I was walking through the streets of Amsterdam a few years ago, and the section was predominantly composed of Muslim immigrants.
There were hundreds of able bodied young men, sitting on park benches and street corners, drinking tea, smoking, and arguing with each other (mostly arguing). They talked and talked and talked.
There was one man working, and he was the one selling tea and cigarettes.
The Arab world is extremely unproductive. If it were not for oil revenues, I cannot imagine the level of poverty it would be in.
Furthermore, I don't believe there ever was a "Golden Age of Islam" for science and mathematics.
Whatever achievements they claim were lifted entirely from Greek, Roman, and other cultures that they looted and plundered.
It's tough to master 21st century technology when you live in the 12th.
Really, I understand that after the fall of Rome that Present day Iraq was the center of science, medicine and many other arts.
There is little good to say about the state of the world today; this is one of the bright spots.
It's a good thing.
Imagine high technology in the hands of hate-filled apes...
Mr Salem may be ashamed to say it, rightfully so, but I'm not:
98% of the arab presence on the internet is related directly or indirectly to mass murder, mayhem and destruction.
Not exactly a legacy to be proud of a few hundred years hence.
I wonder how many women and girls have free access to the internet? I would like to see statistics on this.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Yeah, but they did invent 'zero'. As soon as they invent 'one' they will breach the digital divide.
Whatever achievements they claim were lifted entirely from Greek, Roman, and other cultures that they looted and plundered
Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought. Men like Avicenna and Averroes are essentially commentators. Speaking generally, the views of the more scientific philosophers come from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists in logic and metaphysics, from Galen in medicine, from Greek and Indian sources in mathematics and astronomy, and among mystics religious philosophy has also an admixture of old Persian beliefs. Writers in Arabic showed some originality in mathematics and in chemistry in the latter case, as an incidental result of alchemical researches. Mohammedan civilization in its great days was admirable in the arts and in many technical ways, but it showed no capacity for independent speculation in theoretical matters. Its importance, which must not be underrated, is as a transmitter. Between ancient and modern European civilization, the dark ages intervened. The Mohammedans and the Byzantines, while lacking the intellectual energy required for innovation, preserved the apparatus of civilization education, books, and learned leisure. Both stimulated the West when it emerged from barbarism the Mohammedans chiefly in the thirteenth century, the Byzantines chiefly in the fifteenth. In each case the stimulus produced new thought better than any produced by the transmitters in the one case scholasticism, in the other the Renaissance (which however had other causes also).
- Lord Bertrand Russell, A History Of Western Philosophy (1st Edition, 1945)
Great, yet another digital divide fee to be tacked on our phone bills. /s
See long ago discussion at What, Exactly, are the Great Achievements of the Islamic World?
ML/NJ
The title of this story is as obvious as saying "South Park" is a cartoon! Duh, these people live in the stone ages.
Writing was invented in that part of the world, and they have 10% illiteracy in the best of conditions. Collectively, they publish or translate around 300 books per year.
The "Golden Age" of Islam coincided with their time of expansion, when there was a steady in-flow of loot and slaves who knew how to run a civilization. When this in-flow stopped, so did the Golden Age
If it wasn't for oil, the Arab world would be an inconsequential hell-hole of no interest to anybody
The only electronics they need is the cell phone to detonate IEDs. If they had to use what Arabs have invented in the past thousand years, they'd be reduced to running over people with their camels.