Author(s): Orhan Bajraktarević / Language(s): Bosnian
Issue: 18/2014
The geopolitical position of the Mediterranean countries where Islam maintains considerable growth and influence, the countries where it establishes important cultural and civilizational focal points such as Egypt, Syria, Cyprus, Crete, North Africa, Sicily and Spain, the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent, as well as Turkey and a part of the Balkans, has enabled, since the days of yore up to the present time, the widest encounters between the East and the West. In war and peace, the influences of ancient Egypt, Greece, Persia, Carthage and Rome, have been confronting and replacing each other, which transfered to Christianity and Islam in the epoch of the early Middle Ages. Via Muslim Spain and Italy, Aristotle's philosophy, natural sciences and learning spread by Arab interpreters, translators and commentators of Aristotle, came in the form which has transformed European thought. There was a new influx of Greek ideas along with the arrival of the Neo-Platonists, after the closure of their schools in Athens, in 529. Muslim cities became centers of science in which Greek, Persian, Syriac, Jewish and Indian ideas intertwined. Islam, Islamic culture and philosophy, faced other religions and teachings, as well as a different understanding and adoption of its own theory and practice, while there were ongoing and developing polemics, dialogues, disputes with Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Mazdaists and the preservers of Greek philosophical teachings.
More...