Independent Online Edition > How Islamic inventors changed the world

Independent Online Edition:   How Islamic inventors changed the world
From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we take for granted in daily life. As a new exhibition opens, Paul Vallely nominates 20 of the most influential- and identifies the men of genius behind them. A nice article to read but a little more discussion would be helpful. Not all of the inventors in the Muslim world were Muslim, some were Christian and Jews just as in the European world Muslim scientists played an important role. Furthermore it would be more interesting I think to explore the chain of inventions, show how for example inventions from the Chinese trickled down into the Muslim world, were reproduced and changed there and then went to other places (and maybe back again). Also if we call them Muslim inventors then there should be a link made with the Islamic traditions. This is probably not so difficult certainly during a particular time but back then and now the life of Muslims does not only depend on Islam. Also other matters such as politics, competition and so on matter. We can find much of these considerations on the weblog of the exhibition for example about windmills (yes I’m Dutch…) and toothbrushes (have to go to the dentist tomorrow).
Not that this is not an interesting exhibit, it really is because of many reasons, one of them is such as Halstead states:

“Islam needs to take its place alongside other historic groups, such as the ancient Romans and Greeks,” he said.

“When Europe was living in the dark ages, Islamic civilisation was blossoming, and the advances during this period are more relevant to the modern world than those of the Ancient Egyptians and Aztecs.”

But I also hope we do see that all the other empires mentioned are based on kinship and this one on religion. And seeing most of the things, they should have stated Arab inventors instead of Islamic inventors.