What they said about Islam Saturday, 22 January 2011 17:17

“Our use of the phrase ‘the Dark Ages’ to cover the period from 699 to 1,000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe… From India to Spain, the brilliant civilisation of Islam flourished. What was lost to Christendom at this time was not lost to civilisation, but quite the contrary… To us it seems that West-European civilisation is civilisation; but this is a narrow view.”    

Bertrand Russell in History of Western Philosophy, London, 1948, p. 419

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate, whose emphasis on logical analysis greatly influenced the course of 20th-century philosophy.