1001 Islamic Inventions 1034
pev writes "There's a new traveling exhibition in the UK entitled 1001 inventions. It contains some of the most interesting inventions from the past few thousand years. The common theme, however, is that they all came from the Islamic world and not the west. In some cases [the list is] quite surprising. For the lazy, the Independent newspaper in the UK printed their top 20 from the exhibition."
Puh leez (Score:0, Insightful)
Now introducing the new and improved vest o' dynamite model!!
Makes me laugh. (Score:1, Insightful)
It's sad . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
. . . when a group of people lets all of their scientific achievements throughout history become overshadowed by religious fundamentalism. Let's hope we don't end up going down the same route here in the States.
(It's even more sad when I have to post anonymously for fear that people who disagree with my post might interpret it to be against their version of Islam and harm myself and my family).
Nothing after 1300 (Score:5, Insightful)
Those inventions aren't Islamic (Score:5, Insightful)
Those are human inventions.
Not Surprising At All (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that such inventiveness and scholarly pursuits largely stopped/stagnated as Muslim countries and culture turned inward.
So what did they invent recently? (Score:2, Insightful)
Islamic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like terrorism isn't "Islamic", these inventions aren't necessarily Islamic either.
The religion of the inventor had nothing to do with these inventions.
Re:Nothing after 1300 (Score:2, Insightful)
Shouldn't these be called... (Score:2, Insightful)
Anything in the last 30 years??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't these be called... (Score:5, Insightful)
These inventions were created by intelligent, open minded people who happened to be Muslim and weren't living under oppresion of crazed power hungry lunatics who consider technology to be the tool of satan.
I lived in Pakistan for a few years and all the so called "muslim scholars" of today are uneducated trash who happened to brain-wash enough poverty stricken people in order to get power. These morons are the face of Islam these days and that's sad.
Hopefully, the few remaining educated sane muslims will be able to over turn this growing trend.
Odd, shows how little I know about the world (Score:3, Insightful)
While it is difficult to spot exactly where the islamic fate starts in history most people seem to assume it starts with the prophet Muhammad.
Who came a good 700 years after Jesus Christ who himself came from a fate even older. If you go back several thousand years the only bible fate around that is still around (as far as I know) are the Jews.
Wich means that most of the inventions claimed here are in fact not made by muslims but either by their predecessors (christians or jews) OR one of the many other fates that used to exist in the world.
It always suprises me when people talk about the rich history of the middle east and attribute it to Islam when in fact islam had next to nothing to do with it. Just check islamic attitudes to the great pyramids.
When an article already makes a basic mistake by attributing achievements to a fate that happened hundreds of years earlier I smell propoganda. Would be like attributing the Great Wall to the Chinese Communist Party.
Same region, same ethnic people but totally different nonetheless.
Basically this whole things sound to me like, thousands of years ago when the world was totally different some guy invented a thing wich was kinda of usefull so now a whole group of religious freaks must be liked despite the fact that everything they say and do is exactly against the believes of that guy thousands of years ago.
No thanks. I just judge muslims by the ones I meet in daily life.
My greatest problem with the muslims in general is that they never seem to have heard of the saying "what is good for the goose is good for the gander" (what goes for you goes for me). Take the recent riots over those danish cartoons. Arab media have spouted hate for decades but that is alright. One rule for the muslims, another for the rest of the world. No thank you.
The only thing I know that in holland a mere 3-4% of the population seems to be in the news 80% of the time. You can turn on the tv without some program about them. Enough already.
Oh, and those who think that hatred against muslims is extreme right. Consider this. What do nazi's hate? Homosexuals, equal rights for women, jews, etc. What do muslims hate?
Those lefties defending muslims bashing gays and supressing womens mystify me. Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your enemy as well. Just because your against Bush doesn't mean you have to be pro muslim.
Re:Discrimination (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Discrimination (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of all historical accomplishments? You even use terms like "the truth" and "of course", making it sound ridiculously assumptious.
If I was to believe such a claim, I would require proof. European and American history is Eurocentric, so we know far more about European history than we do of Chinese, Arabian, Japanese, Indian, African or native american history. The Chinese and Japanese have for instance an extremely rich history full of accomplisments, lots of which are not well known by westeners. The same goes for most other civilisations.
Also, just because the white, christian male conquered large parts of the world, does not mean we were culturally superiour. We just happened to better at killing than them.
The earth is round! (and the greeks knew it) (Score:5, Insightful)
Noticed also. (Score:5, Insightful)
However it doesn't make sense to me to associate those inventions from Arabs, Persians, Ottomans,
It's just about a book with fancy colours illustrating inventions from parts of the world where Islam is the main religion now.
Re:Nothing after 1300 (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that they won the crusades, don't you? It is inconvenient for the "blame the West for everything" worldview, but my ancestors got their asses kicked.
The total failure of the Islamic world to produce any worthwhile contribution to human civilzation in the last 500 years is mostly a case of relative decline: what happens in Europe and America after 1500 is nothing short of amazing. Even if they didn't actually slow down their rate of cultural/technological production, they got blown out of the water by the competition. Still, it is striking how little that part of the world has been able to come up with in the last half-millenium.
You can't read an Arab magazine without seeing a list like this once a week. The fact that the British press is now getting into the act of praising 1000 year old inventions and ignoring the last thousand years of stagnation is telling.
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
I like political correctness... (Score:1, Insightful)
This is not an Islamic discovery (Score:5, Insightful)
18) By the 9th century, many Muslim scholars took it for granted that the Earth was a sphere. The proof, said astronomer Ibn Hazm, "is that the Sun is always vertical to a particular spot on Earth". It was 500 years before that realisation dawned on Galileo. The calculations of Muslim astronomers were so accurate that in the 9th century they reckoned the Earth's circumference to be 40,253.4km - less than 200km out. The scholar al-Idrisi took a globe depicting the world to the court of King Roger of Sicily in 1139.
But as I understand it, the Egyptian Eratosthenes had discovered this same thing 11 centuries earlier:
http://outreach.as.utexas.edu/marykay/assignments
Galileo was responsible for many great discoveries, but I've never seen anyone claim that he discovered the Earth was round. Many argue that a round world was common knowledge in Europe, despite what their maps might make us believe.
Re:Discrimination (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm, might have to do with... (Score:2, Insightful)
I love how one can use data to shape any point they wish to make. Hang the author for submitting flamebait trash.
Re:Discrimination (Score:1, Insightful)
(not implying you were hoping for either of those on your list...)
Seventy-two, rather. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Discrimination (Score:5, Insightful)
Did I wake up in some parallel universe today where there's a stigma attached to being straight or Christian? Last time I looked, there was still stigma attached to homosexuality, and bisexuality is mostly ignored or assumed not to exist. Atheists are often thought of as immoral, and given none of the protections and exceptions that religious people - yes, including Christians - get.
There may be no "parades" and so on, but that's because your types are celebrated, or even forced upon us, all the time anyway. In the UK, even though I went to a state school, we had to celebrate your religion every morning. In most countries, same sex couples are not permitted to have legal recognition for their relationship. Perhaps there'd be less parades if they were allowed to celebrate in the same way that heterosexuals can?
The truth, of course, is that the vast majority of all historical accomplishments were achieved by straight, white, Christian males.
Emphasis on the word historical. The number of Christian scientific developments is far less in the last century.
Having said that - I agree that it's silly to start rating which-group-of-people-did-what (although you yourself fall into this trap with the above paragraph). But for the most part, things like "parades" are not about this anyway, they're about raising awareness against discrimination. I disagree with your claim that it's not acceptable to be proud of straight, male, caucasion or Christian heritage.
while straight white males stand at the sidelines with their mouths shut, lest they be considered racist, sexist, homophobic, or just generally discriminatory.
No one is stopping you from celebrating achievments of straight white males. The problem is that you seem to want to also say "...and we're better than all the rest".
Re:But... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:From TFA (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, when you think about it, it's awfully humiliating when not only are the collaters of this data forced to adopt non-Islamic era inventions as "Islamic", but that it cannot find anything more recent than 1300CE worthy of being called a notable invention.
If anything, this exhibition should not be about Islamic pride. It should be a wake-up call to the Muslim world that the innate creativity and resourcefulness of the Arab and Persian peoples has been stifled by modern Islam.
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
You are pretty out of touch to compare relgious fundamentalism in the US with islamic fundamentalism...When was the last time someone had their throat slit for Jesus?
Re:Islamic? (Score:4, Insightful)
The religion of the inventor had nothing to do with these inventions.
The religion of the inventor doesn't matter so much as the culture they lived in, which is completely unrelated to the predominant religion. This can easily be demonstrated empirically.
Culture in the sense I mean it has far more to do with the specific beliefs and institutions that dominate a given society, not the abstract generalizations that a word like "Islam" or "Christianity" captures. There have throughout history been "Christian" nations that have been violent, oppressive, belligerant totalitarian states (consider the England of Elizabeth I), and "Christian" nations that have been peaceful, enlightened and liberal (consider modern Denmark). Islam has been the dominant religion in a similarly diverse set of cultures, from the relatively enlightened caliphates of the middle ages to dark age tribal societies like Afghanistan under the Taliban.
Empirically, religion has literally nothing to do with culture.
But culture certainly has something to do with intellectual achievement. 20th century Russia was a major force in mathematics not so much because Russians had a genetic proclivity for mathematical prowess (as certain crazed pseudo-evolutionists might want to argue) but because it was a lot harder to get into trouble with Communist Party doctrine as a pure mathematician than as a physicist (who might wind up using "Jewish physics" like relativity or quantum mechanics) or as a biologist (who might run afoul of Lysenko).
And all that "Jewish physics" was done by Jews in part because it was easier for them to get chairs in theoretical physics in early 20th century Europe than in experimental physics, because theoretical physics just wasn't seen as being all that important or interesting.
On the more positive side, I've always felt that Newton was archetypally English, for his time--he had the grandiose sweep of Contential intellectuals combined with the practical, detail-oriented, hair-splitting obsessiveness of the great medieval English logicians and experimentalists. And the world he grew up in was one where all the walls had been torn down, where a king had been beheaded in living memory, where any kind of radically intellectual restructuring must have seemed possible.
But while culture and poltics can contribute to an inventor's success, it is the individual who matters in the end.
Re:Incorrect (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Odd, shows how little I know about the world (Score:2, Insightful)
Is Democracy good for the goose (the West)? Why can't the Muslims have it (see: Iran before the Shah)?
Is a free press good? Sure, just not if you're al-Jazeera.
Was Woodrow's ethnic nationalism good? Sure, for Europe. The Arabs were carved up into rival states and a chunk was given to Europeans (holocaust survivors, sure, but Europeans nonetheless).
I am the first to admit that the Arab nations (and Muslim nations generally, with minor exceptions being Turkey and Malaysia) have HUGE problems. But this conceit that the inability to understand the whole goose/gander thing is an exclusively Muslim failing is ridiculous to the extreme.
Re:Those inventions aren't Islamic (Score:5, Insightful)
> the political system. Islam does, and specifies crimes, punishments, etc.
I beg your pardon? I guess you haven't read the Bible much, especially the Old Testament. It does very much outline the framework of a political and social system, complete with excruciating detail regarding crimes and their punishment. That we choose not to structure our societies according to those rules ANYMORE is an entirely different matter. Christianity and Islam are a lot similar than you would like to think, and were even more so before the Reformation. Islam merely haven't had their Martin Luther (yet).
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but in the United States we can vote him out because a U.S. President is limited to two four-year terms. Contrast that with those in power in most of the Middle East and Africa, not to mention several places in Asia, Cuba and S. America. How long was Saddam in power? How many countries in Asia, the M.E. and Africa have had peaceful transitions of governments?
At least with G.W. Bush you know he'll be gone after 2008.
-Charles
Re:Anything in the last 30 years??? (Score:3, Insightful)
That being said, it seems pretty obvious that within the last 250-odd years, the Islamic world has generated very little in the way of innovation, while Westerners have created a world of technology that's completely transformed people's lives. In fact, others have pointed out that in the 600-odd years Islam has existed, the Islamic world has produced very little compared to the innovative west. It seems like there is a fairly precise correlation between when Islam started growing and when innovation slowed to a stop.
This is not really surprising considering that Islam itself says that the Prophet Mohammed has said everything that needs to be said. It's a bit tough to innovate when you're told everything has already been discovered!
D
Re:Makes me laugh. (Score:1, Insightful)
What makes me laugh is how the UK media is currently full of pro-Muslim propaganda. It's obviously designed to prevent anti-Muslim hatred that might be forming in the hard-of-thinking underclass ("working class") as a result of all the terrorism in the last few years.
Intelligent people don't need these "news" stories. The BBC is chock full of them too.
Re:Those inventions aren't Islamic (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is merely that these were created by a society in which Islam was the predominant religion. That's historically and sociologically interesting, demonstrating that in the general case Islam is not incompatible with an inventive society, and raising questions like "How the hell did things get so screwed up over there?", "Can the same sort of screwing-up happen to societies where Christianity is the predominant religion?", and "What is the world going to look like if and when the Islamic world gets un-screwed-up?"
There's a common unspoken belief that somehow Christian-dominant Eurpoean/North American culture has "won" history and "ended up" on top and therefore proven superior. But if you asked a guy in Persia five or six centuries ago, he might have told you how Islam-dominant Arabic/Persian culture had "won" history. In five or six centuries you might have to ask that question in Chinese.
A proper religion is a means of enhancing our relationships with ourselves and with the universe. In all the mess of dogma, superstition, political corruption, and worthless metaphysics, there remain a few threads of actual wisdom teachings; worthwhile inspiration can be found in some forms of Buddhism, Sufism, Quakerism, Hinduism, the more philosophical strains of Judaism and Taoism, in some of the various "primitive" or "ahistorical" nature religions, and in some parts of the Neopagan revivial. Yes, you have to sift a lot of crap to find the diamonds.
Re:Lots of innovation (a long time ago) (Score:5, Insightful)
And unfortunately I think the fallout of this is becoming all too appearent. The Koran records Mohammad as stating:
Only argue with the People of the Book in the kindest way - except in the case of those of them who do wrong - saying, 'We have Faith in what has been sent down to us and what was sent down to you. Our God and your God are one and we submit to Him. (Surat al-`Ankabut; 29:46).
Islam at various points in history was actually much more tolerant than Christianity during its day. Mohammad did indeed show tolerance to Christians and Jews, and for a while even Jews were shown acceptance, reversing a long conflict that began over land before Islam existed. Saladin during the Crusades was not only a brilliant commander, but a very reasonable and tolerant guy, and those kind of values actually spurred the rise of chivalry in Europe.
Unfortunately it seems the "people of the book" are still a long ways off from following it, but the British have done good work here and it is exactly these type of things that can help reverse the dehumanization of our fellow man that has taken place lately. Hopefully as Islam ages, they will abandon many of the precepts created by man as was the case during the great schism in Christianity, but it is a two-way street, and more Christians will also have to think more like Jesus and Tom Fox than we have been. I think that within each religion of the "people of the book" lies a path to peace, the question is how many more deaths it will take before we can all find it.
Re:But... (Score:2, Insightful)
Good point, well made. I just wish I had mod points right now.
Re:Noticed also. (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of the inventions may have been spurred directly by religious motives. I'm sure the interest in astronomy had to do with the adoption of a lunar calendar and the need to determine prayer times, for example. Other inventions probably had more to do with what I mentioned in the first paragraph: the existence of a growing, stable economy in the empire.
Re:Those inventions aren't Islamic (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Discrimination (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, tell that to the Irish, and the Italians, and the Poles, and the Dutch, and the Scots etc, etc. Being straight, white, Christian, and male is no proof against discrimination. Being straight, "white", agnostic and male myself, I can vouch for the fact that it's not a guarantor of wealth, either.
Re:Nothing after 1300 (Score:5, Insightful)
-tolerance of others
-respect for others
-respect for human life
Look back only 300 years in Western civilization to see people being burned at the stake for being accused of not being a faithful Christian. Look back only 200 years ago to see people brutally enslaved by Western civilization with plenty of people twisting the Bible to support it. Look back only 100 years ago to see large portions of the globe carved up in the name of bring "Christendom" to the heathens. Look back only 50 years ago to see the end of a European purge of members of a particular faith. Look back only 20 years ago to see the end of a war between Catholics and Protestants that included terrorist violence.
"Western civilization" has only been out of the grips of madness and poor civilization for a very short time itself. Give the Middle East a couple of centuries to sort themselves out too. I'm not saying that we should give up on holding them to a higher standard but that we should be a little more honest about how much effort it took us to get here and to be careful about our own recent backsliding.
Chris Rock and Colin Powell (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I notice that the tone of the Slashdot story and the comments in this article is rather antagonistic and condescending. I am reminded of Chris Rock's standup routine, when he talks about how white people viewed Colin Powell's possible run for presidency:
"Whenever Colin Powell is on the news, white people give him the same compliments: 'How do you feel about Colin Powell?', 'He speaks so well! He's so well spoken. I mean he really speaks so well!' Like that's a compliment, shit. 'He speaks so well' is not a compliment, okay? 'He speaks so well' is some shit you say about retarded people that can talk. What do you mean he speaks so well? He's a fucking educated man, how the fuck you expect him to sound, you dirty motherfucker? 'He speaks so well.' What are you talking about? What voice were you expecting to come out of his mouth? 'Imma drop me a bomb today', 'Imma be Pwez o dent!'."
LS
Unimpressive to say the least (Score:2, Insightful)
No matter how you slice it, from a comparitive standpoint the Islamic world hasn't contributed jack sh*t in the last 500 years.
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Theism undergirds science (Score:3, Insightful)
The belief that the world is illusory or unimportant is actually a common religious belief, probably the one that sceintific atheists despise the most. If you follow the arguments of religious conservatives these days, they are based on epistemological relativism. Fundamentalists have co-opted postmodernism to exploit its slippery evasions of logic and evidence. This is why Evolution is "just a theory" to them--there is no truth, only opinion. There is no reality. The inconsistency of such arguments, coming from the mouths of absolutists, is mind-boggling, but then, they don't hold reason in very high regard.
And the primary argument of supernaturalists (theists) is that God can change or suspend the laws of physics at will. So the laws of physics apply... except when they don't. Given this assumption, science becomes impossible. This is what the current war between science and religion is about--political religion is intent on eradicating the naturalistic world view, and science in the process.
Everything you said in your post was completely wrong.
Re:Noticed also. (Score:3, Insightful)
Again, I do think it's sloppy and misleading. But if we (the West) are in a fight to prove or disprove the validity of a category of millions of individuals with a religion and region in common, is it any less valid to paint with a broad brush in response to broad-brush racism and discrimination? I know they're academics and should stick to ONLY facts (don't get me started about the Hollywood-inspired silliness that even invades the exhibits at the Field Museum here in Chicago), but we're at a bit of a turning point in the relationship between the West and the Middle East. Maybe the thought was that in the current climate it couldn't hurt to pump up the beauty of a region of people.
It's still dumb and kind of lazy, but I think the idea behind it may well be good. In the U.S., we're living in completely irrational fear of nineteen hijackers who are already dead (and one apparent moron who is currently on trial). In the UK, they/you are living in somewhat irrational fear of a relatively small number of past and future subway and bus bombers. The fear is real (as much as I want to be dismissive of it, I would be lying if I said I didn't think about September 11 every time I go downtown to the tall buildings or go to the airport), and perhaps the curators are simply trying to tap into something interesting and thought-provoking to counter it. I know I'd be tempted to if I had a basement full of things that proved that Muslims aren't fundamentally bad people.
It would be even better if they had put more thought and energy into the angle taken by the name of the exhibit (and maybe they have - it's too far [eight hours by plane] for me to go see it). But the semantics of the exhibit may simply be a combination of what will draw people to the exhibit and what will explain (if a bit clumsily) one global value of a VERY large and diverse group of people.
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have to disagree with this. Jesus's teachings went beyond the messiah prophesied by Isiah, and he did start a new religion (you know those stories about new wine and old wine skins, and you know that whole this third cup is a new cup now thing).
rest of the Jews decided that he was just another prophet and the true son of God hadn't come yet.
This is very telling. One of the main reasons that Jesus was dismissed by many as the messiah is because of his claim to be the son of God. The prophesies of the messiah say nothing about it being God's son. The jews are waiting for the messiah, not for God's son.
Christianity traces its roots to before Christ, just as Islam traces its roots to a time before Mohammed.
Christianity traces its roots to Christ. Before Christ it is judaism, and it is not Christian history but Jewish history. Now Jewish history is important to Christianity, but labeling it as christian roots is a bit like labeling British history as American roots (which while is important to America there are many more influences then just the British).
Re:Noticed also. (Score:5, Insightful)
At least Xianity can blame the Germans.
The fact that those parts of the world were civilized 500 years ago doesn't tell you much about what to expect out of them now. Rather than publishing these sorts of stories in english language newspapers, perhaps Al-jazeera should be at this. Then perhaps modern Egyptians will be more prone to take up civil engineering.
vote him out?? (Score:3, Insightful)
What do term limits have to do with voting someone out? I agree, term limits are a good thing and unfortunately the only thing that will get rid of Bush (since he has been able to fix the last two elections), but they have nothing to do with voting. That's why they work so well; they require no effort on the part of the lazy, uninformed electorate.
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2671229.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Plenty more died there after the Danish cartoon episode. Course Blair and Bush both sided with the Islamofascists saying how hurtful and wrong it was to print the cartoons!
It's a sad day when the French and other continentals print the cartoons in solidarity with Denmark and free speech, but the UK and USA cower from the rage of Islamofascists. The French have to defend our honors because we are too scared too. Very sad. Hopefully this will end the stupid French surrender jokes.
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Noticed also. (Score:5, Insightful)
As such, to account for Al Kharismi's genius and Omar Khayyam's literary talent to their religion is as short-sighted as saying Einstein was brilliant because he was a Jew. At their respective zeniths, Islamic centers of excellence such as Istanbul, Baghdad or Kabul weren't solely Muslim; they were uniquely multi-cultural unlike the west European centers of power then. Civilizational excellence knows no religion, only regional decay does.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing after 1300 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
And a few years before that, the Nazi concentration camps were desroyed and the "workers" there punished. And only because they were wholesale slaughtering a few million people. (If you don't see an analogy, maybe ypu should compare numbers and consider that some people consider humans of any "age" to be human.)
Re:Lots of innovation (a long time ago) (Score:3, Insightful)
Teachings have strayed far from what the prophet Mohammad wrote,
Actually, they haven's strayed far enough. The Reformation was lead by people who claimed to be returning to the gospel of Christ, but in fact what they were doing was pulling a particular thread from a complex and varied tapestry.
You cite the Koran saying Muslims should argue nicely with other "People of the Book", although you gloss over the caveate "except those that do wrong" (or "evil" in some translations.) The Koran does say this, and many other things that could be taken as fairly liberal: "There shall be no compulsion in religion", for example. But it also says things like (9:123) "Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them. Know that God is with the righteous."
With regard to women, the Koran is vastly more retrograde than (Paul's) Christianity, which is saying something. A "return to the words of the prophet" would be a return to sub-medieval treatment of women. "Women are your fields--go then into your fields whence you please" (2:223) "Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them, forsake them in beds apart, and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further actions against them. Surely God is high, supreme." (4:34, emphasis added.)
The last thing this world needs is an Islam that is closer to the words of the prophet. It needs a more liberal, relaxed Islam that has thrown off the yoke of the scriptures just as mainstream Christianity has in the past century, to become a spiritual and social movement that has none of the oppressive trappings that were so clearly expressed by its central prophet and even moreso by his most successful apostle. Early Islam, with it's "itjihad" ("questioning") culture demonstrates that liberal thought is not incompatible with people who call themselves Muslims, just as post-Reformation Christianity has shown that liberal thought is not incompatible with a kind of Christianity. But in both cases it is necessary to ignore a great deal of the foundational texts to do so.
Re:Nothing after 1300 (Score:2, Insightful)
We can't really afford to do that. Especially not when they demand nuclear weap^H^H^H^Hpower.
Re:Those inventions aren't Islamic (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, in that context "Judaism" means the Jewish Religion, and implying that they OUGHT to value the New Testament because it was written "for their benefit" is so deeply cynical that one has to wonder whether you are one of those who believe that the Jews had it coming because "they killed Jesus."
Re:Why isn't there a mod option for "patronizing"? (Score:3, Insightful)
That seems to be a pretty big assumption. One that goes against the evidence too.
> Also, nobody's gonna attack you or your family because you post on slashdot. You stupid little bedwetting jackass.
I'm sure the danish cartoonist wasn't expecting a $16,500,000 price put on his either. For that matter have you even been following the reasons why he drew the cartoons in the first place?
MOD PARENT UP [n/t] (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Nothing after 1300 (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the big issue many people in the West have is that 1.3 billion people on Earth justify, excuse, aid, abet and harbor those few political extremists. Those extremists don't operate in a vacuum and would be stopped in a heartbeat if those they live among didn't tolerate their hate and violence. How about when one of those "political extremists" publicly calls for the MURDER of an author, playwright or cartoonist simply because of SOMETHING THEY SAID OR WROTE those 1.3 billion people stand up and say "sit down, shut up and ignore those idiots -- they will go away".
Until such time, ponder the quote "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."
-Charles
Re:But... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just think of all of the Slashdot readers who don't realize that a year from now, they'll be a year older.
Re:But... (Score:2, Insightful)
But we don't say that. Instead, we go by what history shows. Is there any historical support for a thing called "Islam" existing prior to Muhammad?
And to you moderators, that isn't a commedy routine. The guy is serious.
What is is about Islam (Score:3, Insightful)
Is the nuclear bomb a Christian invention? The automobile? What gives? Why call something "Islamic" if Islam had nothing to do with it. You might call these inventions non-provacative to Islam, or compatible with Islam, but that's about it. They were not invented because of Islam, they were likely invented despite Islam, just like all the Western advances were achieved while dragging the Catholic and Protestant Christian churches kicking and screaming into the future.
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if we'll ever talk about technology on this site again.
Re:Noticed also. (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyway, what's sad to me is all these "inventions" are hundreds of years old. It paints a picture of Islam as a stagnant culture, which is probably the opposite of the good intentions that the curators had.
Re:Turkey has plenty of problems (Score:3, Insightful)
Or don't you respect people's choice in the matter?
Re:Nothing after 1300 (Score:3, Insightful)
(hint: starts with a J, ends with an "ihad")
They were also a response to the persecution of Christians by Muslims in the Middle-East.
The middle-east was once full of Christians. Christian Monasticism actually began in Egypt, for example.
When Islam came, the more passive Christians were easily subjugated.
Re:But... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lots of innovation (a long time ago) (Score:3, Insightful)
It is true that the Reformation, and Lutheranism, was indeed a particular interpretation of Christianity, but the overall goal and point behind the Augsberg Confessional was the Catholic Church's "additions" to the religion that Luther took great objection to; regardless of his individual beliefs, it paved the way for a great deal of freedom from the then more or less exclusive interpretations of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. I don't think it is reaching too much to ask if what many people consider objectionable about Islam is more the hadiths than the Koran, and wonder if that doesn't parallel Christianity at the same relative point just a bit.
The "infidels" bit comes from when Mohammad was being persecuted, and it is important to note it is regarding a specific instance at a specific point in time, and keep things in context, which sometimes followers have difficulty doing. The same is true for Paul's letters in the NT as you reference later. Also, even if one does interpret them to apply universally, "infidel" does not and never has applied to other "people of the book", so that would not be a valid justification for Christian/Jewish conflict. As a further point, the word used for war sometimes, "jihad", means struggle, not necessarily violence or physical in nature.
There are certainly things in the Koran we Westerners will tend to disagree with, particularily regarding women, and you make some excellent points there. However, as a counterpoint, many of the mistreatments of women ascribed to Islam actually predate it, and come from tribal traditions in that area; in many cases Islam's treatment of women is much better than how they were treated, and how they are treated in many areas of the world, including some of the Middle East, to this day.
The particular passage you cite is considered by some to be an incorrect translation; the word "beat", is actually "idribûhunna", and is used in the Koran only to denote separation or travel, not violence. The translation to "beat" comes from usage outside of the context of the Koran.
I don't want to go into too much of a semantics debate, but the overall things I'd like to stress are that at the time the Koran's instructions were a vast improvement in women's rights to the world as a whole, especially to the Middle East, and that the Islamic countries are making faster advancements relative to the birth of the religion towards women's rights than we in the US did; women's suffrage and the struggles of Susan B. Anthony are of our very recent past. Many urbanized areas in Islamic countries are within 100 years of us in terms of women's rights.
I agree with the former, but not latter part of your last paragraph. I think either religion is quite compatible with peace and enlightenment as history has shown, the question is in the interpretation. And I think you'll find that is not the fault of Jesus, Mohammad, God, or even Paul, but rather the institutions we have constructed today.
I do agree fundamentalism can be dangerous in any case though. Abandoning the hadiths entirely does not guarantee a positive change, it still very much depends on how the words of the prophet are interpreted. And they are interpreted outside of the hadiths through the lens of society. That has very much changed and evolved since the Arab and Muslim rural tribal societies in which Islam was born, and will continue to change and grow into the future.
But that still does not free the followers of individual responsibility; of my fellow Christians, they have no prophet telling them to kill anyone, and many still manage to justify hatred and violence to themselves. If we want followers of Islam to be less violent, more forgiving, and more peaceful, perhaps we should attempt to do the same instead of bombing them in the future. For despite all of the "progress" we have made in the West, we are for the most part guilty of precisely what we judge of those we hate. And I'm not entirely sure bombing them is going to elevate them to some lofty standard of peace and enlightment we cannot reach ourselves.
Agreed (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not a muslim but I do hear them talk about allah being with mohammed with x, and then with noah with y, just as he was with adam.
Its part of their belief structure to incorporate islam as the extension of judiasm after it became corrupt(muslim belief).To a muslim its the truth and mohammed came to be set the true faith again.
Re:"qamara" obscura (Score:4, Insightful)
You really should've researched this before blathering on. While Latin, Greek and English are all derived from the Indo-European root language group, Arabic is not. It is of course a member of the Afro-Asiatic root language group, which of course is not related to the Indo-European group. While they may share some pre-historic parent language, most linguists are reluctant to accept this theory (as are most arabs interestingly enough).
The original term was camera obscura, which is of course latin in origin (obscura of course being entirely latin). This is easily explained as latin was already in use in the "scientific" fields as the language of choice. Which explains why an Arab man like Ibn al-Haitham would use latin to describe his invention.
Also the text in the article is completely ridiculous. It was not the common theory that eyes emitted light, that was a theory of 2 Greek scientists. And it was refuted by Aristotle, which became the common theory.
The article is an obvious Arab apologistic treatise. Several of the "inventions" mentioned are not inventions at all. And the vast majority are actually inventions from other lands and peoples.
The Crusades?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, I know it fits nicely into the modern "savage Arabs bad!" viewpoint, but you're going to have to back up your "the Crusades were the Arabs' fault!" with something more than "jihad" as an answer.
Re:Nothing after 1300 (Score:3, Insightful)
What about India and China? (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth is, until Vasco De Gama discovered the sea route to India, Arabs were the conduit for all communication and trade between the West and India. Hence, many inventions and goods that are actually Indian are often misnamed as Arabic. The so-called "Arabic numeric system" is an excellent example.
One would think, after all these years, there would be more clarity on this issue.
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, that would be a lazy person's dream state:
1) Apply for a job in Oklahoma, claiming to be a devout atheist
2) Sue them in federal court for violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
3) Profit!
Islam (the religion) did not invent (Score:5, Insightful)
I have read a lot of history about the Islamic empire that stretched from India to Iberia. This is largely an extension of my desire to understand Spanish history.
To say that Islam created these wonders is to ignore what was actually happening in the society that was the Islamic empire. The empire was tolerant of all religions and beliefs, including people "not of the book," which would include persons that were not Jews and Christians. This empire preached tolerance and benefitted from having non-believers because the government taxed non-believers more (which may have influenced the less-firm in their beliefs to convert).
The end result was a polycultural society that valued innovation, high art and wonderful architecture. And I would argue that it's not the dominant religion that was responsible but the society.
If you look at the last century, you'll see lots of Nobel Prize winners in the sciences coming from America (that would be The Great Satan to many Islamic societies -- especially Iran). Could it be that a polycultural society with vast natural resources is what helps in the creation of these innovations?
I look at these monocultural and intolerant societies as non-creators of advancements. For examples, one merely needs to look at Afghanistan under the Taliban, Iran and China under the Cultural Revolution.
I agree that it is important to look to history and appreciate those innovations and inventions that came before but to suggest that a religion created these is to ignore what really happened.
I should note that, when Iberia turned monocultural and intolerent under the Kings of Castile and Aragon, they created and innovated such wonderous examples as the Spanish Inquisition [rotten.com], the expulsion and forced conversion (and further persecution) of Jews and the encomienda system [answers.com] of tributory labor that was used to enslave and destroy Native American nations and civilizations. [sarcasm]It's a shame these innovations happened so long ago; they surely would have been awarded Nobel prizes for them.[/sarcasm]
I do not wish to detract from the religion that is Islam. I know a great number of practicing muslims and they are good people with whom I have very good friendships. I believe that people should get along with their neighbors and appreciate them more by striving to understand them. But the article seems to gloss over the fact that the culture probably begat the advancements rather than the religion.
Re:But... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Yeah yeah yeah (Score:0, Insightful)
On the one hand, your civilization goes back 5000 years.
On the other hand, the Muslims "forcibly converted" their conquered peoples.
If that were really the case, your community wouldn't still be around!
How stupid do you think we are?
Re:Nothing after 1300 (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, please. This remark is so ignorant that your diplomas should be revoked and you should be forced to repeat your education beginning with the third grade. Microsoft ain't the pinnacle of Western imperialism. As far as I know they lack the army and the record of dead bodies that the true contenders for that title share.
Re:Noticed also. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a Muslim, but let's be honest. Islam's role in spreading knowledge is very under-rated, and is just as important as creating knowledge. What's the use of a theory that can generate power from dust, if no body knows about it? The fact of the matter is that Muslim rulers until the 1800s AD valued education, and set up huge libraries to translate every bit of knowledge from around the world into Arabic. The world's major "high-tech" cities at that time were Baghdad and Alexandria, and people from all over the planet flocked to them. It is a very well-known secret that Newton, Fermat and other luminaries from the Middle Ages travelled to Alexandria and Andalusia (modern day Spain) to study math, physics and astronomy. Still, Arabs did invent many things in math, astronomy and medicince. Some inventions that come to my mind, and that I haven't seen in TFA are the book (before that, people used to roll parchments of paper), and medical stitching. Many of Euler's and Fermat's conjectures had been known to Arab mathematicians before, but history before the Middle Ages kind of falls in murky waters, and history after it was written by Europeans.
But, I agree that attributing inventions like the zero to Arabs is wrong, but you have to give the credit of spreading this invention. It made calculations so easy that anybody could do it. It is also sad that the modern Middle East is in such a state of chaos. The fact of the matter is that Islam is in its Middle Ages right now, where fundamentalism is prevailing over common sense. There are many reasons for that, but if history is any indication, then we might be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But the path won't be devoid of bloodshed.
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil with evil is evil.
Good advice. Pity it has about as much influence in the actual behavior of muslims as turning the other cheek and loving ones neighbour has with christians.
Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if, instead of killing for their religion, people would actually follow it.
This only proves the point... (Score:3, Insightful)
Muslims were a great influence on math and science, thousands of years ago, but name for me ONE SINGLE INVENTION OF ANY SIGNIFICANCE to come out of a muslim country in the past 200 years. There isn't one.
These 1001 inventions are ALL from the glory days of Islam, and therein lies the problem. The Muslim religion has KILLED all crativity. They got left behind at the industrial age and THIS IS THE VERY REASON THEY ARE BITTER TODAY.
They got so full of their success that they became complacent, and the world passed them by. When they woke up to this fact, in the early 20th century, it was too late. People whom they used to "rule" over had surpassed them in every fashion because they chose to live in such a closed society within their Ottoman Empire.
When they realized that they were falling behind, they decided to force anyone (male) with any potential into one of two fields - medicine and engineering. They would send them abroad to attend the finest schools and then bring them back to try and bring any knowledge back into their folds. Think about it: Osama Bin Laden is an Engineer; Ayman al-Zawahiri is a doctor. Neither chose their profession, they were just recognized as having a few brains in their head and given one of two choices.
However, none of this changed the fact that the religion of Islam rejects modernity in every form, so this new influx of knowledge did nothing to stem the tide, the downward spiral of their entire culture. So they did a little introspection to try and figure out why they were failing as a culture. They decided that they needed to return to their 7th century roots, which is exactly the wrong approach.
Muslims are embarassed by the fact that they are so pathetic, and for good reason. The only answer for them is to embrace modernity. Until then, they can drive on the roads we've designed, sell the oil that we pumped for them, live in the buildings that we showed them how to build, using tractors and construction equipment purhcased from us. They'll continue to drive around in thieir German/European/Italian/American cars. They can continue treating their patients in their hospitals using medical textbooks written by the hated Christians and Jews, using techniques learned in Medical colleges that they attended outside their countries. And they can continue to resent us for this until they decide to wake up to modernity.
Re:Discrimination (Score:2, Insightful)
I am inclined to believe the above statement is contradictory. From my observations, being human seems to require inflating your self-worth and belittling others. Humans have always separated and stratified over distinctions of marginal or dubious value. Yet the depth to which they clung to these distinctions made Paul so radical when he wrote "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) This idea is still radical today, as parent attests to. Cultural "progress" and civilization "advances" haven't rooted out human nature. Paul proposed that under Christ this could be achieved, which made the message of Christianity highly attractive to everyone who wasn't a Powerful Wealthy Senatorial Male (PWSM) in Greco-Roman times.
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
That was only one critical aspect of my post. The other critical aspect is that it's dishonest to credit something prior to it's appearance in history. Islam does not appear in history prior to Muhammad.
The Quran commends those "people of the book" (christians and jews) who do not stray from the purity of monotheism or something to that effect, right? Would you also say that those faithful "people of the book" are truly muslims? You'd have to, if you wish to claim that Adam, Even, Abraham and Jesus were muslim. To include one for reason of faithfulness and exclude another despite faithfulness is dishonest.
That's the jist of it.
And not by coincidence ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Christian definition of Jewish Messiah (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue in question is not whether the Jews think that their Messiah is divine. We are talking about your statement, "By Christians' definitions, Jesus _cannot_ be the Jewish messiah." We are therefore using Christian definitions both for the Jewish Messiah and the Christian Christ.
You have argued that becuase Jews don't believe that their Messiah is God-become-man (i.e., he is no less God for becoming human, and no less human for being God--as Christians believe) that this makes the Christian belief internally inconsistent. However, Christians do not arrive at their idea of a Jewish Messiah from the Talmud, or any other account of Jewish beliefs, apart from the Scriptures contained in the Old and New Testaments.
The idea of Christ in Christian theology is a superset of the idea of Messiah _in Christian theology_. Jewish theology did not anticipate that the Messiah would also be God himself in human form. This is not to say that the evidence is not there in the scriptures: upon reading the Scriptures, a Christian concludes that Jewish theology _should have_ anticipated (or at least allowed for) a divine Messiah, but did not.
You quoted an expert who stated, "The Talmud nowhere indicates a belief in a superhuman Deliverer as the Messiah." That is a statement about what the Jews believe, not the Christians. Even then, it does not approach your assertion that "The Jewish Messiah is just a mortal man and not divine." Your quoted expert provided us no information useful to answer the question, "Is the Messiah divine?"--except to say that the Talmud is not the place to look. If "the Talmud nowhere indicates a belif in a superhuman Deliverer as Messiah," then we learn nothing from the Talmud about the divinity of the Messiah, we only gain information about the authors of the Talmud.
If what you're saying is that the Christian's idea of Christ is inconsistent with the Jew's idea of Messiah, then, depending on which Christians and Jews you ask, you might be right, but this would not, as you try to do, prove that Messiah Jesus is an oxymoron.
Re:Noticed also. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, otoh, had you suggested that, say, the construction of the Blue Mosque at Estefan led to an improvement in architectural technologies, for example, I'd have granted you the point (which is more of an analoy to the pyramids). As it stands, the list on the website is a steaming pile of crap; there's absolutely nothing inherently Islamic about coffee or tulips or fountain pens, to cite three random items from the website.
I used the term Islamic centers of excellence as a short-hand to distinguish Ottoman and Persian products described here from those produced in Western spheres of influence. While I appreciate the fact that there has been a civilizational excellence in most of what's now called the Middle East, to label those (and to confusingly jumble those with wholly un-connected ones in North Africa and South Asia) as being "Islamic" is doing a disservice to the ethnic diversity and inclusiveness that these cities stood for. Surely, in these Clash-of-Civilization times, that's a better message than hyping "Islamic science"?
Re:Noticed also. (Score:2, Insightful)
You make a great point - that many of the discoveries were not directly or solely 'muslim' - but yet they were.
As you point out, many of of the key cities that fostered discovery were the locus of many ideologies, that were allowed to coexist. And that is the key point, at the height of the Muslim world the Muslim world was tolerant of local ideas, and learned from them, assimilated them, wove them in to their writings and scientific understanding, grew them in to something more.
It is dangerous to view any culture as an island unto itself. At least any culture that isn't isolated on an island. The truth is that Islamic cultures, like others, went through varying times of acceptance and rejection of other ideas. And like other cultures, the times of acceptance led to the times of greatest innovation, while the times of isolation and rejection led to war and stagnation. A number of Karen Armstrong's [amazon.com] books lend great insight.
Makes you think a little about where the US is.
History, or commentary on modern society? (Score:2, Insightful)
What's the word to describe this? Not irony.. but?
Re:Noticed also. (Score:3, Insightful)
Or are you suggesting that we equate "Arab" with "Muslim"?
As for Omar Khayyam... well, I liked (the English translation of) The Rubiyat, and given its praise of wine, women and fun, I've always thought it was un-religious. Would love to read any spiritualization, if I may use the term, of his works, if you have any references.