The West Owes Islam Nothing

In this American Thinker article, Frank Friday argues that Western civilization owes far less to Islam than modern historical narratives often claim, while contending that Christianity, Roman inheritance, and European legal traditions deserve far more credit for the West’s rise.

• Friday opens by rejecting what he calls propaganda about an “Islamic Golden Age,” comparing it to other mythologized historical narratives used to justify modern political or religious movements.
• He challenges claims about medieval Muslim Cordoba, arguing that its supposed superiority over Christian Europe has been exaggerated and that many of its achievements were inherited from the Roman world.
• The article credits Christian monasteries, churches, and convents with preserving learning, copying books, running schools, helping the poor, advancing agriculture, and protecting communities after Rome’s fall.
• Friday argues that many achievements attributed to Islamic scholarship actually came from Persian, Byzantine, Greek, Indian, or Chinese sources that Muslims preserved, translated, or transmitted rather than originated.
• He says the West’s real “secret sauce” was the Christian view of the Imago Dei, which helped produce rule of law, natural rights, limited government, common law, and institutions that protected ordinary people.
• The article contrasts Christian Europe’s development of legal and civic structures with what Friday describes as the Muslim world’s long-term reliance on tribal and authoritarian systems.
• Friday also argues that Christianity improved the status of women and families by opposing cousin marriage, polygamy, easy divorce, and eventually chattel slavery in Europe, while the Arab slave trade persisted for centuries.
• He credits early Muslim leaders with military skill, administrative pragmatism, and a degree of tolerance toward Jews and Christians, but says the foundations of Islamic civilization led to long-term decline.
• The piece closes by pointing to Islamic Modernism as a possible path forward, praising Muslim reformers who have called for Western education, reexamination of Islamic texts, and intellectual honesty.

Read the full story:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/06/the_west_owes_islam_nothing.html