Fila Sophia

applied philosophy, deep democracy, sustainability / by A.R.Teleb

A European Europe?

[Also on SpeakOut 5 Feb, 2015]

With the frenzy in Europe and parts of the United States, after the Pegida demonstrations and the Charlie Hebdo attacks, it is worth pausing to consider what a de-Islamized Europe or America would look like. It is worth remembering some history and some science.

It is easy to debunk the “Europeanness” of one’s daily life in the West. Imagine your life without the “European” comforts of sugar, syrup, cotton, coffee, marzipan or jars and mattresses. These and dozens more are Arabic words that mark the gifts of Islamic “states” of North Africa, Spain, Sicily or Turkey via the contacts, exchanges, conquests, and mixes that occurred over the centuries of Muslims living in Europe BEFORE the renaissance, BEFORE the industrial revolution.

But those are trivial compared to just a few of the hundreds of scientific discoveries or refinements that Muslims (and Arabic-speaking Jewish thinkers and inventors!) brought to Spain, Sicily, and Italy. Papermaking was indeed an art in China probably before anywhere else, but its industrialization occurred in Baghdad in the 8th century. In the 11th century, Muslims in Valencia, Spain, ran the first paper-mill in Europe.

Now imagine a Europe without paper, or with paper a few centuries delayed. Without it and the subsequent printing press, the “vulgarization” of the Bible would perhaps never have happened so soon. Without cheap copies of the Bible for believers to read and interpret, the Protestant reformation would likely not have occurred when it did. Without cheap, abundant paper, Shakespeare may not have produced his works, or they may never have become known to the world.

Now imagine Europe without Algebra, the decimal system or Arabic numerals. Is it possible to imagine modern science without Algebra? Try to simply multiply two numbers using Roman numerals. If you could overcome that challenge, now try to solve–even write–an equation without Arabic numerals and Algebra. Can you imagine computer science without algorithms (another Muslim legacy in Europe)? Without these simple gifts there many never have been a computer. There may never have been a World Wide Web. Maybe Angela Merkel was thinking of this when she said that “Islam is German.”

But the Internet, ingenious as it is, has still not caught up to History’s most fertile medium of communication, the Mediterranean Sea. At any rate, it will be some decades longer before it does. To imagine the Mediterranean without the boats of refugees and asylum seekers is to imagine it without the ships carrying those gifts over the centuries.

To imagine a “European Europe” de-Islamized is to imagine something entirely alien, a Europe without Shakespeare, without Martin Luther, without the scientific revolution, without the industrial revolution, and probably without capitalism. To imagine a European Europe is to imagine a Europe that modern Europeans would not want to live in.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

Equality by lot

The democratic potential of sortition

deliberativehub.wordpress.com/

The Participatory and Deliberative Democracy Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association

What you read is what I've felt

Fallen philosopher's writing

LearnAmo

Impara l'italiano con noi!

Citizens' Jury

Demokratie durch einige für alle - per Zufall

The Facco Papers

applied philosophy, deep democracy, sustainability / by A.R.Teleb

Woodland Pattern's Blog

Dedicated to the discovery, cultivation and presentation of contemporary literature and the arts.

http://www.peaceactionwi.org/

applied philosophy, deep democracy, sustainability / by A.R.Teleb

Ragman's Circles

Talking about what the matter was

Yanis Varoufakis

THOUGHTS FOR THE POST-2008 WORLD

The Reluctant American

Revolutionary Sustainability, Sustainable Revolutions, Being Female, The Academic Fairy Land of Status Quo, and Other Jibberish

Structural Violence

applied philosophy, deep democracy, sustainability / by A.R.Teleb

Cyclargus Erembis

"a new genus of blues"

sharkouni

The greatest WordPress.com site in all the land!

DemocracySpot

At the intersection of participation and technology. By Tiago C. Peixoto. Opinions are my own and do not reflect those of any institutions with which I am or have been affiliated.

Tahrir & Beyond

Revolution bound

Musings from Upstate New York

applied philosophy, deep democracy, sustainability / by A.R.Teleb

Mystère et boules de gomme !

the internet watering hole for fans of the "French in Action" language video course

A Philosopher Muses

There’s more than one way to think about it.

ElectionSmith

Expertise in Voting & Elections in the American States

The Truth Warrior

Empowering and Inspiring people to be fully authentic, loving, happy, peaceful and joyful in their lives.

%d bloggers like this: