started in ancient Baghdad, Cordova, etc, among Muslims but,
after the Crusades, this task was carried out entirely by
Europeans. For this reason, the existence of our modern
materialistic civilization is generally attributed by historians to
the West.
The revolution of the first half of the 7
th
century was the
starting point of a new age of scientific enquiry. The present
age has seen the culmination of this process in the form of a
scientific revolution. Apparently secular in nature, this present
scientific revolution, is, in reality, an Islamic revolution.
The Qur’an, revealed in the first quarter of the 7
th
century,
repeatedly mentions that in contemplating heavenly and earthly
phenomena, you will find in them the signs of God. But at the
time of the revelation of the Qur’an, these signs of God were
not fully exposed: they were hidden in nature. For this reason
there was no desired framework within which man could ponder
over the Quran. God wished to provide man with such a
framework.
The greatest hindrance to this happening was the ancient
monarchical system. Imperialism, which ran counter to the
scheme of God, had closed the doors to freedom of thought.
Therefore, God Himself intervened in human history through
the Companions of the Prophet. This, in essence, was not merely
a political change: it was the initial stage of the forthcoming
scientific revolution. The two big monarchical empires of the
Byzantines and the Sassanids were shattered by the Companions
of the Prophet, resulting in the establishment of an open
atmosphere of scientific research. (21: 18). The same
revolutionary event was prophesied in the Bible by an ancient
prophet:
He looked and startled the nations. And the everlasting
mountains were scattered. (Habakkuk, 3:6)
Here “the everlasting mountains” means those political
‘mountains’ which had existed from ancient times in the form
of imperial powers. The renowned French historian, Henri
Pirenne, (d. 1935) refers thus to the demolition by Islam of this
absolute imperialism:
“Islam changed the face of the globe. The
An intellectual barrier
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