Catholicism is Based on Islamic Ideology

Do you know what bothers me? I’m bothered because we don’t know enough about the Islamic civilisation, and we should, what with all the troubles and hostilities at the moment. So I did a little investigating.

It was at its cultural peak in medieval times, when they had a wealth of classical knowledge concerning such abstract thought forms as philosophy, illusion, transformation and even phenomenological shifts, i.e. changes in patterns of lived experience. 

The famous House of Wisdom in Baghdad was a major intellectual centre during the Islamic Golden Age, traditionally dating from the 8th century to the 13th century. Scholars from all over the world, including many Christian and Persian intellectuals, sought to gather and translate the entire known world's knowledge into Arabic. These included works from India, China and Ancient Greece, and Islamic scholars studied not only both Greek and Indian mathematics, but were also skilled in astronomy, studying eclipses, and the rotation of the planets until they could calculate the circumference of the earth to within just a few thousand feet.

To put this into perspective, in England at the time we were still throwing our shit out of the window into the street, regardless of whether anyone was walking past or not.

Nowe the interesting thing here is that the philosopher Aristotle’s theories became the foundation of Islamic philosophy. And not a lot of people know that. And this came about mainly through a bloke called Averroes. He was a Muslim, right? Remember that, because I’m going somewhere with this.

You see Averroes had been taught by a geezer called Avenzoar who was a Muslim physician. They became buddies and dedicated 30 years to philosophical writings from an Islamic viewpoint.  If you take all this on board, you’ll begin to get a perspective of just how advanced these guys were? And of what a rich history the Muslim world really has.

Averroes writings had great influence on both Hebrew and Christian writers, especially Thomas Aquinas, who later became a Christian saint. And Aquinas’ philosophy in turn had enormous influence on subsequent Christian theology, especially that of Catholicism.

Six hundred years after Saint Thomas Aquinas died, Pope Leo XIII instructed the canonry to take the teachings of Aquinas as the basis of their theological positions, stating that Aquinas’ theology was a ‘definitive account of Catholic principles.’

So, what has officially been declared as the basis of theological studies in the Roman Catholic Church has been enormously influenced by Islamic and Muslim beliefs.

I’ll repeat that, because not a lot of people are aware of it. Muslim physician Avenzoar taught Averroes. They spent 30 years writing Islamic philosophical texts. Averroes, who was a Muslim remember, had great influence on Thomas Aquinas, who took all this on board and attempted to amalgamate Muslim theology and Aristotle’s pagan Greek philosophies into the principles of Christianity. Well, perhaps ‘attempt’ is the wrong word. He fucking succeeded! Muslim theologies and pagan philosophies had terrific influence on Christian theology.

Then 600 years later along came Pope Leo XIII, who instructed Catholics to take Thomas Aquinas’ Islamic-based teachings as the basis of all theological positions in the Catholic Church. Muslim ideology and concepts form the basis of Catholic principles.

Makes you wonder what all the fuss is about, doesn’t it?