Ovid Quotes
Right it is to be taught even by the enemy.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Frank Justus Miller, vol. 1, Harvard University Press, 1916, p. 209.
This was written when Islam was intellectually far more advanced than Christian Europe. This viewpoint was one of the reasons for their advanced civilization. It was held by many. It is still held by many Muslims, but for the fundamentalist of Islam today, ignorance of anything that is not in the Koran or other sayings of the Prophet is a virtue. Madrassas throughout the Islamic world teach only the Koran and religious law and nothing of mathematics, philosophy, science, history and never of other religions.
This principle characterized most Islamic cultures for the next 400 years while Christian Europe was in the Dark Ages and had ignored most of the accumulated Western knowledge of the Greeks and Romans, The Muslims however, kept this knowledge alive and added to it supporting great mathematicians, scientists, philosophers, theologians and physicians. During the 12th century extreme fundamentalists gained control over Islam and this great principle of Umar’s was not only ignored but those who acquired new knowledge were persecuted as “innovators” often a capital crime. When Christian Europe began to rise intellectually, the Muslim societies were declining. Even today, the Islamic cultures are split as to the value of new knowledge and while there are modern Muslim scholars and scientists, there are still major forces throughout Islam who consider knowledge that is not in the Koran or which contradicts the Koran not only false, but heretical, often to be punished even by death.
Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid (/ˈɒvɪd/) in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. He enjoyed enormous popularity, but, in one of the mysteries of literary history, he was sent by Augustus into exile in a remote province on the Black Sea, where he remained until his death. Ovid himself attributes his exile to carmen et error, "a poem and a mistake", but his discretion in discussing the causes has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
