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Pagliacci Weeps
Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 7
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 Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2005 12:59 pm Post subject: |
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| antineoliberalaxgrinder wrote: |
You've been reading too much Karen Armstrong my friend. |
Do you have any evidence for your novel historical interpretation that the Muslims did not invent and advance these fields (other than the rather flimsy statement that Karen Armstrong wrote about this in a recent book bashing fundamentalism -- that doesn't make her premises false; it just makes her conclusions unpalatable to you)?
Let's make it very concrete and consider algebra. Do you deny that Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi, although drawing on some earlier Indian and Greek sources who had done a foundation of positional notation on the one hand and quadratics on the other, for all intents and purposes invented algebra in his book al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wa'l-muqabala? If you do deny this, who do you say developed algebra? And what of al Khwarizmi's book? Was it a forgery? |
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gupsfu
Joined: 06 Jul 2004
Posts: 7919
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| Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2005 1:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| gupsfu wrote: |
| I'm not familiar with those Muslim inventions or non-inventions. |
Then why does your opinion about this subject have any weight? |
Because you haven't provided any evidence to back up your claims neither, so I don't see how your opinion has more weight than mine.
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Dan-Cannon
Joined: 19 Feb 2004
Posts: 3144
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| Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2005 1:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Pagliacci Weeps wrote: |
| antineoliberalaxgrinder wrote: |
You've been reading too much Karen Armstrong my friend. |
Do you have any evidence for your novel historical interpretation that the Muslims did not invent and advance these fields (other than the rather flimsy statement that Karen Armstrong wrote about this in a recent book bashing fundamentalism -- that doesn't make her premises false; it just makes her conclusions unpalatable to you)?
Let's make it very concrete and consider algebra. Do you deny that Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi, although drawing on some earlier Indian and Greek sources who had done a foundation of positional notation on the one hand and quadratics on the other, for all intents and purposes invented algebra in his book al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wa'l-muqabala? If you do deny this, who do you say developed algebra? And what of al Khwarizmi's book? Was it a forgery? |
According to Muslim historian Al Tabari, Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi was not a muslim, but a Zoroastrian.
Did this man (al-Khwarizmi) ever call himself a Muslim?
_________________
Islam is anti-infidel, therefor i am anti-Islam. - Dan Cannon.
I am the greatest minority in the world: an individual. - David Gulbraa. |
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ohmyrus
Joined: 27 Feb 2004
Posts: 316
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Pagliacci Weeps
Joined: 14 Aug 2005
Posts: 7
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| Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2005 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Dan-Cannon wrote: |
According to Muslim historian Al Tabari, Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi was not a muslim, but a Zoroastrian.
Did this man (al-Khwarizmi) ever call himself a Muslim? |
al-Khwarizmi never to my knowledge wrote about religion. Al Tabari gave him the epithet "al magus" which certainly lends credence to the theory that he was a Zoroastarian, but nothing is definitively known. Whatever al-Khwarizmi's personal beliefs were, the point was it was "the muslim world" (ie, the world that let Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Zoroastarians work and live in something approaching peace, though they did have a penchant for slaughtering Hindus) where all these fields (math, physics, astronomy, linguistics) were being advanced.
But, OK, say Tabari was right and Khwarizmi was a Zoroastarian. What about Averroes? He was most certainly muslim and most certainly advanced astronomy and philosophy more than anyone since Aristotle. In fact, Aristotle would have been largely lost to Europe if not for people who smuggled his translations into France from Spain.
My point here is not to offer some great paen to Islam but just to point out the need for a little western humility when we talk about how "backwards" our Islamic neighbors are in comparison to us -- go back a few centuries and the situation was reversed; go ahead a few centuries and the situation may reverse itself again. Christianity spent its first millenium and a half mired in the kind of ridiculous spiritualist nonsense Islam currently seems mired in. Once freethinking people cast aside those shackles and became as humanist as the early muslims were, they advanced. Meanwhile, the muslims were casting off humanism and losing their ability to progress.
What disturbed me about the article was the claim that to overcome Islam we need to be more like they are now, rather than more like they were 1500 years ago and we were 200 years ago. Faith is not the answer here; faith is the problem. |
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Dan-Cannon
Joined: 19 Feb 2004
Posts: 3144
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| Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2005 4:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Pagliacci Weeps wrote: |
| Dan-Cannon wrote: |
According to Muslim historian Al Tabari, Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi was not a muslim, but a Zoroastrian.
Did this man (al-Khwarizmi) ever call himself a Muslim? |
al-Khwarizmi never to my knowledge wrote about religion. Al Tabari gave him the epithet "al magus" which certainly lends credence to the theory that he was a Zoroastarian, but nothing is definitively known. Whatever al-Khwarizmi's personal beliefs were, the point was it was "the muslim world" (ie, the world that let Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Zoroastarians work and live in something approaching peace, though they did have a penchant for slaughtering Hindus) where all these fields (math, physics, astronomy, linguistics) were being advanced.
But, OK, say Tabari was right and Khwarizmi was a Zoroastarian. What about Averroes? He was most certainly muslim and most certainly advanced astronomy and philosophy more than anyone since Aristotle. In fact, Aristotle would have been largely lost to Europe if not for people who smuggled his translations into France from Spain.
My point here is not to offer some great paen to Islam but just to point out the need for a little western humility when we talk about how "backwards" our Islamic neighbors are in comparison to us -- go back a few centuries and the situation was reversed; go ahead a few centuries and the situation may reverse itself again. Christianity spent its first millenium and a half mired in the kind of ridiculous spiritualist nonsense Islam currently seems mired in. Once freethinking people cast aside those shackles and became as humanist as the early muslims were, they advanced. Meanwhile, the muslims were casting off humanism and losing their ability to progress.
What disturbed me about the article was the claim that to overcome Islam we need to be more like they are now, rather than more like they were 1500 years ago and we were 200 years ago. Faith is not the answer here; faith is the problem. |
The point is not what if they claimed to be "muslim" or the Islamic world. But if they really were muslims according to scriptures, and if the Islamic world adhered to the same scriptures. Did they adhere to what muslims are supposed to adhere to according to the Quran and Sunna?
No more than some of today's 'moderate" muslims are real muslims, many muslims of the past were probably not real Muslims.
So the question is, did these people, muslims or not, make these advancements and discoveries because of Islam, or in spite of it?
Why should anybody hail the so-called "Golden age" of Islam, if Islam itself was never responsible for any "Golden age"?
Books in the Islamic world pre-1000 that were not Arabic were destroyed along with libraries, and the only way to preserve a lot of knowledge was to translate it to Arabic. So if these people who valued this knowledge, translated them into Arabic to preserve it, was this done in the name of Islam, or to preserve this knowledge against the destruction of it, ordered by the Islamic caliphate of the times?
Is Islam "a religion of peace" merely because the majority of muslims doesn't wage war?
Is Islam a religion that allows science and knowledge to prosper just because some people calling themselves muslims were active in science and technology?
So i wouldn't be so quick to say it has anything at all to do with real Islam that these advancements and discoveries were made.
Therefor there is nothing to be "humble" about. These people were great despite Islamic doctrine and culture, and not because of it, and they simply continued working on knowledge from other cultures.
About early Islam and knowledge and culture:
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Zoroastrian ideology regarded all knowledge as sacred; Umar (the second Caliph) believed no knowledge was knowledge unless it originated in Quran. This was his motto when he ordered the burning and destruction of the famous Library and museum of Alexandria. Built by the Greek rulers of Egypt in the second century BC, the library for almost a millennium endured ravages of time, wars, fires and looting. Many times damaged, it was rebuilt, restocked and was functional till the last minute. It was finally destroyed by Amrou ibn el-Ass, the conqueror of Syria and Egypt by direct order of Umar in 7th century. The Imperial library at Ctesiphon had the same fate; the whole city was totally destroyed and never rose again. The destruction of such major libraries with the compulsory use of Arabic as the only language made it clear to the scholars and intellectuals that all pre-Islamic knowledge and national identities were in danger of total destruction and they had to be preserved.
Massive and heroic efforts were made and the result was the formation of a dynamic and significant translation movement for almost two hundred years
till 10th century. The movement started in Damascus in Umayyad times and flourished in Abbasid Baghdad (754 AD). All major Greek Syriac Persian and some Indian texts were translated into Arabic and Neo Persian. Pre-Abbasid translations from Pahlavi included major religious literary and historical texts. The source books that were used by Ferdowsi in compiling Shahnameh were saved around this time. Greek and Indian texts translated into Pahlavi were re-translated into Arabic and Neo Persian. Ibn-al-Muqaffa (Roozbeh) is the best-known Iranian translator of this period. He was accused of being a Zandaqa (heretic) and was murdered. Popular Manichean and other religious texts were also translated.
With the Abbasid the translation of scientific texts was added. Nawbakht the court astrologer and his son Abu Sahl and other colleagues al-Farazi and Umar al-Tabari and many others sponsored by the Barmakid family (the chief ministers to the early Abbasids who were murdered later) translated and promoted Pahlavi texts into Arabic and Neo-Persian. They were all Iranians and aimed to incorporate Sassanian culture into Abbasid ideology and guarantee the continuity of the Iranian heritage. Christian and Jewish learned families of Sassanian Persia such as Bukhtishu and Hunyan families were also great translators of Syriac Greek Pahlavi and other texts into Arabic. Both families had served at Gundishapur University for generations and were instrumental in founding the Adudi Hospital and Medical School in Baghdad.
Baghdad a suburb of Ctesiphon was chosen as the site of the New Abbasid capital (Baghdad is a Persian name and means god given, it was founded in 762 by al-Mansur). The Royal library was based on the Sassanian model and was called the house of knowledge (Bayt al-Hikmat). Even at Caliph Mamun's time when the persecution of Iranian elements had started, the director of the library was the great Persian nationalist and Pahlavi expert, Musa al-Sahl ibn-Harun (9th century). The famed Iranian mathematician and astronomer Musa al-Khwarizmi was employed full time by the library at this time. Ibn-an-Nadim the author of the Fihrist (the index) and the most famous associate of the library listed all the books and their origins in his famous index. A great part of the index has survived and is a valuable source of information. |
http://www.iranonline.com/History/Translation-Movement-In-Iran/2.html
So i would hardly call this a positive aspect of the "Islamic" world. It seems more so that science and knowledge advances in spite of Islamic doctrine rather than because of it.
If you say faith is the problem, on that note i would agree with you. However, a certain mentality of secularism also seems to be incredible damaging and even toxic. Not because of its lack of religious beliefs, but because of its nihilism and moral relativism. the problem is that with the religious supremacy that religions seems to espouse, cultural supremacy was seen equally as intolerant, resulting in the moral and cultural relativism and nihilism of today by a number of secularists.
This basically means that cultures that are against basic principles of freedom and human rights, are no longer deemed inferior to cultures where freedom and human rights are important principles. And we can see the results.
In other words, as a response to Christian religion, secularists have adopted a completely contrary but not less dangerous viewpoint to complete religious or cultural supremacy, that of complete equivalence.
_________________
Islam is anti-infidel, therefor i am anti-Islam. - Dan Cannon.
I am the greatest minority in the world: an individual. - David Gulbraa. |
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Recovering Leftist
Joined: 11 Jul 2005
Posts: 3872
Location: The Monroeville Mall
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| Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2005 6:37 pm Post subject: Re: Huh? |
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| Pagliacci Weeps wrote: |
"Some Crusaders went for spiritual reasons while
others went to seek their fortunes. Whatever the
reasons, they did the world a service. Without the
Crusades, Islam would probably have dominated the
world by now. There would have been no Scientific
Revolution"
Hmmm.... because it's not like those unscientific muslims saved 3/4 of ancient Greek and Roman scientific knowledge, did they? And it's not like they advanced astronomy for a millenium while Christian monks were arguing over whether or not "homoousian" had an iota in it. Nor did they make advances in magnetics, positional number systems, or algebra. It's also not like there was public lighting and sewage in Cordoba and Baghdad when people were still throwing their chamber pots out of their windows in Paris and London.
Come to think of it, at the time of the crusades, the Islamic world was the only place where real scientific progress and research were occurring. So my question is, does this guy not know this, or does he just not care? |
Welcome
This is the common islamic propaganda that is always brought up and usually knocked down immediately here. You ignore the Indian civilization and the Chinese civilization in your efforts to glorify islamic history. Dan is correct to also question the true faiths or beleifs of the intellectuals that you pose as examples.
_________________
"i hate the feelin' when you're looking at me
that way/ cause we're north americans/ but if we act all shy, it’ll make it ok/ makes it go away." ~ James Murphy |
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friend of David
Joined: 11 Jul 2005
Posts: 76
Location: USA
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| Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 12:10 am Post subject: Re: Huh? |
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| Pagliacci Weeps wrote: |
| friend of David wrote: |
The dark ages were dark because the evil Romans held all the Bibles and had them translated into latin. So noone was really free to explore Christianity or find inspiration. Most "Christians" didn't know what Christianity was about.The renaissance happened after the printing press and some very brave translators and scribes made Christs message available to anyone. Inspiration, love, hope, and peace. Christ was finally known to the masses. And the west has moved forward ever since. |
Hmmm... I have trouble with the interpretation that it was more religion that sparked the renaissance, especially since it the renaissance started about a century before Luther was born, and in Papist Italy no less, but I would agree the Reformation had an important part in shaping the course of the Renaissance. However since the Renaissance was ultimately a humanist revolution, it tended to happen against the wishes of religious leaders of all stripes. |
I wasn't refering to Luther but John Wycliffe 1380 AD. Well before Luther.100 years before Luther was even born. |
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Frodo Baggins
Joined: 07 Mar 2004
Posts: 3172
Location: Dar ul-Bacon
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| Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 9:23 pm Post subject: |
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Bringing this up again.
_________________
Do you know of any good links about Islam? Suggest them to me for the Internet Toolbox for Islam-critics, and inform me about links not working. |
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The Cat
Joined: 23 Apr 2005
Posts: 4357
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| Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 12:22 am Post subject: |
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| FAITH = HATE. |
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Frodo Baggins
Joined: 07 Mar 2004
Posts: 3172
Location: Dar ul-Bacon
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| Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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Ohmyrus: I know you've touched upon the subject of how to engage China in this struggle against Islam, but I'd really like you to write more on the subject, if you get the time some day. As a European and Westerner, I understand China only partly, and not always well enough to predict her moves.
_________________
Do you know of any good links about Islam? Suggest them to me for the Internet Toolbox for Islam-critics, and inform me about links not working. |
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manohar
Joined: 11 Dec 2004
Posts: 2347
Location: India
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| Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2006 6:12 am Post subject: |
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| ohmyrus wrote: |
The second thing about polytheistic gods is that they do not appear all powerful. Often they are at odds with one another (eg Zeus and his wife Hera were always quarreling) and can sometimes be manipulated by mortals. Amongst Chinese folk religions, there is a kitchen god who ascends to heaven once a year to tell the Jade Emperor whether the people of each household have been good or bad. So once a year, worshipers bake a special sticky cake to bribe him. If that fails, then they hope that maybe his mouth will get stuck by the sticky cake and he can't talk. (5)
The Jewish-Christian God and the Islamic god Allah are very different. They don't have human flaws and are all-powerful. Belief in such gods demands more from a worshiper. A philandering worshiper in ancient Greece may take comfort that Zeus also does the same but not those of monotheistic religions.
If he thinks that he has offended Zeus, he can turn to Hera or other gods. For followers of monotheistic religions, there is no escape. Unlike a worshiper of the Kitchen god, the Christian or Muslim cannot hope to bribe their God. What this means is that monotheistic religions are better at compelling their worshipers to abide by the prescribed code of conduct. |
I think this has also got something to do with the Roman attitudes of those days.
It is true that Hindus sometimes even get angry with the gods they worship.It is also true that satire had been written with gods by medieval poets.
However I think there never had been such a public desecration of the scale that we saw in ancient Rome where even Mercury was shown to be full of lust with his overly elongated penis in the wall murals.
This I think was allowed because people were given a free hand in expressing their feelings as the princes no longer believed in the conflicting stories.
I have known however from the history channel that ordinary folks never really tried to mimic their gods in most aspects as they considered that the prescribed rules for gods do not apply to men.
| Quote: |
| Thus you can see that church leaders from its earliest times view reason as being from God. This position was comparable to the Mu'atazilites who, if they had triumphed against the fundamentalists might have saved the Muslim world from backwardness. But Islam is too fatalistic a religion for the Mu'atazilites to triumph. God is believed to determine everything. If the trajectory of an arrow is determined by God there is no need to discover the principles of gravity, velocity and momentum. |
Did this fatalism originate after invasions of Chenghis Khan?
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| As a result, slave conditions were much better in the lands colonized by the French and Spaniards than by the British. |
Better when we see that natives were integrated as second and third wives by the church.Not better when we know that the greedy conquistadors smashed the heads of babies to ground after having them baptised.(a policy that is designed to make sure that there is no trouble in future,similiar to how British feared that marriages with locals would turn out to have troublesome offspring in the later stages.)
| Quote: |
| This explains why all, except Christian civilization, stagnated after showing much progress in its early years. Roman civilization lasted 1,000 years and did not made the scientific revolution. Neither did the Egyptian nor Chinese nor Indian civilizations which have been around for even longer time than did the Romans. |
Did Roman civilisation last a 1000 years?Exact dates plz.I think Rome fell by around 400 A.D.
_________________
Asatoma sadgamaya,
tamasoma jyotirgamaya,
mrutyoma amrutam gamaya,
...................................
Om shaanti shaanti shaantihi.
May all the innocent rest in peace forever.
Last edited by manohar on Mon Nov 13, 2006 6:29 am; edited 1 time in total |
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manohar
Joined: 11 Dec 2004
Posts: 2347
Location: India
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| Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2006 6:24 am Post subject: |
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Besides Science, Christianity was among the first to produce an Abolitionist movement. Slaves have been part of all human societies since ancient times. In the 19th century, it was the churches, beginning with the Quakers that took aim at slavery. This is because Christianity teaches respect for human life and that all are equal before God. You can still see this concern for human life even today as Christian groups still oppose abortion and stem cell research.
This is also why Christianity initially appealed to the lowest classes of Roman society such as slaves. It is still true today. In India, most Indian Christians come from the Dalit caste. Antislavery doctrines first appeared not long after the fall of Rome and slavery soon disappeared in most of Europe.
When it was revived to served the interests of plantation owners in the New World, the Pope strongly opposed it. When Papal opposition failed, the Catholic church tried to soften the effects of slavery. As a result, slave conditions were much better in the lands colonized by the French and Spaniards than by the British. |
I saw in the history channel that in Greece slaves were not allowed to worship gods by themselves as that would increase their self-confidence
and thereby threaten the interests of the nobility as they make a direct appeal to the concerned god.
So a possible reason for the appeal of Christianity in the Roman world could have been the urge towards equality.
However the same papacy also denied the knowledge of the Bible and its interpretation the masses.Under such conditions,bonded indenture
would become a possibility.Dalits are not slaves in a literal sense of the word.Some humiliation exists but mostly the exploitation is in the form of bonded indenture.
Also during the Crusades,I have known that the nobility had tried to
affect the self-confidence of the crusading masses by having it recorded that they ate human flesh and behaved worse than the Saracens.
So when there is overpopulation,the effects of Christianity would at best be marginal in the societal sphere after complete Christianisation.
_________________
Asatoma sadgamaya,
tamasoma jyotirgamaya,
mrutyoma amrutam gamaya,
...................................
Om shaanti shaanti shaantihi.
May all the innocent rest in peace forever.
Last edited by manohar on Mon Nov 13, 2006 6:29 am; edited 2 times in total |
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manohar
Joined: 11 Dec 2004
Posts: 2347
Location: India
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| Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2006 11:56 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| When it was revived to served the interests of plantation owners in the New World, the Pope strongly opposed it. When Papal opposition failed, the Catholic church tried to soften the effects of slavery. As a result, slave conditions were much better in the lands colonized by the French and Spaniards than by the British. |
According to what I know from wikipedia,slaves were treated and fed so well in the North America that they could even produce many a offspring and multiply.And many slaves were exploited so badly in the South American continent that more imports had to be made.
Dunno which is true.Seems to me that everyone online is trying to give their own story. 
_________________
Asatoma sadgamaya,
tamasoma jyotirgamaya,
mrutyoma amrutam gamaya,
...................................
Om shaanti shaanti shaantihi.
May all the innocent rest in peace forever.
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manohar
Joined: 11 Dec 2004
Posts: 2347
Location: India
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| Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2006 12:06 pm Post subject: |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade#New_World_destinations
O.K North had already become independant by then from the British and British and French possessions in the Americas also included the Carribbean.
_________________
Asatoma sadgamaya,
tamasoma jyotirgamaya,
mrutyoma amrutam gamaya,
...................................
Om shaanti shaanti shaantihi.
May all the innocent rest in peace forever.
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