Posted on 09/20/2006 9:57:53 PM PDT by jdm
The recent brouhaha surrounding Pope Benedict XVI comments on Islam delivered in Germany should give Muslims a pause. Not one that would conjure the recalcitrant attacks that we have seen recently but rather one that would question why such a prominent religious leader would utter these words.
What the Pope said allows me, as a Muslim, to ponder self-examination and not rush into a reaction of condemnation.
Islam, throughout its history, delivered its share of great minds to humanity during times of peace and prosperity. Scientists like Mohammad al-Khawarizmi who invented Algebra and Avicenna who contributed greatly to medicine lived in an era of "political prestige, financial power, and intellectual pursuit with Baghdad as the epicenter" as Saadia Iqbal described it in a National Geographic article. We Muslims, in another era, built our own great and peaceful civilization that ushered the prosperity wished upon any people of any race in any religion.
But Islam of today differs from the Islam of yesterday. Instead of a thriving era of the Abbasids, we are experiencing a terrorist era of Wahhabism.
Wahabbism is an obscure strand of Islam with fanatical followers who remained "out of sight and out of mind" until Saudi Arabia struck it rich with oil. Hungry economies saw it fit to submit to the Wahabbis and their protectors, the al-Saud clan, rather than confront their danger. But this came with a price.
It was oil that financed 15 Saudis to attack the United States on September 11 and it is Wahhabism today that is militarizing Islam. Unlike the prosperous Abbasid era, the Wahhabi era is confrontational, fanatic, and universal because of undue influence by Saudi Arabia...
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Interesting -- I didn't know it was that straightforward.
Having read the entire article this lowly muslim suggests a way to 'save' his religion. I admire he openly examined his religions past, present, and future. And then came up with a suggestion to 'save' his religion.
His suggestion will throw his whole region into chaos, but it is their battle, their jihad to save their religion.
Arabs did not invent algebra. All they did was contribute the word used to describe mathematical methods that the Greeks had been using for a thousand years.
I was just about to post that but I decided that I would read the thread first. :)
That is a good statement and I agree.
Some thought for those Muslims who want fight back.
Could be they are like we are here in America. We allow 14% of
of the left rule America and some times a less percentage than 14%.
For instance, when one person in an American school is of a different religion, all the others have to stop their show of their faith because of this "one".
A majority of peaceful Muslims are being ruled by a few radicals.
We are facing the same scenario here in America in many topics and, every day it gets worse. Are we any different, have we put a stop to being ruled by such a few?
Marking
This event illustrates one of the major errors made by those who say the West much watch what it does in order to not create more terrorists. A vast majority of the Muslims who have rioted, demonstrated and committed violent acts in response to cartoons, general comments or the Pope's speech have no direct contact with the information. They are responding to what is told to them by the Muslim cadre wanting to create a negative response.
The West is unable to act in a manner that will calm the "Muslim street" because only negative information will be fed to the "Muslim street". Appeasement won't work. The West must react to the true nature of the beast and its controllers.
I can only pray you are right, strategically. Tactically, this was a retreat in the face of violence.
Mohammad was born 635 AD. He was illiterate. He never wrote anything. The koran was, contrary to the lies of Muslim clerics, not written down for hundreds of years later, after Ishaq completed the one and only record of Mohammads life and sayings. You might say it was Ishaq who wrote the Koran. Before that, it was passed along from memory, and we know just how well that works.
Referred to as the Sira, or Biography, Ishaqs Hadith Collection is comprised of oral reports from Muhammad and his companions. It provides the only written account of Muhammads life and the formation of Islam composed within two centuries of the prophets death. There is no earlier or more accurate source.
It's in print and available for about 29$.
Much of it can be read here:
The Kerala School was a school of mathematics and astronomy founded by Madhava of Sangamagrama in Kerala, South India which included as its prominent members Parameshvara, Nilakantha Somayaji, Jyeshtadeva, Achyuta Pisharati, Melpathur Narayana Bhattathiri and Achyuta Panikkar. It flourished between the 14th and 16th centuries and has its intellectual roots with Aryabhata who lived in the 5th century. The lineage continues down to modern times but the original research seems to have ended with Narayana Bhattathiri (1559-1632). These mathematician-astronomers were responsible for a number of mathematical breakthroughs, particularly in the fields of mathematical analysis, infinite series, calculus, trigonometry, geometry and algebra.
The intelligence of an Arab rises as high as the faculty of imitation. Put him on a motor-car or a locomotive engine, and after a certain time of apprenticeship, they will be able to drive it; but if the machine should get out of order, he will be quite incapable of repairing it, and still less could he make a new one.
Islam was not a torch, as has been claimed, but an extinguisher. Conceived in a barbarous brain for the use of a barbarous people, it was-and it remains-incapable of adapting itself to civilization. Wherever it has dominated, it has broken the impulse towards progress and checked the evolution of society.
Islam is all that the unimaginative brain of a Bedouin, obstinately faithful to ancestral pagan practices, has been able to produce. Lacking the gift of imagination, the Bedouin copies, and in copying he distorts the original.
Thus Muslim law is only the Roman Code revised and "corrected" by Arabs; in the same way Musulman science is nothing but Greek science interpreted by the Arab brain; and again, Musulman architecture is merely a distorted imitation of the Byzantine style.
The Muslim mind is the most stagnant of minds on the globe, stagnation devoid of anything but parasitized progress for almost 1500 years.
The Arabs overwhelmed civilized neighbors by means of sheer physical force and barbarity. Those whom they conquered were always much more civilized than these barbarian Muslims, whose primary interests were physical loot, carnality, and the joy of bloodshed using raw power--Bedouin values and virtues sanctioned by Islam.
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."
Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899)
>>The non-fundamentalist muslims are scared to death of the fundamentalists. They don't even know where to start.<<
They need to realize that the backlash from a nuclear attack on a U.S. city would envelope them as well.
Take care, hope to see you and Mata Sherry soon.
5.56mm
Bump
It's pretty much the truth. Islam IS in danger and I think the average Muslim understands this but doesn't quite know which reaction will help it best. Do they get angry and fight the west, or do they stand up to their own. Basically, most think it safer to stand up against the west.
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