ping
I’m tired of reading crap about Muslims/Africans inventing algebra- they couldn’t even invent the wheel. They were no farther along than the Babylonians or Egyptians thousands of years before them- they could solve scripted word problems that they copied from antiquity, and would today be recognized as a type of problem that we would represent as an algebraic equation... For example, “One of these plus another chicken is three chickens. These is two chickens”. Rene Descartes, an evil white European Christian man, was the sole inventor of what every school child in America and the civilized world today knows as algebra, which is to say symbolic algebra.
The rest of us have been doing it since the time of the Babylonians.
“Earlier this year, as conflict raged in northern Syria, two professors, one Lebanese and the other American, both from elite universities in the Washington, D.C. area, passed the long night at Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, Jordan, drinking tea. They pondered the weighty issues of the region:”
Interesting thesis when one considers that the rise of Islamic extremism started with the decline of the Ottoman Empire and accelerated after Turkey became a republic.
The West does not own anything to islam.
But this ludicrous narrative, that muslims used to be science-loving scholars, or that there used to be advanced muslim civilizations long ago (like Atlantis or ancient astronauts) appears frequently in literature, obviously for the purpose of reinforcing anti-Christian and anti-Western sentiment in the reader. Here is an example from Inorganic Chemistry: A Textbook for Colleges and Schools. By E.J. Holmyard, MA, MSc, DLitt, FIC, etc. Used as a textbook from the 1920s to the 1940s in British schools:
When the empires of Byzantium and Persia were overthrown by the armies of Islam (seventh century A.D.), the Muslim conquerors, after they had settled down, began to encourage learning... the Arabs, who soon developed a passion for the science... therefore the establishment of scientific method is the great achievement of the chemists of Islam... Muslims were the first chemists of the world... Fostered by the Muslim rulers, science in Spain flourished, and chemistry might at the present day have been in a much higher stage of development if the great disaster of the defeat of the Muslims by CHARLES THE HAMMER at Tours in A.D. 732 had not taken place. This triumph of the forces of reaction was a great blow to science in general and chemistry in particular, and although the Moorish power in Spain was not finally overthrown until 1492, irreparable damage had been done.Generations have been raised on this tripe, written by traitors to civilization.
He was inviting them back to the philosophic dialogue that transcended their civilization as they studied the Greek philosophers.
In the 11th century, missing writings of the Greek philosophers were discovered in Spain. The bishop of Toledo gathered Muslim, Jewish and Catholic scholars and proceeded to work on translating all of the newly found philosophic writings into Latin. This effort led to the flowering of Europe's universities as each worked to complete the translations and then adapt the philosophy.
At the same time as the West worked to incorporate the knowledge, the top Muslim imams decided that they would no longer allow the study of the Greek philosophers.
This philosophic dialogue within Europe caused the flowering of the Renaissance. And the demise of thought within the Muslim has stunted their knowledge and they are stuck in the 11th century.
Pope Benedict invited Muslims to join the dialogue the had at one time transformed their culture.
But they said no.
Islam as practiced has waxed and waned throughout history. Unlike some other FReepers, I think that the movement to show Islam in a better light is of benefit to the West.
We need to strengthen moderate Muslims who make up 80% of Muslims worldwide and weaken the radicals who kill for fun and glory.
We need more critical studies of Islam, the Koran and Mohammed, particularly ones that undermine the radicals position without openly attacking all of Islam.
Tell that Lebanese idiot to ask millions of dead and enslaved Hindus, Christians, Jews, animists and Zorastrians what they think of Muslim Medieval “civilization”.
What an ass.
Since the author doesn't know his European history I am suspicious he knows his Arab history.