them.

History shows that wherever Christians traveled, they destroyed the knowledge and wisdom of that culture, burning to ashes the Ancient Wisdom which prepared the way for 1500 years of Darkness. Yet Islam brought the Christians out of Darkness, but today, very little appreciation is showed to Muslims who ended the ‘Dark Ages’ by spreading the Light of Learning. Why did Christians destroy books when Muslims preserved the ancient knowledge? The debt is owed to Islam, for contributing to the fields of Science, Philosophy, Medicine, Geography, Mathematics, Geology, etc

We have compiled the evidence to support that Muslims completely changed the world by preserving (not destroying) the Ancient knowledge of civilization, whereas the Christians destroyed over 15,000,000 books and scrolls. We probably could’ve had the cure for many diseases today if these barbaric and ignorant Christians of the ‘Dark Ages’ did not destroy the knowledge of ancient civilization.

“…The darkness fell, and for two thousand years it covered the Western world. All the wisdom-knowledge of the ages was burned in the market place; the “light of the world” had triumphed and the light of reason died. As Canon Farrar said: “The triumph of Latin theology was the death of rational exegesis”. This is hindsight; those with foresight might well have anticipated Early Grey: “The lights are going out all over Europe”. In the light of these facts, the “tyrants” Nero, Tiberius, Domitian, seem less monstrous; indeed they stand out as the defenders of truth. They tried to save the world from two thousand years of ignorance, but that ignorance was too much for them. They found themselves accused of the very things they tried to prevent, riot, arson, rebellion. The Christian priesthood, inheriting the libelous cunning and libelous cunning of its Semitic prototype, caused the burning and the fighting and blamed them on its enemies. Whether it burned Rome or not, it burned the truth and that is worse.

The destruction of all evidence of Christianity’s Gnostic and pagan source was “the first work”. It was the evangelists themselves who started it, in Antioch, as stated in Acts. Speaking of just such things the Emperor Julian said he would deal with them more at length, “when we begin to explore the monsterous deeds and fraudulent machinations of the evangelists”. And of their followers, Edward Carpenter wrote thus: “…they took special pains to destroy the pagan records and so obliterate the evidence of their own dishonesty”. By order of the Church the books of the Gnostic Basilides were burned, likewise Porphyry’s thirty-six volumes. Pope Gregory VII burned the Apollo library filled with ancient lore. Emperor Theodosius had 27,000 schools of the Mysteries papyrus scrolls burned because they contained the doctrinal basis of the Gospels. By offering rich rewards Ptolemy Philadelphus gathered 270,000 ancient documents; these too were burned for the same reason. As someone has said, the early Christians heated their baths with the Ancient Wisdom. And what knowledge they may have contained!

Nor did the destruction end with the Founders; the fanatics they made carried on the work: the Crusaders burned all the books they could find, including original Hebrew scrolls. In 1233 the works of Maimonides were burned along with twelve volumes of the Talmud. In 1244 eighteen thousand books of various kind were destroyed. According to Draper, Cardinal Ximenes “delivered to the flames in the square of Granada eighty thousand Arabic manuscripts”. On finding similar lore in the New World, the Spanish Christians destroyed it and the temple that contained it. (Lloyd Graham, Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, pp. 443-444)

The early Church tried to destroy the parallels by booking burning, character assassination, and other fraud. Now if Christianity were true, the Christians wouldn’t have any reason to destroy the pagan documents, they obliterated the evidence to COVER UP the fraud of Christianity.

The scholar Tom Harper records:

Obviously, you have to regard with deep suspicion any group or movement, however noble its declarations, that proceeds to win its "case" by silencing, excommunicating, or murdering its assumed opponents. Yet most Christians today are totally unaware that Church history conceals a horrendous, lengthy record of precisely these kinds of tactics by the proponents of what eventually became "orthodox", credal belief. What's more, the kind of bigoted fury unleashed in the third and fourth centuries against Pagans, "heretics", and nonconformists of all types set a ruthless precedent for centuries to come. The comparatively modern Church historian G.R.S. Mead cites, for example, the burning of the manuscripts of French rabbis during the notorious Inquisition and the vandalism of fanatical crusaders, “who left smouldering piles of Hebrew scrolls behind them in their path of blood and fire”. Kuhn argues that the official burnings of Hebrew books began at Montpellier, France, in 1233, with the commitment to the flames of all the works of Maimonides (1135-1204), the renowned Jewish philosopher and theologian. In the same year at Paris, some twelve thousand volumes of the Talmud were burned, and in 1244, eighteen thousand other various works were thrown into fire, he records.

Epiphanius (315 403), the rigidly conservative bishop of Salamiz, in an attack upon the “Sabellian heretics” (who found they couldn’t follow the majority view of the Trinity), wrote that “the whole of their errors…they derive from…that which is called the Gospel of the Egyptians”. Kuhn remarks, “Priceless in value would be that same Gospel of the Egyptians if Christian fury had not destroyed it. Another priceless book, The True Logos by Celsus, one of the most noted Pagan philosophers of the second century, was likewise burned. The brilliant Gnostic philosopher Basildes (c. 135-150) taught at Alexandria in the second quarter of the second century and claimed to know of a secret tradition transmitted by St. Peter himself. He was highly regarded even by so eminent a Christian theologian and Church Father as Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215). Yet according to Eusebius, his irreplaceable, widely renowned Interpretations of the Gospels – in twenty-four splendid volumes – were all burned “by order of the Church”. Thirty-six priceless volumes written by Porphyry (c. 232-303), one of the most learned and brilliant minds of his era, were destroyed by the Church Fathers. Porphyry, a Neoplatonist philosopher who could not accept the divinity of Christ and who exposed numerous inconsistencies in the Gospels, had tried official Christianity for a brief time but found it sadly wanting. Fifteen of his burned books formed a special series called Against the Christians. Scholars would give a lot to have them now.

All of this mayhem was a further deliberate attempt to "blot out all links" between the Christian body of doctrine and any Pagan material. The top Church authorities were not content with the original, specious allegation that Satan had been behind all the amazing resemblances – they even talked of "anticipated plagiarism", charging that the devil stole the rites, doctrines, and dogmas centuries before they became accepted by the Church – so they destroyed as far as possible the entire Pagan record to obliterate the evidence of their own dishonesty. (The Pagan Christ, pp. 61-63)

The utter destruction of the 500,000 to 750,000 books and scrolls of the incredible library at Alexandria by a Christian mob stands as perhaps the greatest single testimony to the overwhelming hatred of learning and education held by the rank-and-file majority who flocked to the new religion. (ibid, p. 61)

The English scholar Edward Carpenter states:

“The Christian writers… not only introduced new doctrines, legends, miracles and so forth – most of which we can trace to antecedent Pagan sources – but they took pains to destroy the Pagan records and so obliterate the evidence of their own dishonesty”. (Pagan & Christian Creeds, p. 205)

We have exposed the fraud of Christianity; the early Christians destroyed the pagan source material to conceal the fraud, or the evidence of their own dishonesty. These “Christians” were ignorant, savage, and barbaric people, who slaughtered thousands of “heretics”, based on suspicion, and burned witches alive, they promoted racism and practiced slavery. How did the Christians escape the ignorance and advance towards Enlightenment? The answer is Islam!

“The Christian World came to wage crusades against Muslims but eventually knelt before them to gain knowledge. They were spellbound to see that Muslims were owners of a culture that was far superior to their own. The Dark Ages of Europe were illuminated by nothing but the beacon of Muslim Civilization.” Author : F.J.C Hearushaw Book Reference : The Science of History

“The Renaissance of Europe did not take place in the 15th century. Rather it began when Europe learned from the culture of the Arabs. The cradle of European awakening is not Italy. It is the Muslim Spain.” Author : Robert Briffault Book Reference : The Making Of Mankind

Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe; it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills, trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500's did the net direction of flow begin to reverse. Author: Jared Diamond Book Reference: UCLA sociologist, and physiologist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book: "Guns, Germs, and Steel."

During all the first part of the Middle Ages, no other people made as important a contribution to human progress as did the Arabs, if we take this term to mean all those whose mother-tongue was Arabic, and not merely those living in the Arabian peninsula. For centuries, Arabic was the language of learning, culture and intellectual progress for the whole of the civilized world with the exception of the Far East. From the IXth to the XIIth century there were more philosophical, medical, historical, religious, astronomical and geographical works written in Arabic than in any other human tongue. Author: Phillip Hitti Book Reference : in 'Short History of the Arabs

But Islam has a still further service to render to the cause of humanity. It stands after all nearer to the real East than Europe does, and it possesses a magnificent tradition of inter-racial understanding and cooperation. No other society has such a record of success uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity, and of endeavours so many and so various races of mankind . . . Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of East and West is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition. In its hands lies very largely the solution of the problem with which Europe is faced in its relation with East. If they unite, the hope of a peaceful issue is immeasurably enhanced. But if Europe, by rejecting the cooperation of Islam, throws it into the arms of its rivals, the issue can only be disastrous for both. Author : H.A.R. Gibb Book Reference : WHITHER ISLAM, London, 1932, p. 379

Despite the growth of antagonism, Moslem (Muslim) rulers seldom made their Christian subjects suffer for the Crusades. When the Saracens finally resumed the full control of Palestine the Christians were given their former status as dhimmis. The Coptic Church, too had little cause for complaint under Saladin's (Salahuddin) strong government, and during the time of the earlier Mameluke sultans who succeeded him the Copts experienced more enlightened justice than they had hitherto known. The only effect of the Crusaders upon Egyptian Christians was to keep them for a while from pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for as long as the Frank were in charge heretics were forbidden access to the shrines. Not until the Moslem victories could they enjoy their rights as Christians. Author : James Addison Book Reference : 'The Christian Approach to the Moslem,' p. 35

“It must be owned that all the knowledge, whether of physics, astronomy, philosophy or mathematics, which flourished in Europe from the 10^th century, was originally derived from the Muslim schools, and the Spanish Saracen may be looked upon as the father of European philosophy (John Devenport, quoted by A. Karim in Islam’s Contribution to Science and Civilization)

“The supremacy of the East was not only military. Science, philosophy, poetry, and the arts all flourished…in the Muhammedan world at a time when Europe was sunk in barbarism. Europeans, with unpardonable insularity, call this period ‘The Dark Ages’: but it was only in Europe that it was dark – indeed only in Christian Europe, for Spain, which was Muhammedan, had a brilliant culture”. (Abul Ala Mawdudi, Towards Understanding Islam, p. 52)

“It is highly probably that but for the Arabs, modern European civilization would never have assumed that character which has enabled it to transcend all previous phases of evolution. For although there is not a single aspect of human growth in which the decisive influence of Islamic culture is not traceable, nowhere is it so clear and momentous as in the genesis of that power which constitutes the paramount scientific spirit…What we call science arose in Europe as a result of a new spirit of inquiry: of new methods of investigation, of the method of experiment, observation, and measurement, of the development of mathematics in a form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Muslims”. (Robert Briffault, The Making of Humanity, p. 52)

“Islam, in fact, has done a work. She has left a mark on the pages of human history, which is so indelible that it can never be effaced…that only when the world grows will be acknowledged in full”. (Mawdudi, p. 52)

After the Muslims ruled Spain for 800 years, the ungrateful Christians eradicated the Islamic culture and converted Muslims to Christianity, the religion of fraud. Yet it was Islam that gave birth to knowledge. Yet we find Muslims suffering all over the world.

The historical contrast is that Muslims preserved the knowledge of ancient cultures, when the Christians destroyed the world’s greatest libraries, burning to ashes millions of precious books. The Islamic civilization was flourishing when Europe was trapped in Darkness, and it was Islam that gave birth to the world as we know it today. Muslims contributed to every field of knowledge, along with other non-Muslim contributions. The Noble Quran was the Inspiration for these Muslim inventors. Jesus is recorded to have said “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now” (John 16:12) Jesus was predicting that God would perfect His Divine Law after his departure, and the Divine Laws were perfected by Muhammad, the Last Prophet (peace be upon him).

Islam told the Arabs to leave their corrupt practices by recognizing the existence of their Creator, by obeying the God Who built them and their world. It stated that recognizing the proper position of God in relation to man was a great advance in thinking. It claimed that God Himself is the Creator of the mind, and therefore is the ultimate source of all knowledge. Claiming that God is inseparable from man and this world, Islam negated the concept that God is a reserved Being sitting on His unreachable throne, His being actively and intimately connected with all the proceedings of this world. Thus, the Muslims felt that as God holds the keys to knowledge, man’s purpose was to open the doors of ignorance by spreading this knowledge. This led them to view the entire universe as a divine gift for them to study in developing moral and intellectual strength to the utmost. In searching for knowledge, Islam strongly demanded that man study the sciences, since science itself is thought of as a divinely established system. To them, if God is the Creator of the elements on which chemistry must rely, He is also the Constructor of the solar system which the astronomer beholds, as He is the builder of the human biological system whose mind intrigues the philosopher, and to whose physiology the physician responds.

This was the mentality of the early Muslim chemists and scientists whose work is to be presented here. It is miraculous that the mental giants of whom we will speak developed their skills with little resource except the inspiration derived from their beliefs.

Since the Muslims possess the Quran, a book which they regard as unaltered divine revelation, this text became their starting point. The Quran instructed them to seek knowledge in all fields. Thereby stimulated, the Muslims went directly to the earliest sources of knowledge. Masterpieces of Greek, Persian, Egyptian, Syrian, and Indian science were recovered, translated, and where relevant, assimilated. These resources were easily accessible to them as even the storehouse of Greek manuscripts was found in the Near East, not in Europe. True, there were some Greek writings to be found in Medieval Europe. But these lay covered in the dust of monasteries, the keepers of which were too ignorant to understand their meaning, or to propound their contents.

Thus, the Arabs preserved the earliest works available on the sciences. In chemistry, they found that few texts described it as a true science, most subscribing to the cult of alchemy. The Muslim chemists generally negated the validity of this practice, claiming that God Alone can create the uniqueness of the elements. They dealt instead with practical applications of this science, studying the nature of matter, and applying positive effects to beneficial fields of study such as pharmacology and medicine.

It is important to discuss further the contributions made by translating the early works. The works they preserved from the East as well as those of the Greek were at that time repudiated by the West as heresy. In fact, Europe completely neglected the translation and preservation of scientific knowledge in this era. Scientific inquiry had virtually no support in Western society from the 7^th to 13^th centuries. Bigoted Ecclesiasticism dammed the flow of free thought, blocking the seepage of knowledge within Western societies. Any bits of scientific knowledge that existed in this era were systematically exterminated by the ruling class and clergy. Under Constantine, public libraries were dissoluted or destroyed, while Pope Gregory eliminated scientific studies from Rome and banned the study of all Greek writings. Learning was branded as magic and treasonous, and was punishable by torture or death. Francis Bacon, a noted father of science, was considered a heretic and was forced by the rulers of England to give up his efforts in scientific study. Bruno was burned at the stake for the crime of claiming that the earth rotates about its axis. It was in this, the West’s lowest era of moral and intellectual desolation, that the Islamic world upheld the knowledge by salvaging the ancient works of the Mediterranean world from historical doom.

The world is taking advantage of Islam, and waging war on Muslim countries after giving them so many gifts. The Christian missionaries are raising the dust throughout the Muslim world. But one day people will realize that without Islam, we’d be living in Darkness.