Posted on 12/06/2004 10:19:30 AM PST by quidnunc
The Islamic nations of the world have a population of nearly 1.5 billion, or about one-quarter of the human population of Earth. Yet the gross national product of these nations totals less than half the GNP of Germany.
Poverty is endemic in the Muslim world, despite the fact that most of the world's petroleum deposits and a quarter of our planet's other natural resources lie within these Muslim lands.
The science minister of Pakistan, Atta-ur-Raman, and science adviser Anwar Nasim point out in a recent issue of the British journal Nature that Muslim nations spend only 0.2 percent of their GNP on scientific research, while spending up to seven percent of GNP on their military. They argue that if the nations of Islam put more funding into science, they could create significant economic growth.
Islam once led the world in science.
While Europe wallowed in the poverty and ignorance of the dark ages after the fall of the Roman Empire, the lands of Islam preserved much of the classic learning that was lost in Europe.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at naplesnews.com ...
"While Europe wallowed in the poverty and ignorance of the dark ages."
(I am so sick of this PC garbage!)
If Europe 'wallowed' in anything at all it was due to climatic conditions. Tree rings and ice core samples show there were three periods of intense cold.
http://geowords.com/histbooknetscape/b03.htm
I don't know if it was such a novelty. Nordic mythology also believed the universe had a beginning and would have an end.
Maybe so. I didn't know it.
knowledge of medicine came from Jews.
I thought it came mostly from the Greeks. Not that ancient medical knowledge was all that great. The ancients believed in balancing the "four humors" and bleeding for health, no?
Actually, Saddam did just that. Iraq had/has women scientists.
Of course, thanks to Bush, Iraq may very well revert to sharia.
lol - i don't think your assessment is too accurate. Socialism/Tyranny not Islam is more to blame.
Check out:
http://www.neoperspectives.com/terrorism.htm
The ownership and sovereignty question of the Temple Mount must be resolved before there will be peace in the Holy Land and the Middle East.
It is believed that the Renaissance was in large part the result of El Cid driving the Moors out of Spain, whereupon the Europeans discovered a great deal of science and math in the Mooorish libraries, much of it Greek.
Read about the Dervishes in the Sudan to see what Muslims espouse.
Any thoughtful person who knows history and religion would be anti-Islam. Along with Communism, Naziism, and the Black Death, Islam has been responsible for more death and destruction on the face of the planet than just about anything else since the last asteroid impact. Islam was started by predators. It has spread by predation. It has lived off the decaying corpses of the civilizations it has destroyed. It is a vast, ancient sea of corruption, oppression, fanaticism, and ignorance lapping up against the shores of the present, kept alive by the fortuitous accident of living above huge reserves of petroleum.
"The ownership and sovereignty question of the Temple Mount must be resolved before there will be peace in the Holy Land and the Middle East."
Pardon me for being flippant, but that shouldn't be too difficult. The only 'claim' the muslims have to that piece of real estate is a reference in the koran of a journey to a 'far distant place' that mohammad undertook at night...on a 'magic' horse that had peacock feathers for a tail...Jerusalem as such was never mentioned, that must really have been some magic horse! It covered the distance from Mecca to the Temple Mount (and back) in just one night! (After mohammad had his audience with allah, of course.) What a load of BS. But then, that's all islam is.
Building mosques on the site of other culture's temples is a strategy. The Hindu lost 3,000 temple sites in India.
Read THE LIFE OF MUHAMMAD. See tagline for link.
Such claims always ignore the existance of the Byzantine Empire.
Right. After the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire, not long after there was a fresh wave of invasions by the Muslims from both the east and southeast, the Vikings from the north and the Avars and Magyars from the east. Eventually, these groups were eventually stopped and contained. Beginning in the 11th century, Christendom went on the counteroffensive against the Muslims.
Don't forget the Irish monks. Northumbria in Britain was also a center of learning, I believe. And Mr. Bova seems to have forgotten about the Carlognian Renaissance.
Here's a link you might find interesting to read:
'Moslem Claim to Jerusalem Rests on Wobbly Verse.'
(Snip)
'A commentator in the official Egyptian government weekly, of all places, writes this week that the entire Moslem claim on Jerusalem and El-Aksa is based on a mistaken reading of one chapter of the Quran...' cont:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/print.php3?what=news&id=48845
Velikovsky is the last person I'd go to for an understanding of history (or pretty much anything else).
Oh, Bull.
The specific cases that Mohammedan bigots (yes, that is intentional) cite to try to prove this fantasy are certainly lies.
The two most famous and substantiated are the zero in mathematics and the game of chess. In both cases the Arab merchants were claiming credit in dealing with the "benighted" Europeans for "inventing" things that they had learned from their betters, in this case the declining civilization of the Indian subcontinent. It is apparent they they also did this in carrying ideas and inventions from Europe to India in preceding centuries.
The Arab culture is one that represents the worst of the mercantile: lies, theft, and fraud are all celebrated, so long as they are perpetrated against "infidels." The culture has not changed in five thousand years. There have been many great individuals within this corrupt culture, and there is nothing endemic in the people, just in the culture. Unfortunately the good people are forever soiled by embracing this sick and degenerate society.
It will pass from this world and not be mourned, much as the Nazis, who were embraced by the Arab states in their time. What a surprise!
Vitriolic comments, for sure, but they are my honest beliefs. Though I have never lived in these lands I have more than the average American's dealings with them. Understand, I am not condemning a people, but a society and a culture that has spent the last 1,300 years waging war on my society and 5,000 exacting vengeance for a family feud, all because "God liked the other guys" best.
Tyranny and socialism are the legacies of Robespierre and Marx--both of whom came from the West. They hardly touched Islam (except for a number of the 'Stans).
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