“Science and Islam” on BBC4

4 Responses to “Science and Islam” on BBC4

1. Arash Azari says:

   July 23, 2010 at 9:10 pm

   Dear Prof. Al-Khalili,

   Thank you very much for your beautiful programme “Science and Islam”, but there are some mistakes in this movie.
   First, writing something in Arabic does not proof any relation to Islam. Language is something like tools for stating something.
   In the movie you tell the story in the way that audiences consider all these scientists as Arabic scientists, but we know that most of them are Iranian. The main problem is that at that era, Persian scientists had been written in Arabic in order to communicate with other peoples and transfer it to Europe.
   We can talk about it more in future.
   Thank you very much,

   Best regards,
   Arash

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   • Jim Al-Khalili says:

     July 23, 2010 at 9:19 pm

     Thank you for your comment Arash. I take your point. But firstly, I am not trying to prove any relation between science and Islam beyond how the Islamic Empire at that time fostered a spirit of rational enquiry. Many of the scientists were Christian, Jewish and Sabian, as well as Muslim. As for the ‘Arabic scientists’ comment, I think you will find I never refer to them as Arabic. It is the science itself that is labelled as Arabic because, as you say, that was the language of the texts, even if the authors were Persian. Of course Khwarizmi, Ibn Sina, Biruni, Tusi etc were all Persian, but all wrote in Arabic and that is how historians refer to the science of this period. If you have a better suggestion for a name I would like to hear it.

     Jim

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     • Arash says:

       July 24, 2010 at 3:20 pm

       Hi,
       If we look at the countries that you mentioned; Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran, all are, somehow, the origin of the civilization and it is not strange that they follow up their enthusiasm for science.
       At the beginning, Islam was only religion, but after Prophet Mohammad Islam gradually mixed up with politics and the result becomes something like “Islamic Renaissance” which lasts up to now.
       I do not like to relate these scientific progresses to Islam; instead I would like to say this is the result of the interaction between different cultures. Before Islam, the cultural exchange was limited, but after that it covers from Spain, North Africa, Middle East and even India. For such a vast cultural interaction we should expect a huge development in science. And you mentioned it in your movie when you talked about the numeral system which is the outcomes of such interaction.
       Islam facilitated the interaction.
       Thanks,
       Arash

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2. Arash says:

   July 24, 2010 at 3:42 pm

   For example we can mention burning the librarian books in Iran (Jundi-shapur) and Egypt after Islamic attack which shows that potentially Islam did not pay any attention to science at first interaction.

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