“Memory and Erasure in the Story of the West: Or, Where have All the Muslims Gone?”

Last updated on: November 11, 2018 at 5:24 pm by Dan Peterson

“Memory and Erasure in the Story of the West: Or, Where have All the Muslims Gone?” 2018-11-11T17:24:54-07:00 Dan Peterson

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A medieval Arabic manuscript on herbal medicine
(Wikimedia Commons public domain)

I would like to call general attention to a lecture that will be given this next week at Brigham Young University by a friend of mine (also, for what it’s worth, a former student and, later, a colleague) who is currently working as an independent scholar:

“Memory and Erasure in the Story of the West: Or, Where have All the Muslims Gone?”

Tuesday, 12 PM to 1 PM; 238 HRCB, Brigham Young University

Islamic civilization served as the main source of science and philosophy for the West for the centuries between 1000 and 1600 CE. During the Renaissance, an influential group of Humanists strove to erase that narrative, promoting instead a fictitious narrative of Western origins directly from Greece and Rome.

Glen Cooper worked on the Islamic Translation Series at BYU’s Maxwell Institute, and then taught Middle Eastern history and history of science at BYU. Dr. Cooper received a PhD in the history of Islamic science and culture from Columbia University, in New York City.

I’m very sad to say that I will be unable to attend this lecture, owing to the fact that it will directly conflict with my largest class. Moreover, for that very same reason, I can’t offer them credit for attending and reporting on it. I would even consider canceling my class in order for my students to attend the lecture, so important do I consider the subject — except that, owing to my pending lecture trip to Sydney, Australia, I’m already going to be falling behind with my lectures and class discussions.

Westerners — certainly Americans — tend not to know their own history very well, and we certainly don’t often devote a lot of energy to studying the history of non-Western regions. So it’s easy for us to assume that the world of Islam contributed nothing to Western medicine, literature, mathematics, philosophy, and science — and, indeed, that it had nothing to contribute. But such assumptions are grievously mistaken.

***

I’m casting the net fairly broadly in this post as far as things Islamic and Middle Eastern go:

“Synagogue shooting prompts Muslims to act charitably—and humbly”

“As Christians split over Trump, minority faiths make their mark”

“Dozens of cat mummies, rare beetles discovered in Egyptian tombs”

And here’s a piece that I marked way back in September but neglected to share:

“A sobering look at Islam and human-rights discourse: A group of Muslim scholars offer a view from the Islamic tradition”

Posted from Park City, Utah

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