 |
| Nimrod, one of the important Assyrian capitals is threatened by ISIS |
Islam was not the cure for the Dark Age in medieval Europe, but its cause. Islam brought about the dark Middle Age in Europe. It did not end it. Islam terminated classical civilization in Europe. It did not lay the foundations for Europe’s Renaissance of the fifteenth century. The written history, including Arab chroniclers’ writings, and archeological discoveries emphatically prove that the Roman civilization flourished in Europe till the rise of Islam in the early seventh century. It is a historical fact that Islam gave modern science no impetus at all. Neither did it revive the arts and sciences of a barbarous Europe.
War in general causes destruction, and perpetual wars cause desolation and ruin. The continual Islamic military threat caused the militarization of Europe. Surrounded by aggressors bent on its destruction, with whom it was impossible to make honorable peace, Christians had to take up arms. The Mediterranean was closed by Islamic wars and piracy for a thousand years. Islamic jihad taught Christian Europe the concept of holy war, which is alien to Christianity. This ideology caused the rise of the crusades.
All the negative Medieval European attitudes had appeared first in Islam. This includes intolerance of other faiths, distrust of reason and rationality, hostility toward Jews, etc. While the medieval European theocracy was not the result of direct imitation of the Islamic theocracy, Islam contributed to its birth. Islamic law (Sharia) decreed the punishment of death to the Muslim apostate and the heretic. No such doctrine ever existed in Christianity. However, under Islamic influence, the Roman Popes declared their new doctrine calling for capital punishment for dissenters. In addition, torture which was normal practice in Islamic lands began to be used in Europe.
It was only during a relatively tolerant Abbasid/Persian period of about 150 years that the arts and sciences flourished in the Islamic Empire. By the end of the tenth century, the continual wars and piracy of Islamic forces caused medieval Europe to become markedly inferior to the world of Islam in science and technology. It began to emulate what it found in Islamic controlled territories. However, by the middle of the twelfth century, backward Europe caught up. And by the end of the twelfth century, it took the lead in civilization—a lead it has never relinquished. History declares that modern science is an invention of medieval Christianity. The scientific method and empirical naturalism were developed in Europe, not in the Islamic world, and blossomed into the scientific revolution.
The decline of the Byzantine Empire and the fall of its capital Constantinople in 1453 to the Turks resulted in the emigration of Greek scholars to Western Europe seeking refuge. Western universities were flooded with Greek philosophers and scientists. This led to the rediscovery of classical philosophy and literature, and to an unprecedented intellectual and cultural surge. Some historians estimate that about 75% of the Greek classics (Plato, Aristotle, etc.) were known in Western Europe through Byzantine copies. In addition, some of these works reached Europe through Moorish Spain. Europe obtained the bulk of the classics from its monasteries and Byzantine scholars, not from Islamic lands. Latin versions of a number of Greek works (Euclid, Ptolemy) came to Europe from translations from the Arabic version. However, most of Aristotle’s works were translated directly from the Greek. The Greek heritage did not reach Europe through Islamic lands; rather it came directly to the West without the few Islamic philosophers playing a major role in its transmission.
Al-Hijaz, the center of Islam, has been stagnating since the eighth century. Mecca did not produce a genius in the past fourteen centuries. Cultures are eventually annihilated under Islamic rule because they are considered un-Islamic. Cultural genocide is what Islamic jihad (holy war) in all its forms seeks to accomplish in order to remove the obstacles to the realization of the primitive Islam of seventh century Arabia according to the Islamists’ belief?
The Islamic Empire had controlled the territories of the ancient most-enlightened settled urban Middle Eastern civilizations with their wealth, learning and technologies, including Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and parts of India. In addition, through Persia, it received vital Chinese and Indian discoveries, including the compass, gunpowder, paper, the Indian numeric system, etc. What did it do with this vast knowledge? Whatever genius came out of the Islamic Empire was the echo of the pre-Islamic past of the conquered civilizations. The golden age of an Islamic conquest is actually the final phase of the former conquered civilization, which is completely extinguished after a couple of centuries of Islamic rule. The Islamic civilization is a parasitical civilization which eventually kills its host. Without new conquests, it dies.
After Islamic rulers had stripped the civilizations they conquered of its material and intellectual wealth, the Islamic world went into stagnation and intellectual decline from which it has not yet recovered. By the twelfth century, all the territories of the great ancient civilizations under Islamic rule accelerated its downward spiral into intellectual stagnation, cultural impoverishment, economic decline and poverty. In fact, the populations of Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and North Africa began a long catastrophic decline. Large fertile regions were deserted and reduced to wasteland, thanks to Islamic banditry which made life outside the protective walls of cities very dangerous. This deterioration continued until the coming of the Europeans in the nineteenth century. The wasting of the rich heritage of ancient civilizations, economic and cultural decline and poverty were caused by the Islamic ideology which sanctifies war and plunder, and rejects rationality. This inevitably leads into one direction, cultural and economic bankruptcy.
In the first half of the twentieth century, most Islamic lands were living under European rule. Presently, Islamic nations are clustering toward the bottom of the world in all aspects—military power, political stability, economic prosperity, corruption, human rights, literacy, longevity, etc. Muslims make up about one-fifth of the world’s total population. However, they constitute more than half of the people living in abject poverty worldwide. More From The Awakening
A short video by Dr. Bill Warner
ISIS Razes The City Of Nimrod Where The Tower Of Babel Was Believed To Have Been Built
The ministry said the extremist organization has today, “assaulted the city of Nimrud archaeological site and razed by heavy military vehicles,” in a statement posted on the official page of the Department of Media Relations.
Originally established by Nimrod (Gen. 10:11), and today known as Nimrud,Calah became an important city in Iraq. The artist’s reconstruction above shows the interior of Tiglath-pileser III’s palace there (late seventh century BC).
Nimrod was a very significant man in ancient times, the grandson of Ham and great-grandson of Noah. Nimrod started his kingdom at Babylon (Gen. 10:10). Babylon later reached its zenith under Nebuchadnezzar (sixth century BC). Pictured above are mudbrick ruins of Nebuchadnezzar’s city along with ancient wall lines and canals in modern day Iraq. —(ABR file photo)
This was also part of Nimrod’s kingdom (Gen. 10:11). Nineveh along the Tigris River continued to be a major city in ancient Assyria. Today adjacent to modern Mosul, Iraq, the ruins of ancient Nineveh are centered on two mounds, the acropolis at Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunis (Arabic for “Prophet Jonah”). Pictured here isSennacherib’s “palace without rival” on Kuyunjik, constructed at the end of the seventh century BC and excavated by Henry Layard in the early 20th century. —(ABR file photo)
No comments:
Post a Comment