Islam has a terribly bad image these days. That is a sad fact not only for Muslims, but also for Westerners. Islam can be a source of inspiration for Western non-Muslims that we currently, fearfully and prejudicedly, seem to close ourselves off to. ‘Islam’ simply means ‘surrender’ and not ‘submission’ as many Western writers would have us believe. Islam preaches surrender to an all-embracing and beyond our understanding divine presence that revealed itself ,in the signs of nature, and in a twenty-three year conversation with the Prophet Muhammad. For centuries, that surrender has inspired millions of Muslims around the world to respect strangers, to strive for a just society, to realize that God is always and everywhere present and to arrive at an authentic appreciation of beauty and knowledge.
Holy war – jihad
For many individuals , jihad , a holy war, was a spiritual term that referred to the inner struggle one had to wage to free oneself from one’s own hateful feelings and thoughts. The term holy war came close to the meaning of the Christian dark night of the soul and was miles away from the violent and bloodthirsty meanings that a small group of extremists give it today.
Beauty and mystery
Anyone who delves into Islamic art will discover a world of beauty and mystery that is unprecedented. In the first centuries of its existence, Islamic art eagerly absorbed elements of early Christian, Byzantine, Greco-Roman and Persian origins to transform them into a unique and individual style with universal aspirations. Just getting acquainted with this can give you completely different ideas about art and architecture.
Islamic architecture
To give an example. Christian and classical art worked with clearly defined spaces and narrowly defined focal points. Islamic architecture in southern Spain, on the other hand, eliminated as many boundaries and corners as possible, using interlocking rhythmic patterns, to create the illusion of a fluid, boundless and mysterious space. Completely in line with the image people had of Allah.
Love for nature
Chinese landscape painting inspired Muslims to express their own love for nature in paintings. Islamic landscapes, in turn, introduced Italians to the genre of landscape painting, unknown in Europe.
Mysticism, philosophy and science
Islamic artists, scholars and mystics actively worked to bring together different cultural influences and, if possible, elevate them to a higher and more universal plane. However, they also provided a safe and even intellectually stimulating haven for Jewish and Hermetic groups fleeing the advancing Christianity.
Influence of Hermeticism
Jews were not persecuted in the Islamic world, nor were Christians. The Hermetics, a mystical group from Alexandria in particular, who sought a synthesis of ancient Egyptian, Greek and Jewish wisdom, had an enormous influence on Sufism, Islamic mysticism. It was through them that Greek philosophy was introduced to Europe during the Renaissance. At that time, Islamic culture had already gained hundreds of years of experience in applying the rationalist (Aristotelian) heritage and recognized that rationality is not suitable for answering the ultimate questions. This had a major influence on the direction the culture subsequently took. In the West, philosophers only came to such conclusions in the 20th century (e.g. Wittgenstein and Whitehead).
Your own synthesis
Islamic culture was not just a conduit of classical European ideas that returned to Europe via Spain. Those classical European ideas had never been European. They came from the Eastern Mediterranean (Greece, Turkey, Middle East, Persia and Egypt). The Romans took them over and imposed them on the other Europeans, until they were overrun by northern peoples, which heralded the beginning of the Dark Ages. Islam also fully absorbed this culture of the eastern Mediterranean and transformed it into its own spiritual unity.
Prejudices and hardening
Western Europeans would only much later absorb the influences of the classical cultures of the eastern Mediterranean in their own way. Ironically, Christian Europe gained enormous self-confidence thanks to the Renaissance made possible by Islam. It was on the basis of this self-confidence that it began to conquer the world and, among other things, colonized many Islamic areas. The wars and the humiliations that accompanied them would result in enormous prejudice and a hardening in both worlds. Today we can still witness the sad consequences of this history. Nevertheless, Islamic culture remains of enormous depth and beauty, which can also touch and inspire non-Muslims all over the world.