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Islam Is Not The Enemy

Feature Article Islam Is Not The Enemy
OCT 31, 2013 LISTEN

Let the truth be said, those who attack Islam and those whose actions mischaracterize it are doing humanity a lot of disservice. Many thousands of films, books and online materials have been released, printed and published to promote the wrong notion that Islam is the enemy to be feared and that Muslims have contributed nothing to human progress and its accumulated knowledge.

Sadly, the misguided actions of a very marginal group on the fringe of the Islamic faith, those who speak neither for Islam or Muslims, lend support to this gross misinformation and those bent on demonising Islam to a hilt. The mischievous use of these outcasts as poster-boys of Islam is exactly what makes these two groups allies of each other.

Far from the actions and fantasies of those promoting their comrades-in-arm, the great impact that Muslims have made in more than a thousand years in advancing human knowledge and progress, and especially on the Western civilization, is a debt owed to Islam and the Muslims.

These important contributions are all around us today, as they form the solid foundation on which today's scientific advances were built. It is important for students and those interested in human history to have accurate appreciation of Islamic culture, values and civilization for these form integral part of the collective inheritance that has taken us this far in politics, governance, learning, law, mathematics, philosophy, science and technology.

Quite deliberately, media and political curtains have been drawn over the great achievements that Muslims championed for centuries- achievements that impacted on home, school, marketplace, hospital, town, world and universe. These achievement literally changed our world and how we know it.

How many of us realize that many of the inventions we take for granted- space travel, medicine, mathematics, engineering, even the microchips are built upon more than a millennium of achievements by Muslim scientists and scholars? For good reason, the cities of Toledo and Damascus were known throughout the civilized world as university cities.

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta, also known as Shams ad-Din, left his hometown Tangier on Thursday, 14th June, 1325 C.E., when he was twenty one years of age and embarked on a journey that lasted for about thirty years. When he returned to Fez, Morocco at the court of Sultan Abu 'Inan, he dictated accounts of his journeys to Ibn Juzay.

These are known as the famous Travels (Rihala) of Ibn Battuta and it took Ibn Juzay three months to finish the Rihala. Ibn Battuta was the only medieval traveller who is known to have visited the lands of every Muslim ruler of his time. He also travelled in Ceylon (present Sri Lanka), China, Byzantium and South Russia. The mere extent of his travels, much more than his closest rival Marco Polo, is estimated at no less than 75,000 miles, a figure which is not likely to have been surpassed before the age of steam.

Muslim scientists and engineers in Spain, along with their counterparts in the East, experimented with inertia, momentum, pressure and gravity, and developed theories that resulted in practical waterwheels and distribution systems for irrigation and storage. In the 10th century, Al-Haytham pioneered the science of optics and the physics of light.

He wrote one of the greatest medieval scientific works, al-Kitab-al-Manazir, or Book of Optics, a detailed exploration of mirages, comets, eclipses, rainbows and the camera obscura, the beginning of photographic instruments. His exhaustive studies in optics and related fields influenced Western scientific thought for centuries.

Muslim philosophers had a profound impact on Western religion. The theories on form and matter of ibn-Sina (Avicenna), 10th-11th centuries, became incorporated into Medieval Christian scholasticism. Ibn Rushd (Averroes), inquired into the very meaning of existence and gave Europe its greatest understanding of Aristotle. Averroes was one of the first to advocate the separation of philosophy from religion, and for all his efforts he is considered the founding father of European secular thought.

Among other philosophers were al-Kindi, who built on the work of Plato and Aristotle, al-Farabi, who modelled society after the human organism, with the heart serving as a moral and intellectually perfect sovereign. While Al-Jazari was celebrated in the 13th century as an outstanding engineer and ingenious inventor who created the fabled Elephant Clock and groundbreaking machines that changed the way we harness technology, 3 centuries before him, Al-Zahrawi, pioneered surgery and developed many instruments that are still used today. Al-Zahrawi was the first person to ever use catgut sutures which is naturally degraded by the body's own proteolytic enzymes causing rapid healing of tissues and used in internal structures that cannot be re-accessed for suture removal.

Even the experimental method, the foundation of modern science (especially chemistry) owes much of its development to eighth-century Muslim scientists like Jabir bin Hyan.
Muslim astronomers, benefiting from the sciences of two great cultures, the Greek and the Indian, scanned the skies and identified stars that in Western astronomy, are still known by the Arabic names given to them by the Muslim astronomers.

One of the greatest Islamic astronomers was al-Khwarizmi (Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi), who lived in the 9th century and was the inventor of algebra. He developed this mathematical device completely in words, not mathematical expressions, but based the system on the Indian numbers borrowed by the Arabs (what we call Arabic numerals today). Perhaps the most notable of the Muslim astronomers was Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (known as Azophi in the West), who is his Book of Fixed Stars thoroughly illustrated all the stars known to him along with their observations, descriptions, positions, magnitudes, brightness, and colour. In the late 10th century, a huge observatory was built near Tehran, Iran by the astronomer al-Khujandi.

He built a large sextant inside the observatory, and was the first astronomer to be capable of measuring to an accuracy of arcseconds. Omar Khayyam (Ghiyath al-Din Abu'l-Fath Umar ibn Ibrahim al-Nisaburi al-Khayyami) was a great Persian scientist, philosopher, and poet who lived from 1048 to 1131.

He compiled many astronomical tables and performed a reformation of the calendar which was more accurate than the Julian and came close to the Gregorian. An amazing feat was his calculation of the year to be 365.24219858156 days long, which is accurate to the 6th decimal place! Of the 57 navigational stars taught to pilots and still in use today, more than 40 of them were discovered by Muslim astronomers and are still called by their Arabic names.

These achievements did not exclude Muslim women and achievers who championed intellectual progress like their male counterparts. Fatima Al-Fihri founded the world's first university (Al-Qarawiyin) in 841 CE just as many centuries later, in Nigeria, Nana Asmau, a princess, poet, teacher and daughter of the founder of the Sokoto Caliphate, Usman dan Fodio, followed the shining examples of those before her in education, independence and intellect.

Nana Asmau is famed as the precursor to modern feminism in Africa and amongst her over 60 surviving works, written over a period of 40 years, she left behind a large body of poetry, ethics, law and treaties on women leadership. Yet., the story of Muslim women achievers will not be complete without including that of the brightest star of them: Aisha, the youngest wife of our beloved Prophet (peace be upon him).

Aisha (RA) collected more than 2000 hadiths of the Prophet and worked as jurist during the period of the leadership of Abu Bakr's (RA), Umar (RA) and Usman (RA). During the reign of Muawiyah (RA), a person was sent to Aisha (RA) for resolving the disputes of Syrian scholars on religious matters even there were many prominent male companions of the Prophet in the city.

It was her amazing intellectual power and candid opinion which placed her far ahead of any other companion as even companions of the Prophet (SAW), each with his own astounding credentials, used to consult her in religious and doctrinal matters. Her own father, Abu Bakr (RA), took assistance from her sound knowledge and most excellent legal expertise when he faced ticklish legal or religious issues.

Abu Salma (RA) gave witness that he knew no other person, more knowledgeable about the traditions of the Prophet (SAW) than Aisha (RA). An astute jurist and the knower of the conditions of the Quranic verses (Shan-i-Nazool) and Islamic obligations and their requirements, the amazing life, time and achievement of this wonderful woman bear eloquent testimony to the true status of women in Islam, and are sufficient against all the stereotypes of how Islam treats women.

Today the world needs more of these great men and women whose footsteps on the sand of time remain indelible due to their remarkable achievements and advancement of knowledge and progress. These individuals achieved enduring successes, and their contributions make the world a better place for all.

The roles they played in using the best of great cultures to make giant strides continue to amplify the voice that certainly some of what is Islamic is Western, and some of what is Western is Islamic. After some 14 centuries of cultural sharing, different races and cultures have come to depend upon the other; each is, indeed, a substantial part of the other. People in every land are heirs to the richness of these legacies of great men of Islam, and others like them.

In today's world, millions of Muslim scientists, scholars, thinkers, activists, philosophers, astronomers, engineers and managers are working side-by-side others to advance past achievements and open up new frontiers. Their collaboration and teamwork have been a cornerstone for building a future of peace and progress.

It was Islam and its sublime values that empowered and inspired its great men and women to influence human history for ever, and it is Islam that has impacted on the lives and inspired those Muslims today that have proven their unique assets. Such a great religion cannot be the enemy that the salesmen of hate on one hand and the merchants of death on the other are demonising. Rather, the real enemies are wars, weapons of war, greed, poverty, corruption, hate, ignorance and despair.

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