Posted 2/05/2008 05:23:00 PM by Douglas

Sounds like an interesting book, and it's a fascinating article about the Muslim rule of Spain, or should I say, Al Andalus.

Lewis’s book is part of that revision. The Muslims came to Europe, he writes, as “the forward wave of civilization that was, by comparison with that of its enemies, an organic marvel of coordinated kingdoms, cultures, and technologies in service of a politico-cultural agenda incomparably superior” to that of the primitive people they encountered there. They did Europe a favor by invading. This is not a new idea, but Lewis takes it further: he clearly regrets that the Arabs did not go on to conquer the rest of Europe. The halting of their advance was instrumental, he writes, in creating “an economically retarded, balkanized, and fratricidal Europe that . . . made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, persecutory religious intolerance, cultural particularism, and perpetual war.” It was “one of the most significant losses in world history and certainly the most consequential since the fall of the Roman Empire.” This is a bold hypothesis.

It certainly is, as some would attest that the Enlightenment occurred because of, not in spite of, Christianity. One of those interesting "what ifs" that we'll never know. But I'm extremely thankful I didn't have to learn calculus with Roman numerals.