Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

What, Exactly, are the Great Achievements of the Islamic World?
moi

Posted on 01/11/2002 8:52:14 AM PST by ml/nj

Today in the WSJ, Karen Elliot House reviews a new book from Bernard Lewis entitled What Went Wrong. She begins this way:

How has it come to pass that a civilization that for centuries led the world in science, medicine, and the arts ...
Does anyone know what contribution the Islamic world made to science besides giving us our number system (admittedly a biggie) and naming a bunch of stars (less big)? Algebra may have Arabic roots linguistically, but I cannot think of a single concept or theorem that we credit to the Arabs. The Greeks are all over geometry. The Arabs supposedly preserved this and passed it along, but did they contribute? I don't know. I'm asking.

Ditto for medicine. What did they do? (Stop the bleeding when they chopped off someones hand?)

And if House just said "Art," maybe, but Arts? The Islamic architecture should certainly be considered "leading," but is there any philosophy or literature that anyone pays attention to along the lines of Maimonades or Aquinas?

ML/NJ


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: clashofcivilizatio; muslimworld; religionofpeace; religionofpieces; suicidebombers
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120 ... 241-247 next last
To: Non-Sequitur
So how come they sit on the floor, don't build roads, can't build irrigation systems, grow crops, produce anything worthwhile?
81 posted on 01/12/2002 5:22:01 AM PST by estpeter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]

To: estpeter
I'll narrow it down with a few assumptions if I may. First, I'll assume that you are talking about the area around what we now think of as Arabia, leaving out Iraq with had canals and irrigation from the Tigris and Euphratres Rivers for centuries prior to Islam. I'll also assume that you are talking about the 8th through 11th centuries when the men I posted about earlier lived because obviously today Arabia has all the things you mentioned.

OK, irrigation and crops. Irrigate from where? Grow crops where? In order to irrigate you need a large body of fresh water to draw from and, if you've ever looked at a map of the area, fresh water is sadly lacking. Now roads. Build roads for what? The camel was the animal best adapted for the area and it made a poor draft animal. Better to load it up and use the caravan trails. Produce anything worthwhile? Scientific knowledge may not be worthwhile in your opinion but the rest of the world, fortunately, thinks otherwise. Finally, sitting on the floor. I suppose that they could have built chairs, except that wood was in limited supply - that's one of the reasons it's called a 'desert'. So sitting on the floor beat standing around.

Hope this was helpful.

82 posted on 01/12/2002 6:36:53 AM PST by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 81 | View Replies]

To: Non-Sequitur
Sorry, try again. Many parts of the world face the same problems, but solve them especially when they are so gifted!? It won't fly. You must get out and travel more.
83 posted on 01/12/2002 11:02:49 AM PST by estpeter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 82 | View Replies]

To: estpeter
Solve what? Irrigation? Roads? Lack of chairs? What? Why try to solve problems that may have no solution, or are not problems in the first place?
84 posted on 01/12/2002 11:08:24 AM PST by Non-Sequitur
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 83 | View Replies]

To: ml/nj
Has anyone mentioned belly dancing?

I hate belly dancing.

85 posted on 01/12/2002 11:10:47 AM PST by Sabramerican
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Redbob
haha.


86 posted on 01/12/2002 11:18:37 AM PST by Dubya
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: estpeter
Sorry, try again. Many parts of the world face the same problems, but solve them especially when they are so gifted!? It won't fly. You must get out and travel more.

Look. I think that I have a more jaded view of the Islamic melieu than most.

But I did ask a serious question, and Non-Sequitur provided the most direct, informative response on the thread. I think you ought to pay more attention to the topic of the thread and less to your (perhaps deserved) hostility to Islam.

ML/NJ

87 posted on 01/12/2002 12:13:30 PM PST by ml/nj
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 83 | View Replies]

Comment #88 Removed by Moderator

To: Salgak
The Mathematical concept of "Zero" can be attributed to the Islamic World.

Thread over. The Arabs have added "zero" to civilization.

89 posted on 02/03/2002 1:02:37 AM PST by jwh_Denver
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: Goldhammer
This bit of drivel is part of the standard PC story. Apparently, europeans were just too stupid to invent their own civilization.

Well, for one thing, Greeks are Europeans.

It involves no shame for modern Europeans to recognize that Medieval civilization was built on a synthesis of Greek/Roman and Hebraic/Christian elements. In the same way, the Golden Age of Islam was built on a synthesis of Greek and Persian elements.

If you think the debt that European civilization owes to the Greeks is PC, your education has been sadly neglected. PC people have actually been attempting to downplay this historical debt for decades, Greeks being much too pale-skinned for their tastes. Read The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant, published pre-PC in 11 volumes from the 30s to the 50s if you are actually interested in learning some facts about the roots of our civilization.

They also have a lot about the great accomplishments of Islamic civilization during its (unfortunately long-past) heyday.

Or possibly you're more interested in denying the facts of history if they conflict with your agenda.

90 posted on 02/03/2002 1:08:17 AM PST by Restorer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 88 | View Replies]

To: jwh_Denver
Kareem Abdul Jabbar invented the Sky Hook and Muhammed Ali invented the "Rope-a-Dope" tactic of Boxing.
91 posted on 02/03/2002 1:10:58 AM PST by Born on the Storm King
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 89 | View Replies]

To: Born on the Storm King
They are Americans so we are back to "zero" for the Arabs. LOL!
92 posted on 02/03/2002 1:14:56 AM PST by jwh_Denver
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 91 | View Replies]

To: John SBM
lmao ... really... i am spewing now.
93 posted on 02/03/2002 1:25:07 AM PST by Robert_Paulson2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 54 | View Replies]

To: matamoros
Indeed! Islam and Nazism: two peas in a pod.
94 posted on 02/03/2002 1:28:06 AM PST by The Great Satan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 79 | View Replies]

To: uglybiker
you meant "desert" as in sand. pounding it, eating it and stealing it. It is our duty to show them now, how to melt it.
95 posted on 02/03/2002 1:31:49 AM PST by Robert_Paulson2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 80 | View Replies]

Comment #96 Removed by Moderator

To: Lent
Any "accomplishments" are largely the result of exploiting the existing dhimmi Christians, Jews, Zorastrians, etc

While in general agreement with your post, I believe that the Muslims do NOT consider that the Zoroastrians are 'dhimmi', people of the book, mostly because they were not. Zoroastrianism was an entirely separatge pagan religion, founded roughly in the same period as Buddhism, but in the Persian Empire. It was an ethical religion, and some of its beliefs passed into the Roman West, most especially the worship of the lesser Zoroastrian deity, Mithras. The symbol of Mithraism was a Sacred Bull, and that of Zoroastrianism was the fire.

While accepting Christians and Jews as followers of the same God, Islam gave the Zoroastrians the choice of converting or being executed. To this day islam has a horror of the 'fireworshippers'. As a result, not one Zoroastrian remains alive in the Persian homeland. A number of refugees fled to India, where they remain, and are known as 'Farsi', Hindu for a Persian. The Zoroastrians believe in a good creator god 'Ahura Mazda' and a nearly equally powerful evil god 'Ahriman'. They are known to their Hindu neighbors especially for their practices in desposing of the bodies of the dead. Instead of burying or cremating corpses, the Farsi leave the bodies exposed in walled courtyards, set aside for the purpose, where they can be eaten down to the bones by birds and other scavengers. This does not improve their reputation in the areas of India where they reside.

97 posted on 02/03/2002 2:21:38 AM PST by Lucius Cornelius Sulla
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 69 | View Replies]

To: Goldhammer
The high middle ages owes its foundation to the Church and Christianity, not to Mohammed and the ancient Greeks.

Do you understand the term "synthesis?" I am not one of those who discounts the critical importance of Christianity in the founding of our civilization. However, Christianity was only one of the roots. The other was ancient Greek civilization, as modified by Rome.

I would never claim that medieval civilization owed much of anything to Mohammed as a person, or to Islam as a religion. However it really does owe a lot to Islamic civilization, which was based on the older Greek and Persian civilizations. The Arabs created little, but they were very effective at combining the elements they found in new and better ways.

One significant reason why the High Middle Ages took off when they did was the infiltration of new Greek works or in some cases better translations. These came from the Moslems, mostly thru Spain, or in some cases Sicily. The Church, which had always had a high regard for Greek philosophy, was faced with the task of figuring out how to fit these new (to them) texts and the ideas they contained into the edifice of Christian theology. This great mental challenge took many decades to be acomplished and created great controversy and was a huge stimulus to intellectual life.

The fact that medieval civilization was greatly influenced by contact with what was at the time the much higher Islamic civilization is not a new or PC idea, although it may be exaggerated by some for that reason. Recognition of this by Western historians goes back for many centuries.

I think you may be confusing a couple of ideas. One is the Afrocentric idea that the Greeks (and therefore Western civ) somehow "stole" technology from Africans and that therefore Western civ is invalid. The other is that all civilizations are influenced by other ideas with which they come in contact.

The second is true, the first is ludicrous. Very few civilizations have arisen in isolated areas. Cross-fertilization of ideas seems to be essential to the development of advanced civilizations. That some of these ideas were transmitted from Islamic cultures to Western cultures is not an insult to the West.

Healthy cultures are willing to absorb good ideas, whatever their source. It's like the English language, which never saw a word it couldn't absorb. Compare this healthy attitude to that of the French, who are trying desperately (and unsuccessfully) to keep their language "pure." Which language is thriving and which is losing influence?

Much of the decline of Islam is based on its isolating itself and rejecting outside influences, as the French language has done, only much more so.

Western culture is the English language of cultures. It thrives on the free and open market of ideas, not rejecting some because they are from outside its bounds.

98 posted on 02/03/2002 2:35:32 AM PST by Restorer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 96 | View Replies]

To: matamoros
Murdered the greatest number of people since the Nazis

I think that would be Pol Pot

99 posted on 02/03/2002 2:43:03 AM PST by KneelBeforeZod
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 79 | View Replies]

Comment #100 Removed by Moderator


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120 ... 241-247 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson