Knowledge Every Muslim Should Know (Book One)

The Biggest Heist in the History of Science

THE BIGGEST HEIST IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

By Hussein Alghouleh

A thousand years ago, the Islamic world was developed to a great extent, while European civilizations were busy sinking in backwardness and ignorance. A deeper look into the history of science and civilization reveals that it was Muslim scholars who entrenched most of scientific literature, discoveries and inventions of the world.

In such times, Muslim scholars followed scientific and medicinal ways to operate surgical operations, where Western civilizations followed practices of magic and witchcraft for healing. Around the year 1000 CE, a Muslim doctor by the name of Abu al-Qasim Al-Zahrawi published a 1500 page illustrated encyclopedia of surgery that was used in Europe as a medical reference for the following 500 years. It is good to mention here that many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those devised by Al-Zahrawi.

Muslims also pioneered in engineering, constructing many useful mechanical instruments, examples can be found with the invention of very accurate clocks in order to establish a more accurate method for the five daily prayer timings, as the clocks developed by Al-Jazari.

Badi’al-Zaman Abu al-’Izz ibn Isma’il ibn al-Razaz al-Jazari was a Muslim polymath born in what is known today as Cizre, Turkey.  He is best known for al-Jami’ bain al-’ilm wa al-’amal al-nafi’ fiṣina’at al-ḥiyal  (The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices) written in 1206 CE, where he described over  100 mechanical devices, some 80 of which are trick vessels of various kinds, along with instructions on how to construct them.

Aside from Al-Jazari’s inventions, many sophisticated tools of warfare were designed and developed by other Muslim engineers, owning the first notions of inventing rockets and even war tanks. Muslim engineers were also the first to use secret code formation. Again, it was Al-Jazari who invented the first secret code locks. What was significant during that era was the fact that Muslim scientists and scholars were reliant on methods of scientific documentation, as they used to document references in their books.

But it was after the defeat of Muslims as a global unity which followed the events of the conquest of Baghdad in 1258 CE that has allowed Western powers to simply steal all documentation of scientific discoveries and inventions accomplished by Muslims, and wipe out the names of original authors, and attribute scientific discoveries and inventions of Muslims to themselves; surely, it was the biggest heist in the history of science.

Many well-known scientists of that era have taken Muslim discoveries and attributed them to themselves; the easiest way to steal knowledge is for someone to take a book, recopy it word by word, and then delete the name of its original author and place their name instead. And if it was not for the tremendous scientific leap achieved by Muslim scientists, Western civilizations wouldn’t have arose, and the fact is that those scientific developments and discoveries came as a direct result of teachings from the Qur’aan, continuously urging for seeking knowledge, reflection and discovery, as indicated by Allah—The Exalted—in the verses of chapter Al’Alaq in the Noble Qur’aan:

“Read! In the Name of your Lord, Who has created (all that exists) (1) Has created man from a clot (a piece of thick coagulated blood) (2) Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous (3) Who has taught (the writing) by the pen (4) Has taught man that which he knew not (5)”