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Islamic Golden Age exhibit
(Comments begin here.)
As reported by culture writer Edward Rothstein in the New York Times, there is a huge (8,000 square foot) exhibit at the New York Hall of Science in Queens on the “Golden Age” of Islamic invention, which the exhibit’s introductory film, with Rothstein’s assist, invidiously compares with the European Dark Ages. As I have said before, the constantly repeated cliché that Islamic civilization was far more advanced than European civilization because the former had its “Golden Age” at the same time that Europe was in its Dark Ages is not only incorrect, but mischievous. The reason Europe was in the Dark Ages, also known as the Early Middle Ages (500 to 1000 A.D.), was not that it was backward, but that the western Roman civilization, the greatest civilization in the history of the world, had been destroyed by barbarian invaders and, further, that the ruined and weakened Europe continued for the next 500 years to lay at the mercy of both barbarian invaders from the north and east and of Islamic invaders from the south, and, through much loss, suffering, and heroic endeavor, barely survived intact, while slowly building up the Christian societies that became the nations of modern Europe. When, around 1000 A.D., Europe achieved economic prosperity and military sufficiency and the barbarian and Moslem invasions stopped, the High Middle Ages began, and one of the first things the revived Europe then did was to turn the tables on the Moslems and invade the Islamic world in the First Crusade, seeking to win back the once-Christian Near East which had been captured by the Moslem jihad armies in the seventh century. Anyone, whether liberal or “conservative,” who uses the coincidence of the European Dark Ages with the Islamic “Golden Age” to demonstrate Europe’s supposed backwardness in relation to Islam, without mentioning that Europe wasn’t simply backward but wrecked by barbarians, is, regardless of his personal intentions, objectively being a bigot against Europe.
Furthermore, Rothstein, who is relatively sensible as liberals go, foolishly suggests that the European Dark Ages extended all the way to the 17th century, the same period he gives to the Islamic Golden Age. But of course, all liberals (and many ignorant conservatives) see the entire Middle Ages, and, indeed, everything up to the Renaissance or even the Enlightenment, as a “dark age.” Westerners’ cheap and thoughtless contempt for the earlier stages of their own civilization is not one of the least of the reasons for their suicidal devaluing of the West itself, and thus of the West’s current headlong surrender to unassimilable non-Western immigrants.
UPDATE, 2 p.m.:
In the entry above, written early this morning, I was responding to the opening part of Rothstein’s article, in which he uncritically presents the exhibit’s point of view. However, in the rest of the article, he subjects the exhibit to a withering and bracing critique. He describes the exhibit as an exercise in multicultural—or rather Islamic—propaganda and identity politics which falsely claims that the West has falsely been given credit for Islamic discoveries, falsely puffs up certain Islamic discoveries as the equal of Western ones, and basically disregards all civilizations except for Islam. He even reverses his apparent endorsement of the surprising notion that the Islamic Golden Age extended to the 17th century:
The exhibition … wildly overdoes it…. [I]t overstates the neglect of Muslim science, which has, to the contrary, long been cited in Western scholarship. It also expands the Golden Age of Islam to a millennium, though the bright years were once associated with just portions of the Abbasid Caliphate, which itself lasted for about 500 years, from the eighth century to 1258. The show’s inflated ambitions make it difficult to separate error from exaggeration, and implication from fact.
Rothstein also dismisses the notion that Europe was behind Islam, though he goes too far when he accuses the exhibit of “reviving the notion, now defunct, of the Dark Ages.” Maybe scholars don’t like to use the term Dark Ages any more, because it sounds too judgmental, but the period of great disorder and weakness and of centuries-long “nation-building” in Europe known as the Dark Ages certainly existed, whether we call it the Early Middle Ages or the Dark Ages.
As for what drives the shameless puffery of Islam packaged as a history of science, Rothstein ventures this:
Perhaps because one tendency in the West, particularly after 9/11, has been to answer Muslim accusations of injustice (and even real attacks) with an exaggerated declaration of regard. [LA replies: Rothstein has stumbled upon Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society, which says that the worse any designated nonwhite or non-Western group behaves, the more it must be praised.] It is guiltily offered as if in embarrassed compensation, inspired by a desire not to appear to tar Islam with the fervent claims made by its most violent adherents.
Science museums have shared that impulse. An Imax film at the Boston Museum of Science is almost a commercial travelogue about science’s future in Saudi Arabia; and the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey has presented a traveling exhibition about Muslim inventions, that, like this one, mixed fascinating information with promotional overstatement.
What is peculiar too is that the current Hall of Science show presumes a long neglect of Muslim innovations, but try finding anything comparable about Western discoveries for American students. Where is a systematic historical survey of the West’s great ideas and inventions in contemporary science museums, many of which now seem to have very different preoccupations?
In all, the piece is one of the strongest attacks on multiculturalism and anti-Westernism I have ever seen in the New York Times.
Here is the entire article:
December 9, 2010
A Golden Age in Science, Full of Light and Shadow
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
“Take a look,” Ben Kingsley says, dropping an ancient tome before three British students as if he were teaching the Dark Arts at Hogwarts. “Take a look,” he tells them, “if you dare.”
The book magically opens, releasing a cyclone of glittering ghosts. And Mr. Kingsley—who here portrays a librarian trying to get bored students interested in what their teacher calls the “Dark Ages”—is transformed into the turbaned al-Jazari: 12th-century inventor, mechanical engineer, visionary. “Welcome to the Dark Ages!” he declares, “or as it should be known, the Golden Ages!”
After he takes the students “from darkness into light” in this introductory film, we are off and running through “1001 Inventions,” at the New York Hall of Science in Queens. The exhibition’s name invokes the Eastern exoticism of Scheherazade, but the show is in earnest about its claims.
There aren’t 1,001 inventions on display, but those that are, along with the ideas described, are meant to show that the Western Dark Ages really were a Golden Age of Islam: a thousand years, in the show’s reckoning, that lasted into the 17th century. During that era, the exhibition asserts, Muslim scientists and inventors, living in empires reaching from Spain to China, anticipated the innovations of the modern world.
There are serious problems with this exhibition, but this has had no effect on its international acclaim. Conceived by a mechanical engineer, Salim T. S. al-Hassani, it began on a smaller scale touring British cities. It expanded into its current form at the London Science Museum this year, attracting 400,000 visitors, according to the show’s Web site. And its lavish companion book, “Muslim Heritage in Our World,” has won plaudits.
Kiosks are arranged here in an 8,000-square-foot space, their explanations, interactive displays, and videos examining seven “zones”: Home, School, Market, Hospital, Town, World, Universe. The show is also family friendly. A 20-foot-high reproduction of al-Jazari’s mechanical water clock welcomes visitors, its base an elephant and its crown a phoenix; unfortunately it is not really a replica—it operates without the water mechanism—but its playful monumentalism intrigues. And while some interactive exhibits are stilted, an astronomy display lets you reach toward a screen of the night sky like a deity, your gestures gliding a constellation into its proper place.
Throughout, the exhibition pays tribute to an important scientific tradition not commonly familiar, stocked with extraordinary technological creativity and scholarly enterprise. From 10th-century Spain we read of al-Zahrawi, author of an encyclopedic treatise on surgery. From 10th-century Baghdad we find al-Haytham, whose explorations of optics helped lay the foundations for Newton’s discoveries. We learn of advances in medical care, mathematics, astronomy and architecture.
As it turns out, though, the account requires extensive qualification. Had we learned more about scientific principles, had we been given sober assessments of, say, how 10th-century science developed, had a scholarly perspective been more evident—had we, in other words, been ushered into this world in a way once expected from science museums—the show could have been far more powerful.
Instead, it is as manipulative as it is illuminating. “1001 Inventions,” we are told in the literature, “is a nonreligious and non-political project.” But it actually is a little bit religious and considerably political.
It is less a typical science exhibition than a typical “identity” exhibition. It was created by the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilization in London, whose goal is “to popularize, spread and promote an accurate account of Muslim Heritage and its contribution.” The show also tries to “instill confidence” and provide positive “role models” for young Muslims, as Mr. Hassani puts it in the book. And it is part of a “global educational initiative” that includes extensive classroom materials.
The promotional goal is evident in every display. The repeated suggestion is that Muslim scientists made discoveries later attributed to Westerners and that many Western institutions were shaped by Muslim contributions.
The exhibition, though, wildly overdoes it. First, it creates a straw man, reviving the notion, now defunct, of the Dark Ages. Then it overstates the neglect of Muslim science, which has, to the contrary, long been cited in Western scholarship. It also expands the Golden Age of Islam to a millennium, though the bright years were once associated with just portions of the Abbasid Caliphate, which itself lasted for about 500 years, from the eighth century to 1258. The show’s inflated ambitions make it difficult to separate error from exaggeration, and implication from fact.
Consider one label: “Setting the Story Straight.” We read: “For many centuries, English medic William Harvey took the prize as the first person to work out how our blood circulates.” But “what nobody knew” was that the “heart and lungs’ role in blood flow” was figured out by Ibn al-Nafis, the 13th-century physician. And yes, al-Nafis’s impressive work on pulmonary circulation apparently fell into oblivion until 1924. But Harvey’s 17th-century work was more complete; it was a theory of the entire circulatory system. So while neglect is clear, differences should be as well.
But the exhibition even seems to expand its claim. Historians, the label continues, have recently found evidence that Ibn al-Nafis’s Arabic text “may have been translated into Latin, paving the way to suppose that it might have indirectly influenced” Harvey’s work. The “may have,” the “suppose,” the “might have” and the “indirectly” reflect an overwhelming impulse to affirm what cannot be proved.
Sometimes Muslim precedence is suggested with even vaguer assertions. We read that Ibn Sina, in the 11th century, speculated about geological formations, “ideas that were developed, perhaps independently, by geologist James Hutton in the 18th century.” Why “perhaps independently”? Is there any evidence of influence? Are the analyses comparable? How? Nothing is clear other than a vague sense of wrongful neglect.
Some assertions go well beyond the evidence. Hovering above the show is a glider grasped by a ninth-century inventor from Cordoba, Abbas ibn Firnas, “the first person to have actually tried” to fly. But that notion is based on a source that relied on ibn Firnas’s mention in a ninth-century poem. It also ignores the historian Joseph Needham’s description of Chinese attempts as early as the first century. The model of the flying machine is pure speculation.
And some claims are simply incorrect: catgut was used in surgical sutures by Galen in the second century, long before al-Zahrawi (named here as its pioneer).
The exhibition also dutifully praises the multicultural aspect of this Golden Age while actually undercutting it. Major cultures of the first millennium (China, India, Byzantium) are mentioned only to affirm the weightier significance of Muslim contributions. And though we read that people “of many faiths worked together” in the Golden Age, we don’t learn much about them.
Religious affiliation actually seems far more important here than is acknowledged, keeping some figures out and ushering others in. Christian Arab contributions go unheralded, but the 15th-century Chinese explorer Zheng He, a Muslim, is celebrated though he has no deep connection to Golden Age cultures.
And finally we never learn much about the role of Islam itself. Universities, we read, were affiliated with mosques. Did that affect scientific inquiry or the status of non-Muslim scientists? Did the religious regime have any impact on the ultimate failure of the transmission and expansion of scientific knowledge? And given the high cost of any golden age, isn’t it necessary to give some account of this civilization’s extensive slave trade?
Instead of expanding the perspective, the exhibition reduces it to caricature, showing Muslim culture rising out of a shadowy past to attain glories later misappropriated by Western epigones. Left unexplored too is how this tradition ended, leading to a long eclipse of science in Muslim lands. There is only a recurring hint of injustices done.
The paradox is that this narrative is not only questionable but also unnecessary. An exhibition about scientific achievements during the Abbasid Caliphate could be remarkable if approached with curatorial perspective. Why then, the indulgence here?
Perhaps because one tendency in the West, particularly after 9/11, has been to answer Muslim accusations of injustice (and even real attacks) with an exaggerated declaration of regard. [LA replies: Rothstein has stumbled upon Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society.] It is guiltily offered as if in embarrassed compensation, inspired by a desire not to appear to tar Islam with the fervent claims made by its most violent adherents.
Science museums have shared that impulse. An Imax film at the Boston Museum of Science is almost a commercial travelogue about science’s future in Saudi Arabia; and the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey has presented a traveling exhibition about Muslim inventions, that, like this one, mixed fascinating information with promotional overstatement.
What is peculiar too is that the current Hall of Science show presumes a long neglect of Muslim innovations, but try finding anything comparable about Western discoveries for American students. Where is a systematic historical survey of the West’s great ideas and inventions in contemporary science museums, many of which now seem to have very different preoccupations?
In the meantime, in the interest of mutual understanding, some such show about Western science might perhaps be mounted in Riyadh or Tehran, just as this one was in London. Wouldn’t that be a tale worthy of Scheherazade? It might begin: “Take a look, if you dare.”
[end of article]
- end of initial entry -
Kilroy M. writes from Australia:
I feel compelled to add to your comment. In my experience, most of the Westerners I encounter who denounce the European Middle Ages as a backward time closely follow up their snide comments with crude derogatory references to Catholicism and the Catholic Church. I’m sensitive to this because I am a Catholic. I accept many of the critiques of the Church that have been made at VFR in the past, admittedly with some discomfort, though I have given due consideration to them in the spirit of enlightened and fair debate. However, I note that many of those who denounce the “Dark Ages” as a time of ignorance and blame this on the Church tend to be of the Protestant persuasion (one or another of its multiple variants). They seem to ignore that the great universities, and many of the great minds of the “backward” period were in fact under the direct patronage of those very forces denounced as ignorant, dark, etc. I liken this to the brain-dead irrationality of the Jew-haters, who will allow their simple prejudice, no matter how un-founded in fact or reality, to govern an entire world view. The results speak for themselves. It is my opinion that their hatred of Catholicism has partly contributed to paving the way for the cultural celebration of Islam.
LA replies:
Over the last 1,400 years, religious and ideological divisions within the West have repeatedly resulted in one side using Islam against the other. It is a signal, perhaps a fatal, weakness of the West.
Also, while criticizing Protestantism, let us not ignore the Catholic Church’s own Islamic outreach program. The Catholic Catechism currently enjoins Catholics to embrace Muslims as “fellow adorers of the one God.” While some Catholic trads argue that the original Latin text of the Catechism doesn’t have to be interpreted that way, the fact remains that it is intepreted that way, not least by the Pope. As long as such a view of Muslims remains authoritative in the Church, the Church will remain at the forefront of the forces that are opening the West to Islamization. Of course there are contrary forces within the Church as well. We must hope that they prevail.
S.L. Toddard writes
Your discussion on the Islamic Golden Age exhibit brought to my mind the following passage from Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy,” which I finished this past week:
“I take in order the next instance offered: the idea that Christianity belongs to the Dark Ages. Here I did not satisfy myself with reading modern generalisations; I read a little history. And in history I found that Christianity, so far from belonging to the Dark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark. It was a shining bridge connecting two shining civilizations. If any one says that the faith arose in ignorance and savagery the answer is simple: it didn’t. It arose in the Mediterranean civilization in the full summer of the Roman Empire. The world was swarming with sceptics, and pantheism was as plain as the sun, when Constantine nailed the cross to the mast. It is perfectly true that afterwards the ship sank; but it is far more extraordinary that the ship came up again: repainted and glittering, with the cross still at the top. This is the amazing thing the religion did: it turned a sunken ship into a submarine. The ark lived under the load of waters; after being buried under the debris of dynasties and clans, we arose and remembered Rome. If our faith had been a mere fad of the fading empire, fad would have followed fad in the twilight, and if the civilization ever re-emerged (and many such have never re-emerged) it would have been under some new barbaric flag. But the Christian Church was the last life of the old society and was also the first life of the new. She took the people who were forgetting how to make an arch and she taught them to invent the Gothic arch. In a word, the most absurd thing that could be said of the Church is the thing we have all heard said of it. How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.”
I realize it is not entirely apropos to the discussion, but what a mind the man had!
Jeff W. writes:
Speaking as a Protestant who routinely disparages the Dark Ages, I feel that I should defend myself, though I agree with everything that LA has said. The growth that took place in the years 1000-1500 did indeed lay the groundwork for all the progress that came afterwards.
But I view this as a national (or tribal) thing. We Americans (or at least my subset of them) were the people who survived the wars of the Reformation. In North America, we survived attempts of the Catholic French to wipe us out, by sending Indians to kill us, as well as their attempts to confine us to a narrow coastal plain. The Founders were self-consciously Protestant and viewed the American nation as one that could grow large and successful in North America while maintaining its Protestant traditions of democracy, tolerance and freedom of conscience.
Thus I do not view the people of the Dark Ages with contempt or hostility. It’s just that they are not part of my nation. My nation came into existence during the Reformation.
Americans have always had difficulty defining themselves as a nation, and the U.S. may someday soon devolve, Yugoslavia-like, into Balkanized warring tribes. Should that occur, one of those tribes will likely still take pride in tracing its ancestry back through 1776, back through the wars against the French, and back through the wars against Catholics during the Reformation. They also will likely continue to call themselves Americans.
Daniel S. writes:
I think the the entire notion of a great Islamic “Golden Age” of enlightenment and science bequeathing its knowledge on the Christian West is a fabrication of anti-Catholic Western intellectuals (though many modern Catholics now propogate this Big Lie); a historical fabrication later utilized by the Muslims for their own reasons. This romantic view of Islamic history is a Western creation, and one that did not interest the Muslim world until fairly recently, similar to the modern Islamic obsession with the crusades, as noted by historian Rodney Stark:
Until about the start of the 20th century, the Muslims didn’t even remember there had been Crusades. This is all about 20th-century nationalism. The whole issue was: How did we get so backward? And the Muslims aren’t the only ones who made up the myth that it was the westerners who made them so backward. We are told that almost all other parts of the world are backward or were backward because somehow they got exploited by Europe. It’s all very well and good—but it’s all nonsense.
There wasn’t any discussion about the Crusades until the 20th century, when it became one of the slogans of Arab nationalism. And even then, it was a pretty minor issue until the formation of the state of Israel. That’s when suddenly the Crusades became a really big thing with Muslim nationalists. “We can blame the West for everything, including Israel.” That may be good politics, but it’s rotten history.
By the way, I’m not making this up, either. Again, there is a consensus among historians of the Crusades that there is no record of Muslim concern with the Crusades until the 20th century. [end of quote]
The sad fact is that self-hating Western academics of the past few hundred years have helped feed the narrative of Islamic intellectual and moral supremacy over the Christian West. They have provided much of the very propaganda used by Muslims to assert the cultural hegemony in Western educational institutions.
Nile McCoy writes:
Interesting suggestion that an “Islamic Golden Age” lasted into the 17th Century. According to the Wikipedia article Seige of Baghdad (1258), the Ilkhanate Mongols invaded, laid seige to, and sacked the city of Baghdad, then the capitol of the Abbasid caliphate.
“The invasion left Baghdad in a state of total destruction. A number of inhabitants ranging from 100,000 to 1,000,000 were massacred during the invasion of the city, and the city was sacked and burned. Even the libraries of Baghdad, including the House of Wisdom, were not safe from the attacks of the Ilkhanate forces who totally destroyed the libraries, and used the invaluable books to make a passage across Tigris River. As a result Baghdad remained depopulated and in ruins for several centuries, and the event is conventionally regarded as the end of the Islamic Golden Age.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_%281258%29—cite_note-2”
“Iraq in 1258 was very different from present day Iraq. Its agriculture was supported by canal networks thousands of years old. Baghdad was one of the most brilliant intellectual centers in the world. The Mongol destruction of Baghdad was a psychological blow from which Islam never recovered. Already Islam was turning inward, becoming more suspicious of conflicts between faith and reason and more conservative. With the sack of Baghdad, the intellectual flowering of Islam was snuffed out. Imagining the Athens of Pericles and Aristotle obliterated by a nuclear weapon begins to suggest the enormity of the blow. The Mongols filled in the irrigation canals and left Iraq too depopulated to restore them.” (Steven Dutch)
As an aside, the Mongol horseman was basically the equivalent of a modern army.
December 17
Denis James writes:
Secularists will argue that it was only with the introduction of ancient Greek thought that Europe was able to rise to the heights that it did. How would you answer them?
Also, what it the essence of Christianity? What is contained in Jesus myth that you see as as so important?
Thanks,
LA replies:
In case you forgot, here are the last few e-mails in your previous exchange with me:
From: “denis james”
To: “Larry Auster”
Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 5:12.p.m.
Subject: Made In God’s Image?
One of your readers used an expression you use frequently—“man was made in God’s image”. Interesting concept that. First, how do you know what God’s image is? He is supposed to be immaterial, infinite, etc. Now you know what his (not her or it?) physical shape is? Fascinating.
Let me guess. The expression is just a metaphor right? What you really mean is that man is a conscious being just like God. But what would God’s consciousness be like? This is where that silly Biblical sentiment breaks down totally. How does God’s consciousness work? How does he retain his knowledge? How does he form concepts? What use has he for conceptual knowledge? He’s omniscient! Conceptual knowledge—reason, logic, etc—only have value for non-omnipotent beings that are volitional. Applying knowledge to a supernatural being is to destroy the whole concpet of consciousness itself. Made in God’s image? Hardly. Humans made God in man’s image even giving this omniscient being a consciousness that he would have no need for.
Contradictions, contradictions, contradictions. But yet you are absolutely certain that it is rejecting this concept that sends one down the path to “godless liberalism”. It is only by believing in this contradictory mess that the West can be saved from the Left and Islam say the Traditionalists. Fancy that.
Do you remember in Atlas Shrugged the way Ayn Rand describes James Taggart’s mind. Taggart always has a vision of himself walking down a long dark corridor. At the end of that corrider is a door which signifies the totality of Taggart’s self and essence. He never wants to open that door for fear of what he will find. He eventually did open that door and do you remember what he say Larry?
Are you sure that you want to open your door? Perhaps you shouldn’t. Perhaps its better to go on cursing “liberals”. Much safer I think.
Post this and let your experts have at it. I’d love to see what webs Kristor will spin on the “image of God” issue. That man has a theistic web for everything. That takes skill. Of a sort …
From: “Lawrence Auster”
To: “Denis James”
Subj: Made in God’s image?
From the time VFR began, there are certain classes of commenters that don’t get posted, and at the top of that list are people who are hostile. It’s not possible to have an intellectual discussion with a person whose desire is not to have a discussion, but to express hostility. You are not an atheist who wants to have a reasonable discussion about why you think there’s no God and why the belief in God is false. You have a driving hatred of God and of people who believe in God, and you want to crush them. I’m sure you can find a venue somewhere that welcomes that kind of exchange. VFR is not one of them.
Several times I’ve said to you that if you want me to engage with you, you need to change the way you talk. You’ve refused to do that. So at this point you’re wasting your time and mine by writing to me.
From: “Lawrence Auster”
To: “Denis James”
Subj: Made in God’s image?
I just realized that it’s worse than what I said. You compare me to Rand’s character James Taggart, the embodiment of evil. Yet you expect me to have a discussion with you.
You’re a sick individual. Do not write to me again.
From: “denis james”
To: “Larry Auster
Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2010 9:24.p.m.
Subject: Sick
I’m sick?
You have expressed pro-Jim Crow sentiments, you expressed sympathy that gays are no longer staying in the closet out of fear, you believe that all depictions of non-marital affections between the sexes should be BANNED, you have expressed sympathy that BLASPHAMEY is no longer punishable—all this and you call me sick?
Yes I do think you are evil, as evil as the Leftists you hate so much. You are a Christian theocrat and I would love to see your entire Christo-fascist worlview crushed. Alas, I actually think that after the Left destroys the West, it will be Christians like you that will benefit. Although you will be dead before any of that happens, sadly your evil cult will outlive you, and that is what Chrisitianity is—a death worshipping cult.
I have no use for communicating with you any longer. From the answers you have given me, I know you better than you know yourself. When the Objectivist blogger critiques your idiotic views on atheism and Rand I’ll be involved in that. But I leave you to your Traditionalist agenda. You may now resume condeming women’s liberation, “atomistic individualism” and godless liberalism, your favorite activities.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 16, 2010 07:30 AM | Send
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