Repaying the West's Debt to Islam
A good candidate for "Dhimmi of the week":Repaying the West's Debt to Islam
Unless you're a history buff, it can be hard to believe how pivotal early Islamic civilization was in laying the foundations of modern science, mathematics, technology, and the arts. Between 600 AD and 1400 AD, Europe was caught in a bleak time, commonly termed the Dark Ages. During that same period, however, Islamic societies were making fundamental discoveries. The contributions of early Islamic people are far too numerous to list. A few innovations starting with the letter "a" are: acetic acid, alcohol, almanacs, aloe, and astrolabes. In addition, these people were adept at improving the technologies and inventions that Muslim traders brought back from China. In the sciences, Islamic scholars began converting Greek speculations into a process for uncovering verifiable facts. They made fundamental contributions to medicine, astronomy, chemistry, physics, and optics. In medicine, for example, Muslim scientists developed a hollow needle for removing cataracts from the eye by suction -- around 1,000 years ago. And mathematics was a Muslim forte, as seen in the creation of algebra and the Arabic number system that we use today.
posted by Unknown @ 10:41 AM
9 Comments:
See my post above regarding this issue and a reference. What complete horseshit - "A few innovations starting with the letter "a" are: acetic acid, alcohol..."
Alcohol for God's sake - that's what this bimbo must have been drinking when she wrote this drivel. Alcohol goes back not centuries but millenia - I suppose it's like shooting fish in a barrel to mention that alcohol is prohibited in the Koran. Nevermind - don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.
As for mathematics - hint - just check the word India.
See my post above also. This woman never got past the letter 'a' (used in the Greek language to denote a negative)and she shows a frightening lack of scholarship. How do they get published?
Olga Pikovskaya, the author of this crap, is an ignorant, 17-year old bimbo who won a prize in one of the numerous, meaningless "science-oriented" contests that clog the news this time every year.
According to the New York Daily News, Olga was abandoned by her father, no doubt giving her a fashionable excuse for running off at the mouth about a subject of which she knows nothing.
I went to Caltech and MIT. This is NOT what we were taught. This dim-witted bimbo thinks she knows more about science than the people who invented the atomic bomb. (And if you're curious, it was the Dean of Students at Caltech who told me what a joke these science contests are.)
I have five or six books on the guitar. They are packed away now, but here is the story from
http://www.classicalguitarmidi.com/history/guitar_history.html#G_Latina_G_Morisca
It is believed that the history of the guitar began in the ancient Near East. There, the archeologists found instruments and representations of them that served as landmarks or guideposts in the relatively uncharted territory of the guitar's beginning.
Among the artifacts excavated from Babylonia, the most relevant were the clay plaques dated (1900-1800 B.C.). These showed nude figures playing musical instruments, some of which bear a general resemblance to the guitar [over 2000 years before Islam].
...
The first known European string instrument that might have had its origins here [in medieval Europe] dates back to the third century A.D. [about 1000 years before Islam]
...
There was a distinction made between Guitarra Latina and Guitarra Morisca. The latter has been brought by the Moors, hence, its name. Its soundbox was oval and it had many sound holes on its soundboard. The Arabs, passing through Egypt on their way to complete the great Muslim conquest of North Africa and Spain, may well have transmitted the cardinal features of this design to the instrument makers of Western Europe. It is equally possible that the first Spanish guitars were a European development. Certain is only that the Arabic influence in Spain prepared the ground for the advent of the guitar.
The Guitarra Latina however, did have curved sides and was thought to have come to Spain from some other European country. It was this type that undoubtedly developed into the modern guitar.
Now that this pack of lies has been published by the morons of Business Week, it is starting to appear on Islamist web sites.
"Perhaps it's time for the West to remember its debts to the Muslim world and help Islamic society to regain its past glory -- on their terms, not ours."
What a dhimmi! It's scary to think that someone who purports to know history could write such ignorant drivel. It sounds just like something one would read in an Islamic rag from Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
How can this woman get away with publishing such incorrect details?
Muslim 'traders' did not bring paper process back from China. They got it from war booty – Chinese captured in Samarkand.
'Alcohol' begins with the the Arab prefix 'al' meaning 'the' plus the Arab word 'kuhl'. This is simply the Arab word for it. They certainly did not discover it.
The astrolabe (f. Gk. Astrolabon) was an instrument used by the ancient Greeks, and probably by the Phoenicians long before the Arabs 'invented' it.
Acetic (pertaining to vinegar) is Latin.
Islam did not discover anything. Islam is a religion. People, and often conquered people who were neither Arabs nor Muslims but referred to as such, studied mathematics, astronomy, physics, and chemistry. The Egyptians and the Persians knew astronomy and geometry 3000BC. These 'fundamental' discoveries were in existence long before Mohammed was born in 570AD. Indian scholars of Aryan race and Hindu religion wrote about maths as early as 800BC and had an understanding of the Pythagorean theorem and geometric algebra. Al-Khwarismi (780-850AD) used the accumulated store of knowledge from India, Greece and Persia, to invent modern algebra. Albategnius used Indian trigonometric methods. Al-Biruni (astronomer - 973-1048) did visit India, learned Sanskrit and studied every ancient text he could find.
In Charlemagne's time (742 – 814) his architects and engineers built a 500 ft long bridge over the Rhine at Mainz, erected numerous churches and palaces, (including the Aachen cathedral) attracted scholars from all over Europe, built libraries and filled them with manuscripts. Charlemagne died Jan 814. So much for the dark ages.
What does she mean 'the transfer of goods and ideas led directly to the Renaissance'?The next Muslim discovery will probably be Shakespeare. The dark ages were over for 400 years by 1400AD. Nobody just 'thinks' muslim society is theocratic and backward. It is, and will be kept there by the fundamentalist nature of its leaders.
(This Olga Pikovskaya has really, really annoyed me!)
Irene Adler - can you give me more info re Shakespeare was a Muslim? Where did you see that? I'm obviously well behind on all this.
Irene Adler - got it, saved it and will send it to some literary friends. Apropos of Olga Pikovsky I do not believe she wrote that article. She may have the by-line, but the writing has the sophistication of a much older person. If her first language is Russian then - if she is indeed only 17 - she did not write that article. Or it has been heavily edited. I'm not excusing her, but wondering. Last post on this before moving on.
That cataract information is also probably incorrect. I did see something on the History Channel about Galen (a Greek in the Roman Empire, ~150 BC) that said he invented that hollow needle.
This is BS
The entire number system and Algebra are Indian - The arabs themselves call the number system "Hindu number system"
All those beautiful mosques in Central Asia were built by Hindu slaves who were taken as captives.
Islam has produced practically nothing in 1000 years. They just plagiarized the work of the Persians/Egyptians/Indians
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