A few days after the 9/11 attack, I was asked to write a speech for a leading American business executive. While the original subject was to have focused mostly on her business and industry, the continuing national grief meant it would have been insulting to ignore the major issue of the day. And so this speaker agreed to try and bridge the gulf between Muslims and non-Muslims by remembering the greatness the Muslim world had spawned, and how much it meant to everyone.
I decided to have the speaker address the fascinating Muslim history that I’d uncovered in my reading and research ... a Muslim history that was about invention, creativity, big ideas, tolerance, and coexistence.
A Muslim history that had been more intellectually accomplished than Christian Europe of the day, and a Muslim past where Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists had sometimes flourished and worked together. A Muslim culture that had seeded the European Renaissance, and helped enable many aspects of the modern West and global civilization.
It is a history that by the beginning of the 21st century had been forgotten, ignored, misunderstood, suppressed or even rewritten.
I thought that the speech might get some attention and might draw some criticism here at home. What I hadn’t expected was that Muslims overseas would also write, wanting to know who were these historical figures referred to, and how could they find out more?
It was then I knew that there was a huge gulf of misunderstanding on both sides that needed to be filled. And so I came to think, if a fuller and deeper appreciation of Muslim history could be recovered, then maybe the very premises of the emerging “clash of civilizations” could be re-framed.
The result is this book. I know there may be those on the non-Muslim side of the divide who will say that I’m distorting history, by choosing to emphasize the bright side of a very complex civilization. I will respond that I am simply balancing the incomplete and negative slant of most of what we non-Muslims have been given. To apply the argument of these critics fully and fairly, we would need to include in the history of Western “Christian” civilization not only the thoughts of Voltaire and St. Thomas Aquinas, but also the thoughts and deeds of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
There may also be those who will say that I have sought to rehabilitate and glorify heretics and impure Muslims, who deserve to be suppressed and forgotten.
By no coincidence, all of the great thinkers, inventors and artists of Muslim civilization were creative minds. Much like today’s scientific researchers, they were trained in their various disciplines to constantly question assumptions, in a search for higher truth. Their number included some who followed other religions. While they were all versed in the tenets and philosophy of their faiths, few were rigid, doctrinaire thinkers. And they
operated in a very different political context than we see today. The Muslim quest for knowledge often drove even the most devout rulers and religious scholars to support freethinking and empirical scientific inquiry.
By writing Lost History, I hope to show not only the contributions of an old and rich civilization. I hope to show, as Caliph Al Mamun concluded, that reason and faith can coexist: that by fully opening the mind and unleashing human creativity, many wonders, including peace, are possible.
Michael Hamilton Morgan
June 2007
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