O sermão no sopé das pirâmides - IV

Na caixa de comentários do postal Uma leitura crítica do Sermão - II, um leitor amigo alude a uma suposta dívida da arte ocidental para com a arte islâmica, assunto abordado pelo presidente americano no seu Sermão:

«Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation.»

No Faith Freedom International, Zartoist faz o seguinte comentário a este propósito:

«Someone who has really studied the history of interaction between the Greco-Roman civilization and, on the one hand, Hellenized Egypt and on the other, Pre-Islamic Persia, could make a good argument that Islam actually hindered the progress of civilization. All indications are that “the light of learning”, namely of Greek and Roman civilization, was already being preserved and would have been preserved, in the Middle East – especially in Persia – to the same if not a greater extent than it was after the violent Islamic conquest of the Persian civilization (a civilization that already had over a thousand years of fruitful interaction with the Greek-inspired civilizations of the West).

It is also a fact that most of the scientific “innovation in Muslim communities” cited by Obama, from Algebra to Medicine, was the product of (mostly Persian) free-thinkers who were not believing Muslims – scientists like Omar Khayyam, Ibn Razi, and Ibn Sina – who only wrote their scientific treatises in Arabic (rather than their native Persian) on account of the Arab occupation of Iran.

We do not call “Gothic architecture” Christian, do we? The great architecture of Iran, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, and northern India is no more “Islamic”. It is an amalgam of ancient Persian, Byzantine and Indian styles – one that was already arising during the Sassanian Persian Empire (which extended from India to Turkey). The only “Islamic” contribution to this architecture was to prohibit the incorporation of paintings – since depiction of human beings is forbidden in Islam. Incidentally, this stunted the entire development of painting in the sphere of Persian civilization, which had a rich tradition of pictorial art before the Islamic conquest and may well have developed it to the level of modern Europe.

As for poetry and music, most of the great “Islamic” poets (again mostly Persians) were considered heretics by Islamic authorities, and music is prohibited in Islam as a vain “useless” activity. Poetry and music survived in civilizations such as Persia DESPITE Islam. A careful study of the history of Sufism will reveal its roots in attempts by persecuted pre-Islamic Gnostics in Persia and Egypt, to ensure the survival of their esoteric wisdom by exoterically cloaking themselves in Islamic garb. While many of them ultimately wound up believing their own dissimulation, scholars of Islamic law have never been fooled – that is why they executed Halaj and Suhrawardi, and why the poetry of no less a genius than Nizami (the Persian analog to Shakespeare or Spenser) is censored in Iran today!!!»

Um artigo a que havemos de voltar a propósito de outros aspectos do sermão.