998). Universities such as Al-Azhar (969 A.D.) were also established long before those in Europe. The Islamic world created the first universities – and even hospitals – in the world.
Islamic scientific manuscripts of the Medieval Age; meticulous studies on human anatomy and zoology.
This fact may be very surprising to modern Westerners, who generally have a different kind of picture about Islam in their minds. But this picture emerges from ignorance about the origins and history of the Islamic civilization. Those who get rid of this ignorance – and several prejudices – acknowledge the true nature of Islam. One example of these is a recent documentary film by PBS, titled Islam: The Empire of Faith, in which the commentator rightly states that:
In the unfolding of history, Islamic civilization has been one of humanity’s grandest achievements… For the West, much of the history of Islam has been obscured behind a veil of fear and misunderstanding. Yet Islam’s hidden history in deeply and surprisingly interwoven with Western civilization… It was they (Muslim scholars) who sewed the seeds of the Renaissance, 600 years before the birth of Leonardo da Vinci. From the way we heal the sick to the numerals we use for counting, cultures across the globe have been shaped by the Islamic civilization. 1
In an article published in Salon.com, a prominent voice of the liberal American media, author George Rafael writes in an article titled “A Is For Arabs” that;
From algebra and coffee to guitars, optics and universities… the West owes to the People of the Crescent Moon… A millennium ago, while the West was shrouded in darkness, Islam enjoyed a golden age. Lighting