It's been awhile since racist and bigoted statements were considered acceptable in America. Now they're back, on the lips of powerful and influential people. Language that would get people fired if applied to blacks or Jews now passes without comment when used against Arabs and Muslims. We view this disturbing trend as resulting from recent politics and events. But we are children of a history we do not know. The roots of our "new" bigotry stretch through our racist American past to a thousand-year old blind spot, one big enough to drive half the world through. It's high time we adjusted our rear-view mirrors.

It's true that decades of growing propaganda from neoconservative, fundamentalist, and Hollywood sources made us easy marks for politicians brewing a spirit of national retribution after 9/11. Bush foreign policy and the continuing roundup of Arab citizens and immigrants make the enemy's identity crystal clear. Now a preacher can rant that Muhammad was "a demon-possessed pedophile" and Allah will "turn you into a terrorist", and be commended by the Southern Baptist leadership. But what's the background to this picture?

In a recent article in the New Statesman, Ziauddin Sardar writes that "the west's hatred of Islam stems from, more than anything else, the denial of its true lineage. The western world as we understand it is a child of Islam. Without Islam, the west - however we conceive it today - would not exist. And, without the west, Islam is incomplete and cannot survive the future."

The western world is "a child of Islam"? Welcome to your blind spot. Happily, it's not about theology, but to clear it up we'll have to go way back in history, to the first contacts between Islam and Christian Europe.

In the year 700, Islam and the Arabic language were beginning a rapid spread across Northern Africa to India and beyond. Europe was entering its Dark Ages, nursing its dwindling links to a dead Roman culture. Arabic scholarship, science and invention surpassed Europe in every way. Soon, Arabic scholars would include Greeks, Persians, Christians, Jews and more. Arabic would become as essential as English is today. Europe would cling to Latin, already a dying language.

Three hundred years later, Europe began to catch on. Translating more Arabic texts, we began learning technology, science, and the very roots of our culture and democracy at the feet of our Islamic neighbors. The Arabs had already begun rescuing the genius of ancient Greece from oblivion, translating the Pantheon of Greek learning and art into Arabic, bringing it back to life in Islamic culture.

At the time, hardly anyone in Europe could even read Greek. We learned "our" Greek heritage by translating the Arabic into Latin. For centuries, European scholarship was based on Arabic translations. We even copied Islamic scholarship to build our own early universities. But we said we that got it all directly from "our" Greek ancestors, and launched the Crusades to begin murdering our teachers.

The injection of ancient Greek learning and art into Church-bound Europe was the engine of the Renaissance, and the beginning of our humanist traditions. The fact that we learned it all from our Islamic superiors has been written out of our history for a thousand years.

Few of us like algebra, or the number zero, but they were also vital to Europe's growth. The very word 'algebra' comes from an Arabic book written around 830 and translated into Latin centuries later. By the Renaissance, the zero and algebra had spread through Europe. What could Newton or Einstein have done, without the Arabs? How can we receive such gifts and perpetually rebuke the giver?

There are many other examples; the Arabic roots of European music and instruments, and the rich Islamic/Arabic influence on the people and cultures of southern and eastern Europe, to name but two. We have a lot of history to recover.

Where would we be, without this cornucopia of gifts? If we are not the child of Islam, we are at best its kid brother. The one that likes to blow up frogs with firecrackers. Being a kid brother myself, I know the signs, when it's time to grow up and show your big brother some love and respect. A time to reconcile the past, and talk man to man. You find out he's not such a bad guy after all. And he sure knows a lot.

James Brooks of Worcester, Vermont, is a writer, webmaster, and former business owner. His recent articles have been published by several Web sites covering the Middle East, investigative journalism and alternative politics. Currently Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (www.vtjp.org) and publishes News Links, a free, once-daily (Mon-Sat) e-mail digest of in-depth Middle East news and commentary. To subscribe, contact jamiedb@attglobal.net.

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