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To: kezekiel
PBS produced a film about this called "The Empire of Islam." Here's a link to the section of the website that recaps their contributions in Algebra and Trigonometry, Engineering, Astronomy, Medicine, and Paper & Publishing. No comment on the content from me, because I took the time to look it up but now I have to get back to work, so I don't have time to read it.

Thanks for the link.

I know you said you didn't have time to look, but I just did. There is some stuff to follow up on there but most of the "innovations" seem to be translating information from the original into Arabic, rather than destroying it. For example:

At the House of Knowledge founded in Baghdad by the Abbasid caliph Mamun, scientists translated many texts from Sanskrit, Pahlavi or Old Persian, Greek and Syriac into Arabic, notably the great Sanskrit astronomical tables and Ptolemy's astronomical treatise, the Almagest. Muslim astronomers accepted the geometrical structure of the universe expounded by Ptolemy, in which the earth rests motionless near the center of a series of eight spheres, which encompass it, but then faced the problem of reconciling the theoretical model with Aristotelian physics and physical realities derived from observation.
The bad news is that I surfed around a bit and found this from the description of the life of Muhammad:
Muhammad, surrounded by his followers, lived in Medina for ten years, slowly winning over converts. Muhammad made repeated attempts to attract the Jews to his cause, for example, he directed that believers worship like the Jews in the direction of Jerusalem. Ultimately these attempts failed, and henceforth Muslims prayed in the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca. Muhammad's native town, which had long been a center of paganism, thereby became the center of the true religion, the focal point of the believers' daily prayer, and eventually the object of their annual pilgrimage.

Raiding and warfare were the primary economic activities of the new community in Medina, and the rich caravans organized by the Quraysh of Mecca were particularly attractive targets. In 628, Muhammad finally negotiated a truce with the Meccans and in the following year returned as a pilgrim to the city's holy sites. The murder of one of his followers provoked him to attack the city, which soon surrendered. Muhammad acted generously to the Meccans, demanding only that the pagan idols around the Kaaba be destroyed. Muhammad's prestige grew after the surrender of the Meccans. Embassies from all over Arabia came to Medina to submit to him. Muhammad's extraordinary life and career were cut short by his sudden death on June 8, 632, aged about sixty, less than a decade since he had set off from Mecca with his small band of followers.

This is so cleansed that it doesn't even agree with the Islamic sources: Nothing about slaughtering the Jews who didn't want to be converted; He needed to be "provoked" to attack. To my mind this balderdash renders the enitre site as unreliable.

ML/NJ

65 posted on 01/11/2002 2:00:11 PM PST by ml/nj
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To: ml/nj
If Mohammed died in Medina how is it that the Al Aqsa Mosque, built to cover the spot where his soul ascended into heaven, is in Jerusalem?

Is it that the Al Aqsa Mosque is a sham built only to take away the holiest site of the Jews, Solomon's Temple using a phoney story?

You don't have to answer that.

206 posted on 12/06/2004 10:50:28 PM PST by FreedomCalls (It's the "Statue of Liberty," not the "Statue of Security.")
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