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From: mike@rlvd.UUCP (Mike Woods)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Re: Islam (long but informative)
Message-ID: <686@rlvd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 07:26:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: rlvd.686
Posted: Fri Aug  9 07:26:02 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Aug-85 01:06:06 EDT
References: <264@harvard.ARPA> <3200042@uiucdcsb> <526@scc.UUCP>
Reply-To: mike@rlvd.UUCP (Mike Woods)
Organization: Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, Atlas Buildings, U.K.
Lines: 22
Xpath: warwick ubu

In article <526@scc.UUCP> steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes:
>
>	The Islamic people took the books of the Greeks and kept them.
>The Christians in Europe burned them books.   After the worst part
>of the "dark ages" the books were reintroduced to Europe.   During
>the dark ages, the Islamic civilization invented Algebra and so 
>on . . .
>

According to my understanding of history (which is perhaps a little shaky),
Greek, Roman, and just about all other literature was lost because of the
fall of the Roman empire and a subsequent lack of anyone to prevserve the
books. The Christians (or to be precise, the monks) saved what they could
but as it took a looong time to copy a book their efforts were devoted to
Christian literature (mainly the Bible).

In all, it was a lack of a civilised world that destroyed Greek literature,
not overt action by the Christians.

Mike.

Yes, I am a Christian. No I am not biased, just objective.