أَعُوذُ بِاللّٰهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

In the name of ALLAH, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Book "How Islam created Modern World" by Mark Graham

Mark A Graham is a mystery novelist whose works were translated in several languages. He is the winner of the Edgar award-winning author of ‘The Black Maria’, third in a series of historical novels which have been translated into several languages. He studied medieval history and religious studies at Connecticut College and has a Master’s degree in English literature from Kutztown University. He lives in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.

"How Islam created Modern World" by Mark Graham is a powerful historical exploration, showing how Islamic civilization shaped the foundations of the modern world — including science, medicine, philosophy, art, architecture, mathematics, and global culture. Mark Graham highlights the contributions of Muslim scholars across centuries and reveals how their intellectual legacy influenced Europe and the Renaissance.

Mark Graham's book "How Islam Created the Modern World" posits that medieval Islamic civilization served as the essential bridge between the ancient world and modern Europe, preserving and expanding knowledge that fueled the Renaissance. The work argues that Islamic scholars and cities pioneered scientific, mathematical, and philosophical advancements that directly enabled the European Enlightenment. For more details, visit Islamic Bookstore.

For several centuries, corresponding to the European Middle Ages, Baghdad was the intellectual center of the world. It was there that a huge community of translators and scholars appropriated in Arabic culture the knowledge of ancient civilisations and combined it with the cultural traditions and imperatives of the Islamic context to create a scientific, mathematical and philosophical golden age.

This golden age of Islam embraced all the products of human spirit practiced at that time, including different scientific disciplines, medicine, symbolic and artistic creation, social organisation and material culture, including productive branches12 of applied knowledge in industry, architecture and the making of instruments.

These accomplishments were so numerous and original that they realised an unprecedented stage of civilisation and occupied a high rank in human creation. Being unique and at the front of inventivity, they gained the admiration of other peoples who were aware of the existence of these treasures. Hence a dynamic process of transmission was set up between the Muslim and the Latin worlds all over the Mediterranean coasts.

Muslim scientists correctly calculated the circumference of the globe in the tenth century. Muslim musicians introduced the guitar and musical notation to the Europe. And Muslim philosophers invented the scientific method and paved the way for the Enlightenment. At the dawn of the Renaissance, Christian Europe was wearing Persian clothes, singing Arab songs, reading Spanish Muslim philosophy and eating off Mamluk Turkish brassware. This is the story of how Muslims taught Europe to live well and think clearly. It is the story of how Islam created the Modern World.

The Book "How Islam created Modern World" by Mark Graham records that in the Middle Ages, while Europe was mired in superstition and feudal chaos, Baghdad was the intellectual center of the world. It was there that an army of translators and scholars took the wisdom of the Greeks and combined it with their own cultural traditions to create a scientific, mathematical and philosophical golden age. Their accomplishments were staggering, including the development of modern medicine, chemistry, and algebra.

The book "How Islam Created the Modern World" by Mark Graham argues that Islamic civilization pulled Europe out of the Dark Ages. While Europe struggled in chaos, scholars in Baghdad built a golden age of science and philosophy. They saved ancient Greek ideas and added their own brilliant discoveries. Here are the key ways Islam shaped the modern world:-

Science and Medicine: Muslim scholars invented the scientific method. They also created modern chemistry and made great leaps in medicine. For example, they learned how diseases spread and wrote medical textbooks used by Europeans for centuries.

Math and Astronomy: Islamic thinkers developed algebra. The word itself comes from the Arabic word al-jabr. They also calculated the size of the Earth with amazing accuracy.

Philosophy: Scholars used clear logic to explore the world. Their ideas helped pave the way for the European Enlightenment.

Daily Life: Trade and learning brought Islamic daily habits to Europe. Europeans began wearing Persian-style clothes, playing new instruments like the guitar, and eating off fine Turkish brass.

This is a book containing about 200 pages, with Ten (10) Chapters and two Appendix. Chapter 1: Islam becomes an empire; Chapter 2: The House of wisdom; Chapter 3: Hippocrates wears a turban; Chapter 4: The great work; Chapter 5: Beyond the Arabian nights; Chapter 6: Islam’s secret weapon; Chapter 7: A medieval war on terror; Chapter 8: The first World war; Chapter 9: Raiders of the last library; Chapter 10: Children of Abraham, children of Aristotle; Appendix 1: What the Qur’an says; Appendix 2: Arabic words in English and lastly Further reading. Through these chapters and pages Mark Graham says that Islam gave the West its science, math, and philosophy. This sharing of knowledge laid the exact foundation for the European Renaissance.

The Book starts in the Introduction as "This is a story that needs to be told. It is the story that has largely been forgotten, its remnant embalmed in technical journals and in text that only a handful of specialist read. Open any high school history test book and you see this story noticeably absent, as you would in most undergraduate world history surveys. It is the story of how a religion, many have come to see as barbaric and anti modern, built an empire of wealth and splendor the like of which world had never seen. It is story of a precious heritage of knowledge was not only preserved but reconstituted and reimagined. And it is the story of how medieval Europe gave birth to renaissance."

The Book in Chapter One correctly describes the first revelations upon Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and shows that "Suddenly human wealth and tribal pride were as nothing. Islam and Submission to God became the new out of the day." He then adds on "It is not for the first time empires had been prey to marauding invaders. Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals had sacked Rome. The Huns and Vikings put the dark in Europe dark ages. But none of these groups left any truly lasting impact on the societies they raped and pillaged. Instead they were quickly absolved in the Latin Christian culture of Rome, going native almost immediately". The author continues to explain that "The Muslims were different. They have the revelation of God to back them up, a new faith that outdid all others. Conversion was the order of the day, and not always on the most pleasant of terms. They were not interested in assimilation. Since God's words had been dictated to Muhammad (PBUH) in Arabic, the language itself was Holy. Rather than learning Greek or Persian or Latin, the Arab saw to it that Arabic became the world language, the tongue of the civilization for next 600 years". The Chapter One concludes with "The year was 750 and the Abbasids knee deep in blood ascended the throne, they would hold for five centuries. Despite spite such a sevage start, it was here, in the New Capital of Baghdad that Arabs and Persians alike began a process of experimentation, invention and discovery that would lead to the European Renaissance and beyond".

The Book in Chapter two say from very beginning "It was Dark Ages. The Viking were marauding the coastlines, trade routes were down, thugs in armour setup a protection racket call feudalism and the wisdom of the Greeks was lost. Meanwhile on the coast of the North Sea, Irish monks saved civilization by preserving what paltry classical texts they had, waiting for the right moment to disseminate them through the Continent and jump start the Renaissance". He adds on "This is how the tale is still often told in the West from grade school to college. Rise of Islam is mentioned just long enough to explain why there were so many Muslims in the world. After that Islam fades from the historical record until the Franks encounter the 'Saracens' in the 1090s."

The author then goes on to say "Perhaps the most heretical thing to say that Europe ever had anything to learn from Islam. But learn it did, sitting at the foot of its Muslim teachers for half a Millennium. Far from being incubators or preserverse, Muslim were all the things, those textbooks deny them being; artist, poets, philosophers, mathematicians, chemist, astronomers, physicists. In short, they were civilization at a time when Europe was wallowing in barbarism. Muslim civilization was the greatest in size and technology that the world had ever seen."

Let's conclude this introduction of the book from final pages of the tenth chapter "Children of Abraham, children of Aristotle. " "The Renaissance is West's creation myth. It is there in Florence, we learn, that the Middle Ages ended and rebirth of classical ideals began. The result was humanism, rationalism, enlightenment, -everything that makes us culturally superior to everyone else."

"It is important for everyone to understand that these are European traits derived from Greeks. We are their only direct descendants. As the orientalist JJ Saunders put it "Muslim did, as we have seen, borrow a good deal from Greece but in a limited or indirect fashion: the Greek past never belonged to them in the sense it did to Christendom."

The author continues to say "This is the crux of the myth. The Muslim Scholars would tell you that the Greeks belong to Islam as much as they ever belong to the Christendom. They would remind that it was they who saved the Greeks when the Christian were burning them. It was they who translated them, debated them, commented on them and improved upon there systems. Muslims gave Western Christian their medicine, their music, their food, their clothes, their poetry, their philosophy and their mathematics. They were the ones who thrust Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the enlightenment. This is the terrible secret that Renaissance myth tries to hide."