ILLUSIONS, HALF-TRUTHS AND MASKS. Keywords: Fate and luck, Predestination, Fatalism, Free-Will, Religion, morality and economics, Golden Age of Islam, Ibn Khaldoun, School of Salamanca, Poverty and Islam, Islam and communism. Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Einstein

 

The Alhambra, the palace of the last Moorish kingdom in Al-Andalus, in Granada

ILLUSIONS, HALF-TRUTHS AND MASKS

A meditation about the new rise of communism in America

By Xuan Quen Santos

PART  VII

“If the soul is impartial in receiving information,

it devotes to that information the share of critical investigation

 it deserves, and its truth or untruth thus becomes clear.

However, if the soul is infected with partisanship for a particular opinion or sect, it accepts without hesitation what is agreeable to it. Prejudice and partisanship obscure the critical faculty and prevent critical investigation.

The result is that falsehoods are accepted and transmitted.”

 

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)

 

                The horoscope, Tarot cards, palm readers, Ouija boards, Zoltar the Fortune Teller, fortune cookies, California Psychics for just $ 1 a minute… Are you into any of these?

During Hellenistic times, temples dedicated to the goddess Tyche were established in most cities across ancient Greece. Famous for their popularity and luxury were those in Antioch and Alexandria. Her temples were usually at the market places, and her festivities took place at harvest times. The Romans changed her dress and named her Fortuna. Two thousand years later, Americans play and watch on TV how her Wheel of Fortune decides who are the lucky ones and the losers. Tyche was mostly FATE and DESTINY. Fortuna played with CHANCE. Their interests were with prosperity and material well-being, goals towards which economics can orient today with better chances of success.

The Roman Goddess Fortuna and her Wheel of Fortune
Blessings for merchants and the market

The star philosopher of those times was the mentor of Alexander the Great. We know him as Aristotle of Stagira; his influence is still with us, and his insights are reviewed at universities. As time has passed, many of his contributions that were held almost sacred have been discarded. During the Renaissance, Galileo Galilei was able to demonstrate that one of those ideas in physics was in error. While teaching at the university, he dropped simultaneously from the Tower of Pisa two cannon balls of very different size and weight, a very large one and a very small one. They hit the ground at the same time. Aristotle had affirmed, and everybody had believed, that a heavier body, such as a stone, would fall much faster than a lighter body, such as a feather. Galileo tested his ideas and gave birth to the scientific method, even though he did not have the technology and instruments to be precise. It took two more centuries for Isaac Newton to formulate the gravitational force, and then three more for Albert Einstein to think differently and question Newton. Einstein’s ideas were validated only a decade ago, after an actual astronomical event took place, long after his death. We know today that the feather and the stone would have fallen at the same speed if all the opposing forces of air had been eliminated by a total vacuum. We also know that the force of gravity bends. The search for a gravitational theory has taken 25 centuries. Aristotle used his sensorial experience, some reflection and led us to error. Galileo put the ideas to a simple test and corrected the course. Newton used empirical observations with sophisticated measuring instruments and deductive reasoning aided by advanced mathematics he had himself formulated as the inventor of one of the forms of calculus. Einstein added more detailed observations and data produced by others using advanced high-power telescopes. The gravitational theory is still in progress. The International Space Station is a permanent lab for the effects of the absence of gravitational pull on living organisms.

In two of his writings, Aristotle had dealt with what we now call economics when he was discussing concerns of how judges could solve commercial disputes. He came up with the idea that objects of commerce have two values. One is value for use, and the other is value for trade. And that was it. In addition, the general view was that things are valued by the amount of work people put into making them. Labor is most of what goes into the transformation or availability of simple agricultural and handcrafted items that are traded in primitive markets. Tools are also deposits of previous labor usually made by the same craftsman that uses them. The labor value theory seems to make common sense. These three ideas (labor as a source of value, and the mysteries of value for use and for trade) were not advanced any further until some priests and missionaries of the University of Salamanca wrote about them in the XVI century. Spain was at that moment the most powerful and wealthy empire after its colonies in America had begun to bear fruits: gold, silver, copper, gems, tomatoes, vanilla, tobacco, potatoes, chiles, corn, hardwoods… The port of Seville was the busiest in the world. It also had a great heritage in commerce.

The Court of The Lions at the Palace of The Alhambra in Granada
a symbol of the prosperity during the Golden Age of Islam

Spain had just concluded the wars against the Moors (1492) and the trade in the Mediterranean was just re-starting through Barcelona and Valencia. Southern Italy and Sicily were part of the Spanish Kingdom of Aragon. Even the Popes were Catalonian. After the war ended, the Catholic Kings begun a loyalty and faithfulness requirement from the ancient Sephardic Jews of Spain; many refused and left for Turkey, Holland and The New World. Some stayed and converted. The infamous Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, descended from converted Jews. The defeated Arabs, Moors and Umayyads were given a harsher test, a few left as converts to New Spain. But many stayed, and others just crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, back to North Africa. Among them were the most educated and trained officials and their emigration created a period of prosperity in North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt, the Maghreb.  A diverse culture flourished in southern Spain and took roots in its colonies in America.

The expertise in complex trade continued past the XVI century. Toledo and Cordova had not been only Arab. For centuries they were the two most populous Jewish cities in Europe and “international” centers of culture. Cities like Cartagena had been populated by Jews since Carthaginian and Roman times, long before the Germanic Visigoth tribes arrived from northern Europe to invade Iberia. Spain began to flourish as the union of several Medieval kingdoms, and one of its roots was the seven century occupation of the Islamic Al-Andalus.

During the seven centuries the Moors (Arabs, Berbers, and Umayyads) had control of most of Hispania, known then as Al-Andalus, the region had been the center of culture and trade in the western Mediterranean. The academics of the Califate of Cordova were the bridge that generated the European Renaissance out of the Dark Ages. The Muslim libraries had preserved the ancient Indian, Persian, Greek and Roman texts and scholarly traditions that became available for translation into Latin. Even Chinese knowledge and inventions had filtered into the Arab culture by way of trade and later the Mongol invasions. This is the nurturing center that produced personalities like Maimonides and Ibn Khaldoun. This bridge of classical culture made it possible for Saint Thomas Aquinas to study Aristotle which led to major reforms in Christian Theology. European medicine was modernized by Avicenna’s treatises (Ibn Sina). It also brought the Arabic numerical system (base ten, decimal and with zero) that Arabs had taken from India, and Algebra from the Persian mathematician Musa al-Khwarizmi (his name is the English word algorithm). Fibonacci would not exist in history had he not had his experience in the Maghreb. Modern commerce, banking and economics, modern science, modern philosophy and even modern theology would not have been possible without the Hispano-Arabic-Jewish people and their diverse cultures. And this root of blood and knowledge has something to do with the School of Salamanca that flourished just after the period of the “Reconquista” of Spain.

I do not know why Hegel sub-estimated the Jewish religion’s ethical foundation other than suspecting the rising anti-Jewish sentiment in the Prussian state. With respect to Islam, the Muslim faith, I think he shared the common belief that it is essentially based on the idea of predestination. By the end of the XVII century, it was true. This idea can be abbreviated by the acceptance as fact that everything that happens has been decided or planned in advance by God or by fate and that humans cannot change it. Resignation, conformism and inaction follow. These turn into obedience to those that claim to be the messengers and have the power of enforcement. And of course, there is the power of enforcement.

The Horoscope, the ancient map of the night sky and the season

If you are into the horoscope, Tarot cards, palm readers, Ouija boards, Zoltar the Fortune Teller, fortune cookies, California Psychics for just $ 1 a minute, then you share the belief of predestination or fate. With the exceptions of the fortune cookies that Chinese restaurants offer to thank you for your patronage, and the California Psychics that are there just to take your money, all the other items in the list have a millenary origin and still play a significant role in many cultures. They were all directly tied to religious beliefs. They all led our learning about the cosmos into astrology, and now astronomy and astrophysics. There are several horoscopes, but they all originated as expressions of the calendars, lunar, solar or both. Until the printed newspapers began to disappear, looking for the horoscope was the most popular initial habit of subscribers. Even today, fairs and carnivals host booths that cater to the believers in a written destiny; you also find them in the seedy parts of towns; lotteries count on the believers of fate and luck as much as on the greed of the calculators of odds and chance.

The Fortune Teller XVI century Flemish painting
The fortune teller in art, always a Gypsy

In the West, the divine foreordaining of ALL that will happen, especially with regard to the salvation of some and not others, has been particularly associated with some teachings of St. Augustine of Hippo and of Calvin. There are still currents within Christian sects that can be categorized as believers that all is already written. Their doctrine raises important questions about free will, human responsibility, and self-determination. I am not discussing the theological implications of this belief. Understanding the definition of predestination can considerably influence individual perspectives on life and faith. I am only interested in how it affects what people do, not only in the community as a whole, but specifically in the spheres of economics and ethics.

Rene Descartes, mathematician, philosopher
the father of Rationalism

If you have not appreciated what I what been discussing in these pages, it is likely that you clicked off and went on to do something more interesting to you. If you are interested, or at least curious, or are mad as hell just waiting to see where this will end, you have already decided to spend some of your valuable time with me. I appreciate it, and also just demonstrated that you are able to make decisions. The importance of the decision, how consequential it may be or not, does not matter. You have free will. This demonstration is similar to how Descartes offered proof that he existed: “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am). I can make an intelligent choice; therefore, I have free-will. By the way, credited as the father of “rationalism” and a philosopher of science, Rene Descartes presented several reasoned, non-religious or theological arguments for the existence of God in his work "Meditations on First Philosophy" (1641). Faith and reason are not just compatible; they have the same destination.

Galileo Galilei and his telescope

What is the Catholic church accused of in the Galileo story? That the church is closed to scientific knowledge. The details tell a different story. Galileo was a friend of the two Popes related to his famous story; they were his protectors and employers. He had built his most powerful telescope for them. Do you know that the Vatican has had an astronomical observatory for centuries? Are you aware that most religious festivities are related to cosmic observations and events? Did you know that our current calendar is based on the Gregorian Calendar issued in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII? In the West, Catholics included, we do not follow it anymore as we rely now on the latest satellite technology and an atomic clock that makes corrections of milliseconds at the end of each year. But the rest of the Christian world in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa don’t even follow the Gregorian calendar. They still follow the Julian calendar, approved by Julius Caesar more than two thousand years ago. In addition to his political and military functions, he was the Pontifex Maximus; equivalent to being the Pope of the Pagan Romans. That is why the Orthodox Churches celebrate Christmas 13 days later and their seasons are off by two weeks. Faith and science are not in opposition, but sometimes it takes time to reconcile them. The truth is one. Did you ever give a thought to the names of our months? Most of them are names of Roman gods or Roman Emperors (Janus, Mars, Juno, Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus). Or why does December say it is the tenth month, but now it is the twelfth? (September was seven, October was eight, November was nine). Why was Galileo working for the Pope? All religious leaders search for truth. Imagine how serious his fault was that he was sentenced to pray several times a day, and to continue his research in a farm owned by the church; he was cared for in his advanced age by one of his daughters who was authorized to leave the convent to do it. On top of that, his daughter was told to “serve his sentence” and do the praying for him. It all began with another error of Aristotle that Galileo had questioned. During Galileo’s lifetime, the Vatican was involved in the Wars of Reformation, and the Popes did not want further division within the hierarchy. Galileo had agreed not to continue the public controversy in his first proceeding, an agreement he later violated. His fault was violating the agreement, and he was sentenced to pray. Most of what has been written since then is propaganda that came out of the French Revolution in order to create the “famous case” of the division between faith and science. Hasn’t modern scientific archaeology confirmed the factual and historical character of The Bible? Science seems to have taken a long time to confirm what faith has known for quite some time. The truth is one, but sometimes it takes time to agree about it.

The heading of this meditation is a quote from one of the most respected Medieval scholars of the Muslim culture and the religion of Islam.

Ibn Khaldoun, philosopher, historian during the last stage of the Golden Age of Islam

Ibn Khaldun's contributions to history, sociology, and economics are profound and enduring. He supported free markets emphasizing that competition and the interaction of buyers and sellers determine prices. He also advocated for low taxes not to burden economic activity and cautioned that high taxes and excessive government interference suffocate production and lead to economic decline. His insights foreshadowed Adam Smith’s groundbreaking contributions, supply-side economics, and the Laffer curve. His ideas about the economic progress and decline of civilizations were ahead of Gibbon’s and Marx’s. But, like what happened with Aristotle, his writings on economics are buried under voluminous material dealing with other topics and they had been available only in Arabic until not long ago. What is clear from his thinking is that he was not a believer in predestination or fatalism. His quoted words are a defense of an open mind ready to analyze evidence and proof, ready to listen to criticism, ready to change. They are also a criticism to sectarianism and prejudice which stand in the way of reason and truth. No one cut his head off. Had he lived in today’s Arab Islamic sphere of influence, he likely would have asked to come to America as a refugee.

Moshe Maimonides, known as Ramban. Jewish Physician, philosopher born in Al-Andalus
Physician to the Great Saladin of Egypt during the Golden Age of Islam

Maimonides, the Sephardic Jew called Rambam from Cordova, and Ibn Khaldoun, who although born in Tunis across the Mediterranean Sea, his family had a long ascendancy in Al-Andalus and had just escaped the fall of Seville, are two important figures in the history of humanity. Both were the product of a period of Arab greatness, when free-will and personal initiative were respected. That period has long ceased to exist. Why?

French historian and philosopher Louis Rougier, in his 1971 “The Genius of the West” describes it: “From the eighth to the twelfth century the Islamic Empire, made up of many peoples, extending from the Pyrenees to the limits of China, preserved Hellenic science, enriched it with borrowings from Persia, India and even China, and finally transmitted it during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to the Latin West. Over a period of five centuries, during which darkness settled over the West, the home of civilization was in the Near East and in Spain; its language was Arabic, and its sun was the sun of Allah… The brilliant rays of this Asiatic civilization penetrated deep into France, Italy and Sicily. Arabic and Jewish doctors from Spain settled at Salerno and Montpellier. Arabic medicine was taught at Venice and Padua down to the sixteenth century…From 1200 on, a theological reaction swept through Islam. There were no longer philosophers—the word itself became synonymous with “infidel”—and only occasionally was there a scholar like the fourteenth-century historian, Ibn-Khaldun…” About this period, Professor Rougier concludes: “Islam, returning to its sources, paralyzed inquiry with a formula which brooked no answer: Allah aalam, God knows best what is.”  Predestination and fatalism had taken over.

The dogmatic and literal ideological current of Islam is referred to as Salafi (Salafiyyah). It is characterized by its inflexibility, intolerance and anti-pluralism. Dr. Mustafa Akar, Professor of Economics and Rector at Aksaray University in Turkey, wrote “Reason versus Tradition, Free Will versus Fate” in 2016. He states that, “This school and the mentality it adopted are clearly still alive today and serve as the source of inspiration and motivation for many radical Islamic movements…such as the Taliban, Saudi-rooted Wahhabism, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and al-Qaida are all Salafi movements”. I would add to the list the Muslim Brotherhood, originally from Egypt. Akar identifies on the opposite side several schools of early Islamic thought that recognized free will as one of the ethical foundations taught in the Quran, among them Tawhid or Mutazilite, Ahl al-Ra’y, and a school of reason.  Akar points to the Mongol invasions of the XII century as the main cause for the disappearance of the institutions and persons whose work and ideas had led to the Arab Golden Age. Perhaps this is only a partial explanation; as it is not a single event, multiple causes may be involved.

Perhaps it is just a deflection to avoid looking at causes that emerged from within the Arab culture. One is the continuous internecine wars for control of the power of government by different tribes or religious sects. There is no clear basis in the Quran for the governmental leader to be the head of the religious institutions, or for the religious leader to be the head of the governmental structure. In fact, there is no indication that a religious leader would be established. Iran’s current theocracy is a good example of what it leads to in the latter case, and the concept of the Caliphate exemplifies the former. Although the title of Caliph has been in disuse for over a century, it was claimed by the head of ISIS in 2014. The title of Sultan has a better defined function as the head of government, even though at times it also had religious significance. The lack of clarity of functions has been a clear opportunity for some leaders to use religion as the mask of absolute authority. Islamic history has a full record of these conflicts.

The recognition of “free-will” does not need to be explicit, or in law. Its existence or negation is recognized in many other aspects of a culture, such as freedom of speech and the press, or freedom of religion, of the basic freedoms of a person by “owning” himself. Two institutions that have characterized Islam are apostasy and slavery. Apostasy is when the member of a religion abandons it or changes it for another faith. The website “Islam, Question and Answer” sponsored by an Islamic organization explains that: “The apostate is not to be put to death immediately after he falls into apostasy, especially if has doubts. Rather he should be asked to repent and be offered the opportunity to return to Islam and resolve his doubts, if any. If he persists in his apostasy after that, he is to be put to death”. The site indicates that it was founded and is supervised by Shaykh Muhammad Saalih Al-Munajjid. It is not a historical reference. It means today.

Watercolor of a caravan of slaves in Western Africa

Islam spread slavery throughout Africa, and for captives of their wars. The last country to legally prohibit slavery was Mauretania in 1981, mostly to get a check mark from the United Nations in order to receive aid. Until the end of WW I, the slave markets of European Christian captives, men and women, existed openly under the Ottoman rule. These institutions, whether they are really proscribed now or still exist without official recognition, are a clear reflection of an absolute intolerance of free-will and the most fundamental rights of the human person. It is true that many Western nations had these institutions at one time or another but have not existed for centuries. European Wars of Religion led to the Laws of Toleration, and then to the concept of Freedom of Religion three centuries ago. The same forces of faith and belief in free-will led the West to proscribe slavery shortly after. It is important to note that European participation in the slave trade across the Atlantic began seven centuries after the Islamic, Arab and Berber slave traders had organized it. The slaves bought by Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish and English traffickers purchased them at well-organized slave markets on the south Atlantic. The did the same thing on the Indian Ocean. The African tribes that had converted to Islam enslaved the captives of the tribes that had resisted or that simply were practicing their animistic faiths. African Muslims supplied African slaves to the world.

Berber slave traders selling European women in the Tunis market
Original is a painting of Otto Pilny of the early XX century

I am sure you have heard the phrase "Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made". It is often attributed to the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck, but its true origin is likely from American poet John Godfrey Saxe back in 1869. The reading of the proceedings of the United Nations committee in charge of drafting the Declaration of Human Rights is a perfect example of the sausages. Imagine the USA mission led by Eleanor Roosevelt from the victorious seat at the end of WW II. She was pushing the “moderate socialist” agenda of FDR unto the world. It started with language inspired by the US Constitutional documents. Then the French changed some of the language so that it sounded more like the French Revolts. The emissaries of Stalin wanted to add elements of the Soviet Constitution, and they did in part. The Chinese delegate insulted the other members by suggesting that they spend some months studying Buddhism. Others went with the flow expecting American aid after the war. The sausage was approved to great fanfare with the vote of a large number of insignificant states and the very grateful Europeans that had just been saved from defeat and were anxious to continue their policies masked by the label of democratic socialism. A few countries abstained or did not participate. The Soviet bloc rejected it. I found it interesting that Saudi Arabia voted against it, and even today is not a signatory because “it was not acceptable to Islam”. Most of the declaration is a wish list of entitlements, but the initial words of Article 1 may explain the opposition of the Saudi family (tribe) that owns the Arabian desert and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina as their personal property. Article 1 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

The recognition that all human persons are endowed with reason and conscience is a recognition that all persons have free-will and have the right to use it. By denying its existence, which they claim their Quran’s interpretation does, puts Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabis Islamist leadership in the same non-moral direction that all Marxist proclaim. They require obedience to whatever the ruling elite demands. Enforcement means use of force.

A very detailed and extensive account of “The History of the Arab People” (1991) by Albert Hourani covers the degradation, disintegration, colonization, nationalism and their more numerous recent crises. Other authors point to the takeover by non-ethnic Arabs of the different state organizations that have existed in the Islamic regions over the centuries, such as Iranians (Persians), Egyptians (Mamelukes), and Turkish (Ottoman). The Quran did not provide guidance that envisioned a political system, and it was born in a culture that is still tribal. Other authors point to the permanent tensions that have existed since the early days of Islam between the Shia and Sunni sects. This conflict has been a continuous source of division and violence within Islam, stemming from a dispute over the rightful succession to the Prophet Muhammad after his death in 632 CE. This is what since ancient times was called a “blood feud”. It is reflected in the claims of most Sultans, Caliphs, emperors and kings that have ruled over all of Islam, or the current monarchs that claim a blood relation to Mohamed. This conflict also has an underlying source of tribal tensions within the strictly Arab nations. From the beginning there was a confrontation between the commercial interests of the tribes of the ancient city of Mecca, and those that resulted from the rise of the tribes that supported Mohamed. In pre-Islamic times, this city was a center of polytheistic worship of many animistic creeds. Control of the sanctuaries and holy places has always been a source of religious power, and also an important source of economic interests. The rituals of the mysterious Kaaba are pre-Islamic, but they merged into it as the most notorious cultural representation of Islam to the world.

The Kaaba at the center of pilgrimage in Mecca
Said to mark the site where Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Ismail (Ismael) built
the first house of worship to Allah. The Jewish Bible identifies Ismael as the first son
of Abraham he had with an Egyptian slave of his wife
Islam recognizes Muslims, Jews and Christian as "People of The Book"
with a common Abrahamic heritage

As an economist, Akar provides the evidence that supports his assessment that the Muslim world is lagging behind in a condition he calls “poverty within abundance”. The OIC – The Organization of Islamic Countries- groups the 57 countries that have a predominant Islamic heritage. With more than 1.5 billion people, it is 22% of the world’s population, but it only shares 9% of the world’s GDP. It includes an area that has 50% of some of the world’s important energy resources. The Economic Freedom of the World Index of the Fraser Institute shows no OIC member country among the top 10, but there are 22 included in the category of “least free”, and 26 among those labeled “somewhat free”. The wealth enjoyed by some of the Islamic states originated in the exploitation of petroleum has helped them mask their condition by having low taxes because revenue is derived from oil sales. Brunei, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia head the list. A retrospective look at the 56 countries in 1850, before the era of petroleum and the combustion engine, would place all of them among the poorest in the world.

In the index that measures quality of life in the world, HDI -Human Development Index- the bottom is occupied by Niger, Chad, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt. The Islamic countries that rank high are those that subsidize their consumption with oil revenues. Everything resulting from the wealth generated by petroleum is really generated by the industrial development of the West and not due to any local improvement. In the Index of Global Innovation produced by Cornell University, the lowest ranked are Sudan, Togo, and Yemen.

Compare this information and comments with those provided by the study of Asmus and Grudem in “The Poverty of Nations” mentioned in previous pages. There is great correlation between Islam and poverty, just as there is between Christian values and prosperity. If Islam is predestination and fatalism, regardless of its theological foundation, it leads to un-economic use of the only sources of wealth: human creativity and freedom to exchange.

For the most part, historians recognize several facts about the Arab emergence, its golden age, and its decline. It appeared in a moment of history when the Roman Empire to the west, and the Byzantine and Persian empires to the north and east had collapsed. Two elements were imposed on the conquered people, the Arabic language and the Quran as the backbone of morals and law. Always in a minority in the conquered lands, ethnic Arabs co-opted the local elites and governed with violence. In a way, they re-created the stable environment of the Pax Romana that integrated an enormous market even though they did not have a uniform currency. The Greek, Persian and Roman coinage had similar weight standards and continued their existence beyond their original minting. The Quran includes many rules related to commerce that already existed and were common practice. That made it easy to follow.

There is much that this view of intellectual history overlooks. Nevertheless, there is enough evidence that supports some very broad conclusions. 1) Hegel was in error by excluding Judaism and Islam from belonging to religions of a higher order where human freedom can be realized. Islam can be qualified as having fallen in a period of decline. Can it be reversed?  2) During the Golden Age of Islam, Europe, mostly by way of Al-Andalus was influenced out of the Dark Ages by a flood of new and re-discovered knowledge that led to the Renaissance. 3) The Renaissance, with a vision of a New World in geography, the invention of the printing press with movable characters, paper and ink from China, mathematics from Persia and India, and a renewed thirst for knowledge, made a great leap forward into what we call Western Civilization. It may be an error to call it with such a narrow name. Chaldeans, Persian, Jews, Christians, Arabs, and even Greeks, Romans and Turks all have origins at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe. Their roots are our roots and a good way up the trunk into our most valued traditions of the west.

Just like Galileo had dared to question Aristotle’s ideas about gravity and the solar system, some scholars revisited his ideas on what happens in the market when people exchange. Others questioned his concept of a “just war” that the Catholic kings, and the earlier Crusaders had relied upon to force people to accept baptism, or to enslave them. The first group opened the minds into the foundations of economic science. The second group began the discussions that initially were labeled natural rights and now are called human rights and international law in general. They are now known as the School of Salamanca, or as the Late Scholastics of the University of Salamanca. They demonstrated before the royal court that the Indians of America were persons, they could choose freely, formed families, many had sophisticated forms of government, and an established culture. That was evident to the missionaries even if the Bible had no mention of them or of that part of the world. In other words, the Indians of America had free will too. The enslavement of the indigenous people was declared unlawful in 1542. They pronounced the King of Spain as a subject under the law, long before Charles I of England was tried by Parliament and executed. These groundbreaking religious scholars are now recognized as an important part of the Renaissance that led to The Enlightenment.

The central library of the University of Salamanca in Spain
A repository of ancient manuscripts, books and incunables

The real founders of economic science and natural law jurisprudence wrote hundreds of years before Adam Smith and John Locke. They were not economists or attorneys as such, but moral theologians, missionaries, and doctors of canon law. They trained in the tradition of Saint Thomas Aquinas, following ancient Christian avenues to   investigate and expand all the sciences on the firm ground of reason, logic and natural law. Many drew from their own experience as missionaries in distant lands, including the new American continent. Many came from families impacted by the recent wars between Arabs and Christians. Others had a Jewish or mudejar heritage. Salamanca itself, an ancient Celtic city, had been occupied by Roman legions, Visigoth armies, and Muslim invaders; they all had left their imprint in the University of Salamanca, chartered formally in 1218, but established a century earlier. Their work in the early Renaissance filtered throughout Europe by way of visiting teachers from other scholarly centers, but mostly by the hundreds of students that went on to teach at other institutions in France, Holland, Italy and Germany.

The priests of Salamanca did not elaborate a complete doctrine of economics, but they established the foundations that led to the modern economic theories that explain how the market works. Ending the discussions about “just prices”, they demonstrated and declared that those are the market prices that appear as a result of competing sellers and buyers. Value was attributed to each person’s judgment of the utility of a good and depending on how much was available. This anticipated by centuries the subjective theory of marginal utility of value. They defended sound money policies and what we would now call international free trade. They expanded on Aristotle’s explanation of the importance of ownership of property as opposed to common tenancy, anticipating the description of what today is known as “the tragedy of the commons”.

The original work of the Scholastics was written in the late Medieval Latin that was already in the process of transforming into the modern Romance languages. Gradually, their works disappeared in the archives and old libraries with books no one could read, but their ideas had spread. The first translations of one of them, Francisco de Vitoria, became available only in the early XX century, and in English not until 1991. Economics had not been recognized as a separate field of study. Their innovative ideas remained veiled in titles such as “Handbook for Confessors and Penitents”.

It is clear to me that the part of humanity that has moved away from determinism, materialism, predestination and that, in general, negated the empowering force in creativity and innovation of free-will, has found ways to raise the standard of living and quality of life of all the people; but most significantly, it has lifted those that occupied the bottom of the ladder, the lower caste, the serfs, the wrong tribe, and the destitute in the cultures that still deny its existence, whether it is a political regime, or a religious regime, or just the state apparatus of power under the mask of righteousness.

Can Islam recover its inner force that had led to its Golden Age?

Can a Renaissance of the Islamic faith happen in the West? Where are the Islamic voices of reason and faith in America? There are more than 5 million Muslims in the country, a very large number of them have come as refugee immigrants. Why did they come here and not to an Islamic country?