The Classical Heritage in Islam

"This is the primer really. He gives some actual texts in translation – some medical and some philosophical – and you get a taste of what was actually being translated and what it was like. Rosenthal considers the translations to be hugely important. Not just from a scientific aspect but also from the point of view of Islamic theology, the ability to reason, to use logic derived from Greek philosophical technique. The ways in which argumentation and dialectic developed owes so much to the Greeks. Well, Western civilisation has tended to leave out Islam, even though the Islamic world inspired Europe as much as Greece and Rome did. Before colonisation Europe didn’t have a problem recognising Arab innovations, but Christianity’s view has always been that Islam is a heresy. The problem really arose with colonial imperialism and the idea that everyone non-European was inferior, and that has effected how other cultures are perceived. The Islamic world was written out for political reasons. Now we can see that not everything comes from the Middle East, but that the Islamic world has made a huge contribution to science and culture through the ages, and that culture was not only preserved by the Muslims but also built upon. The British school history curriculum focuses mainly on Hitler."