The Commentator

[0] Christian nationalists want to turn America into a theocracy, a government under biblical rule.

[1] If they gain more power, it could mean fewer rights for you.

[2] I'm Heath Drusin, and on the new season of Extremely American, I'll take you inside the movement.

[3] Listen to Extremely American from Boise State Public Radio, part of the NPR network.

[4] Hey, I'm Randabte.

[5] I'm Ramtin Arablui, and on this episode, how one medieval is, Islamic philosopher put his pen to paper and shaped the modern world.

[6] As a kid growing up here in the U .S., I heard the same general story you probably did about the history of Western civilization.

[7] First, there was Greece, where they invented democracy and philosophy.

[8] Then came the Roman Empire, until it eventually fell and Europe went into the dark ages.

[9] Until the Renaissance, when people like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo basically painted and wrote Europe's way out of ignorance.

[10] I was told that this is what began the process of the world moving into the age of science and secularism.

[11] And the main characters in this story were almost always white European men.

[12] While this tale is partially true, it leaves out a lot of details that might have made that kid version of me and you think differently about what we call the Western world.

[13] The truth is that between 900 and 1 ,300, most of the world's learning and scholarship was happening in places like Baghdad, Cairo, Timbuktu, and Cordoba.

[14] And those cities existed vast libraries and schools that people traveled to from all over the world to study and practice medicine, astronomy, philosophy, and mathematics.

[15] The people of Islamic lands created a canon of medicine that was used.

[16] used in Europe until the 1800s.

[17] They developed algebra and even invented the first corrective lenses.

[18] It was the golden age of Islam, and that's where we're going to go in this episode, to meet a Spanish Muslim thinker whose story shows us just how much Islamic philosophy influenced the shaping of what we now call the Western world.

[19] You're listening to Thurline from NPR.

[20] Support for this podcast and the following message come from Wise, the app that makes managing your money in different currencies easy.

[21] With Wise, you can send and spend money internationally at the mid -market exchange rate, no guesswork, and no hidden fees.

[22] Learn more about how Wise could work for you at wise .com.

[23] We're going to start this story by discussing a painting.

[24] Not just any painting.

[25] It's one of the most famous of the Renaissance period in Europe.

[26] It's called The School of Athens, and and it's by the artist Raphael.

[27] It's colorful and bold and depicts all the great philosophers who influence the thinkers of the Renaissance.

[28] At the center of the image are Plato and Aristotle striding forward and then fanning out somewhat behind them in the wings are a whole host of minor philosophical figures and one can go through and identify who these folk are in various ways.

[29] Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid, Ptolemy.

[30] And they're all depicted as you'd expect.

[31] There are white men dressed in European robes.

[32] But then, just beneath them, in the bottom left portion of the painting, is someone who immediately sticks out.

[33] He's dark -skinned with a green robe and a yellow turban and a big mustache.

[34] He's looking over the shoulder of someone who's writing in a book.

[35] His hand is pressed against his chest in a mix of veneration and awe.

[36] His name is Abu Al -Waleed, Muhammad.

[37] Ibn Ahmed, ibn Muhammad, bin Rosht, or as he came to be known in the West, Averroes.

[38] So Averroes is a figure of the 12th century, living at a time at which Islam had already expanded incredibly from its beginnings on the Saudi Peninsula.

[39] In just a few hundred years, the Islamic world spread all the way east to India and west to the Iberian Peninsula in Europe.

[40] Islam was the dominant cultural force over a lot of the world at that point.

[41] Averroes was born in 1126 in Cordova, a city in what we today call Spain.

[42] By the time he was born, Spain had been ruled by an Islamic caliphate for hundreds of years.

[43] Today it's easy to imagine him as a Middle Eastern man, but really...

[44] He was just an ordinary European.

[45] It's just that at this time, Europe was not entirely...

[46] a Christian continent.

[47] This is Robert Passnow.

[48] I'm a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

[49] Robert explained that southern Spain at that time was...