How did Islam affect history?

Answer 1

The Islamic religion has had a immense impact on the ancient and modern world.

During the Crusades, Christian and Muslims clashed in battle for Jerusalem. Afterwards, people had a varied opinion on their radical beliefs and "Jihad" holy wars.

On September 11th, the bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon by Muslim extremists gave a negative impulse to the victims and to many people worldwide who witnessed the crisis.

However, a handful of ignorant, uneducated individuals should not cast a shadow of generalization upon Islam. Islam does not support or promote killing or violence.

Like Judaism and Christianity, the Islamic religion is monotheistic, or has a belief in one absolute God or divine deity. All three are correlated in the roots of God and praise Moses, Jesus and God as one. The Muslims acknowledge the Old and New Testaments of The Bible and include the last chapter, the Torah as the true revelation of God's plan for Humanity. So all in all, those who are part of one of these big three religions denounce or persecute those of another, but in the end they are all related in one big cosmic and realistic way.

Answer 2

Answer 1

Well, for the first part, wherever Islam spread, it brought Arab culture.

After capturing Alexandria, wherever Islam spread, there was knowledge, writing, and basically experiencing a golden age....it united wherever it touched in a way that had not been united before.

Answer 2

by:

1. good morals
2. compatibility with science and encouraging science research
3. logic
4. trust
5. allowing thinking, reasoning, and free will

Answer 3

It depends on who these "people" are. Islam is a religion, with a theology, philosophy, and a political organizational style. Naturally, all of these elements will affect people differently. Please see the Related Links below to narrow down which group of people affected by Islam that you would like to read more about.

Answer 4

MUSLIM CONTRIBUTIONS TO HUMANITYSeeking knowledge is obligatory in Islam for every Muslim, man and woman. The main sources of Islam, Qur'an and Sunnah (Prophet Muhammad's traditions), encourage Muslims to seek knowledge and be scholars since this is the best way to lead people to know Allah (God) and to lead a happy and sound life.Muslims were, therefore, eager to seek knowledge, and within a few years of Muhammad's mission, a great civilization sprang up and flourished. The outcome is shown in the spread of Islamic universities; Al-Zaitunah in Tunis, and Al-Azhar in Cairo go back more than 1000years and are the oldest existing universities in the world.Muslims made great advances in many different fields such as geography, mathematics, medicine, architecture, literature, and astronomy.Algebra and the Arabic numerals were introduced to the world by Muslim scholars. The astrolabe, the quadrant, and many navigational maps were developed by Muslim scholars and played an important role in the world progress, most notably in Europe's age of exploration.Muslim scholars studied the ancient civilisations from Greece to China then added their own creative ideas and inventions, and finally transmitted this new knowledge to Europe, as well as other places.In MedicineIn Islam, the human body is a source of appreciation as it is created by Almighty Allah (God). How it functions, how to keep it safe, how to prevent diseases from attacking it have been important issues for Muslims.Prophet Muhammad himself urged people to "Do take medicines for your diseases", as people at that time were reluctant to take medicines. He also said "God created no illness but established for it an antidote, except old age. When the antidote is applied, the patient will recover with the permission of God."These were strong motives to encourage Muslim scientists to explore, develop, and apply empirical laws. Much attention has been given to medicine and public health care: the first hospital was built in Baghdad in 706 AC. The Muslims also used their camels as mobile hospitals which moved from place to place in a caravan style.Muslim scholars used human corpses, skulls, and skeletons in order to help their students understand how the body functions. This enabled surgery to develop very quickly.Al-Razi (930) was the greatest physician in the world in the middle ages. Khalaf Abul Qasim Al-Zahrawi was a very famous surgeon in the eleventh century. Ibn Sina (1037) wrote his famous book (Al-Qanun Fi Al-Tibb) which remained a standard textbook for over 700 years.In GeographyMuslim scholars paid great attention to geography. Al-Muqdishi, for example, was the first geographer to produce accurate maps in colours. This helped a lot of people all over the world to get a clear and better understanding of the globe.In 1166, Al-Idrisi, a well-known Muslim scholar, produced a world map including all the continents with their mountains, rivers and famous cities.In fact, Muslims' great concern for geography is due to their religion. Islam encourages people to travel through the whole earth to see God's signs and patterns everywhere. Islam also requires each Muslim to have some background in geography. For example, one should know the direction of "Qiblah" in order to make prayers five times a day. This means that he/she should be able to find the four directions north, south, east and west. Muslims also were used to taking long journeys for conducting business as well as for spreading their religion.They took every opportunity to explore the whole world with adequate geographical information.In AstronomyMuslim's have a special interest in astronomy. The moon and the sun are of vital importance in the life of every Muslim. By the moon, Muslims can determine the beginning and the end of every month. By the sun the Muslims can calculate the different times of prayer. At the same time, the Qur'an contains many references to astronomy.The heavens and the earth were ordered rightly, and were made subservient to man, including the sun, the moon, the stars, and day and night. Every heavenly body moves in an orbit assigned to it by God and never digresses, making the universe an orderly cosmos whose life and existence, diminution and expansion, are totally determined by the Creator.(Qur'an, 30:22)In MathematicsIt is very interesting to know that Islam, unlike other religions, urges mankind to search and explore the universe. For example, the Holy Qur'an states:We(Allah) will show you (mankind) our signs/patterns in the horizons/universe and in yourselves until you are convinced that the revelation is the truth.(Qur'an, 14:52)This invitation to explore and search made Muslims interested in astronomy, mathematics, geometry, and other sciences.The Muslims invented the symbol for zero (The word "cipher" comes from Arabic sifr). They also organised the numbers into the decimal system. Additionally, they invented the symbol to express an unknown quantity, such as variables like x, or s.The Muslims had very clear and firm understanding of the correspondences among geometry, mathematics, and astronomy.Moreover, it was the Muslims who founded the science of Algebra (Al-Jabr). The famous scholar Al-Khawarizmi (850), was able to make and describe algebraic calculations.Not only did Muslims make these discoveries and inventions, but they also transmitted them to Europe through Spain.

Muslims was a worldwide power found simply on faith.

1. Election of A Leader: After the death of Prophet Muhammad, in 632 AD, Muslims elected Abu Bakr to be their leader and the Head of the Islamic State. Except for the Roman Empire, no one in the world had, at that time heard of electing a Head of State. That was democracy.
2. Water Purification & Distribution: Tunisia, North Africa - Muslims designed an ingenious water purification system using two water basins and gravity to filter clean water from one basin to the other. They built a distribution system so that the cities had clean running water. This was hundreds of years before anyone in Europe thought of having running water in the cities.
3. Baghdad: 200 years after Prophet Muhammad's death, the borders of the Islamic empire stretched from Spain to India. It took nearly a year to travel from one end of its borders to the other. At its heart was the fabled city of Baghdad. It had exquisite neighbor- hoods filled with parks on both sides of the river. It was a city of learning, filled with the best scholars, the best thinkers, and the best artists. People from all over the empire came there looking for solutions to their staggering scientific and engineering problems. Baghdad's renowned House of Wisdom and its public libraries attracted Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars from all over the world. Muslim scholars embraced the ideas of Aristotle and Plato, writers that Christian world considered blasphemous. Renaissance had its true beginning during this period. It was during this period that Muslims began to challenge the earlier knowledge. Spirit of scientific investigation and search to develop new solutions was everywhere. System of Arabic numerals, Algebra, Trigonometry, engineering, Astronomy, and countless other disciplines trace their roots to this era.
4. At the time when Europeans were praying to the bones of their saints to cure their illnesses, Muslims determined that tiny organisms transmitted disease from one person to another.They concluded that a sick person should be quarantined to protect the rest of the community from germs. This is the beginning of the modern hospital. Separate wards for patients suffering from different diseases were established. They even studied mental illness. Their study of anatomy was so advanced that their discoveries remained unchallenged for the next 600 years.
5. The father of optics was a Muslim named Ibn Al-Hatem. He produced the first treatise as to how the eye sees. A thousand years before the European doctors attempted, Muslim doctors were surgically removing the cataracts.
6. For all this knowledge to be copied and communicated throughout the vast empire, there was a new invention, paper. Around 750 AD, when Muslims reached Central Asia, they found paper. Within 50 years, it was all over their empire, including Spain. From there, Europeans learned to make paper. Scribes were writing books on paper. Baghdad had streets of booksellers, some with as many as a hundred shops selling books. This was at a time when in Europe, a monastery would be lucky if it had five or ten books.
7. During the dark ages, Cordoba in Spain was the most sophisticated metropolis in Europe. It had roads, lights, libraries, hospitals, palaces, running water, and people lived in big houses. The Great Mosque of Cordoba is now the famous Roman Catholic Cathedral. What is now its steeple was once a minaret. A Christian nun in the 10th century called this mosque the "Ornament of The World". Al-Hambra is the best remaining example of what a Muslim palace looked like. In the 10th century, here the Muslim elite enjoyed the good life, while Europeans struggled thru the "Dark Ages".
8. Obeying the Qur'an's injunctions, Muslims studied both the Book of Divine Revelation (the Qur'an) and the Book of Creation (the universe), and founded a magnificent civilization. Scholars from all over Europe and elsewhere benefited from the great Muslim centers of higher learning at Damascus, Bukhara, Baghdad, Cairo, Fez, Qairawan, Zaytuna, Cordoba, Sicily, Isfahan, and Delhi. Historians liken this Muslim golden age, in full flower when Europe was enduring its dark Middle Ages, to a beehive. Roads were full of students, scientists, and scholars travelling from one center of learning to another. Such "Renaissance" men and women as Jabir Ibn Hayyan, Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi, Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Abu al-Hasan al-Mas'udi, Ibn al-Haytham, al-Biruni, al-Ghazzali, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, and Abu Bakr al-Razi were shining like stars in the high sky of science.

   In his monumental Introduction to the History of Science, George Sarton divided time into chronological chapters and named each chapter after that period's most eminent scientist. From the mid-eighth century to the mid-eleventh century, each of the seven 50-year period carries the name of a Muslim scientist: "The Time of al-Khwarizmi," "The Time of al-Biruni," and so on. Within these chapters we have the names of about 100 important Islamic scientists and their main works.

   John Davenport, a leading scientist observed:

   It must be owned that all the knowledge whether of Physics, Astronomy, Philosophy or Mathematics, which flourished in Europe from the 10th century was originally derived from the Arabian schools, and the Spanish Saracen may be looked upon as the father of European philosophy.4

   Bertrand Russell, the famous British philosopher writes:

   The supremacy of the East was not only military. Science, philosophy, poetry, and the arts, all flourished in the Muhammadan world at a time when Europe was sunk in barbarism. Europeans, with unpardonable insularity, call this period 'The Dark Ages': but it was only in Europe that it was dark-indeed only in Christian Europe, for Spain, which was Mohammedan, had a brilliant culture."5

   Robert Briffault, the renowned historian, acknowledges in his The Making of Humanity:

   It is highly probable that but for the Arabs, modern European civilization would have never assumed that character which has enabled it to transcend all previous phases of evolution. For although there is not a single aspect of human growth in which the decisive influence of Islamic culture is not traceable, nowhere is it so clear and momentous as in the genesis of that power which constitutes the paramount distinctive force of the modern world and the supreme course of its victory-natural sciences and the scientific spirit... What we call science arose in Europe as a result of a new spirit of inquiry; of new methods of investigation, of the method of experiment, observation, measurement, of the development of Mathematics in a form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs.

   For the first 500 years of its existence, the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities, the Muslim East offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, which was sunk in the night of the Dark Ages. It retained its vigor and remained ahead of Christian Europe until the terrible disasters of the thirteenth century.6

   During the tenth-century, Muslim Cordoba was Europe's most civilized city, the wonder and admiration of the time. Travelers from the north heard with something like fear of the city that contained 900 public baths and 70 libraries with hundreds of thousands of volumes. Yet whenever the rulers of Leon, Navarre, or Barcelona needed surgeons, architects, dressmakers, or musicians, they applied to Cordoba.61 The Muslims' literary influence was so vast that, for example, the Bible and liturgy had to be translated into Arabic for the Christian community's use. The account given by Alvaro, a Christian zealot and writer, shows vividly how even non-Muslim Spaniards were attracted to Muslim literature:

   My fellow Christians delight in the poems and romances of the Arabs. They study the works of Muhammadan theologians and philosophers, not in order to refute them, but to acquire a correct and elegant Arabic style. Where today can a layman be found who reads the Latin commentaries on Holy Scriptures? Who is there that studies the Gospels, the Prophets, the Apostles? Alas, the young Christians who are most conspicuous for their talents have no knowledge of any literature or language save the Arabic; they read and study with avidity Arabian books; they amass whole libraries of them at a vast cost, and they everywhere sing the praises of the Arabian world..."7

   3. Black Hole: An area of space-time with a gravitational field so intense that its escape velocity is equal to or exceeds the speed of light, a great void, an abyss. White Hole: A hypothetical hole in outer space from which energy, stars, and other celestial matter emerge or explode.

   3. Quoted by A. Karim in Islamic Contribution to Science and Civilization.

   4. Pakistan Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 3.

   5. Lothrop Stoddard, The New World of Islam (London: Chapman and Hall, 1922). The various disasters are the Mongol destruction of vast swaths of Muslim Central Asia, which culminated in their destruction of Baghdad, at that time the Islamic world's capital, and its environs (1258) and the Crusades (eleventh century to the present day). When General Allenby arrived in Jerusalem in 1917, he announced that the Crusades had been completed. When the French arrived in Damascus, their commander cried out beside Saladin's tomb: "Nous revenons [we return], Saladin!" K. Armstrong, Muhammad, A Biography of the Prophet, 40. American president George W. Bush announced the beginning of a new crusade after the event of September 11, 2001. During the thirteenth century, the Crusaders conquered Palestine, Syria, and Cyprus and established a state in Jerusalem.

   6. Thomas Arnold, The Legacy of Islam (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1931).

   7. Dozy, Reinhart P. (tr.), Indiculus Luminosus.
   

Answer 5

it was used to display and portray the religion