Nineteenth-century racial theorist Renan attributed Islamic science to Aryans, not Arabs.
Evidence
Renan made sweeping generalizations about the “narrow minds” of people who live in the East and in Africa, who because of their adherence to Islam are an intellectually barren race. What we see here are not only racist assertions about Muslims but also the idea that Islam has stunted scientific growth. When challenged to explain the flourishing of science in Islamic empires in the Middle Ages, Renan replied that the Arabs, like other “Semites,” were incapable of science. The Abbasid caliphate, he added, was essentially Greek and Persian, even if it used Arabic. Thus, it was the “Aryans” who were responsible for this flowering of science. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 179
Categorization
- XREF: Names the Orientalist racial-erasure move that Grosfoguel/Rana/Selod/Iftikhar also document in academic knowledge production — the West stealing non-Western epistemic credit. — connects to: Nineteenth-century Americans and Britons attributed Islam’s spread to coercion rather than persuasion.; Renan explained away Muslim scientific achievement by attributing it to Persians and Greeks; Renan attributed medieval Islamic science to Aryans, not Arabs, to preserve his racial hierarchy. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 347