What is the quintessence of Arab reductionism?
One has to bear in mind that the change imposed upon the Arabs at the times of Prophet Muhammad with the imposition of Islam was a tremendous event that was difficult for average Arab nomads to accept. When it became clear that Islam would finally be imposed, masses of Arabs realized that they could not avert the event, but they could make it relatively or mostly ineffective or harmless to their past identity and customary way of life. It is clear that for an Arab of Mecca or Medina in 625 or 628, converted or not, the advent of a great culture and the rise of a brilliant civilization (as we attested them in the Arts, the Letters, the Sciences and the Philosophy of Damascus, Baghdad, Cordoba, Shiraz, Kairwan, Samarqand, Ispahan and Istanbul), as a result of the diffusion of Islam among other peoples, was not expected at all; they could not imagine at all the impact of the Islam on the other peoples because they did not know the civilizations and the cultures developed by other peoples
