Islam was far ahead of Europe in mathematics, astronomy, medicine at the time of the Crusades. Islamic scholars extended the knowledge of Greece and Rome, and inputs from India and elsewhere. That knowledge (including the zero), taken back to Europe by Crusaders etc, was far more significant in shaping the Renaissance, and our powerful, wealthy, modern Western civilisation than Medieval Christianity was. Yet although there are many brilliant individual modern Moslem thinkers, it seems Islamic civilisation stopped developing. Did Islam freeze in Medieval religious fundamentalism, while Europe slowly left it behind, and if so why? Or did something else stop Islamic modernisation?
2006-09-15
17:47:46
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8 answers
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asked by
Anonymous