Why Have Muslim Scholars Been Undervalued Throughout Western History?

Bakir Tarabishy's Muslim Reading Room ^ | Article not dated | Bakir Tarabishy

[Benoit Baldwin]

In the name of Allah, the Most-Merciful, the All-Compassionate   Why Have Muslim Scholars Been Undervalued Throughout Western History? By Bakir Tarabishy   The history books that fill our bookshelves are indispensable recollections of past civilizations’ glories and failures, achievements and abominations. Unfortunately, history can never be completely objective, since it is written by men, and men have a tendency to restrict their thoughts to a single point of view. While history has created in our minds many heroes from murderers, and criminals from saints, one of its greatest crimes is the almost complete omission of the debt the West owes to Islam and the Muslims. W. Montgomery Watt describes the problem: Because Europe was reacting against Islam it belittled the influence of Saracens and exaggerated its dependence on its Greek and Roman heritage. So today an important task for us is to correct this false emphasis and to acknowledge fully our debt to the Arab and Islamic world. (Ghazanfar, Islamic World and the Western Renaissance) Students in Western Universities might have heard that Muslims were once leaders in science, but their accomplishments are often belittled, and their scientists are reduced to but borrowers who translated Greek and Persian works then assumedly hid them on a bookshelf so the West can later expand and build on them once it awakes from its sleep during the dark age. Donald Cardwell, in the Fontana History of Technology, claims that technologies imported into Europe during the Dark Ages "originated in China and India and were merely passed on by the Arabs." While cultural bigotry plays a major role in this distortion of the facts, the achievements of the Muslims have been left out of Western historical records as a result of the hatred of Islam embedded in the Judeo-Christian world, which shall be traced to many factors. Before thoughtlessly calling out "conspiracy" as many Muslims today so often do, one must show that the Muslims actually did have an integral role in scientific development. Due to the wealth of achievements, however, this is not very hard to find. The book of Allah and the example of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings upon him) set the basis for an intellectual tradition in the Islamic world which relied on reason and honesty. The purpose of knowing the natural world in Islam is to reveal the signs that Allah set in his creation. "We shall show them Our portents on the horizon and within themselves until it will be manifest unto them that it is the Truth" (The Holy Quran, 41:53). While Greek philosophy was based on the relativity of truth and change, in Islam, as Seyyed Hossein Nasr comments: The arts and sciences came to possess instead a stability and a ‘crystallization’ based on the immutability of the principles from which they had issued forth; it is this stability that is too often mistaken in the West today for stagnation and sterility. (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/nasr.html) The Muslims made numerous advances in many fields, one the most important being physics. They received the physics texts of the Greeks, then translated, corrected, and expanded on them greatly. The basis of the study of optics can be attributed directly to the Muslims. Al-Hassen bin Al-Haythem is considered the founder of this field. He and Al-Beirouni also logically came to the conclusion, in disagreement with Aristotle, that the speed of light is constant and that light is composed of extremely small particles moving at extremely high speeds, which is the basis of the quantum nature of light, an endlessly celebrated tribute to 20th century science (Mahmoud 112-113; Davies 29). Muslim scholars also laid the foundations of mathematics. Muslims were the first to recognize the importance of and use the zero effectively, borrowed from the Indians, bringing to Europe what is now called "Arabic numerals". Otherwise, the scientists and mathematicians of Europe would probably still be counting on their fingers or fumbling with clumsy roman numerals when analyzing data. Muhammad bin Mousa Al-Khawarizmi is considered the founder of modern algebra, and the mathematicians that followed made ever more impressive contributions. Ghiath Edden Al-Kashi, approximated pi to 16 places past the decimal point. The system know as Pascal’s triangle, which assists in factoring equations in the form of (a + b)n, was developed by Al-Karkhi, and not Louis Pascal. Later Muslim mathematicians were able to factor equations as complex as fourth degree equations; fifth degree equations are impossible to factor. (Mahmoud 137-147) The contribution of Muslim mathematicians to algebra is integral to the development of all sciences as mathematics is frequently referred to as the language of science. Newton would have had quite a difficult time quantitatively describing his laws of motion without using the algebra first implemented by the Muslims. The Muslims made monumental strides in the practice and study of medicine. Ibn Sina’s text the Canon of Medicine, was used as a text in Europe for centuries later, and its popularity dwarfed the books of Galen and Hippocrates. Physicians like Abul Qasim al-Zahrawi, Ibn Sina, and Ali Abbas, wrote texts on surgery that would form the foundations of Western Surgery (Shustery 152-153). A story by the Muslim physician Usamah bin al-Manqaz serves as a good example of the superiority of Muslims doctors over their European contemporaries: Among the marvels of the medical affairs on incident is this that Sahib Munitrah wrote to his uncle that there was need of a doctor to treat his companions. My uncle sent a Christian doctor, Thabit, to them, but he came back within ten days. We asked him, "Have you been able to treat the patients in such a short period?" He said, "They had brought to me a soldier who had a boil on one of his feet. When a bandage dipped in the juice of Linjah (a plant) was applied, the abscess got burst. There was another patient, a woman whose dry and chapped skin had developed itch and was giving her trouble. I kept her on a restricted diet as a preventive and tried to make her dry skin moist. But suddenly an English doctor appeared on the scene and told the people there about me, "What does he know of medical science and treatment of patients?" Then he asked the soldier with the abscess on his foot whether he would like to live with on leg or die with both. The soldier said he would prefer to live with one leg only. So the soldier and a sharp axe were brought and I was witness to this scene. The English doctor straightened his leg on a wooden board and asked the soldier (executioner, Tr.) to chop off his leg with a single stroke of his axe. He made a stroke with the axe, and I was a witness to that, and found that it failed to sever the leg. So he made a second attempt. The bone marrow was thrown out and the patient died immediately. The author then reveals how the English doctor poured water on the woman with dry skin, and she too died a sudden, painful death. (http://www.erols.com/gmqm/sibai10.htm) While historians have written many books on the high level of sophistication and learning of the Muslims compared to the Europeans during the dark ages, few have thought to make the connection between Muslim science and the scientific explosion that was to occur later in Europe. The dependence of the latter on the former, however, is immense. It would not be controversial to say that the scientific revolution that took place in 17th Europe could not have occurred without the help of the Muslims. The maelstrom brought upon Europe by the intellectual tradition taken from the Muslim world had far-reaching consequences on European life. Slowly as education spread throughout Europe, with Universities arising in the major cities, the authority of science grew exponentially. Even the powerful Church of Rome would soon go down as it foolishly tried to challenge rationality and scientific proofs with superstitions and the fading doctrine of papal authority. The West would take this tradition and run amok with it, venturing in directions never before taken by humanity. Soon Europe, which was during Islam’s golden age dismissed by Ibn Khaldun as "those parts", had superseded the Muslim World in every way imaginable: scientifically, militarily, economically, and administratively. (Eaton 32-33) However, a perplexing relationship existed between the Muslim world and Europe. It was not one of mutual reverence and respect, nor was it one of a father-culture, daughter-culture nature. There was an overpowering sentiment of hate embedded in European culture that outweighed any benefit or advancement the Muslims would give to them. For hundreds of years the Muslims would take a permanent place in the forefront of the European mind. Wave after wave of Muslim armies crashed into Europe, coming with superior military training, unseen technology, and a culture alien to all what the European knew. Gai Eaton explains: The "menace of Islam" had remained the one constant factor amidst change and transformation and it had been branded on the European consciousness. The mark of that branding is still visible… "The fact remains", says the Tunisian writer Hichem Djaït, "that medieval prejudices insinuated themselves into the collective unconsciousness of the West at so profound a level that one may ask, in terror, whether they can ever be extirpated from it." (30-31) This fear would turn into hate and aggression as Europe regained its strength. The Muslims also would serve as a means for Europe to do so. These "pagans" as Europeans saw them, would be the perfect enemy for Europeans to rally together. They did so, quite pathetically, in the crusades. The crusades, in terms of human losses, were one of the most lopsided military campaigns in history, with the exception of the savage massacres of Muslim civilians by the Christian armies. However, the crusades, initially being a crushing defeat for the Christians, would introduce them to the enormity of the gap between them and the Muslims. At the same time, Europeans scholars were learning at the hands of the Muslims in Spain. The translated Greek works would introduce the Europeans to an indigenous intellectual tradition they never knew existed. This helped spark a new self-confidence among the scholars of Europe. Unfortunately, the scholars of Europe were torn between their intellectual loyalty and the strong hatred of their teachers present in their culture. Karen Armstrong explains: The Arabs in particular were a light to the Christian West and yet this debt has rarely been fully acknowledged. As soon as the great translation work had been completed, scholars in Europe began to shrug off this complicating and schizophrenic relationship with Islam and became very vague indeed about who the Arabs really were… There is an unhealthy repression and doublethink about people who are at one and the same time guides, heroes, and deadly enemies. This is very clear in the scholarship about Islam. (64-65, 225-226) This hatred, however, was, for the most part of Islamic history, one-sided. The Muslims had little reason to hate, or even to be concerned about Europe. To them it was a land of barbarism and backwardness, of a foreign landscape and weather. The battle of Poiters, for example, is considered by the Europeans as one of the major turning points in history, where the French armies repelled a Muslim raid into southern France. However, rarely is the battle mentioned by Muslim historians, and when it is mentioned it is described as but a trivial raid. (Armstrong 42) Another factor that plays alongside the long-standing hatred of Islam in Europe is the phenomenon known as orientalism. This concept was first articulated by Edward Said in his landmark book Orientalism, which is now considered required reading for anyone studying Middle Eastern culture or history. Orientalism is the result of the elaboration of the imaginary distinction between East and West: geographically, culturally, morally, and intellectually. The result of orientalism are claims that go along the lines of " ‘We’ are like this, but ‘they’, for unexplainable reasons, are fundamentally different, and in due course, inferior." This in turn serves as justification for "Us" to rule "Them", to exploit "Them", to guide "Them" to our enlightened ways. Academic orientalism gave rise to arrogant, seemingly humanistic ideals which drove imperialism, whose effects are felt very painfully in the Muslim, as well as most of the third, world. As Said explains it: It [orientalism] is… a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts; it is an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distinction (the world is made up of two unequal halves, Orient and Occident) but also of a whole series of "interests" which, by such means as scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological description, it not only creates but also maintains; it is rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world; it is, above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political (as with a colonial or imperial establishment), power intellectual (as with reigning sciences like comparative linguistics or anatomy, or any of the modern policy sciences), power cultural ( as with orthodoxies and canons of taste, texts, values), power moral (as with ideas about what "we" do and what "they" cannot do or understand as "we" do). Indeed, my real argument is that Orientalism is—and does not simply represent—a considerable dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the Orient than it does with "our" [Western] world. (12) [Italics in original text] One may ask after looking at the reasons why Muslim scholars are vastly undervalued in Western books is "Why should we care now?" The scholars are dead. The ink in the history books has dried. What good will it bring Muslims, besides a headache, to raise this issue now? It is done to restore confidence to the Muslim Ummah, to remind believers what is needed to be great again. The Muslims ruled from France to India, not only because of being blessed with the true message, but also of being superior to the conquered people in all other "worldly" ways. The Muslims would have never conquered the Persians without superior military planning and tactics. The people of the Roman Empire in greater Syria and North Africa would have never converted to Islam if the Muslims were not materially superior to the Romans. The Khatib who gives the Friday sermon, who believes that Muslims will become great again once they start using their miswaks more often, is missing the whole story. Islam does not spread through prayer and piety—people go to the Jannah through prayer and piety. Islam provides a system that allows individuals to reach their fullest potentials in this life, and to encourage worship that allows individuals to reach their fullest potentials in the next. Studying the lives of the Muslim scholars also provides modern-day Muslims with a portrayal of the prototypical modern scientist. He is one who devotes his efforts to discovering Allah’s signs in this world and who tries to direct his or her discoveries those that produce social benefit. For the Westerner, it is important to change these historical inaccuracies to help improve the relations between the West and the Muslim world by finally acknowledging the enormous debt owed to the Muslims. However, as the celeritous progress of Western science pushes on, it is more likely that the increasing arrogance and faith in Western science with its purely Western (Greek) origins will keep this overdue apology from occurring. While a historian may mention "Avicenna" or "Averroes" fleetingly in one of his or her books, the problem is that what is left out is far greater than what is told. The eminent historian George Sarton criticized those who "will glibly say ‘The Arabs simply translated Greek writings, they were industrious imitators…’ This is not absolutely untrue, but is such a small part of the truth, that when it is allowed to stand alone, it is worse than a lie." Works Cited The Holy Quran. Armstrong, Karen. "Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today’s World". Doubleday: New York, 1991. Davies, Paul. "Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature". Penguin: London, 1995. Eaton, Gai. "Islam and the Destiny of Man". The Islamic Texts Society: Cambridge, 1994. Mahmoud, Yusuf. "Al-Injazat Al-Ilmiyya fil Hadara Al-Islamiyya". Dar Al-Bashir: Amman, 1996. Reichmann, Felix. "The Sources of Western Literacy: The Middle Eastern Civilizations". Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, 1980. Said, Edward. "Orientalism". Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1978. Shustery, A. M. A. "Outlines of Islamic Culture". Sh. Muhammad Ashraf: Lahore, 1976.

[sinkspur]

What happened? What the hell did all this "scholarship" do for nations run by tyrants and royal families?

If these enlightened folks would act like civilized human beings, they might be taken a little more seriously.

[CatoRenasci]

The battle of Poiters, for example, is considered by the Europeans as one of the major turning points in history, where the French armies repelled a Muslim raid into southern France. However, rarely is the battle mentioned by Muslim historians, and when it is mentioned it is described as but a trivial raid. (Armstrong 42)

Inaccuracies such as this -- the battle was Tours in 732 -- and the generally uncritical attitude of Moslem scholarship, not to say the censorship of anything that did not accord with whoever was then in power's idea of what was Islamically acceptable is the main reason Western scholars have not taken too much Moslem scholarship seriously in recent times.

Curiously, among the most critical are the British, who are widely known for their Arabist tendencies and abiding interest in Arabic language and countries.

While the hostilities between Christendom and Islam surely played a factor, basically the problem is that while the West built on foundations from Greece and Rome, yes, enriched upon and added to greatly by Arab scholars in the middle ages, the West has continued to develop intellectually, while Arab intellectual development is stuck somewhere between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance.

I'm sure the Moslem writers don't like to dwell on battles they lost: what do they say about Lepanto (1571) and the two Sieges of Vienna (1529 and 1683)?

[FairWitness]

"This hatred, however, was, for the most part of Islamic history, one-sided. The Muslims had little reason to hate, or even to be concerned about Europe. To them it was a land of barbarism and backwardness, of a foreign landscape and weather. The battle of Poiters, for example, is considered by the Europeans as one of the major turning points in history, where the French armies repelled a Muslim raid into southern France. However, rarely is the battle mentioned by Muslim historians, and when it is mentioned it is described as but a trivial raid."

Well, there you have it. They were just toying with us (the West).

All the Federales say,
they could have caught him anyday,
they only let him go so long,
out of kindness, I suppose.
(From the ballad of Poncho and Lefty, by Willie Nelson)

[ArcLight]

The essay itself might provide a hint:

However, a perplexing relationship existed between the Muslim world and Europe. It was not one of mutual reverence and respect, nor was it one of a father-culture, daughter-culture nature. There was an overpowering sentiment of hate embedded in European culture that outweighed any benefit or advancement the Muslims would give to them.

For hundreds of years the Muslims would take a permanent place in the forefront of the European mind. Wave after wave of Muslim armies crashed into Europe, coming with superior military training, unseen technology, and a culture alien to all what the European knew.

Maybe the "wave after wave of Muslim armies" left behind a few disagreeable memories?

[curmudgeonII]

It is true that most of our present day knowlege of the classic writers {Aristotle, etc.] came to us from Muslim sources---frequently via Spain.

[patlaw_guy]

But what have you done for me lately? :)

[wideawake]

A few issues:

(1) The more we learn, the more we realize that Islam's intellectual accomplishments were actually the accomplishments of the host cultures (Persia, the Estern Roman Empire) which they parasitically absorbed and then appropriated. Muslims are continually claiming that these were really Islamic creations - but the facts are the facts.

(2) The Muslim scholars who came up with original contributions in mathematics, astronomy and literature (like the brilliant Ibn Rushd) were rejected by succeeding generations of Muslims themselves as being too secular, too preoccupied with matters of no consequence or suspect of paganism because of their admiration for Greeks like Aristotle, Archimedes and Galen.

(3) Many of these so-called Muslim contributors to culture were actually straining against the primitivism of Islamic culture and morality - the greatest "Muslim" poet in world literature, Omar Khayyam, was a writer of drinking songs which hinted at ribald merriment.

(4) Islam is at its historical best when it is conquering, enslaving and exploiting the cultural products of subdued peoples. It has proved singularly incapable of producing much of any value.

While Muslim scholars preserved the biological and astronomical researches of Aristotle they did not build upon them and Muslim clerics eventually condemned their study - but when Christians got hold of these texts two centuries later, the head of the Dominican order of priests called out for the resumption of scientific experimentation. Within two generations Francis Bacon (also a cleric) was carrying on innovative research and Fr. Jean Buridan at the University of Paris was correcting Aristotle's data and formulating the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The few Muslims who tried to carry the work forward were isolated by society and had no disciples. In the Christian world innovator followed upon innovator in such rapid succession that the Europe which was in continual danger of being engulfed by Islamic barbarism in the millenium leading up to the 1640s was striding as a benevolent ruler through Muslim lands by the 1800s.

To this day Islamic countries are cultural and economic parasites - dependent upon the West they despise for the most rudimentary of modern technologies.

[ml/nj]

The Muslims made numerous advances in many fields, one the most important being physics. They received the physics texts of the Greeks, then translated, corrected, and expanded on them greatly.

This is true. But it all happened a thousand years ago.

Can any Moslim defender cite anything that any Moslim has created in the past 500 years that holds any value for a non-Muslim. Art? Science? Music? Medicine? Literature? Teach me!

ML/NJ

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Why have Muslim scholars been undervalued? Perhaps because they write a lot of anti-Judeo-Christian and revisionist history BS.-

---

Bismillahir Rahmaanir Raheem, 1998

Sufi vs Salafi: The Pot Calls the Kettle Black

It is indeed a sad day when the death of Muslim scholars draws flesh-eating detractors to the fore like bees to honey. The bodies of Shaikh Ibn Baz and just recently, Shaikh al-Bani (May Allah be pleased with them) were barely settled in their earthly graves, when the first wave of attacks began to surface. One can't help but question the mindset of a Muslim who challenges the credibility of beloved and revered scholars with such reckless abandon as if they never did a "mustard seed" of good for the Ummah.

These scholars were men....not saints. They were earthly beings....not divine beings. As such, they were fallible. They made mistakes...just like human-beings are prone to do. What is the purpose of exposing the shortcomings of dead scholars? Why the grandstanding at the expense of the dead? Is it for publicity? Or is it a sinister design to lure the zealous followers out into the open and force them into a defensive posture?

I, for one, am not amazed by some of what these scholars proclaim. I don't go into fits of rage and convulsions when I hear or read a fatwaa that I find disagreeable. I simply choose not to accept or follow the bad fatwaa. It doesn't mean that I go around proclaiming that scholar "deviant".

This ummah has unfortunately become so polarized and so flooded with taqleed and hizbitiyyah that when we see two different opinions on an issue we feel that we must reject one as wrong, deviant, bidah etc. while never giving thought to the notion that both positions could be valid. What is truly amazing is how this difference in opinion is played out amongst the followers of the scholars. The Imamate of the four schools of Fiqh (Maliki, Shafi, Hanbali, Hanafi) differed on matters....they sat amongst one another as talib and ustaadh. They never attacked one another the way those who claim to be adherents to their teachings attack one another today.

Similarly almost daily, I'm encountered by a so-called Salafi brother (my contention is that there are no Salaf still living today...but then I don't believe that the food of the Christians and Jews is halal either because there are no Ahle Kitab still around today) denouncing one scholar/martyr after another...Maududi, Shaheed Syed Qutb, Shaheed Hassan al-Banna, Shaheed Abdallah Azzam,... and contemporaries like Shaikh Omar Abdel-Rahmaan (May Allah hasten his release) and Mujahid Ussama Bin Ladin (May Allah protect him and grant him victory over the infidels). But this was not the way of Ibn Taymiyyah (RA) the one the same so-called Salafi brother proclaims as "Shaikul Islam."

In his fatwaa regarding the jihad against the Tatars, Shaikh Ibn Taymiyyah (RA) was emphatic about what he considered "setting aside arguments over the lesser kufr to join forces against the greater kufr" that is corrupting the Islamic way of life and occupying the Muslim lands. Now when Mujahid Ussama Bin Ladin heeds the advice of Ibn Taymiyyah and declares that his beef is not with the other Islamic jihadist groups and pledges to work with them...when Bin Ladin heeds the words of the Prophet (saaws) as related by Aisha (ra) and others and declares Jihad against the Kufr forces occupying Muslim lands, he is now betrayed by his own brothers who claim to be Salafi.

This is not the way even of Shaikh Bin Baz (may Allah be pleased with him) who wrote a letter to Shaikh Sad al-Husayyin regarding his essay refuting Jamaat at-Tableegh after being a member of them for many years. In the letter Shaikh Bin Baz writes:

"It is no secret that I say I was not pleased by your letter nor did my chest open toward it as this path you have taken does not benefit the dawah in any way as it only destroys and does not build and it only corrupts and does not rectify and its harm is greater than its good."

"Your letter has been misused by those who have no insight in order for them to raise enmity and to impute takfeer (declare as a non-Muslim) to some of the Tableegh. Some [have misused your letter] to declaring the blood of Tableegh lawful - and refuge is with Allah. "

"And Allah subhaanu wa taala forbade us to insult the kuffaar (unbelievers) if that leads to insulting Allah; so how about insulting the Muslims if that leads to fleeing from the truth and staying away from it and those who call to it? The duty (al-waajib) is that YOU STRIVE FOR RECTIFYING NOT CORRUPTING AND THAT YOU MIX WITH THEM AND INDICATE TO THEM REGARDING WHAT SOME OF THEM MIGHT FALL INTO FROM ERROR WITH GENTLENESS AND SOFTNESS NOT HARSHNESS AND SEVERITY"

I call the Ikwhaani to this issue because of the series of crisis that are besetting the Ummah. While we are busy lobbing dirtbombs at one another 200 Muslim men, women, and children are dying everyday in Iraq. The United States has joined forces with her former enemy, Russia, to combat Islam in the Caucasus Lands, the Zionist leader has caved into pressure and is poised for renewed oppressive measures against the Palestinians, and the Clinton-Sharif Deal hammered out weeks ago under the cover of "emergency" meetings over a CIA-engineered Kashmir crisis, is finally paying dividends. Sharif gets to keep the millions he owes the Pakistan Government for some nice digs near Tony Blair or near Mr. Kabbani's place in Beverly Hills, California. Washington D.C. on the other hand, gets their "clear and present danger" motive for sanctions and/or occupation of more Muslim land albeit for the ultimate "prize"... further de-stabilization of the sub-continent (the gateway to the potential launchpad of the Khilafah) and control of the "Islamic Bomb".

The time has come for heeding the words of Shaikul Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (RA) and putting aside our differences to form a united front in combating the forces of kufr occupying Muslim land and subjecting it's people to oppression and tyranny.

We Muslims must recognize that our common enemy is using Palestine as a smoke screen. The Jew is the not the least bit concerned about settling in a homeland. Yahudi wants the whole world and included in it are the Muslim lands. History bears witness that Yahudi uses the Christian nations and the blood of Christian sons to fight their battles and establish Zionist hegemony around the world. For they have understood the power of money.

"Give me control of the money of a country and I care not who makes her laws." (Meyer Rothschild)

"The Second World War is being fought for the defense of the fundamentals of Judaism." (Statement by Rabbi Felix Mendlesohn, Chicago Sentinel, October 8, 1942)

"We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent." (Jewish Banker Paul Warburg,February 17, 1950, as he testified before the U.S. Senate).

We Muslims are (and should be) the world's foremost authorities on Jews. Our Qur'an doesn't offer us details on how to make salaat but it spells out in crystal clear terms, the nature of Yahudi. Therefore it is a compulsory upon us to resist this occupation of Muslim lands and root out the festering Zionist-Crusader cancer wherever we find it.

Even Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the six founding fathers designated to draw up The Declaration of Independence of America, spoke before the Constitutional Congress in May 1787, and asked that Jews be barred from immigrating to America. He said:

"IN WHATEVER COUNTRY JEWS HAVE SETTLED IN ANY GREAT NUMBERS, THEY HAVE LOWERED ITS MORAL TONE; depreciated its commercial integrity; have segregated themselves and have not been assimilated; HAVE SNEERED AT AND TRIED TO UNDERMINE THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION UPON WHICH THAT NATION IS FOUNDED by objecting to its restrictions; have built up a state within a state; and when opposed have tried to strangle that country to death financially, as in the case of Spain and Portugal.

For over 1700 years the Jews have been bewailing their sad fate in that they have been exiled from their homeland, they call Palestine. But, Gentlemen, SHOULD THE WORLD TODAY GIVE IT TO THEM IN FEE SIMPLE, THEY WOULD AT ONCE FIND SOME COGENT REASON FOR NOT RETURNING. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE VAMPIRES, ANDVAMPIRES DO NOT LIVE ON VAMPIRES. THEY CANNOT LIVE ONLY AMONG THEMSELVES. THEY MUST SUBSIST ON CHRISTIANS AND OTHER PEOPLE NOT OF THEIR RACE. If you do not exclude them, in less than 200 years OUR DESCENDANTS WILL BE WORKING IN THE FIELDS TO FURNISH THEM SUSTENANCE, WHILE THEY WILL BE IN THE COUNTING HOUSES RUBBING THEIR HANDS. (i.e. Jewish dominated Wall Street in New York City)

The Mother of the Believers, Aisha (ra) reported that she heard the Prophet (saaws) say: "If I survive, I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arab Peninsula"

No modern-day scholar sitting in a palace in Medina or Mecca can go back on what the Prophet (saaws) enjoined and declare fatwaa opening the Muslim lands to the occupying kufr military forces.

Omar ibn Khattab (ra) declared Palestine (al-Quds) an Islamic Waqf to be entrusted to the Muslim Ummah forever.

No modern-day scholar sitting in a villa in Italy with thikr beads can hold a candle to Omar(ra) who was indeed one of the Salaf.

This latest round of bashing between the so-called Salafi and Palazzi/Kabbani camps (don't mention Sufi because these two pro-Zionists give sincere Sufi a bad name) is so silly and misleading that I hope that it stops. It's an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has researched the two camps. As far as I'm concerned, this argument is basically one of my Shaikh is less Zionist than your Shaikh. One camp is a "friend of Israel" and declares that Islam's claim on al-Quds is invalid. The other camp tries to legitimize the presence of 30 (Thirty) Zionist military outposts in the Arab Peninsula and clandestine deals with the Zionist leadership.

Now I remember what that story was about....something about the pot calling the kettle black.

Fi-Amanillah,
Jamaaluddin al-Haidar
Support Independent Islamic Media
http://www.ummah.net.pk/albayan

[ChadGore]

Why Have Muslim
Like a whining child needing attention, they try and bomb their way into a debate, and riot their way into relevancy.

It is not the mark a civilised society to allow that.

If Ralpg Nader had sprayed a inosent americans with exploding jet fuel, incinerating their bodies where they stand, would you let him into the debates? Would consider his point of view more credible ?

It's no differant for Osama Bin Laden.

[wideawake]

You are correct - many Greek texts were preserved in Arabic manuscript.

However, very few Muslims used these texts and they were in deep disfavor in the Muslim intellectual world (such as it was) in the period following the 10th century.

If it were not for Christian monks these texts would never have gained a wide circulation in the West and the originals we have would not be preserved in the East. The texts began to die out in the Arab world after the 1100s.

Basically, Islam had about a 600 year headstart in natural science and completely dropped the ball.

[GOPJ]

In very short time, Muslims who move to the United States do very well. The repressive countries they come from inhibit original thinking.

I enjoyed your comments.

While the hostilities between Christendom and Islam surely played a factor, basically the problem is that while the West built on foundations from Greece and Rome, yes, enriched upon and added to greatly by Arab scholars in the middle ages, the West has continued to develop intellectually, while Arab intellectual development is stuck somewhere between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance.

[Paraclete]

First Ebonics, now Arobics?

[DSHambone]

Modern Islamic Scholar = Oximoron

For a few more:
Professional Arab Army
Arab Unity
Saudi Tank Maintenance

[ArcLight]

Actually, it's all rather like the Afrocentric scholars going on and on about the glories of ancient Egypt. All very interesting, but...so what? It has virtually nothing to do with the modern world.

[independentmind]

You make some pretty convincing claims about the superiority of Western Civilization. Are the West's differences with Islam irreconcilable? If so, what implications does that have for our future course of action? Do you recommend conquering all of Islam?

[liberallarry]

It's important to distinguish between Muslims and Muslim culture. Muslims living in the West are important contributors to the arts, sciences, engineering, and commerce. These same people living in their own countries and cultures produce almost nothing.

[parsifal]

It looks to me like you have unwittingly uncovered a powerful new battle-cry for Americans!

Kill The Terrorists!They Invented Algebra!!!