Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

’1001 Muslim Inventions’ Fantasy Comes to DC: The Presentation of Legend as History
vinienco.com ^ | 8/26/2012 | J. Christian Adams

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 ...


TOPICS: Arts/Photography; Education; History
KEYWORDS: discovery; godsgravesglyphs; jihad; longerperspectives; muslim; religionofpieces; science
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 101-115 next last
I guess this is part of our government's efforts to make moose-lims feel good about themselves. And here I thought the only thing they invented was the exploding vest.
1 posted on 08/26/2012 4:59:30 PM PDT by YankeeReb
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb

Any two of N French mathematicians , where N is a large number, are worth more than 1000 Muslim anythings.

Islam, you are a symbol of evil.


2 posted on 08/26/2012 5:06:34 PM PDT by Da Coyote
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb

dirt


3 posted on 08/26/2012 5:08:40 PM PDT by Doogle ((USAF.68-73..8th TFW Ubon Thailand..never store a threat you should have eliminated))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb

Let’s say this is all true, then WTF happened to them so that they now live like animals in the desert with no advancements for 800 years.


4 posted on 08/26/2012 5:08:47 PM PDT by svcw (If one living cell on another planet is life, why isn't it life in the womb?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb

Exploding retarded little girls comes to mind.


5 posted on 08/26/2012 5:10:45 PM PDT by Doctor 2Brains (If the government were Paris Hilton, it could not score a free drink in a bar full of lonely sailors)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb
Firnas is “said to be the first person who tried to fly.

I'm sure the first human to try to fly was a resident of Africa's Rift Valley given the choice between leopard or cliff.

6 posted on 08/26/2012 5:10:45 PM PDT by Mike Darancette (CREDO QUIA ABSURDUM)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb
And here I thought the only thing they invented was the exploding vest.

Don't forget goat lap dancing.

7 posted on 08/26/2012 5:12:34 PM PDT by smoothsailing
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb
Alexander bin Bell
Achmed and Mohammed Wright (not a relative of Jeramiah)
Enrico Hussein Fermi
The list goes on, I'm sure.
8 posted on 08/26/2012 5:13:03 PM PDT by SERKIT ("Blazing Saddles" explains it all.......)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb

They invented wiping your ass with the bare hand you don’t eat with.


9 posted on 08/26/2012 5:13:15 PM PDT by dead (I've got my eye out for Mullah Omar.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb

National geographic is not part of the Government, Still one has to wonder why they put on this fantasy exhibit.

National geographic is usually pretty much based on fact, why would they display artistically developed fiction.


10 posted on 08/26/2012 5:14:02 PM PDT by Venturer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb

Re: “Pamela Geller, PJ Media: 1001 Pieces of Islamist Propaganda: Fabricated Exhibit Comes to D.C.”
“(J. Christian) Adams’ eight-year-old daughter seeing the exhibit, did not notice all the weasel words:

She was convinced that the Wright Brothers were not the first to fly, and instead it was Firnas launched from the mosque at Cordoba a millennium ago. This would not be the only instance when thought corrupted the language of the exhibit, which in turn corrupted thought, at least among the more impressionable.

By creating a children’s attraction, the exhibit is fostering a subliminal brainwashing that will move into the public schools as well.”

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/08/pamela-geller-pj-media-1001-pieces-of-islamist-propaganda-fabricated-exhibit-comes-to-dc.html


11 posted on 08/26/2012 5:15:12 PM PDT by combat_boots (The Lion of Judah cometh. Hallelujah. Gloria Patri, Filio et Spiritui Sancto.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb

Pamela Geller: 1001 pieces of Islamic supremacist propaganda: fabricated exhibit comes to D.C.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/08/pamela-geller-1001-pieces-of-islamic-supremacist-propaganda-fabricated-exhibit-comes-to-dc.html

...The exhibit is almost unfailingly dishonest. As Adams explains, even if everything it says about Muslim inventions were true, it does not and cannot explain why Muslims never followed up on these inventions. If Firnas was really the first to fly, why did it fall to the Wright Brothers 1000 years later to follow up on what he supposedly discovered about how to do it? Why weren’t Muslims flying around in airplanes centuries before the Wright Brothers were born?
If, as Adams also recounts, Muslims really invented the camera as the exhibit claims, why don’t we have snapshots of Saladin and Suleiman the Magnificent? Why did we have to wait for Daguerre and Niepce?

1001 Muslim Inventions raises more questions about the decline of Muslim civilization than it answers, yet projects like 1001 Muslim Inventions have support at very high levels. Remember in June 2010 when Charlie Bolden, the NASA chief appointed by President Obama, revealed that Obama had asked him to “find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering”?

The truth: what contributions?

The bottom line: the inventions and discoveries attributed to the Muslim world were actually stolen from conquered peoples. The 1001 Muslim Inventions exhibit is not history, it is propaganda, and the foolish infidels keep lining up enthusiastically for more.


12 posted on 08/26/2012 5:16:20 PM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK (Any man may make a mistake ; none but a fool will persist in it . { Latin proverb })
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: svcw
islamic inventions eh...?

1. Afghanistan....tradition of graduating police/guards slaughtering their teachers.

2. Iraq....innovative use of giant plastic grinder on miscreants.

3. Iraq....invention of the "butt glue" to eliminate homosexuality.

4. The rest (57 - 3 = 54 states)... Seventh grade education with a seventh century mindset.

13 posted on 08/26/2012 5:16:56 PM PDT by spokeshave (The only people better off today than 4 years ago are the Prisoners at Guantanamo.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb
odd they don't list any... like the TOP ten or twenty
14 posted on 08/26/2012 5:17:13 PM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb

I heard the muslims first invented the condom from goat innards, but it was the Chinese who perfected them by removing the innards from the goat.


15 posted on 08/26/2012 5:18:36 PM PDT by umgud (No Rats, No Rino's)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb
In all fairness there was a brief Golden Age of Islam where the Islamic world did produce some useful things- decent advances in math (arab numerals anyone?) and some chemistry (although it, like European chemistry advances later, was really alchemy). That golden age came to an end in 1258 when the Mongols wiped Baghdad from the face of the Earth. And yeah, the Caliph in Baghdad had it coming.

That said, from 1259 onward Islam has been an intellectual black hole and shows absolutely no sign of improving.

After reading the article this sounds like a case of trying to improve Islam's image. I ain't buying' it.

I wonder if the people putting on the exhibit appreciate the hideous irony that the most recent Islamic achievements they can tout (fakes and all) took place 800 years ago...


Islam delenda est.
16 posted on 08/26/2012 5:18:58 PM PDT by verum ago (A good physical therapist is half friend, half sadist.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb
1001 Arabian Blights
17 posted on 08/26/2012 5:19:09 PM PDT by mikrofon (Fairy Tales)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: YankeeReb
His first attempt which has passed into legend took place when he leapt from the minaret of the Great Mosque in Cordoba. Equipped with a glider with wooden struts, he managed to fly and landed more or less unharmed.

"That's not flying! That's falling with style!"
- Woody

18 posted on 08/26/2012 5:19:51 PM PDT by dead (I've got my eye out for Mullah Omar.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Venturer

Because a while back they veered left and are now firmly in the thrall of political correctness. Many here on FR noted it and pretty much have written off a once great organization.


19 posted on 08/26/2012 5:22:30 PM PDT by xp38
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Venturer
National geographic is usually pretty much based on fact, why would they display artistically developed fiction.

Nat Geo has been putting questionable material in their magazine for years now. The usual means is cherry picking of facts and selective interpretations thereof (just like this exhibit). That's what makes it so insidious- strictly speaking they don't fabricate stuff, but only strictly speaking.

I use the opposite excuse from the classic Playboy one for NatGeo- I read it for the pictures, not the articles.
20 posted on 08/26/2012 5:24:40 PM PDT by verum ago (A good physical therapist is half friend, half sadist.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 101-115 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson