Editorial

Abstract

As Mehmet Mahfuz Söylemez documents in his “The Jundishapur School:
Its History, Structure, and Functions,” Southwest Asia has long been a site
for a cross-fertilization of ideas that have led to productive societies.
Although Jundishapur’s excellence as a medical center predates the coming
of Islam, it nevertheless played a key role in transmitting knowledge to
Muslim physicians as well as contributing to Baghdad’s development as an
up-and-coming center of excellence. In an open and welcoming climate,
the scholars and physicians of Jundishapur and Baghdad fostered a learning
environment that allowed Muslim civilizations to flourish.
Today’s Muslims often look back to such “golden ages” with wistfulness,
admiration, and frustration. Given the constant defeats and subjugation
faced by Muslim countries since western colonization, this wistfulness is not
surprising. In order to bolster their identity to defend themselves against this
continuing subjugation, Muslims often offer this glorious past to an
Islamophobic world: “We are not barbarians! See what Muslim civilization
was capable of!” And in the face of Eurocentric curricula that largely deny
any role to a non-European civilization in the history of ideas since Plato,
such reminders are crucial.
But as Dieter Weiss’ “Paths toward an Arab Knowledge Society” inadvertently
highlights, such wistfulness is underscored by an ignorance of just
what it takes to produce a golden age. For a society to flourish, it must create
the conditions that enable its inhabitants to engage in knowledge creation:
the freedom to think, debate, and discuss. While he focuses only on
the Arab world, one would have to be blind to reality not to realize that the
same deplorable situation can be found in most Muslim countries today.
Imagine what kind of Muslim cultural and political society must have
existed for Ibn Sina, who produced great medical and philosophical works
while denying the resurrection of the body. Compare that with the assassinations,
death threats, and the like facing contemporary writers who engage
in independent thought about Islam and the modern world. Think of the role
of caliph Ma’mun’s bayt al-hikmah (House of Wisdom), where Christians,
Muslims, and scholars who followed other religions worked side-by-side to ...