How Allah Killed Science
"When songstres ses and musical instrument s appear and wine
is held to be lawful," There will be peoples of my Community
who willholdfornicat ion, silk, wine, and musical instrument s
to be lawful.'
These arenot ancient laws that are universally ignored today, like
some old American colonial ordinance against spitting on thesidewalk.
Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini spoke vehementl y about the evils of
music—and not just rock and roil or rap, but allmusic:
“Musiccorrupts the minds of our youth. There is no difference
bet weenmusi c and opiu m.Both crea te leth argy in diff eren t
ways .If you want your count ry tobe inde pende nt.then ban
music.Musicis treason to our nation and to our youth.'
And art?Islam's prohibition ofrepresentational art is even
moreabsolute. Muhammad said: "Angelsdo not enter ahouse
wherein there isa dog or some images (or pictures etc.) of living
creatures(ahuman being or an animal etc.)."' Not encouraging
words for a budding Caravaggio-
Of course, Western museumswillgo to great lengths to dis-
play what they can of enamel or calligraphy in order to give
Islami c art its due (and. of cours e, the archi tectur al and artis-
tic mar vel s ins ide mos que s can 't be tra nsp lan ted fro m the ir
settin gs), but compare d to the Wester n artisti c traditi on, only
the most blin kere dmult icul tura list swoul d not admi t that it's
pretty slimpickings.PCMyth: Islam was once the foundation
of a great cultural and scientific flowering
In fact,Islam was not the foundation of much significantculturalor sci-
entifi c develo pment at all, It is undenia ble that there was a great cultura l
and scientific flowering in the Islamic world in the Middle Ages, but