The Muslim Accomplishments That Weren’t

Jamie Glazov, the premier interviewer for FrontPageMagazine, asks Peter BetBasoo what has Islam really contributed in terms of human scientific and artistic endeavor? An excerpt:

Muslims claim many, many accomplishments we know they had nothing to do with.

Arabic numerals? From India.

The concept of zero? From Babylonia.

Parabolic arches? From Assyria.

The much ballyhooed claim of translating the Greek corpus of knowledge into Arabic? It was the Christian Assyrians, who first translated to Syriac, then to Arabic.

The first University? Not Al-Azhar in Cairo (988 A.D.), but the School of Nisibis of the Church of the East (350 A.D.), which had three departments: Theology, Philosophy and Medicine. Al-Azhar only teaches Theology.

Speaking of medicine, Muslims will claim that medicine during the Golden Age of Islam, the Abbasid period, was the most advanced in the world. That is correct. But what they don't say is that the medical practitioners were exclusively Christians. The most famous medical family, the Bakhtishu family, Assyrians of the Church of the East, produced seven generations of doctors, who were the official physicians to the Caliphs of Baghdad for nearly 200 years.

There are many more examples, but I think these are enough to make the point.

Click here to read the complete interview.