Introduction to Islam

Islam is both a religion and a civilization, a historical reality that spans over fourteen centuries of human history and geographical presence in vast areas stretching over the Asian and African continents and even parts of Europe. It is also a spiritual reality that has transformed the inner and the outer life of numerous human beings in very different temporal and spatial circumstances. Today over 1.2 billion people from different racial and cultural backgrounds are Muslim, and historically Islam has played a significant role in the development of certain aspects of other civilizations, especially Western civilization. Islam created a civilization that has covered the middle belt of the Old World for over a millennium. This civilization produced great intellectual figures, a distinct art and architecture, dazzling achievements in science and technology, and an equitable social order based on the teaching of the Quran. Its thinkers, poets, musicians, and artists created works that deeply influenced Western as well as Indian and even some extent Chinese art and thought. Its scientists formulated theories and carried out practices that were widely emulated by Western scientists during the Middle Ages. The contribution of Islamic science is so great and complex that they cannot even be summarized in a proper and meaningful way in a short introduction. Suffice it to say, for some centuries (the eighth through the fourteenth and fifteenth century), Islamic science was, from the point of view of creativity, at the forefront of science considered globally. Not only did Muslims synthesize Greco-Alexandrian, ancient Mesopotamian, Iranian, Indian and to some extent Chinese science, but they created many new sciences or added new chapters to the ancient sciences. For example, in mathematics they expanded the study of the geometry of the Greeks and created the new disciplines of trigonometry and algebra. Likewise, in medicine they furthered the studies of Hippocratic and Galenic medicine while diagnosing and distinguishing new diseases, discovering new remedies, and proposing new theories. The same can be said for numerous other sciences, from alchemy to astronomy, from physics to geology. The global history of science has as one of its central chapters Islamic science, without which there would have been no Western science.