For this heresy and for many other reasons, many peoples in the Iberian Peninsula joined the Moroccan invasion. As a matter of fact, Dr. Hussain states that several Spanish envoys from the various persecuted- and downtrodden groups had been sent to the Islamic Moroccan leadership to call for an expedition to help rid the peninsula of the Cruel Rodrick and his kin.
After Islamic military success, a model of tolerance was quickly set up on the Iberian Peninsula for generations to come.
Jews, Christians and Muslims lived and cooperated together in Iberia under what was called Andalusia. It was in Andalusia where many great centers of learning were set up—and which were visited by scholars from all over the continent. Dr. Hussein notes that the library during Islamic Cordoba’s Golden Era had tens of thousands of more books than did any of the libraries of England and northern Europe.
CONTRIBUTIONS
Prior to the arrival of Islam in Spain, Spain was a European backwater.
Both the present capitals of Portugal and Spain—Madrid and Lisbon—were largely created by the Muslims. Many other new cities were built, as well. Eventually, Islamic clock technology would make its way across Europe. This would be followed by water wheels and water pumps for irrigation and fountains.
Meanwhile, in terms of tolerance, the much-feared Vikings of Scandinavian Lands got along with the Muslims quite well.
The coinage of trade in Scandinavia throughout the Viking domination of Northern Europe was of Islamic origin. Dr. Hussain passed one such Islamic coin that had been found recently in Sweden for the participants in the audience at the AWARE CENTER to see and to touch. Dr. Hussain stated that Vikings traveled as far as to Baghdad in their trading journeys into the Islamic world.
Meanwhile, in Palermo and elsewhere in Southern Europe, Arabic scholarship in the sciences was quietly being translated into Latin—even though the Roman church’s opposition to revealing Islamic arts and sciences continued to be strong throughout the 2nd Millennium.
Similar to the Catholic churches demeaning of the contributions of the Arabs and Islam to Europe, many prominent western scholars have often pooh-poohed the notion that Arabs and Islam contributed much to the West in its Darkest hours.
Bertrand Russell was one such mid-guided scholar who demeaned Arab contribution to architecture and sciences. Another biased author is the currently popular Western Civilization scholar Felipe Fernando-Armesto who entitles his chapter on Islam: “The Tower of Darkness”.
“How did such bias hit even the ivory of towers like Oxford University in England?” asks Dr. Hussain--a university that he claims cannot even write its own developmental or early history without bowing to the scholarship carried out in Islamic Spain during Europe’s Dark Ages.
There are two explanations.
The first is that Western European institutions of higher learning were established and built up originally primarily after the 16th to 18th Century, i.e. when the western European powers of Spain, Portugal, England, France and other smaller nations had divided up most of the planet into colonies under their hegemony. The archeology and history most sought by this particular domineering western civilization of leaders was one that pointed its trail back to Rome—not even to Greece!
This is because Greece and Greek literature and history had had next-to-no direct influence on Western Europe until long after Rome had become Catholic.
Interestingly, during its own existence Imperial Rome had observed what today are England, Spain, and northern Europe as periphery locations—far from its main concerns or interests in Northern Africa and the Middle East, i.e. where Islam eventually blossomed.
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