Renan made sweeping generalizations about the “narrow minds” of people who live in the East and in Africa, who because of their adherence to Islam are an intellectually barren race. What we see here are not only racist assertions about Muslims but also the idea that Islam has stunted scientific growth. When challenged to explain the flourishing of science in Islamic empires in the Middle Ages, Renan replied that the Arabs, like other “Semites,” were incapable of science. The Abbasid caliphate, he added, was essentially Greek and Persian, even if it used Arabic. Thus, it was the “Aryans” who were responsible for this flowering of science.

XREF: Connects to broader histories of 19th-century orientalism and racialized accounts of scientific progress, e.g., Said's Orientalism.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 179