All semester we've been learning about Islam and the Arabs, where they started, how the spread and certain hardships they experienced. However, today went from fact to opinion. For the second time in less than a month, the professor taught straight from an internet site. He posted a link on the school's website for us to be able to access it ourselves and also had it up the entire class. He treated us like middle schoolers as he had someone read it aloud and every paragraph or so he would explain something. This is the link:
http://www.load-islam.com/artical_det.php?artical_id=492§ion=indepth&subsection=Islamic+history
Notice anything wrong right off the bat? If you noticed its a .com and not a .edu/.gov/.net site, you'd be right. We are criticized all of the time for using .com in research papers because you can't trust them. They are individual's sites that can have whatever information the author wants on them; true or not. The page is very opinionated, calling Spain and all of Europe around 750 filthy, uneducated and basically incompetent. One guy in my class took great offense and displayed that during class. He grew up in that area and knew it wasn't true. But the article wanted to make the point that the Arabs cleaned up Europe. Made it better in every way possible.
I was getting a little upset by this point as well. For as long as I've been studying European history, the muslims have never played a dominant role in the formation of the power that Europe became. The article lists things they brought, such as "Irrigation systems imported from Syria and Muslimia turned the dry plains... into an agricultural cornucopia. Olives and wheat had always grown there. The Muslims added pomegranates, oranges, lemons, aubergines, artichokes, cumin, coriander, bananas, almonds, pams, henna, woad, madder, saffron, sugar-cane, cotton, rice, figs, grapes, peaches, apricots and rice." (Burke, 1985, p. 37).
The article also said the Muslims brought all of the knowledge to Europe:
"The subjects covered by the texts [brought by the arabs] included medicine, astrology, astronomy pharmacology, psychology, physiology, zoology, biology, botany, mineralogy, optics, chemistry, physics, mathematics, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, music, meteorology, geography, mechanics, hydrostatics, navigation and history." (Burke, 1985, p. 42)
As you can also see, the author only quoted one person. I counted thirteen quotes from the same person on a three page article. Very opinionated quotes, might I add, including,
"The intellectual community which the northern scholars found in Spain was so far superior to what they had at home that it left a lasting jealousy of Muslim culture, which was to colour Western opinions for centuries" (Burke, 1985, p. 41)
The real kicker to me was when Columbus was brought up. The article mentions the "coincidence" of 1492 when both Columbus discovered America and when the Ummayyads were forced out of Spain. The professor went on about finding the new world and the Ummayyads being too busy killing each other to be bothered. He asked our opinions and I raised my hand. I said it couldn't possibly be a coincidence since they had already discovered America many years before and Columbus didn't know it was even a new place. The prof was confused and I understood the confusion so I gave a brief explanation.
It's unclear who actually discovered America because communication between country's discoveries was a bit lacking. Most believe the Chinese discovered it first many years before Columbus (around 1421). Even if you do give Columbus the credit for it, he thought it was India and even so, never reached the mainland, only the southern islands around the Bahamas. In 1497, Amerigo Vespucci came along in 1497 and "discovered" it. This being said, Columbus's discovery would have had no impact on the Muslim Spain. The prof, not liking what he was hearing, tried to change to "so the muslims discovered America". This irritated me even more because he was trying to make a point that the muslims HAD to have something to do with everything good that happened in that time period.
Regardless of what happened back then, and the opinions of people today, the whole thing really got me thinking. The idea what we only hear what we want to hear is so absolutely true, it's disgusting. Teachers so often only tell the facts that make things seem better for one group, or worse if the idea is to make them look bad. Had a non-muslim been teaching this class, the topic of muslim Spain would have been portrayed in a completely different way. I guess a lot of it, is to teach to the majority to reduce the risk of a complaint. In high school, if even one kid complains about biases, the teacher can get into a lot of trouble. Of course it's a lot different in college, but the same principle is there.
Although it's not just internet sites with strong opinions vs. fact. I recently read a book called "Why we Suck" which is just that; why America sucks. It's a great book, very funny, but I wouldn't recommend ever quoting it in a relevant situation. Another book I'm currently reading, call The Essentials of the Islamic Faith begins the very first chapter with the quote "The existence of God is too evident to need any arguments." Now this certainly may be a majority's opinion, but certainly not a fact that can be used in an argument.
I guess to sum up what I'm trying to say, is that I've never seen first had the result of "we hear what we want to hear" when it comes to education. Obviously this happens in social context all of the time, but when we think about higher education I, personally, have always been under the impression it's all fact. I guess I've been proven wrong.
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