God's Religion: Islam

Without Islam Europe would not be here today. Even though later on it was rejected by Europe. Islam is one of the biggest religions in the world so it traveled through Europe. People lives in harmony or so it says. But thanks to that there was no ignorance there.

Opinion is divided on this second point. Hardliners point not only to the endless battles of the Recon quest campaign to win Iberia back for Christendom, but also to the many pogroms and massacres of the time, and laws designed to separate and strictly limit any contact between the communities. Those more favorable to the idea of connivance cite the numerous instances of cultural crossover and working together for the common good despite the obvious tensions. In l0th-century Umayyad Cordoba, for example, Jews and Christians were able to serve in high government office; they were officially viewed as ahl al-kitab, or "people of the book": those whose faith was based on a written document, such as the Bible or the Torah, and hence protected under Islamic law. No one denies the underlying violence of the times: the question is whether the three faith groups ever worked consciously towards a more accepting society. Tolerance over the Moorish period was neither constant nor can it be viewed as having never existed at all. The first Moors arrived as warriors in 711, quickly finding wives among the native population as they settled down in their newly conquered territories. The last of them - the Moriscos, great-grandsons of this ethnically mixed people - were summarily expelled in 1609 from a Spain obsessed with racial purity and the threat from the Ottomans, farm workers and artisans given just three days to leave after a presence in the country that had lasted nine centuries. During this period the whole spectrum of human interaction, from intimate contact and interchange to violent persecution, were in evidence. The mechanics of this shift are perhaps the most interesting question of all, and most relevant to today: the how and whys of the ebb and flow of connivance (1). The contacts between communities were limited. But the worked for a common good. Jew and Christians were protectected under Muslims law. The three religions worked together.

On the first question -Moorish Spain's impact on medieval Europe - the new-generation popular studies display a growing consensus. Finally the debt the west owes to the Muslim world is being recognized. Al-Andalus was in many ways the United States of its day: an ethnically diverse, political and cultural powerhouse that the rest of the western world looked to for new ideas and the latest trends, even while it sometimes resented, and even rejected, this influence. Everything from technology (the abacus, paper) to the latest fashions (dark clothes in winter, light ones in summer), foods (artichokes, sugar), pastimes (chess) and new ideas (higher mathematics, Averroës's innovative "rational" thinking) first reached Europe through Moorish Spain. The most celebrated point of entry for intellectual traffic was the school of translators based in Christian-controlled Toledo in the 12th and 13th centuries, from where Greek and Arabic learning rendered into Latin was able to penetrate Europe and lay the cornerstone of the Renaissance. The picture is complex, as Europe was shaped through its acceptance and its rejection of what Moorish Spain had to offer. Although learning from al-Andalus eventually helped to fill "the occidental void", as Levering Lewis points out, paradoxically the "Europeans" first began to define themselves as a coherent group of peoples in direct opposition to the Muslim forces pushing over the Pyrenees during the course of the 8th century (1). The west owes money to the Muslims world and they are finally realizing it.

This was a great time for Muslims, Jews, and Christian. They were working together for the common goal. The Muslims world gained money from the west. The U.S. got it good to.

Government in Islam

“Turkey sets a fantastic example for nations around the world to see where it's possible to have democracy coexist with great religion like Islam.” Those were George Bush's words of welcome, this week, to Turkeys President Abdullah Gul. He is saying that it is possible for a religion and the government to work together (The Economist).

“In decades past, a Turkish leader might have been received at the White House with cordial remarks about his country's growing prosperity or its contributions to NATO. But it would have been strange perhaps, not to mention religion when hosting a head of state that had just set precedent that was watched with fascination by politically active Muslims in many parts of the world.” (The Economist).This person is saying that it's strange that he wasn't aware that he was being watched by active Muslims of many parts of the world