When did Islam's fall from grace begin?

[Leo Caesius]

The whole point of Islam is that it is a religion, certain things have to be done in order to appease Allah, those who diverged from the mainstream were marginalised. Once an area had been assimilated all progress stopped, the evidence speaks for itself, there has been no purely Islamic/Muslim advance. That is why the Middle east became a backwater, not through lack of trade, but lack of ability to overcome the restrictions of their faith.

You are obviously not very familiar with Islam. You're talking about it as if it were a "religion" in the modern, 20th century sense. There is no "appeasing" Allah; he doesn't need it. As for those who diverged from the mainstream, they occasionally ended up running the place. Economic and political considerations were every bit as important as religious ones (if not more so) in determining who gets marginalized and who does not. The Muslim world was, in this regard, much more forgiving than Europe for much of its history.

The Muslims actually had the burden of governing the Middle East for 13 centuries. The Assyrians were fixated mostly upon theology and heresiology. Seriously, read some of the Syriac classics - any will do, but take a look at Bar Salibi. All of the things that you're attributing to Muslims are there in Syriac Christianity. There was no such thing as a secular Assyrian before the 19th century - their identity was defined 100% by their religion.

In any case, what culture produced a purely domestic advance? You isolate a culture, like the inhabitants of Borneo, and they remained frozen in time (for lack of a better word). Much of what Europe claims as its own was "stolen," to use the word of the day, from the Romans, Greeks, and other cultures. Innovation finds fertile soil only where cultures collide and ideas travel freely. The Middle East was one such place.

 

[Quiet_Man]

You are obviously not very familiar with Islam. You're talking about it as if it were a "religion" in the modern, 20th century sense. There is no "appeasing" Allah; he doesn't need it. As for those who diverged from the mainstream, they occasionally ended up running the place. Economic and political considerations were every bit as important as religious ones (if not more so) in determining who gets marginalized and who does not. The Muslim world was, in this regard, much more forgiving than Europe for much of its history.

The Muslims actually had the burden of governing the Middle East for 13 centuries. The Assyrians were fixated mostly upon theology. Seriously, read some of the Syriac classics - any will do, but take a look at Bar Salibi. All of the things that you're attributing to Muslims are there in Syriac Christianity. There was no such thing as a secular Assyrian before the 19th century - their identity was defined 100% by their religion.

In any case, what culture produced a purely domestic advance? You isolate a culture, like the inhabitants of Borneo, and they remained frozen in time (for lack of a better word). Much of what Europe claims as its own was "stolen," to use the word of the day, from the Romans, Greeks, and other cultures. Innovation finds fertile soil only where cultures collide and ideas travel freely. The Middle East was one such place.

Islam by its very nature isolated itself, as soon as other nations could defend themselves militarily against Islamic expansion, the areas it occupied were doomed to become an intelectual backwater.

I'm not sure where you are coming from with Islam not being a religion, formal worship is following the five pillars of the faith which are of course religious practices not secular ones.

Europe did claim and use much of what the Romans, Greeks, Indian, Chinese and then built upon this knowledge, the Islamic nations did not, they never expanded upon any advance they came across as a result they fell by the wayside.

 

[Fabilius]

Islam by its very nature isolated itself, as soon as other nations could defend themselves militarily against Islamic expansion, the areas it occupied were doomed to become an intelectual backwater.

Nope. I believe there was quite a lot of trade with nonmuslims. Religion can be a bugger, but Islam is not the sole reason for the fact that the Middle East got behind Europe.

 

[Leo Caesius]

I'm not sure where you are coming from with Islam not being a religion, formal worship is following the five pillars of the faith which are of course religious practices not secular ones.

You yourself said that any country which became Muslim focused upon religion and therefore couldn't advance. Here you identify religion explicitly as "worship." However, Islam was not restricted to worship; it is a community and a way of life. Two concepts were used to describe "the West" until quite recently: Christianity, the religion of most of the West, and Christendom, the entire political, religious, social, and territorial complex that was the West before it became secular. Islam answers to both of these concepts.

Therefore, your claim that Islam entails focusing upon worship to the detriment to anything else is predicated upon a gross misunderstanding of what religion was in the premodern period throughout the world (including Europe) and what it means to Muslims today.

Europe did claim and use much of what the Romans, Greeks, Indian, Chinese and then built upon this knowledge, the Islamic nations did not, they never expanded upon any advance they came across as a result they fell by the wayside.

Again, this is utter rubbish.


The Independent (London)
Copyright 2006 Newspaper Publishing PLC
All Rights Reserved
March 11, 2006 Saturday
First Edition

HEADLINE: HOW ISLAMIC INVENTORS CHANGED THE WORLD;
The world's great civilisations

From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we take for granted in daily life. As a new exhibition opens, Paul Vallely nominates 20 of the most influential- and identifies the men of genius behind them.

BYLINE: Paul Vallely

1 The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after eating a certain berry. He boiled the berries to make the first coffee. Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray on special occasions. By the late 15th century it had arrived in Mecca and Turkey from where it made its way to Venice in 1645. It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in the City of London. The Arabic qahwa became the Turkish kahve then the Italian caffZ and then English coffee.

2 The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled us to see. The first person to realise that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab word qamara for a dark or private room). He is also credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.

3 A form of chess was played in ancient India but the game was developed into the form we know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward to Europe - where it was introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th century - and eastward as far as Japan. The word rook comes from the Persian rukh, which means chariot.

4 A thousand years before the Wright brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to construct a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. He hoped to glide like a bird. He didn't. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought to be the first parachute, and leaving him with only minor injuries. In 875, aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles' feathers he tried again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft for ten minutes but crashed on landing - concluding, correctly, that it was because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing. Baghdad international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.

5 Washing and bathing are religious requirements for Muslims, which is perhaps why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today. The ancient Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it more as a pomade. But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and aromat-ics such as thyme oil. One of the Crusaders' most striking characteristics, to Arab nostrils, was that they did not wash. Shampoo was introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed's Indian Vapour Baths on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV

6 Distillation, the means of separating liquids through differences in their boiling points, was invented around the year 800 by Islam's foremost scientist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy into chemistry, inventing many of the basic processes and apparatus still in use today - liquefaction, crystallisation, distillation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation and iltration. As well as discovering uric and nitric acid, he ted the alembic still, giving the world intense rosewater and other mes and alcoholic spirits (although drinking them is haram, or forbidden, in Islam). Ibn Hayyan emphasised systematic experimentation and was the founder of modern chemistry.

7 The crank-shaft is a device which translates rotary into linear motion and is central to much of the machinery in the modern world, not least the internal combustion engine. One of the most important mechanical inventions in the history of humankind, it was created by an ingenious Muslim engineer called al- Jazari to raise water for irrigation. His 1206 Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices shows he also invented or refined the use of valves and pistons, devised some of the first mechanical clocks driven by water and weights, and was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions was the combination lock.

8 Quilting is a method of sewing or tying two layers of cloth with a layer of insulating material in between. It is not clear whether it was invented in the Muslim world or whether it was imported there from India or China. But it certainly came to the West via the Crusaders. They saw it used by Saracen warriors, who wore straw-filled quilted canvas shirts instead of armour. As well as a form of protection, it proved an effective guard against the chafing of the Crusaders' metal armour and was an effective form of insulation - so much so that it became a cottage industry back home in colder climates such as Britain and Holland.

9 The pointed arch so characteristic of Europe's Gothic cathedrals was an invention borrowed from Islamic architecture. It was much stronger than the rounded arch used by the Romans and Normans, thus allowing the building of bigger, higher, more complex and grander buildings. Other borrowings from Muslim genius included ribbed vaulting, rose windows and dome-building techniques. Europe's castles were also adapted to copy the Islamic world's - with arrow slits, battlements, a barbican and parapets. Square towers and keeps gave way to more easily defended round ones. Henry V's castle architect was a Muslim.

10 Many modern surgical 111 instruments are of III exactly the same design as those devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi. His scalpels, bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery and many of the 200 instruments he devised are recognisable to a modern surgeon. It was he who discovered that catgut used for internal stitches dissolves away naturally (a discovery he made when his monkey ate his lute strings) and that it can be also used to make medicine capsules. In the 13th century, another Muslim medic named Ibn Nafis described the circulation of the blood, 300 years before William Harvey discovered it. Muslims doctors also invented anaesthetics of opium and alcohol mixes and developed hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes in a technique still used today.

11 The windmill was invented in 634 for a Persian caliph and was used to grind corn and draw up water for irrigation. In the vast deserts of Arabia, when the seasonal streams ran dry, the only source of power was the wind which blew steadily from one direction for months. Mills had six or 12 sails covered in fabric or palm leaves. was 500 years before the first windmill was seen in Europe.

12 The technique of inoculation was not invented by Jenner and Pasteur but was devised in the Muslim world and brought to Europe from Turkey by the wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul in 1724. Children in Turkey were vaccinated with cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50 years before the West discovered it.

13 The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of Egypt in 953 after he demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink in a reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a combination of gravity and capillary action.

14 The system of numbering in use all round the world is probably Indian in origin but the style of the numerals is Arabic and first appears in print in the work of the Muslim mathematicians al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi around 825. Algebra was named after al-Khwarizmi's book, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, much of whose contents are still in use. The work of Muslim maths scholars was imported into Europe 300 years later by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci. Algorithms and much of the theory of trigonometry came from the Muslim world. And Al-Kindi's discovery of frequency analysis rendered all the codes of the ancient world soluble and created the basis of modern cryptology.

15 Ali ibn Nafi, known by his nickname of Ziryab (Blackbird) came from Iraq to Cordoba in the 9th century and brought with him the concept of the three-course meal - soup, followed by fish or meat, then fruit and nuts. He also introduced crystal glasses (which had been invented after experiments with rock crystal by Abbas ibn Firnas - see No 4).

16 Carpets were regarded as part of Paradise by medieval Muslims, M 6 thanks to their advanced weaving techniques, new tinctures from Islamic chemistry and highly developed sense of pattern and arabesque which were the basis of Islam's non-representational art. In contrast, Europe's floors were distinctly earthly, not to say earthy, until Arabian and Persian carpets were introduced. In England, as Erasmus recorded, floors were "covered in rushes, occasionally renewed, but so imperfectly that the bottom layer is left undisturbed, sometimes for 20 years, harbouring expectoration, vomiting, the leakage of dogs and men, ale droppings, scraps offish, and other abominations not fit to be mentioned". Carpets, unsurprisingly, caught on quickly.

17 The modern cheque comes from the Arabic saqq, a written vow to pay for goods when they were delivered, to avoid money having to be transported across dangerous terrain. In the 9th century, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad.

18 By the 9th century, many Muslim scholars took it for granted that 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.

19 Though the Chinese invented saltpetre gun - powder, and used it in their works, it was the Arabs who worked out that it could be purified using potassium nitrate for military use. Muslim incendiary devices terrified the Crusaders. By the 15th century they had invented both a rocket, which they called a "self-moving and combusting egg", and a torpedo - a self-propelled pear-shaped bomb with a spear at the front which impaled itself in enemy ships and then blew up.

20 Medieval Europe had kitchen and herb gardens, but it was the Arabs who developed the idea of the garden as a place of beauty and meditation. The first royal pleasure gardens in Europe were opened in 11th-century Muslim Spain. Flowers which originated in Muslim gardens include the carnation and the tulip.

"1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World" is a new exhibition which began a nationwide tour this week. It is currently at the Science Museum in Manchester. For more information, go to www.1001inventions.com.

 

[Quiet_Man]

You yourself said that any country which became Muslim focused upon religion and therefore couldn't advance. Here you identify religion explicitly as "worship." However, Islam was not restricted to worship; it is a community and a way of life. Two concepts were used to describe "the West" until quite recently: Christianity, the religion of most of the West, and Christendom, the entire political, religious, social, and territorial complex that was the West before it became secular. Islam answers to both of these concepts.

Therefore, your claim that Islam entails focusing upon worship to the detriment to anything else is predicated upon a gross misunderstanding of what religion was in the premodern period throughout the world (including Europe) and what it means to Muslims today.

Again, this is utter rubbish.


The Independent (London)
Copyright 2006 Newspaper Publishing PLC
All Rights Reserved
March 11, 2006 Saturday
First Edition

HEADLINE: HOW ISLAMIC INVENTORS CHANGED THE WORLD;
The world's great civilisations

From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we take for granted in daily life. As a new exhibition opens, Paul Vallely nominates 20 of the most influential- and identifies the men of genius behind them.

BYLINE: Paul Vallely

1 The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after eating a certain berry. He boiled the berries to make the first coffee. Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray on special occasions. By the late 15th century it had arrived in Mecca and Turkey from where it made its way to Venice in 1645. It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in the City of London. The Arabic qahwa became the Turkish kahve then the Italian caffZ and then English coffee.

2 The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled us to see. The first person to realise that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab word qamara for a dark or private room). He is also credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.

3 A form of chess was played in ancient India but the game was developed into the form we know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward to Europe - where it was introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th century - and eastward as far as Japan. The word rook comes from the Persian rukh, which means chariot.

4 A thousand years before the Wright brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to construct a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. He hoped to glide like a bird. He didn't. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought to be the first parachute, and leaving him with only minor injuries. In 875, aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles' feathers he tried again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft for ten minutes but crashed on landing - concluding, correctly, that it was because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing. Baghdad international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.

5 Washing and bathing are religious requirements for Muslims, which is perhaps why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today. The ancient Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it more as a pomade. But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and aromat-ics such as thyme oil. One of the Crusaders' most striking characteristics, to Arab nostrils, was that they did not wash. Shampoo was introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed's Indian Vapour Baths on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV

6 Distillation, the means of separating liquids through differences in their boiling points, was invented around the year 800 by Islam's foremost scientist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy into chemistry, inventing many of the basic processes and apparatus still in use today - liquefaction, crystallisation, distillation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation and iltration. As well as discovering uric and nitric acid, he ted the alembic still, giving the world intense rosewater and other mes and alcoholic spirits (although drinking them is haram, or forbidden, in Islam). Ibn Hayyan emphasised systematic experimentation and was the founder of modern chemistry.

7 The crank-shaft is a device which translates rotary into linear motion and is central to much of the machinery in the modern world, not least the internal combustion engine. One of the most important mechanical inventions in the history of humankind, it was created by an ingenious Muslim engineer called al- Jazari to raise water for irrigation. His 1206 Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices shows he also invented or refined the use of valves and pistons, devised some of the first mechanical clocks driven by water and weights, and was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions was the combination lock.

8 Quilting is a method of sewing or tying two layers of cloth with a layer of insulating material in between. It is not clear whether it was invented in the Muslim world or whether it was imported there from India or China. But it certainly came to the West via the Crusaders. They saw it used by Saracen warriors, who wore straw-filled quilted canvas shirts instead of armour. As well as a form of protection, it proved an effective guard against the chafing of the Crusaders' metal armour and was an effective form of insulation - so much so that it became a cottage industry back home in colder climates such as Britain and Holland.

9 The pointed arch so characteristic of Europe's Gothic cathedrals was an invention borrowed from Islamic architecture. It was much stronger than the rounded arch used by the Romans and Normans, thus allowing the building of bigger, higher, more complex and grander buildings. Other borrowings from Muslim genius included ribbed vaulting, rose windows and dome-building techniques. Europe's castles were also adapted to copy the Islamic world's - with arrow slits, battlements, a barbican and parapets. Square towers and keeps gave way to more easily defended round ones. Henry V's castle architect was a Muslim.

10 Many modern surgical 111 instruments are of III exactly the same design as those devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi. His scalpels, bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery and many of the 200 instruments he devised are recognisable to a modern surgeon. It was he who discovered that catgut used for internal stitches dissolves away naturally (a discovery he made when his monkey ate his lute strings) and that it can be also used to make medicine capsules. In the 13th century, another Muslim medic named Ibn Nafis described the circulation of the blood, 300 years before William Harvey discovered it. Muslims doctors also invented anaesthetics of opium and alcohol mixes and developed hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes in a technique still used today.

11 The windmill was invented in 634 for a Persian caliph and was used to grind corn and draw up water for irrigation. In the vast deserts of Arabia, when the seasonal streams ran dry, the only source of power was the wind which blew steadily from one direction for months. Mills had six or 12 sails covered in fabric or palm leaves. was 500 years before the first windmill was seen in Europe.

12 The technique of inoculation was not invented by Jenner and Pasteur but was devised in the Muslim world and brought to Europe from Turkey by the wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul in 1724. Children in Turkey were vaccinated with cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50 years before the West discovered it.

13 The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of Egypt in 953 after he demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink in a reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a combination of gravity and capillary action.

14 The system of numbering in use all round the world is probably Indian in origin but the style of the numerals is Arabic and first appears in print in the work of the Muslim mathematicians al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi around 825. Algebra was named after al-Khwarizmi's book, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, much of whose contents are still in use. The work of Muslim maths scholars was imported into Europe 300 years later by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci. Algorithms and much of the theory of trigonometry came from the Muslim world. And Al-Kindi's discovery of frequency analysis rendered all the codes of the ancient world soluble and created the basis of modern cryptology.

15 Ali ibn Nafi, known by his nickname of Ziryab (Blackbird) came from Iraq to Cordoba in the 9th century and brought with him the concept of the three-course meal - soup, followed by fish or meat, then fruit and nuts. He also introduced crystal glasses (which had been invented after experiments with rock crystal by Abbas ibn Firnas - see No 4).

16 Carpets were regarded as part of Paradise by medieval Muslims, M 6 thanks to their advanced weaving techniques, new tinctures from Islamic chemistry and highly developed sense of pattern and arabesque which were the basis of Islam's non-representational art. In contrast, Europe's floors were distinctly earthly, not to say earthy, until Arabian and Persian carpets were introduced. In England, as Erasmus recorded, floors were "covered in rushes, occasionally renewed, but so imperfectly that the bottom layer is left undisturbed, sometimes for 20 years, harbouring expectoration, vomiting, the leakage of dogs and men, ale droppings, scraps offish, and other abominations not fit to be mentioned". Carpets, unsurprisingly, caught on quickly.

17 The modern cheque comes from the Arabic saqq, a written vow to pay for goods when they were delivered, to avoid money having to be transported across dangerous terrain. In the 9th century, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad.

18 By the 9th century, many Muslim scholars took it for granted that 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.

19 Though the Chinese invented saltpetre gun - powder, and used it in their works, it was the Arabs who worked out that it could be purified using potassium nitrate for military use. Muslim incendiary devices terrified the Crusaders. By the 15th century they had invented both a rocket, which they called a "self-moving and combusting egg", and a torpedo - a self-propelled pear-shaped bomb with a spear at the front which impaled itself in enemy ships and then blew up.

20 Medieval Europe had kitchen and herb gardens, but it was the Arabs who developed the idea of the garden as a place of beauty and meditation. The first royal pleasure gardens in Europe were opened in 11th-century Muslim Spain. Flowers which originated in Muslim gardens include the carnation and the tulip.

"1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World" is a new exhibition which began a nationwide tour this week. It is currently at the Science Museum in Manchester. For more information, go to www.1001inventions.com.

1) culinary advances can hardly be called a scientific advance.
2) Ibn al-Haitham merely plagiarised the works of Hunayn ibn-Ishaq's (an Assyrian Christian) textbook on ophthalmology, written in 950 A.D
3) Chess was developed in Persia, well before Islam.
4) Abbas ibn Firnas is a great example of the failure of Islam to follow through on innovations, the guy didn't even write down anything to help further research.
5) Soap another pinnacle of Islamic civilisation? The Byzantines were using soap made from lye which they got from Egypt well before Islam.
6) Try looking up Alambic distillation used by the Chinese in 3000 BC, the East Indians 2500 years BC, the Egyptians 2000 years BC, the Greeks 1000 years BC, and the Romans 200 years BC.
7) Once again a great might have been, used existing priciples all the way back to Archimedes and once again never followed up on by future Islamic scientists.
8) You answer your own argument there, quilting was not an Islamic invention, it was merely passing through.
9) Domes and arches, the fundamental architectural breakthrough of using a parabolic shape instead of a spherical shape for these structures was made by the Assyrians more than 1300 years earlier, as evidenced by their archaeological record.
10) Once again all those techniques and invention can be traced back to either the Chinese or Indians, or are merely observations. Observing something is not the same as following up on it.
11) The first windmills were in use by the Persians before the Islamic takeover. The west had a tendency to use water wheels even in Roman times, there was no need for windmills.
12) Innoculation was first used as evidenced in a chinese print about 200BC
13) Great invention, really changed the world with that one

14) The propaganda that Arab mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption is common but false. The fundamental basis of modern mathematics had been laid down not hundreds but thousands of years before by Assyrians and Babylonians, who already knew of the concept of zero, of the Pythagorean Theorem, and of many, many other developments expropriated by Arabs/Muslims Try reading A History of Babylonian Mathematics, by Neugebauer.
15) See item 1.
16) Carpets were being used by ancient Egyptians in 1480BC as evidenced by hieroglyphs of handlooms.
17) Once again a Chinese innovation.
18) The Islamic claim their astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration. This is a bit melodramatic. In fact, the astronomers you refer to were not Arabs but Chaldeans and Babylonians (of present day south-Iraq), who for millennia were known as astronomers and astrologers, and who were forcibly Arabized and Islamized -- so rapidly that by 750 A.D. they had disappeared completely.
19) Once again you answer your own claims, the chinese were using rocket propelled spears long before Islam "invented" them.
20) Gardening is hardly a science. The Roman and greek physicians were the source of Islams knowledge in these matters.

So apart from 1 Mesopotamian Turk whos work was never further advanced Islams claims to science lie in the fields of food, fountain pens and flowers.

The evidence speaks for itself Islamic culture stultifies the advancement of science, great with stuff already invented, but not that innovative in itself, typical theocracy really. Had there been a true culture of science within Islam itself I'm sure it would have continued to match if not beat the west in every field of advance, but it didn't. I say the flaw is within the Islamic system itself, not Muslims. Change the system early enough and the Islamic world would be the first world, not the west.

 

[Leo Caesius]

Rubbish. I'd like to see you apply the same standards to the Europeans at the same time. I'm seeing a lot of special pleading here.

1) culinary advances can hardly be called a scientific advance.

You claimed that Muslims made no advances in knowledge. In that regard, culinary advances are extremely relevant.

2) Ibn al-Haitham merely plagiarised the works of Hunayn ibn-Ishaq's (an Assyrian Christian) textbook on ophthalmology, written in 950 A.D

"Plagiarized" is a very strong word, and happens to be wrong in this case. While Hunayn ibn Ishaq happens to be celebrated in the field of ophthamology, Ibn al-Haitham's advances in the field of optics are his own. If the two men had been reversed (the one a Christian, the other a Muslim) you would almost certainly trivialize the role of the Muslim and overstate the case of the Christian.

3) Chess was developed in Persia, well before Islam.

True, an ancestor of chess existed in Zoroastrian Iran, as did Backgammon and Polo. But the forms to which the Europeans were introduced were highly developed from these original forms. Antonio Panaino (my old mentor at the University of Bologna and a student of Claudio Gnoli) has written quite a lot on these topics.

4) Abbas ibn Firnas is a great example of the failure of Islam to follow through on innovations, the guy didn't even write down anything to help further research.

More special pleading. By this standard, Leonardo da Vinci was a big failure because nobody ever followed up on his innovations and his notes were written in code so that nobody else could read them to help with further research.

5) Soap another pinnacle of Islamic civilisation? The Byzantines were using soap made from lye which they got from Egypt well before Islam.

No, that's not true. The Egyptians never used sodium lye, a formula which was first developed by the Arabs and later borrowed by their Byzantine contemporaries. Today's soap does not differ significantly from that first innovated by Arabs.

6) Try looking up Alambic distillation used by the Chinese in 3000 BC, the East Indians 2500 years BC, the Egyptians 2000 years BC, the Greeks 1000 years BC, and the Romans 200 years BC.

Are you kidding me? The alembic wasn't invented by the Chinese! I have yet to hear that anyone other than Geber invented it (although I'm sure carlton will set me straight if I'm wrong here). These other dates for the invention of distillation that you've provided are all controversial and, in any case, never amounted to anything, so once again (by your own standards) they were failures and dead ends.

7) Once again a great might have been, used existing priciples all the way back to Archimedes and once again never followed up on by future Islamic scientists.

See 4 above.

8) You answer your own argument there, quilting was not an Islamic invention, it was merely passing through.

No, I didn't. Your claim, that it was just "passing through," is controversial. In any case, the Muslims first used it for military purposes.

9) Domes and arches, the fundamental architectural breakthrough of using a parabolic shape instead of a spherical shape for these structures was made by the Assyrians more than 1300 years earlier, as evidenced by their archaeological record.

That's beside the point. We're discussing the pointed arch, not the arch in general. Did you even bother reading this?

10) Once again all those techniques and invention can be traced back to either the Chinese or Indians, or are merely observations. Observing something is not the same as following up on it.

If this is the case, and I do not believe that it is, you should be able to provide some links arguing your case, instead of simply waving your hands and saying that it ain't so.

11) The first windmills were in use by the Persians before the Islamic takeover. The west had a tendency to use water wheels even in Roman times, there was no need for windmills.

Again, this claim (Sassanians invented the windmill) is far from universally acknowledged. There simply isn't any proof, although it wouldn't surprise me if it were true. In any case, they became widespread under Islam. By the way, if you really want an example of a theocratic, reactionary, oppressive state, Sassanian Iran is a much better example than the Muslims ever were.

Secondly, we're talking about innovations, which you claim never existed under Islam. The fact that these innovations were not adopted in Europe may say something about the Europeans but absolutely nothing about Islam.

12) Innoculation was first used as evidenced in a chinese print about 200BC

Perhaps, but it wasn't current in China at the time that the Muslims invented (or re-invented it, if you will). By your own logic, the Chinese shouldn't count.

13) Great invention, really changed the world with that one

The pen is mightier than the sword.

14) The propaganda that Arab mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption is common but false. The fundamental basis of modern mathematics had been laid down not hundreds but thousands of years before by Assyrians and Babylonians, who already knew of the concept of zero, of the Pythagorean Theorem, and of many, many other developments expropriated by Arabs/Muslims. Try reading A History of Babylonian Mathematics, by Neugebauer.

I have read it. I own it. I studied in the department that Neugebauer founded. And I don't agree with you; this is more empty rhetoric. You are seriously overstating the extent of Mesopotamian mathematics. The mathematics adopted by the West and subsequently by the whole world attained their current form in the Islamic world. To claim that the Muslim mathematicians were mindlessly aping the Indians and the Babylonians (as you are here) is to completely miss Neugebauer's point and the point of the people who succeeded him, such as David Pingree.

You have a lot of nerve complaining about "propaganda" while at the same time expecting us to swallow all of this stuff from AINA.

15) See item 1.

Ditto. In any case, you're ignoring Arab contributions to the field of optics and practical inventions such as glasses.

16) Carpets were being used by ancient Egyptians in 1480BC as evidenced by hieroglyphs of handlooms.

Yes, and in China as well, but they came to the West through the Islamic world. Persian and Turkish carpets are still known the world around to be the best in existence.

17) Once again a Chinese innovation.

I don't see any evidence for this. Care to provide it?

18) The Islamic claim their astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration. This is a bit melodramatic. In fact, the astronomers you refer to were not Arabs but Chaldeans and Babylonians (of present day south-Iraq), who for millennia were known as astronomers and astrologers, and who were forcibly Arabized and Islamized -- so rapidly that by 750 A.D. they had disappeared completely.

It's no more melodramatic than some of your claims about the Assyrians. As for the Chaldeans and Babylonians disappearing by 750 AD, that is patently not the case. I've done field work among their descendents, who still speak Aramaic and still follow their ancient astrological tradition.

19) Once again you answer your own claims, the chinese were using rocket propelled spears long before Islam "invented" them.

No, they were using firecrackers, which is very different from "rocket propelled spears." The Muslims were the first to innovate a military use for them.

20) Gardening is hardly a science. The Roman and greek physicians were the source of Islams knowledge in these matters.

First of all, have you ever heard of botany and horticulture? Second of all, the Romans and the Greeks had little to do with gardens in Islam; if anything, the Iranians were the primary inspiration for this practice. Even so, the Muslims developed upon the Iranian knowledge and spread it throughout the world.

The evidence speaks for itself Islamic culture stultifies the advancement of science, great with stuff already invented, but not that innovative in itself, typical theocracy really.

Once again you have proven that you really have no in-depth knowledge of the time period or cultures that we're discussing here. You talk about theocracy but hold pre-Islamic Iran up as a model. You talk about the Islamic obsession with theology and hold up the Church of the East as a model. You talk about Muslim "dead ends" and then argue that the Chinese invented everything before everyone else, ignoring of course the fact that most of these inventions languished in China before disappearing from sight until they were rediscovered. You keep telling me to read books I've already read and keep claiming that they say things that they do not. These are all significant contradictions that you've made and failed to address.

 

[Quiet_Man]

Once again you have proven that you really have no in-depth knowledge of the time period or cultures that we're discussing here. You talk about theocracy but hold pre-Islamic Iran up as a model. You talk about the Islamic obsession with theology and hold up the Church of the East as a model. You talk about Muslim "dead ends" and then argue that the Chinese invented everything before everyone else, ignoring of course the fact that most of these inventions languished in China before disappearing from sight until they were rediscovered. You keep telling me to read books I've already read and keep claiming that they say things that they do not. These are all significant contradictions that you've made and failed to address.

All your claims founder on the fact that Islamic advances were few and far between, merely using bits and bobs stolen or gained from other civilisations.

The evidence is there before your eyes, Islam retards or stultifies advancement of science just like any theocracy. If it didn't the world would be a different place. All else is just quibbling on your part not mine.

When it comes to science, the west won because it set aside religion.

 

[Leo Caesius]

Alright, you know what? I'm done arguing with you. You got nothing, if you think repeating yourself counts for an argument. I do suggest, though, that you read Otto Neugebauer's Exact Sciences in Antiquity (the one you referenced above as "A History of Babylonian Mathematics"; it's an engaging read). I also suggest that you actually go read some Syriac material, in translation if need be, if you're going to keep harping on how great it is.

Push baShlomo!

 

[Earling]

Mongols.

The devestation of Mesopotamia is hard to overstate.

Had the Mongols for some inexplicable reason avoided the far wealthier Islamic heartlands and go into Europe, putting todays Italy, Germany and France to the sword then it is quite possible Europe would have languished long behind the east.

Even then I might argue the fact the Ottomans were a serious threat up to the 18th century and a reasonable power till the 20th. The fact is the Sultan couldn't pull a Peter the Great, galavant Europe, and realise what must be done to match the west. You might consider it a flaw of Islam, but given that power had proved by and far superior to christianity in the last thousand years that seems... false. Its unfair to blame a religion for all the flaws in the countries in which it is accepted. Indeed I could ask when did the fall of Catholicism occur given how non-Catholic countries have effectively dominated the world for the most part after the collapse of Spanish power. (In regards to Europe atleast)

 

[JP_Morgan]

I think it's probably the fact that Europe had far more natural resources than the Middle East does. That and there weren't any conlficts like the thirty years' war

 

[Quiet_Man]

Alright, you know what? I'm done arguing with you. You got nothing, if you think repeating yourself counts for an argument. I do suggest, though, that you read Otto Neugebauer's Exact Sciences in Antiquity (the one you referenced above as "A History of Babylonian Mathematics"; it's an engaging read). I also suggest that you actually go read some Syriac material, in translation if need be, if you're going to keep harping on how great it is.

Push baShlomo!

Whatever

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

All your claims founder on the fact that Islamic advances were few and far between, merely using bits and bobs stolen or gained from other civilisations.

The evidence is there before your eyes, Islam retards or stultifies advancement of science just like any theocracy. If it didn't the world would be a different place. All else is just quibbling on your part not mine.

When it comes to science, the west won because it set aside religion.

Leo's already neatly refuted all your 'evidence', so I'll just have to ask you this: Why did the West 'set aside religion' and the Islamic world not?
I'd appreciate more than one word and a smily as an answer.

 

[Quiet_Man]

Mongols.

The devestation of Mesopotamia is hard to overstate.

Had the Mongols for some inexplicable reason avoided the far wealthier Islamic heartlands and go into Europe, putting todays Italy, Germany and France to the sword then it is quite possible Europe would have languished long behind the east.

Even then I might argue the fact the Ottomans were a serious threat up to the 18th century and a reasonable power till the 20th. The fact is the Sultan couldn't pull a Peter the Great, galavant Europe, and realise what must be done to match the west. You might consider it a flaw of Islam, but given that power had proved by and far superior to christianity in the last thousand years that seems... false. Its unfair to blame a religion for all the flaws in the countries in which it is accepted. Indeed I could ask when did the fall of Catholicism occur given how non-Catholic countries have effectively dominated the world for the most part after the collapse of Spanish power. (In regards to Europe atleast)

Religion in general, tends to put strictures on scientific developement. You tend to have the Nobility, and the Church, neither of which has any interest in upsetting the status quo. The Nobility is essentially a closed society shut off from the bulk of the population which leaves only the church itself as a route out for the best and brightest. These would have been wasted on religious study, translating, re-writing, worship, with precious little time for anything else. You might get the occasional tinkerer in either society, but nothing major. The one factor of that society I have left out is the Mercantile class, it is these who are freed up by the loosening of religious doctrine, it is these who tend to look for bigger, better, cheaper ways to do things. Much of what Luther achieved wasn't so much in the way of religious freedom, but it gave many of the richer more farsighted individuals the opportunity to throw off the yoke of religious domination and do their own thing. This is in my opinion (and I may be wrong, I often am) is what eventually allowed the west to pull away from Islamic societies in general. With all the turmoil going on in western societies, people looked for better (often more destructive) ways of doing things.

As for the Mongols, I believe you are correct here, the west was fortunate that they had very little that the Mongols wanted whilst the rich cities of Mesopotamia did.

 

[Quiet_Man]

Leo's already neatly refuted all your 'evidence', so I'll just have to ask you this: Why did the West 'set aside religion' and the Islamic world not?
I'd appreciate more than one word and a smily as an answer.

He hasn't refuted anything, he's just tried to show that Islam was a fertile place for inventiveness, I just pointed out that most of the claims were taken from elsewhere and or not developed any further, this is what lead to the stagnation of Islamic society.

As for the west setting aside religion, this came about when the monolithic power block of the Roman Catholic church was broken by Luthers thesis. It's not that the thesis was important in and of itself, but, that it gave impetus to many to break away and set up power structures of their own. A lot of realms broke up not for religious reasons (though that was the excuse) but to enhance the power of the local princes from their overlords. Once this breakup occurred you had the competition neccesary to force further developements. Further developements require cash to fund them. You then get the rise of a mercantile class who eventually end up owning the nobles. The mercantile class usually look for better, quicker and cheaper means to do things so as to maximise their profits. This in the end enabled western investment in factories, exploration and progress.

I realise its not quite as simple as I make it out to be, but unless a society goes through occasional turmoil where the established order is forced to innovate or be removed then all you get is stagnation. This is particularly true of societies with monolithic religions who's sole purpose (in my eyes) is the perpetuation of the monolithic religions structures.

The west had its Luther, Islam did not, it remains pretty much the way it ended after its expansionist phase.

 

[Ruthlesstyrant]

One can say that notable improvements were coming from someplace else, but at least they were adapted and brought to a good use (this is as well a sign of progress). But the greater problem is that they weren't really able to recover from decline and their defeats.
While in Europe, they were somehow able to cope with the greater catastrophes (fall of Rome, split of Christianity, Muslim conquest, the plague, the 30 years-war, the World Wars and stuff like that), with exceptions like, for example, the fall of Constaninople (while this might not have effected Western Europe that much, leaving much of the Eastern part of the continent under the sway of the other camp for some centuries and spawning, long after the fall of Eastern Rome, the miniscule successor state of Greece which was, in many regards, one of the more backwards countries in Europe, is not a very impressive display of the ability to cope with catastrophes).
However, I don’t see that the backlashes in the Muslim world were followed by a real recovery.
The Mongols' devastations caused the fall of Baghdad, and afterwards, Mesopotamian Arabia was doomed. The Turks seizing Egypt left behind a quasi-colony that was still a backward place as the French arrived 300 years later, and though they might have been able to escape the Ottoman yoke in the 19th century, they are still far from being a fully modernized nation today. The Muslims in India who were once running the place (and a very impressive place by that), are living today mostly in Pakistan and Bangladesh, two third world-nations. The Ottomans were supreme in 1453, but after 1683, they declined. And, the Tanzimat-period aside, I don't know if they would be a modern nation today if it has not been for Ataturk (besides, a great part of the population is still living under less appealing conditions).
I would not say that this is due to Islam, however. Jewry, according to the Old Testament, is likewise archaic (or even worse). Christianity is (according to the New Testament) far more humanitarian, but I doubt that it would have ended as the most widespread religion if there wouldn't have been a St.Paul and if it had followed the orders of its prophet to the letter.
The core problem seems to be that the more persisting, conservative elements in Islamic teaching (I blame the residuals of the nomad society Islam was created in) underwent a marriage and a mutual reinforcement with the persisting, conservative elements of the societies that adopted Islam (often very traditional societies themselves). While modernization and change usually came as the result of a struggle in the Western world, the traditional camp was more successful in the Muslim world, and even though change might have worked, it didn’t leave a very big mark in the long run; the whole “it’s not us, it’s the others’ fault”-thing I’ve already talked about elsewhere prevents change as well.

So, yes, I think Leo is right if he claims that a genuine European Islam would have been very different from a Middle Eastern Islam. A Muslim Europe would probably have become a place that still relates rather to Rome than to Arabia: keep in mind, Christianity also had its center in Rome, though it had its roots in Palestine: the Holy Land was important, but certainly not from a cultural point of view. And I think it would not be to daring to predict that, under such circumstances, Europe would still be more European than Middle Eastern.

 

[Leo Caesius]

He hasn't refuted anything, he's just tried to show that Islam was a fertile place for inventiveness, I just pointed out that most of the claims were taken from elsewhere and or not developed any further, this is what lead to the stagnation of Islamic society.

You did no such thing, you merely appealed to a flagrant double standard for Islam and the rest of the world. When China invents something and then sets it aside, it is to be commended; when Islamic thinkers do the same thing, they are condemned. You accuse Islam of being an oppressive theocracy and then lavish praise upon oppressive theocracies. You complain about hidebound religiousity and then hold up the Assyrians as enlightened thinkers.

You initially claimed that there was absolutely no discovery or innovation under Islam, and when I demonstrated that this was not the case, you shifted the goalposts considerably. When I demonstrated that you were still making special pleas and double standards, you responded with a smiley.

If Islam stagnated, it wasn't for lack of inventiveness, or a high degree of culture and civilization. Yet you are fixated upon denying that these things ever existed, thanks to this propaganda you've found on the web distributed by Baathist front organizations.

The west had its Luther, Islam did not, it remains pretty much the way it ended after its expansionist phase.

It's not analogous at all. For starters, many of the reforms adopted by Luther would have been unneccessary for Islam. Islam has no priestly hierarchy (outside of Iran, where the Persians had the elaborate priestly hierarchy of the Sassanids to build upon). The imamate is open to anyone who knows the prayers and can perform the rituals. Muslims pray to Mecca but there is no Vatican in Mecca and no Pope in Mecca, either. There are no indulgences, which was one of Luther's major concerns - you cannot pay, either in part or in full, for the remission of sins.

In fact, the only religious institution in Islam is that of the judiciary, the ulema, who are a group of religious scholars. Even before the Caliphate was abolished, Islamic scholars were divided as to whether it was truly an Islamic institution, at least after the rule of the four "rightly guided" Caliphs.

If Luther were a Muslim, exactly what would he reform? Tell me that! His views towards women and other religions (particularly Jews) would have warmed the cockles of the most conservative mullah's heart.

That's not to say that Islam doesn't need reform, especially now that the institution of the Caliphate has finally been laid to rest, and the world is slowly approaching a baseline consensus towards issues such as the rights of women and religious pluralism that are anathema to many conservative Muslims. If anything, however, it does not need a Martin Luther. The problem with reforming Islam is that no one man can do it; unlike the Roman Catholic Church, there is no one central institution governing Islam, but millions of Islamic scholars, whose opinions are roughly equal.

All of this aside, any true reform to come to the Islamic world will need to be economic and political, not religious. Focusing upon the religious to the detriment of the economic and political will merely perpetuate the current situtation.

The core problem seems to be that the more persisting, conservative elements in Islamic teaching (I blame the residuals of the nomad society Islam was created in) underwent a marriage and a mutual reinforcement with the persisting, conservative elements of the societies that adopted Islam (often very traditional societies themselves).

Yes, this is what I've tried to impress upon him repeatedly. Islam in its original form was actually much more liberating for women than it subsequently became. Some scholars have claimed that this is due to the attitudes towards women that Islam encountered as it expanded. In any case, Quiet_Man here has sung the praises of the Assyrians and the Persians multiple times, apparently unaware of the irony that both of these groups are so conservative in every sense as to make Islam appear to be absolutely revolutionary.

 

[Quiet_Man]

You did no such thing, you merely appealed to a flagrant double standard for Islam and the rest of the world. When China invents something and then sets it aside, it is to be commended; when Islamic thinkers do the same thing, they are condemned. You accuse Islam of being an oppressive theocracy and then lavish praise upon oppressive theocracies. You complain about hidebound religiousity and then hold up the Assyrians as enlightened thinkers.

You initially claimed that there was absolutely no discovery or innovation under Islam, and when I demonstrated that this was not the case, you shifted the goalposts considerably. When I demonstrated that you were still making special pleas and double standards, you responded with a smiley.

If Islam stagnated, it wasn't for lack of inventiveness, or a high degree of culture and civilization. Yet you are fixated upon denying that these things ever existed, thanks to this propaganda you've found on the web distributed by Baathist front organizations.

Totally and utterly wrong, Islam has stagnated and it has been because of its lack of innovation. You mentioned scholar al-Idrisi taking a globe to Sicily, tell me why there are no islamic settlements in America? Could it be that they couldn't make it there? Or could it be that they straddled the spice routes and saw no need to seek out a means to circumnavigate said globe.

You were the one who made staggering claims about Islamic "Inventions" I merely pointed out that they were invented by anyone but Islam. As for discoveries I also pointed out that they were never taken any further, just used as propaganda by you to claim Islam got there first.

As for praising oppresive theocracies of anyone but Islam, I point out I have made no such claims at all, I find all theocracies oppressive. You also make the mistake I believe of thinking I was talking of the Empire of Assyria instead of the scholarly group of Assyrian christians operating out of the University of Nisibis.

As for Baathist propaganda, another invention on your part, I have little or no time for oppressive fascist organisations either.

You jumped to erronius conclusions, heaped Islamic propaganda upon the mess and then wonder why you get a whatever.

 

[Leo Caesius]

Totally and utterly wrong, Islam has stagnated and it has been because of its lack of innovation.

You keep saying that, as if by sheer repetition it will somehow become true. The only way you could come to this conclusion is by ignoring the facts of the matter, which isn't scholarship - it's religious propaganda.

You mentioned scholar al-Idrisi taking a globe to Sicily, tell me why there are no islamic settlements in America? Could it be that they couldn't make it there? Or could it be that they straddled the spice routes and saw no need to seek out a means to circumnavigate said globe.

What do either of these things have to do with religion?

You were the one who made staggering claims about Islamic "Inventions" I merely pointed out that they were invented by anyone but Islam.

You didn't point anything out! You simply did the internet equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "ut-UH!"

As for praising oppresive theocracies of anyone but Islam, I point out I have made no such claims at all, I find all theocracies oppressive. You also make the mistake I believe of thinking I was talking of the Empire of Assyria instead of the scholarly group of Assyrian christians operating out of the University of Nisibis.

I made no such mistake. You argued that many of the innovations that the Muslims claim originated in Sassanid Iran - a controversial claim to begin with - and yet anyone who was even slightly familiar with the Sassanids would know how oppressive and theocratic they were.

I am familiar with the Syriac literature of the Church of the East, and you are not, beyond what you've read on the internet. That is one difference between the two of us. 99% of the material in the Syriac corpus is dedicated to Bible translations, Bible commentaries, heresiologies, hagiographies, liturgical materials, religious poetry, theological treatises etc. etc. When your Assyrian Christians wanted to discuss the exact sciences, they wrote in Arabic. In fact, few Assyrian Christians turned to the sciences (beyond theology) until after the Islamic Conquest. All of the surviving pre-Islamic literature of the Church of the East is dedicated to religion. Why is that, do you think?

As for Baathist propaganda, another invention on your part, I have little or no time for oppressive fascist organisations either.

I advise you to look into where all of this internet information that you're using originated. One of the major sources of information on the internet for Assyrian Christians is a Baathist front group, founded in Baathist Iraq in 1976. That's the danger of using internet sources.

You jumped to erronius conclusions, heaped Islamic propaganda upon the mess and then wonder why you get a whatever.

I know exactly why I got a "whatever" from you - you're incapable of formulating any other response.

 

[Quiet_Man]

You keep repeating yourself, but you're full of it. The only way you could come to this conclusion is by ignoring the facts of the matter, which isn't scholarship - it's religious propaganda.

What do either of these things have to do with religion?

You didn't point anything out! You simply did the internet equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "ut-UH!"

I made no such mistake. You argued that many of the innovations that the Muslims claim originated in Sassanid Iran - a controversial claim to begin with - and yet anyone who was even slightly familiar with the Sassanids would know how oppressive and theocratic they were.

I am familiar with the Syriac literature of the Church of the East, and you are not, beyond what you've read on the internet. That is one difference between the two of us. 99% of the material in the Syriac corpus is dedicated to Bible translations, Bible commentaries, heresiologies, hagiographies, liturgical materials, religious poetry, theological treatises etc. etc. When your Assyrian Christians wanted to discuss the exact sciences, they wrote in Arabic. In fact, few Assyrian Christians turned to the sciences (beyond theology) until after the Islamic Conquest. All of the surviving pre-Islamic literature of the Church of the East is dedicated to religion. Why is that, do you think?

I advise you to look into where all of this internet information that you're using originated. One of the major sources of information on the internet for Assyrian Christians is a Baathist front group, founded in Baathist Iraq in 1976. That's the danger of using internet sources.

I know exactly why I got a "whatever" from you - you're incapable of formulating any other response.

Once again you jump to conclusions.

The actual evidence, empirical as it is, would seem to suggest that from being a pinnacle of civilisation the Islamic lands slipped (with a few notable exceptions) into a technical scientific wasteland. instead of building on the advances they received from other civilisations they just stood still. Looking inward as the west without its religious burdens overtook it as the centre of progress.

You have still failed to come up with a satisfactory reason for the majority of centres of Islamism being 3rd world, despotic ran, socially barbaric societies, with the form of the religion being far more important than its meaning.

I say and still believe that the theocratic roots of Islam retarded its advancement and nothing you have said so far makes me believe otherwise.

I also don't use single source internet sites, a quick scan gave me a history of innoculations (oddly enough not a Baathist site) History of carpets (again not a Baathist site) history of mathematics (oddly enough a hindu site not Baathist at all in any sense) I also studied the effects of islam on minority racial groupings and so have far more sympathy with assyrians, chaldeans, berbers, kurds, armenians, and anyone else involved in the arab expansionism that was the basis of Islam. In the same way I also feel for the indiginous natives of America who met the full force of European expansionism. It happened, I can't do a thing about it, but I'm also not blind to what happened either. Once assimilated, all original thought from those cultures died out, this is what happens in theocracies, there is not a lot of room for original thought or ideas.

 

[Leo Caesius]

Once again you jump to conclusions.

You don't really seem to understand what that entails.

You, after all, are the one who keeps talking about the School of Nisibis as if it were a modern university. It was purely theological; the closest equivalent to it today would be something like Al-Azhar in Cairo. It was emphatically not a place where people went to study sciences. Yet you are apparently unaware of this fact.

The actual evidence, empirical as it is, would seem to suggest that from being a pinnacle of civilisation the Islamic lands slipped (with a few notable exceptions) into a technical scientific wasteland.

You keep talking about "evidence" and yet you haven't actually shown any. Instead, you make constant appeals to half-digested and misunderstood knowledge that you've picked up in your travels around the internet.

If Islam was merely a conduit for the superior knowledge of other civilizations, as you would claim, how do you explain the abundance of Arabic loanwords in English? England was never ruled by Arabs and for much of its history had no direct contact with them. Yet much of the scientific vocabulary in English and other European languages is indisputably Arabic in origin. Any linguist will tell you that the chief reason people borrow loanwords is to express concepts in the language of origin not found in their own language (a second reason, equally important reason is prestige).

Here is a representative sample. These are facts. Each one of them constitutes an indisputable example of cultural borrowing. All told, at least 900 such facts exist. What you have provided, sir, are not facts.

You have still failed to come up with a satisfactory reason for the majority of centres of Islamism being 3rd world, despotic ran, socially barbaric societies, with the form of the religion being far more important than its meaning.

My explanations, appealing to political and economic circumstances, are far more convincing than your unfounded claims of Islamic intellectual sterility and Western (or, in the case of the Assyrians, Christian) exceptionalism.

I say and still believe that the theocratic roots of Islam retarded its advancement and nothing you have said so far makes me believe otherwise.

I'm not trying to convince you. You simply cannot be convinced. But I want to make an example of you. A little knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing.

I also studied the effects of islam on minority racial groupings and so have far more sympathy with assyrians, chaldeans, berbers, kurds, armenians, and anyone else involved in the arab expansionism that was the basis of Islam.

Since you've done all this studying, why don't you name some of the texts you used? Provide some actual references.