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[Deleted]September 2, 2020
antandroSeptember 2, 2020
I've got a book on this - it's ridiculous how a lot of it is just elided from popular history. It's like people go "Greeks/Romans" to "Vikings" to "Dark Ages" ... then skip a few centuries ... and suddenly, "Renaissance". Muslims basically get mentioned as "those people who were the other side in the Crusades".
On the feminist side, what's awesome is the completely different PoV that Muslims have historically had about women. All the way from Khadija and Fatimah up through Ibn Taymiyyah and a bit beyond ... sadly, I have to say, I don't think much of more modernist Islamic feminist hermeneutics. The older ones basically had the attitude: "Oh, women can't do that, but men can? Alright. Prove it. And unless you can prove it, shut up". Since they're all working from a single and fixed text (excluding much of hadith literature), this actually worked really well.
[Deleted]September 2, 2020
mathwitchSeptember 2, 2020
It sounds like a great exhibit, so thanks for the link.
Just looking at the words algebra and algorithm should tell you that Islamic developments in mathematics and science are absolutely fundamental to our current understandings. It mystifies me how much we canonize ancient Greek thinkers while completely overlooking centuries of Islamic scholars and researchers.
drdeeSeptember 2, 2020
Now that you mention it...it was traditional for elite boys to learn Greek and Latin to read ancient texts (and my students in the UK, most of whom come from elite-ish schools, tell me they still learn Latin, though Greek seems to have disappeared for the most part (was it because Greek was usually for Biblical studies?)--but it would have been equally valuable to learn Arabic to read ancient texts.
lucreciaOctober 1, 2020
Hah, nostalgia! We had a copy of the book at home at one point. Surprised it's still going, since that must've been around 2006.