Posted on 03/26/2002 7:38:44 AM PST by JosephW
Berkeley Offers Islamic History Course Online
University of California at Berkeley Extension is launching a new online course on the history of Islam to respond to an increased interest in Islamic studies. The course covers the geography, diversity and politics of Islam in addition to its religious heritage. "After September 11, we saw a tremendous need for a better understanding of this complex and fascinating religious tradition," said Kathleen Rose, curriculum director at UC Berkeley Extension Online. The $535 distance learning course offers flexible self-paced instruction. Students interact with the instructor and other students in the course through e-mail, message boards and online chats. Students may enroll at any time as long as the class is open, and they then have six months to complete the class and take a supervised final examination
To be sure, we all frown upon Berkeley and the attitudes it typically espouses. (I say "typically" because the stench of Berkeley politics does not taint everything there; the physics research at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, for example, is world-class.) But that being said, I fail to see why the Islamic history course should be singled out for criticism on FreeRepublic, instead of, say, the art history course.
Berkeley is radically leftist. It deserves criticism for that, but not for doing what a university ought to be doing right now, which is offering a public course on a suddenly important topic.
.....i agree we should all strive to learn more about Islam.....
.....but one needs to weight what Berkeley will be creating.....
.....patriotic Americans or jihad johnnies.....
.....(hint) they aint got a real good record.....
From the course description:
This broad-ranging course explores the rich and complex history of Islam from the birth of the religion to the present day.
What do you think?
But it is rich and complex.
You don't dismiss the history of China because of what the communist thugs are doing there now, do you?
Death
Destruction
Massacre
Cultural genocide
Despotism Barbarism
Any questions?
You chose to overlook the part that says (paraphrasing): concentrating on the spiritual aspects of Islam...
No, I didn't. Your paraphrase is misleading. The course description mentioned "the religious values of the culture". That's not the same as spirituality, since their "religious values" include beating women and murdering unbelievers.
No, and I don't follow your analogy. The Communists are relative newcomers in Chinese history, and a significant departure from the way Chinese society and culture used to be. Islam, on the other hand, is as it has always been. What Muslims are doing now is what they have always done.
Codswallop. In the past, the wealth and splendor of such cities as Istanbul, Damascus, Baghdad, Samarkand and Tashkent was legendary (and this without oil money). The cities of Arabia boasted many of the greatest libraries and universities in the world. The Arabs led the world in the fields of mathematics and astronomy. They produced great works of literature (such as The Arabian Nights, which I heartily recommend in the Burton translation). They developed musical and artistic traditions--not to mention a cuisine--that are as complex and varied as any in the world. Their trade ships covered the known world. In short, it met all the criteria of a great civilization.
Much of that genius is wasted, now, but to deny that it ever existed is simply knee-jerk xenophobia.
Or lack of coffee. You're right. What do you think happened to make them so primitive (and unproductive) today?
A good answer would probably require as much analysis (and likely produce as little definitive result) as has been spent on the fall of the Roman empire. My personal view of it (too simplistic by far) is that the Ottoman empire came to dominate the Islamic world to such a degree that the long political and economic collapse of that empire dragged the culture down with it. By WWI the Arabs were back to being impoverished nomads with no interest but to kill their Turkish oppressors, while the Turks were simply waiting for a Kemal Atatürk to come and sweep the past away.
Is there anything in Islam itself that would promote the idea of a secular state?
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