Posted on 08/26/2012 4:59:28 PM PDT by YankeeReb
National Geographic Explorer’s Hall in Washington D.C. has hosted some of the most prestigious exhibits in America. Previous exhibits have included the Chinese terracotta warriors, as well as the James Caird, the lifeboat Sir Ernest Shackleton miraculously sailed from Antarctica to South Georgia Island in 1916. Currently it is hosting a curious exhibit through February 2013 entitled “1001 Inventions: Discover the Golden Age of Muslim Civilization.” This high tech, slickly produced exhibit explicitly seeks to debunk the “myth” that the dark ages were dark.
The exhibit purports to provide examples of innovations from Muslim civilization, and some of the claims may come as a surprise to those familiar with the Wright Brothers or Yuri Gagarin.
I recently visited “1001 Inventions” which was housed on the same floor as a fantastic Titanic exhibit. I purchased entry to the museum at a ticket booth staffed by Rebecca Head, a National Geographic employee. Perhaps assuming I was heading to see the Titanic exhibit, Head pushed attendance at 1001 Inventions – “There is a really great exhibit on Muslim inventions you should see.”
The exhibit begins with star power – a short movie starring Academy Award-winner Ben Kingsley. Kingsley plays a librarian who faces a trio of young uniformed (presumably British) students seeking information about “the dark ages.”
Kingsley’s character bristles at the children’s characterization, critical of those “filling your head with such nonsense and ripping down the good of former civilizations.”
But “everyone knows the Greeks and Romans invented everything!” one child replies.
Kingsley’s librarian doesn’t equivocate – “some of the most important discoveries” were made by “Muslim civilizations.”
(Excerpt) Read more at vinienco.com ...
...I give them Damascus steel as a consolation prize.
“...consider the argument I had with my 8-year-old after leaving the exhibit. She was convinced that the Wright Brothers were not the first to fly, and instead it was Firnas...”
To which he should have said, “Honey, throughout your life you’ll meet people called ‘Muslims’. Trust none of them because most of them are liars.”
Exactly right. The last 500 years saw the age inventions and progress in science. We know about the European and American contributions. Where are the contributions in these areas from the non-European and American areas of the world. Few and far between. It's an interesting question. If Islamic countries supposedly invented and came up with so many inventions and scientific contributions, why have they contributed next to nothing for the last 500-800 years? And why don't these non-Muslim defenders of Islam ask themselves that question?
It's not. Virtually ALL of the so-called contributions to civilization by muslims, were in fact invented by others.
Even the most ballyhooed “contribution”, algebra, was actually created by the Nestorian Christians whom the muslims conquered. The muslims exploited the inventions they acquired through conquest, but like any culture that fails to develop its own brainpower, eventually those “contributions” fell into disuse because they couldn't be understood/maintained/replicated by later generations.
Why didn’t they explain how this vast Muslim empire that “stretched from Spain to China” got there? Hmmm?
Thanks for the info, not that I was going to buy a subscription anyway, It’s too expensive.
Nestorian Christians, would you expand?
We have a family friend who refers to himself as Aserian Christian, and he really gets up set about these claims.
He says they developed the concept of zero, which without there would be no math and all that followed.
So I am unclear as to whether he is correct or not.
But either because I just had a gin and tonic, I don’t remember or went swimming that day so I just do not recall Nestorian Christians.
Muslims are good at taking off, not so good at surviving the landing.
Goats have laps?
But still not as good as the steel used in the Japanese katana.
There truly is nothing more evil on this planet than islam.
And all you politically correct folks will find this out, sooner or later.
You forgot Mohammed Einstein and Abdullah Newton.
ping for tomorrow.
They invented eating right and wiping left. I think that’s the end of the list.
Thanks.
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