Eulogizing Past Glories

Mir Adnan Aziz
The Nation
August 16, 2008

Socrates thought they were the voice of conscience. Iroquois Indians saw them as commands to be followed. Voltaire said they resulted from overeating. Freud defined them as repressed thoughts. James Allen said "Dreamers are saviours of the world". This is how, what we call Dreams, have been described over time.

Dreams, essentially a phenomenon affiliated with sleep, become an idea when awake. Civilization has advanced on the wings of imagination and innovation. Throughout history, the most advanced nations have earned the status by having harnessed the intellectual capital and creative potential of the populace. They used this ability to think, imagine and innovate to create better societal lives.

Ideas are the building blocks of spiritual, social, economic and political reality. The quality of life in a society is a manifestation of its prevailing ideas. The British science fiction author, H.G. Wells asserted, "Human history is in essence the history of ideas". Plato conceptualized a world of ideas of which material reality was a manifestation. We can trace a line of ideas from antiquity to present day civilization.

The great Athenian philosopher Socrates mentored Plato who in turn mentored Aristotle. The ideas of Karl Marx spawned communism, those of Hippocrates shaped the practice of medicine and Freud influenced the field of psychology.

Every invention and advancement of human civilization, from penicillin to the microchip, sprung from an idea. This is why the Wright brothers flew and Archimedes rushed out of his bath tub yelling Eureka. Benjamin Franklin tied a key to his kite string whereas an apple falling on Newton's head gave us the first law of motion. Henry Ford's dream of a car for the multitudes changed automobile history. In many ways, thus, dreams and ideas have and will continue to shape the world.

Tragically the Muslim world of today is as bereft of these dreams as it was once at its apogee being the guiding light for all of civilization. The Scottish Orientalist, William Montgomery Watt, points out in his book 'The Glory That Was Islam': "When Christian Europe began to show an interest in the discoveries of its 'Saracen' enemies in around 1100 AD, Arab science and philosophy was at its zenith. Europe had to learn everything that there was to be learned from the Arabs, without whom European science and European philosophy would never have been able to develop as they did".

The Muslim contribution to civilisation spans literature (al Biruni, Jahiz, Ibn Qutayba) calligraphy (Ibn Muqla) poetry (Umar Khayam) art and sciences like architecture, astronomy, mathematics (Al Khawarizmi), medicine (Ibn Cenna) physics, chemistry and philosophy (Al Kindi, Al Ghazali, Ibn Rushd).

Apart from numerous ground-breaking inventions and theories, these contributions had a profound dimension. The golden age of Muslim science and philosophy, unlike today, was one of contacts and exchanges between cultures. It was an era of spontaneous borrowings and two-way influence.

The 11th-century Iraqi scientist Ibn al-Haytham, known as Alhozen, developed the concept of human vision. Before that the eye was seen merely as an 'optical instrument'. Alhozen's detailed description of ocular anatomy formed the basis for theory of image formation. Ibn al-Nafis, a 13th-century Syrian physician, described the blood movement in the human body. This was a break-through in understanding human anatomy and physiology.

Abul Qasim al-Zahrawi, a physician from 10th century Muslim Spain, wrote a book that described surgical procedures and gave detailed illustrations of the necessary surgical instruments. Many of these were devised by him. With this detailed illustrative work, surgery became integrated into scientific medicine instead of being a practice left to barbers and cuppers.

Arab advancement and forays in navigation, from the Astrolabe and the Compass to the fast sailing ship known as the Caravel, facilitated and made possible the arrival of Europeans in the New World. For 700 years the Arabs ruled Spain and Portugal, the two powers that held a virtual monopoly on exploration in the New World.

Michael Hamilton Morgan's "Lost History; the Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists'', delivers a missing link to the story of an inter-connected world. This is the achievements of Muslim civilization and its influence on the world.

Today with the Islamic world, a slumbering dreamless society, the world has consciously forgotten the contributions of an entire civilization. Solomon was reflecting upon just such a society when he wrote, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." The retrogression of our moral and societal values, decline in intellectual productivity and infrastructural decay can be attributed to an absolute dearth of vision.

Islam was once applied in a way to support creativity and tolerance along with diversity of positive thought and behaviour both in societal and individual lives. Mamun ur Rasheed summed it up aptly when he said: 'Reason and faith can be the same. By fully opening the mind and unleashing human creativity, many wonders, including peace are possible'.

For years, we in the Islamic world have been content in eulogizing past glories while lamenting our present predicaments. It is time to craft solutions to the issues of life that are confronting us. The ways and means for a better and brighter tomorrow are for those who dream and work to see them come true. It is they and only them who will possess the empires of the future.