into some corner of oblivion? You were the fountainhead of
learning, the unfailing spring of light for all the earth, how is it that
you are withered now, and quenched, and faint of heart? You who once lit
the world, how is it that you lurk, inert, bemused, in darkness now? Open
your mind's eye, see your great and present need. Rise up and struggle,
seek education, seek enlightenment. Is it meet that a foreign people
should receive from your own forbears its culture and its knowledge, and
that you, their blood, their rightful heirs, should go without? How does
it seem, when your neighbors are at work by day and night with their whole
hearts, providing for their advancement, their honor and prosperity, that
you, in your ignorant fanaticism, are busy only with your quarrels and
antipathies, your indulgences and appetites and empty dreams? Is it
commendable that you should waste and fritter away in apathy the
brilliance that is your birthright, your native competence, your inborn
understanding? Again, We have digressed from Our theme.

Those European intellectuals who are well-informed as to the facts of
Europe's past, and are characterized by truthfulness and a sense of
justice, unanimously acknowledge that in every particular the basic
elements of their civilization are derived from Islam. For example
Draper,(58) the well-known French authority, a writer whose accuracy,
ability and learning are attested by all European scholars, in one of his
best-known works, The Intellectual Development of Europe, has written a
detailed account in this connection, that is, with reference to the
derivation by the peoples of Europe of the fundamentals of civilization
and the bases of progress and well-being from Islam. His account is
exhaustive, and a translation here would unduly lengthen out the present
work and would indeed be irrelevant to Our purpose. If further details are
desired the reader may refer to that text.

In essence, the author shows how the totality of Europe's civilization--its
laws, principles, institutions, its sciences, philosophies, varied
learning, its civilized manners and customs, its literature, art and
industry, its organization, its discipline, its behavior, its commendable
character traits, and even many of the words current in the French
language, derives from the Arabs. One by one, he investigates each of
these elements in detail, even giving the period when each was brought
over from Islam. He describes