At some point in the history of Christianity, the rationalist view became more dominant, whereas the opposite occurred in Islam. The torch, it could even be said, passed from one to the other. While Ibn Rushd’s defense of rational faith had little impact in Islamdom, it greatly influenced St. Thomas Aquinas, whose synthesis of philosophy, science, and faith opened the way to modernity in the West. And al-Farabi’s tenth-century anticipation of a democratic government to secure the rights and freedoms of the individual certainly found its destiny in the West before anywhere else.
