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 ...
I've been wondering whether the above was the case. I also question 1.5 billion muezzies. I suspect 1.4 billion of them were converted at the point of the sword. Also another reason so many don't speak out. They know the penalty for infidelity.
Yeah? What about burning the library at Alexandria? My God, I woould love to know what was in that library.
And wiping out the Aramaic Christians in Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Once a bloodthirsty cult, always a bloodthirsty cult.
Database miners' alert: There was an extensive thread a couple years ago on that topic.
A little known fact is that millions of Europeans were abducted by both parties to become slaves.
If today's modernists argue that Christianity and science was incompatible. Then one can surely argue that Islam and science are not as well. However this is not what they say, they may allude to this sentiment but like all post-modern logic, they will not come out and say it only will offer a token acknowledgement of their leadership in the sciences a long long time ago. As the dawn of science advanced further and the enlightenment took hold in europe, Islam began to fade and has begun to look inward and found that the world being forged by western ideas where in fact incompatible with their stated idiology. had it not been for the Ottoman empire, Islam may surely have been relegated to the dustheap of history
That is my understanding too. At the time the Mediterranean world was Romanized, Christan well educated and prosperous. So it took a while to ruin what 4,000 years of civilization had built but the Muslims managed it.
We would be doing the world a favor if we reintroduced western civilization to the nation of Islam.
See #18. Anyone who doesn't think the Moors had a valuable influence on the West should ask themselves the following:
What is MCXII divided by VII?
Nobody in the Roman empire ever asked themselves that question. And forget about the whole concept of "remainders" in that computation, too.
They still do
why think of where we would be without such great inventions as the Donkey bomb,shoe bomb etc!!
I, for one, blame this on the USA and Bush.
Even liberals that I ask are totally stumped when I ask them to name an accomplished Islamic of the past thousand years...
Of course they originated in India.
Of course the Mongol Horde had nothing to do with the collapse of the Islamic Empire.
Arabs didn't even have a written language until the 7th century *AD*
He posited that it would not occur until private space travel developed. That it would be driven by tourism, not exploration. And that those who could afford the substantial price would be attracted by human activities possible on the Moon, but not possible on Earth. (An example he gave was flying with artificial wings -- the Icarus myth, come true.)
Recent events such as Rutan's winning of the X Prize, and Virgin Airlines offering tourist travel, are confirming the sound logic of what Bove wrote so long ago. He's a technically based author like Arthur C Clarke.
Congressman Billybob
Click for latest, "Appointing Justices to the Supreme Court."
Our numbering system comes from India, the arabs borrowed it from the Indians (while busy killing them as quickly as they could) and we got it from the arabs.
The concept of "zero" was also used by the Mayan Civilization of Central America.
> We would have come out of the middle ages much sooner had it not been for the twin axis of evil of the Muslims and Vikings.
WTF? The Vikings were a minor blip, basically only covering Scandinavia, Britain, a few bits of northern Europe and Russia... and they were pretty much neutered by Christianization by 1100 or so. The "Middle Ages" began to end when the *Italians,* who were in no way inconvenienced by the Vikings got their Rennaissance up and running. That was aided in no small part to the Plague shaking up society and knocking some of the pillars out of the existing power stuctures, like Da Church.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.