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."
But... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Quote (Score:5, Informative)
Numbers is a poor example.
Credit where credit is due.
From TFA (Score:5, Informative)
The moslems only attacked Persia in 638. It seems to me that at least one of these inventions have nothing to do with Islam.
Re:Computer Science 101 (Score:5, Informative)
Not very well researched either... (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA: 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 fact that the Earth was round (contrary to popular belief) was not big news in the 9th century. The ancient Greeks knew very well that the Earth was a sphere, and they too had calculated the circumference with surprising accuracy several centuries B.C. (not to mention before Mohammed). Also Galileo wasn't controversial because he claimed the Earth was round - it was because he claimed that the Earth revolved around the sun, and not vice versa. Sigh.
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
No, Mohammed didn't create the religion, he's just the last prophet.
Similarly, Jesus didn't really create Christianity, he was Jewish. The Jews that became Christians decided that Jesus was the son of God as foretold in the old Testament, while the rest of the Jews decided that he was just another prophet and the true son of God hadn't come yet.
Christianity traces its roots to before Christ, just as Islam traces its roots to a time before Mohammed.
"qamara" obscura (Score:5, Informative)
Those are Arabs, traditionally. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Those inventions aren't Islamic (Score:5, Informative)
Islam is not *merely* a religion; it is a combined religion, culture, and political system, in a way that western religions are not. The Bible has been translated into hundreds of languages - the Koran is *inherently* an Arabic document, and - it is argued -can not be translated, but only glossed in other languages. Christianity and Judaism speak to morality and salvation, but do not specify the political system. Islam does, and specifies crimes, punishments, etc.
From time to time other Western religions have taken control of the apparatus of governments, and resulted in theocracy. In Islam, this is not an abberation - it is a key tenet of the politico-religious philosophy.
What have you done for me lately? (Score:3, Informative)
Those inventions were created by people, not by Islam. Islam is merely a religion, and hence useless and incapable of anything at except stroking peoples emotions (for good or bad).
Yet the relative social order and stability brought about by the Baghdad caliphate was sufficient to allow some branches of science advance. That order ended with the Abbasid dynasty in 1200's with the Mongol invasions. Since then much of the middle east has been a backwater. The Sharia no longer serves Muslim civilization well.
Re:Their best invention. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Discrimination (Score:2, Informative)
I dispute your casual assumption of causasian and Christian being equivalent.
From TFA: (Score:3, Informative)
First of all, Persian != Islamic. Second, Chess predates Islam.
Uh, no... (Score:5, Informative)
Christians like to read a lot into the Old Testament that isn't there.
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:5, Informative)
It was just a few years ago that abortion clinics and doctors were being firebombed and shot in order to protect the sanctity of human life.
Re:Anything in the last 30 years??? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Those inventions aren't Islamic (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, the nations with the most muslims are not places where arabic is spoken. India is number one, Indonesia is number two, and Pakistan is number three.
Re:FYI... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nothing after 1300 (Score:3, Informative)
They were very effective warriors, and ruthless to those they thought were not cooperating or playing by the rules, but they were also the most effective governors the world had know to that point.
Vaccination claim for Islam is WRONG! (Score:5, Informative)
" Children in Turkey were vaccinated with cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50 years before the West discovered it."
This is just plain WRONG! The practice of deliberately infecting people with SMALLPOX (not cowpox) from a mild case to make them immune (variolation) was a process developed sometime around the 10th century in China and/or India. It involved taking pus from the pox of someone suffering from smallpox, or the scabs from the pox, and inoculating healthy people with it. Usually a mild case of smallpox developed, giving lifelong immunity afterwards. The first written account of variolation describes a Buddhist nun practicing around 1022 to 1063 AD. She would grind up scabs taken from a person infected with smallpox into a powder, and then blow it into the nostrils of a non-immune person. Another method, more common, involves rubbing the pus from the pox into a scratch in the skin of the non-immune person.
By the 1700's, variolation was common practice in China, India, and Turkey, where it was carried to England by a diplomat's wife. In the late 1700's European physicians used this and other methods of variolation, but reported "devastating" results in some cases. Overall, 2% to 3% of people who were variolated died of smallpox, but this practice decreased the total number of smallpox fatalities by 10-fold. However, a variolated patient could transmit genuine smallpox and could even start an epidemic!
Jenner, on the other hand, was the first to use cowpox (vaccinia virus) instead of live smallpox ... hence the name of "vaccination".
Re:Noticed also. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm Muslim, but I'm certainly not an Arab. For some reason Muslims are always associated with Arabs. Most Muslims are NOT Arabs.
My ancestor civilization was associated with the invention of guns and paper money, but since they were not Arab, those inventions will not be listed as Muslims.
OTOH Arab inventions since before the time of Mohammed are listed. To really know Muslims, you have to travel to Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, Central Asia, Africa and Turkey as well as Arabia.
Re:Nothing after 1300 (Score:4, Informative)
Europe, however, expanded with astonishing speed. From their emergence onto the world stage, it was less than two hundred years before they'd colonized the Americas. By the end of the 1800's, nearly the entire world was under some degree of control of European states. Even standing governments, like China, were being trivialized by European authority in their own lands. They had an immense amount of space to fill up, so their population exploded like nothing the world's seen in recorded history. Add in the American and French revolutions and the Napoleanic Wars, which between them sealed the fate of the old forms of government that had held civilizations back for thousands of years, upending the social order and replacing them with new and highly progress-driven governments.
The West managed to create a civilization that had a rapidly growing population, access to every resource they could ever want, plenty of space to grow, and a lot of available money (since most of the wealth was no longer going to the glorification of kings). Advancement was no longer something that just "happened" like it had in Arabia and China, it was an end unto itself that people spent their whole lives chasing.
Re:Those are Arabs, traditionally. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Noticed also. (Score:3, Informative)
e.g.
"He is also credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one."
Only by people who don't consider measuring the diameter of the earth to be physics.
Or by people who don't consider measuring the weight of displaced water by floating and immersed bodies physics.
Or by people who generally don't realise quite how brilliant some of the Greeks, some of whom predate the era being talked about by over a thousand years, were.
Don't get me wrong - at other times I praise highly the incredible advances made in the region we now call the middle east in ancient times, in particular in my favourite field - discrete mathematics. But I simply think that you shouldn't tarnish an otherwise good report with unverifiable or refutable fabrications.
FP.
Re:But... (Score:3, Informative)
By this definition all religions are "timeless". However, as I understand it, Islam (submission) is the third "covenant" after the Old and New Testaments, which makes the religion (as an organized set of beliefs driven by a document defining God's revealed plan to Mohammad) around 1.5 thousand years old.
Re:But... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:4, Informative)
The statement was released this morning after Mr Blair spoke by phone to his Danish counterpart.
"We understand the offence caused by the cartoons depicting the prophet and of course regret that this has happened. Such things help no one," Mr Blair's spokesman said. "It is always sensible for freedom of expression to be exercised with respect for religious belief. But nothing can justify the violence aimed at European embassies or at the country of Denmark.
"The attacks on the citizens of Denmark and the people of other European countries are completely unacceptable, as is the behaviour of some of the demonstrators in London over the last few days.
"We also strongly welcome the statements of Muslim leaders here who are themselves tackling the extremists who abuse their community's good name."
This hardly fits what you say about Blair. Please give links to back up your side. It seems that Blair has, once again, given an intelligent statement about the situation.
Re:But... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Lots of innovation (a long time ago) (Score:4, Informative)
I, too, find this an interesting observation and have recently read a great deal about the mediteranean world between the fall of Rome and 1000 A.D, during which Islam became a powerful force, culturally and politically and Europe declined. This period was followed by the Crusades, when European contact with Islam brought about an infusion of many of the ideas and inventions mentioned in the article. The period 1000-1500 seems to be a point at which the European and Islamic cultures were neck and neck after which the Europeans pulled ahead during the Rennaisance and the Enlightenment.
During the first period, The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) suffered from some early defeats due to un-preparedness and bad policy decisions. Also a sort of hubris. They thought, "We're the ROMAN EMPIRE, a bunch of desert tribes can't mess with us, they'll go away if we pay them off". What happened next is key, I believe. It became a popular idea in the Eastern Roman Empire that the reason they were repeatedly defeated by the Muslims was because they had strayed from the favor of God. This is an idea they got from the Old Testemant of the Bible which on a number of occasions said that Israel was defeated (e.g. the Babylonian captivity) because the people had strayed from proper religious observance. In Byzantium people decided that icons, for example, were a violation of the rule against idol worship and that by destroying icons they would regain the favor of God thereby turning the tide and begin winning battles against the Muslims. In reality, the iconoclastic movement caused civil war further weakening Byzantium.
The tide began to turn against Islam, about 1500 ironically, just after the complete defeat and capture of Byzantium. Actually, Islam was as strong and as healthy as ever at that time but Europe began to grow and expand through exploration and experimentation and this lead to their advancement and Islam's RELATIVE decline. They began to think like the former Eastern Roman Empire. They had just conquered Constantinople (now Istanbul), their goal for 700 years, the greatest city in the world (in the Turk's mind). The rest of Europe were a bunch of barabrians by comparison and would fall eventually.
In more recent times, as you mention the last 200 years, Islam has fallen behind (really they just never advanced, they stagnated). Currently, they are looking around and saying. "Why are we not as great as we once were?" and some are coming up with the same answer the Byzantines did. Some believe that they are not religiously observant enough and that if they get fundamentalist enough they will win back the favor of God and start to defeat the West.
After 9/11 some of the American fundamentalist preachers tried to pull the same B.S. They said that 9/11 was a punishment by God because we listen to Rock and Roll and try to legalise gay marriage etc. We also have been trying to restrict the free flow of people (locking out foreign students) and ideas (the fight against teaching evolution in schools, though this is not directly connected 9/11). The point is, a resting on our laurels attitude and a turning away from cultural growth and economic expansion and towards ignorance, stagnation and fundamentalism could weaken the U.S as much as it did the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires before it.
The Byzantines, the Muslims and the American fundametalists were all wrong. What wins in the long run is openess to new ideas, economic expansion and not resting on your former glory.
Religious fundamentalism and internal fighting only weaken cultures. God won't come to our rescue if we all become vegitareans. God helps those who help themselves.
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Uh, no... (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know if it's a common viewpoint among Jews, but a good friend of mine who is Jewish once said that she thought the idea of Jesus being special because he was "the son of God" was offensive - the idea being that in Judaism we are *all* the sons and daughters of God.
Re:Uh, no... (Score:2, Informative)
Accuracy? (Score:3, Informative)
Eratosthenes discovered this (include the circumference to about the same error) in the 3rd century BC using the same method.
Re:Uh, no... (Score:3, Informative)
For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Re:But... (Score:3, Informative)
So says the modern Catholic church. We'll never know, because they were not just "left out", they were ordered completely destroyed in antiquity, and only accidental incomplete findings of the texts survive. As for the historical accuracy of the existing New Testament, almost none of it can be archeologically verified, including the actual authors of the remaining gospels, which were assigned their "authors" hundreds of years later.
In any case, as to the topic at hand, I don't think one can claim a religion predates its differentiator (ie. the person who caused the religion's followers to differentiate themselves from others.) The belief structure can go back to antiquity, just like you could claim that much of Judeo-Christian-Muslim thought goes back to the addition of "good" and "evil" to Western religious dogma in Zoraster's time.
Re:Those are Arabs, traditionally. (Score:3, Informative)
If I remember correctly, that belief is also held in both the Jewish and Christian mythologies.
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:3, Informative)
(Note that, according to the quotees, Bush also supported the establishment of a Palestinian state).
- AJ
Re:But... (Score:2, Informative)
Don't think that the inclusion of a book in scripture was just a willy nilly decision. It was considered with all the weight that such a question should have. Since then, they have goon though plenty of literary and historical critisism. The New Testament is, hands down, the most citisied (here critisim isn't nessisarly bad) book in history. That's a really good thing. The Hebrew Scripture have definetly recieved their fair share too. Unfortunatly the Islamic scriptures have been largely ignored, probably because taking an objective look at them usually ended up with someone losing a head.
Re:It's sad . . . (Score:3, Informative)
I researched it a little -- it set off my BS detector because it just seemed too damn convenient -- and found that not only was the reporter who reported this not at the meeting, but the guy who *TOLD* the reporter about it wasn't at the meeting either! The reporter said, basically, that someone told him that someone told HIM that Bush said something like that at the meeting. And yet of course people jumped all over it, because it met their preconceived ideas of what Bush must have said.
Just kind of an interesting aside. There truly is no stronger human impulse than to believe what we want to believe!
- AJ