In this video, Paul Nielson critiques a deceitful presentation by an Islam apologist Mehdi Hasan, where Hasan falsely claims that Islam is a basis of Western science including even the European Renaissance. A “woke” leftist audience is enthusiastically cheering what Hasan is saying in the video.
Nielson explains that Islam actually had nothing to do with such contributions of scientific thought, but rather key people who were living in newly Islamized areas were entirely influenced by previous cultures such as Greece and India, and Islam actually attempted to persecute and impede the works of such people. Therefore such people accomplished what did what they did despite Islam, not because of it.
He explains that the time period of the supposed “Golden Age of Islamic Science” should actually be called “The Final Breath of the Classical Civilizations (After the Muslims Destroyed Them.)”
Followings are points that Nielson made:
— When Islam emerged from the Arabian Peninsula, they subjugated areas that used to belong to the Greek Christian world that were already completely immersed in thousands of years of scientific thought and achievements.
— Islam was actually entirely anti-science, where the law of “cause of effect” was rejected and thus Islam was not capable of engaging in scientific thought. Muslims believed that “cause and effect” wasn’t valid because they thought that Allah could recreate the world in any manner whenever he wanted to.
— When Islam subjugated the classical world, they burned most of the literature that they came across. For example when they conquered Alexandria, Egypt in 640, they destroyed all of the literature that they could find, erasing the legacy and scientific accomplishments of that highly advanced area.
— When Islam conquered India, they burned all the writings in the Library of Nalanda, which was the largest accumulation of knowledge in that part of the world.
— Muslims reasoned: “If it is not something that is not also written in the Quran, then destroy it because that means it is not important.” And they also even reasoned: “If it is something that can be found in there Quran, destroy it anyway because we already have it in the Quran.”
— The Islam apologist Mehdi Hasan giving the speech in the above video mentioned various people who are examples of “sources of significant Islamic scientific thought,” however none of them are valid examples since they based their thoughts entirely on previous cultures and they were also considered to be heretics in Islam, as Nielson explains:
— Ibn Rushd was a man in Islamic Spain who was fascinated by Greek though and he wished to open Islam to such concepts, but his thoughts were entirely heretical to Islam, so he ended up being prosecuted and most of the literature he created was burned. A small part of his work that didn’t get burned ended up in the hands of European thinkers who translated his work. His translated work caused Europeans to falsely associate the Islamic world with Greek heritage, which was a misconception that was not corrected until much later. The above Islam apologist Hasan called Ibn Rushd “the father of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment” due to his works influencing key people such as Thomas Aquinas, however that is definitely an exaggeration since people such as Aquinas were influenced by many other people as well. And even if Rushd could be thought of as “a father of such thought”, his thoughts were entirely the result of Greek thought that preceded him, such as Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, therefore making them be the actual “fathers” of the Renaissance.
— Ibn Sina is another philosopher that is mentioned by Muslim activists, who was born in 980 in a region of the Middle East that still retained its Persian intellectual heritage despite being conquered by Islam. He was highly influenced by other cultures such and Greece and India, and he contributed advancements in medical science that was adopted by many Europeans. However, since his thoughts were science-based he was denounced as a “Kaffir” (a derogatory term for a non-Muslim) by Muslims, but high ranking Muslims kept him around anyway because of his usefulness.
— al-Khwarizmi is often claimed to be the founder of Algebra, but he also came from the non-Islamic Persian tradition and he also studied Greek philosophy and Indian mathematics. His work found its way to Europe where it became adopted.
— As the above examples explain, the supposed “Golden Age of Islamic Science” was merely a period in time when a handful of Islamic individuals were translating Greek works into Arabic and they were studying Indian mathematics, therefore the time period should actually be called “The Final Breath of the Classical Civilizations (after the Muslims destroyed it.)” Calling it the “Golden Age of Islamic Science” is actually disrespectful to the previous societies that were destroyed by Islam.
— There is only a list of about five such Islamic “thinkers”, however other much smaller regions such as localized areas of Europe each gave rise to hundreds of equally or more significantly historically influential people.
— Those few Islamic people could have to helped transform the Islamic culture and been its “enlightenment thinkers,” but that was never allowed by Islam’s closed-minded mentality, therefore the only influence they had was completely outside of Islam.
— If you look at the condition of Islamic countries today, it is readily apparent that they have essentially no significant scientific traditions compared with other cultures in the world, due to the unyielding rigidity of the Islamic culture.
Watch this historically accurate walk through of the Parthenon in classical Greece, which predated Islam by well over a thousand years. This along with Indian thought is the actual source of most of the ideas behind the supposed “Golden Age of Islamic Science.”
See other videos about the various time periods in ancient Greece at this page.
See the article A Summary of Islam Issues for other articles about Islam.
See Paul Nielson’s YouTube Channel at this link.