It's called the "Islamic golden age" because those advances were done by Muslims in a state ruled by Islamic law. While obviously that doesn't prove that Islam created those advances (I never claimed it did) it does run counter to hairyfeet's dodgy quote (can't find deGrasse saying that anywhere) which claims Islam stopped Arabian progress, when most of that progress happened under Islam.
"Islamists" were in power in Egypt for over a year, which pyramids were turned into mosques? What known treasures were looted? When was the Sphinx defaced?
According to one version of his biography,[18] al-Haytham, confident about the practical application of his mathematical knowledge, assumed he could regulate the floods of the Nile. Having been ordered to do so by Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, the sixth ruler of the Fatimid caliphate, he quickly realised its impossibility. Fearing for his life, he feigned madness[1][19] and was placed under house arrest.
There's a similar story about Galileo, and it's used as an example of how overbearing the Catholic Church was at the time. But nooo, in this case, it's an example of how "golden" Islam is. Makes sense!
The Catholic Church's opposition to Galileo was because his theories contradicted the Church's teachings.
What's religious about what happened to al-Haytham? He claimed he could divert the Nile, he was ordered to do so by the ruler, realised he couldn't do it after all so pretended to be mad and got thrown in jail. What's Islam got to do with that? You think any 11th century European king would have been more lenient?
And how are these Islamists going to destroy a monument which is, in essence, a 6 million ton pile of stone? A 6 million ton pile of stone guarded by a military force...
Since when did "conspiracy to commit iconoclasm" become a capital offence?
It is how Neil Degrasse Tyson said when talking about how religion can kill progress "The Arab world was the center of science and mathematics for centuries, and then came Islam"
You mean the Islamic golden age? Which many consider to have ended at the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols?
a recent poll suggested that three quarters of muslims approve of what muslims extremists are doing.
What poll?
First of all those 23,700 homicides were carried out by around 15,800 people. Scaled up to the size of ISIS (100,000) that makes the equivalent of 150,000 murders in one year.
Secondly where are the annual ISIS figures in that link? The figures quoted by Wikipedia are the combined total, over several years of the conflict, of deaths caused by ISIS, other rebel groups (that the west was so desperate to support) and pro-government forces.
There wasn't a lot of tourism (or respect for monuments by anyone) in 1356, only the most hard-line extremist would want to get rid of the cash-cows that are the pyramids today.
According to Wikipedia ISIS has around 100,000 people fighting for it. The world's Muslim population is around 1.6 billion. Therefore ISIS contains 0.006% of the world's Muslims fighting for it.
Interestingly that's around the same percentage of the US population (0.006%) who were convicted of murder in 1994 (source), so is Islam really any more broken than, for example, 1994 America?
The pyramids being made by slave labour is something of a myth. There's not much evidence available for early pyramids, but there's plenty of evidence that later pyramids were made by skilled craftsmen and not slaves.
That's just a single quote from one extremist, and unlike in Afghanistan he that doesn't have any power in Egypt. Even the ultraconservative Salafist political party only wanted the statues covered, not destroyed.
Suggesting that normal Egyptian Muslims are calling for the destruction of the pyramids is extremely dishonest; It's a bit like linking to a Westboro Baptist protest and claiming "American Christians are calling for the repression of homosexuals".
What makes you think that they do not want to destroy the pyramids, for the same reason?
How about all those tourism dollars? Egypt isn't some moneyless failed backwater state, their tourism industry generates around $13 billion a year, more than the entire GDP of Afghanistan in 2002.
Wow, US phone companies really have you guys by the balls eh? Anyone in Europe can swap a dumbphone for a smartphone without any contract change or even having to contact our provider.
Of course this isn't really relevant to this thread as zephvark and umghhh aren't talking about not having a smartphone, they're talking about not wanting to read on a smartphone.
Phones are out of the question
Don't knock it until you've tried it; While a proper e-ink screen is nicer, new phones with large, high-res screens are really nice to read on, and even older phones aren't bad (I read loads of books on my 4" Nexus S). More importantly phones have the big advantage that you have it with you practically everywhere by default and they're almost always connected.
On a train? Read a book on your phone. Waiting in line for something? Read the same book on your phone. Waiting for a late friend? Read the same book on your phone. On the can? Read the same book on your phone. In bed? Read the same book on your phone. Finished your book? Buy/download/torrent a new one straight away.
Sure you could specifically carry round a book or e-reader everywhere you go, but that means yet one more thing to carry round and remember.
"You know, we've won awards for this crap." -- David Letterman
