2. HOLDING SACRED THAT WHICH IS NOT SACRED

2. Holding Sacred that which is not Sacred ~ 92 ~ It is highly probable that but for the Arabs, modern industrial civilization would never have arisen at all. 43 The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984) says that libraries formed important features of Islamic society. There were a number of institutions, which possessed more than one lakh books. Most of the classical literature that spurred the European Renaissance was obtained from translations of Arabic manuscripts in Muslim libraries. 44 To some, the achievement of the Arabs is at best their transmission of the Greek sciences to Europe through translations. Professor Hitti puts it in these words: This stream (of Greek culture) was redirected into Europe by the Arabs in Spain and Sicily, whence it helped create the Renaissance of Europe. 45 Such an assertion is not, however, correct, for what the Arabs had received from Greek philosophers was not experimental knowledge but theoretical argument. In other words, what they received from