[Jedi Master Pikachu]

The Muslim world is to be credited with helping preserve much of the knowledge of the Roman Empire, though they are also at least partially responsible for the complete fall of that empire. The number system comes from them (although it is traceable to India). While much of Europe was in the thrall of the Dark Ages (there were advances during that time, but it was a technological dark age, and many skills--how to make cement, for example--were lost), Muslim controlled Iberia thrived.

Give credit where credit is due. Even bad guys can be intelligent and can make contributions to the world.

[saganite]

Even if the Muslims preserved knowledge in Spain they were at best placeholders until the West could recover from it's own bout of madness. Credit where credit may be due but no kudos for advancing science and the arts.

[Young Werther]

The basis for Muslim knowledge? During that first rush of conquest they swept across the Middle East, North Afica and Spain where they met their match at Tours in 763.

Part of their entourage were Jewish slaves who "took care of the housekeeping." When the "Moors" were driven out of Spain by the "Cid" They left behind their Jewish slaves and the classical books and knowledge that the Jewish people had preserved. Yes Muslim scholars would invent the concept of Zero and build upon classical mathematical texts but their contributions were insignificant considering they contributed to the "Dark Ages" and not to the "Age of Enlightenment"

These Jewish knowledge keepers would make their way to Northern Italy where they shared this knowledge with Tony Soprano's forebearers and the FIRST Uiversity was founded.

To this day the modus operandi is the same.

[dhuffman@awod.com]

Conservatives know, should know, that a stopped clock can be trusted to be correct for two fleeting instances per day. The progressives are continually tinkering with Islamic Science and Philosophy (among all other things) to try and make it less wrong always. Hence the phrase, 'the lesser of two evils.'

Either we are equal or we are not. Good people ought to be armed where they will, with wits and guns. NRA KMA

[megatherium]

You're right. The words algebra and algorithm come from the Arabic. Perhaps the wealth of the Islamic world from 900 to 1300 made it the leader in commerce and knowledge (much of which they inherited from the Byzantine Empire they partially conquered). The interesting question is, why did the high Islamic culture collapse and the Europeans rapidly overtake them, after 1300? I think this author gives good insight into that, it had to do with their beliefs about the value of what we now call science and its relationship to faith.

[Eyes Unclouded]

what have they done for us lately