God’s Religion: Islam

On the first question -Moorish Spain’s impact on medieval Europe – the new-generation popular studies display a growing consensus. Finally the debt the west owes to the Muslim world is being recognized. Al-Andalus was in many ways the United States of its day: an ethnically diverse, political and cultural powerhouse that the rest of the western world looked to for new ideas and the latest trends, even while it sometimes resented, and even rejected, this influence. Everything from technology (the abacus, paper) to the latest fashions (dark clothes in winter, light ones in summer), foods (artichokes, sugar), pastimes (chess) and new ideas (higher mathematics, Averroës’s innovative “rational” thinking) first reached Europe through Moorish Spain. The most celebrated point of entry for intellectual traffic was the school of translators based in Christian-controlled Toledo in the 12th and 13th centuries, from where Greek and Arabic learning rendered into Latin was able to penetrate Europe and lay the cornerstone of the Renaissance. The picture is complex, as Europe was shaped through its acceptance and its rejection of what Moorish Spain had to offer. Although learning from al-Andalus eventually helped to fill “the occidental void”, as Levering Lewis points out, paradoxically the “Europeans” first began to define themselves as a coherent group of peoples in direct opposition to the Muslim forces pushing over the Pyrenees during the course of the 8th century (1). The west owes money to the Muslims world and they are finally realizing it.

This was a great time for Muslims, Jews, and Christian. They were working together for the common goal. The Muslims world gained money from the west. The U.S. got it good to.

Government in Islam

“Turkey sets a fantastic example for nations around the world to see where it’s possible to have democracy coexist with great religion like Islam.” Those were George Bush’s words of welcome, this week, to Turkeys President Abdullah Gul. He is saying that it is possible for a religion and the government to work together (The Economist).

“In decades past, a Turkish leader might have been received at the White House with cordial remarks about his country’s growing prosperity or its contributions to NATO. But it would have been strange perhaps, not to mention religion when hosting a head of state that had just set precedent that was watched with fascination by politically active Muslims in many parts of the world.” (The Economist).This person is saying that it’s strange that he wasn’t aware that he was being watched by active Muslims of many parts of the world