Nowadays I feel that their is a sort of antipathy towards Arab-Americans after the terrorist attacks on 9-11 by arab terrorists just like their was a resentment toward Japanese-Americans 60 years ago after the attacks on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan. But people do not realize the great contributions arab and muslim civilization has made in history. When they hear the word Arab, they think terrorist, turbon or even 7-11. But they are more than that. In the year 700, Islam and the Arabic language were on the move. Soon their influence would stretch from India to Spain. Europe was entering its Dark Ages, nursing its dwindling links to a dead Roman culture. Arabic scholarship, science and invention surpassed Europe in every way. Arabic scholars would .
soon include Greeks, Persians, Indians, Africans, Christians, Jews and more. Every Arab and muslim was obliged to pursue knowledge in all its forms. They endeavoured to acquire the knowledge of previous civilizations by obtaining Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Chinese, Farsi, Armenian, Hebrew and Roman texts and translating them into Arabic. Arabic would become as essential as English is today. Europe would cling to Latin, already a dying language. At the same time as acquiring knowledge, the Islamic civilization was able to disperse it, because it had procured the art of paper-making from the Chinese. At its peak, tens of thousands of books were published every year and in just one suburb in Baghdad there were over a hundred bookshops. As well as such classics such as The 1001 Arabian Nights, these bookshops also sold textbooks of every imaginable subject and helped to support the most literate and learned society in the world. This was while in Europe, books were only attainable by clergyman of the Church. The Church disapproved of knowledge spreading to the masses and burned books when they are found to be opposing the Holy Church's powers and/or views.
