"Had it not been for the Arab thought, there would have not been a contemporary European philosophy"

That, of course, is shit. European philosophy was resurrected, after centuries of mere copying (while Europe was struggling to survive under constant barbarian raids - Arabs from Spain and Sicily, Magyars from Hungary, Vikings from Scandinavia), in the age of Anselm of Aosta, which is more than a century before the Arab texts became known in the West. The Arab texts, which were in the main derivative from Aristotle and heretical as compared with Islam, were understood and appreciated by the West (whereas, if I remember correctly, Avicenna and Averroes were rejected by their own people) because the West had already a flourishing Catholic philosophical school. This sort of false history has been spread around for centuries by people who wished to play down the originality and high culture of the Christian Middle Ages; alas, now these cultural parricides have joined forces with out-and-out enemies of the West. Disgusting - and rotten history, too.

Totally OT but in the spirit of the UK continual surrender to the Ummah you might like to see the new police uniform for Women Police Officers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4328705.stm

Bat Ye'or has a whole section on this in her new Eurabia. The section is entitled: "The War Against Western Culture" And right now I am listening to Yo Yo Ma's Appalachia Waltz. Take that you Islamist ignoramuses.

Western poetry is "based on Arabic texts?" What a load of nonsense! Have they not heard of Homer or Ovid? This is the same "Arabs invented mathematics" nonsense in another form. Where does this narcissistic self-aggrandizement come from?

As for European philosophy deriving from Islamic philosophy, if Nietzsche had written, "God is dead" in a Muslim country, he would have wound up dead.

True, Arab scholars have made contibutions to science, mathematics and the humanities; just not much lately. Furthermore, many of these contributions were based upon knowledge the early Arabs gained in their conquests of Western and Eastern civilizations. For example, today we use what are referred to as "Arabic" numerals, when in fact the numerals originated from India. Also, Greek architects designed many of the early mosques, laying the foundations of Islamic architecture.

Don't forget that Shakespeare was a Sufi.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/003659.php

I second Mentat's reference to Bat Ye'or's newest book, "Eurabia." I hope that as many people as possible read it and pass it on and ask that reader to pass it on again to someone else. It can't have enough readers. Hopefully, some of those readers will be politicians of both parties.

They keep rehashing this Islamic Golden Age nonsense at every opportunity. And many Islam-appeasers readily accept these spurious claims as fact and continue spreading this rubbish. Islam has little to be proud of, so it has to make things up, or exaggerate them. About a fifth of the world's population, and what do they have to show for themselves? A fifth of the world's art, music, literature, science, medicine, engineering, etc.? Nope. Too busy whining about how the West is to blame for their pathetic state. Too busy trying to live their lives according to some 7th Century deviant. Hopeless.

Yes if you believe everything that muslims claim, you would believe that they invented everything and discovered every land on earth. They take from every culture and like Jerusalem, tear down treasures, then build their satanic mosques on top of sacred ground. They rewrite history to suit themselves, even the scriptures have been stolen and bastardized. The beauty of the Torah and New Testament is lost when twisted to fit islamic belief. The child of promise was the long awaited child, not the one conceived with the handmaid, Hagar.

Here is a site that is a real laugh-

http://www.themodernreligion.com/ht/before_columbus.html

The Modern Religion = islam, now that is a real lie.

Well the link won't work, but you can paste it.

I really hate it when they do this - and they ALWAYS do it.

They make huge sweeping statements and then say nothing to support them.

"Had it not been for the Arab thought, there would have not been a contemporary European philosophy."

Why? How? When? Where? - Muslims and their Dhimmi supporters never care for such details.

Every time a Muslim comes here (JW/DW) and we demand some facts to support their inflated claims - they vanish like jinni!

Everything they say is a false. The basis of their humble and repressive civilization is falsehood. They find it hard to come to terms with the fact that Allah's followers in this world are such an artless and benighted set of people - so they create a complimentary fantasy for themselves to live in.

They always put down Medieval Europe. Medieval Europe gave us such things as steel, stirrups, written music and moveable type printing (amongst other things) - much more than Medieval Islam gave us. Oh - but what Barbarians we were compared to those ever-so-cultured Arabs with their pointed arches and rehashed Ancient Greek science.

As a matter of fact, there is something to the claim that modern philosophy owes much to the Dar-al-Islam (although certainly not to the orthodoxies of the Sha'ifi, Maliki, Hanafi, and Hanbalite schools of jurisprudence, from whence the orthodoxies of the Islamic world generally stem).

Ibn Rushd posited a two-storey epistemology in which the realm of nature was understood scientifically (by observation and deduction), while revelation was relegated to the realm of the supernatural and religion. This point of view was condemnded by both Moses Maimonides in Judaism and Thomas Aquinas in Christianity, who held that the truths of reason and revelation ultimately could not conflict. In the end, Ibn Rushd was rejected by Islam as well--although the enlightenment in the West came up with something very similar to his thought (possibly learned from Thomas Aquinas' refutations of him?), which ultimately did away with Ibn Rushd's upper storey world altogether.

Also, our oldest manuscript of Aritotle's _Politics_ is a 12th century AD Latin translation; and some scholars believe it was made in Spain from an Arabic prototype. Of course, this means there probably was also a Syriac model from which the Arabic came lying between the medieval Latin translation and the Greek original. Ptolomey's Astronomy was long known to Westerners under the title _Almagest_, which is a corruption of its Arabic title. A lot of Greek medical knowledge also was kept alive by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim physicians south and east of the Mediterranean while Europe was struggling through the Dark Ages.

Also, the medieval ideal of courtly love sung of by troubadours spread to Christendom from Islamic Spain--reflecting the raunchy underbelly of Islamic culture, such as can be seen in the _Thousand and One Nights_. Yes, even Almohades sometimes commit adultery, pederasty, sodomy, and like things.

Give credit where credit is due. The difference lies in that Europe (and later North America) took these balls and ran with them; while the Muslim mind stagnated.

Totally OT but in the spirit of the UK continual surrender to the Ummah you might like to see the new police uniform for Women Police Officers.

posted by Sebastien

I was also going to post this link last night, on the Air hostess thread, but when I called the story up the picture had changed.
The earlier picture was of two policewomen, wearing hijabs edged with the Met Police chequered border. Something about the picture just did not look right. I have never seen a policewoman in a hijab. And they were the originators of the cockney insult "hatchet faced bint"
I called a friend over - Are these real? Hum, he said, they look ugly enough to be real. But how do they get a helmet on over the rag?
Which was the danger, the whole reason for women officers wearing a clip on cravat, and male officers a clip on tie is the danger of being throttled in a fracas. If a conventional tie is too dangerous, surely a hijab is even more so. But as I said, something about the picture did not look right, it has now been removed and I wish that I had saved a copy first.

Perhaps if we search hard and long we will find these "Contemporary European Philosophies" stored along with the nebulous "American Foreign Policies" that America Haters use to justify 9/11.

Funny I never hear specifics when the haters rant and rave about America bring the violence on ourselves? Perhaps financing and feeding the majority of the Third World or accepting any and all immigrants that come here are the policies that return hatred and murder of innocent American citizens?