"It is very important for the whole country to understand the hugely positive impact that Islamic inventors have had upon the world, and for Muslims to take pride in it." Because, you know, that's the one thing Muslims need more of: Pride.
"Teach children what Muslims did for us, says minister Jim Knight," by Martin Beckford for the Telegraph, October 17:
Children should be taught about the contribution Muslims have made to civilisation in order to combat the threats of extremism and discrimination, according to a Government minister.Jim Knight, the schools minister, claimed lessons in the scientific and cultural innovations of Islam over the centuries would give young Muslims a sense of worth and reduce their risk of becoming alienated and falling under the spell of radicals.
He said it could also bring divided communities closer together, by teaching children from other backgrounds about the debt we all owe to Muslims – from coffee and pinhole cameras to the three-course dinner and advancements in maths.[...]
"This offers a whole series of remedies and an education for the rest of us. It is very important for the whole country to understand the hugely positive impact that Islamic inventors have had upon the world, and for Muslims to take pride in it."
Salim Al-Hassani, the honorary chairman of FSTC, added: "At present there is a widespread mis-conception among many people worldwide that the state of science and technology during the period known as The Dark Ages was that of stagnation and decline.
"Learned intellectuals are challenging this myth and showing how, during the same period, the Muslim civilisation flourished and contributed to thousands of essential inventions that still affect our daily life.
"We believe that open recognition of the contributions of all civilisations to our present civilisation should be reflected in the National Curriculum."
most of the advancements happened when islam wasn't strong enough to use its claws on the people!
Because if islam did something good, it would still be doing it... but as we all knownothing good came out of it
Mr. Knight forgot about the invention of the suicide belt!
"Teach British children what Muslims did for us"
OK, plus some perspective on what they are doing for us now, like jihad, threatening the end of free speech, suppression of women, hatred of western cultures and laws, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
This is just so much nonsense.
There are talented Mohammadans, but they are not talented by virtue of being Mohammadans.
Islam smothers creativity, a Mohammadan who's talent pushes through to the surface is rare, and a lot like a whale coming up for air before diving again. Islam itself never invented anything but trouble.
To be fair, the children should be taught about the greatest kufr inventor of all time. Not Edison, not Tesla...but AlGore...AlGore invented, the internet, radio, television, the milk shake,
the paper bag, cloths pins...he also invented the modern flush toilet, but Thomas Crapper got credit for it...You could fill a book with AlGore's inventions...he even invented global warming, no easy task, but his greatest and best invention is beer. It is not Al-lah that is god, it's Al-Gore.
The children need to know, Al-Gore willing...
"Coffee... three course meals... "
Oh, for f*ck's sake!!! I'm getting seriously hacked of with this kind of nonsense!
The Ethiopians gave us coffee, and three course meals ???? did someone "invent" three course meals? Heck even the Jewish Passover seder could be argued to have had a starter, main course and "dessert" for over 2000 years. And even we aren't claiming to have "invented" the idea.
One thing the world, and particularly the Muslim world, DOESN'T need is more of this fantasy bullsh*t. What the world needs is more realism.
We should acknowledge the Gift of Islam:
Intolerance, Shameless Lies, and Murder.
Teach British school children what Muslims did for us... and half of them probably couldn't give the dates of WWII or tell you what Winston Churchill did for them.
Consult any of the standard histories of science, and out of five hundred pages, perhaps five will be given over to "science under Islam." One finds a handful of contributions, chiefly in optics, though the Arab and Muslim "historians" of science, such as George Saliba (he likes to call it "Arabic science"), have a long history of making baseless or exaggerated claims (see Saliba on Muslims supposedly beating Copernicus to the punch). Some of those Islamic achievements clearly are merely borrowings -- as, from the Sanskirt mathematicians, the concept of zero and the algebra, to which the Arabs did contribute the name). Furthermore, one discovers by study of the dozen or two names that many of those "achievements" of "Islamic science" were made not by Muslim Arabs, but by Persians (a generation or two removed from Zoroastrian ancestors ), or by Jews or Christians (who were also, in Baghdad and Cordoba, the ones responsible for all those translations of Greek classics that Arabs like to talk about so much). People are fooled by what sound to them to be Arab names, when in fact they are simply Arabic names, but the names of non-Arabs and non-Muslims -- or in some cases, of those who have grown up in, and been formed by, a non-Muslim milieu, and may even be the children or grandchildren of Christians,Jews, Zoroastrians, and have managed to achieve not because of Islam but despite it. The most famous Muslim scientist, ar-Razi or Rhazes as he was known in the West, was heterodox, almost a freethinker, and not an orthodox Muslim at all.
So if Minister Knight really wants British students to learn more about the "great achievements" of Muslims in science, or for that matter in art, he will find that he has opened up one more embarrassment, at least if the subject is dealt with truthfully and not as Muslim apologists and re-writers of history would have it. And not only is the Muslim contribution to science, over the past 1350 years, fleeting and thin -- it flourished only for a few centuries, when there were still many non-Muslims in the lands conquered by Muslims, and died out when their numbers and influence dwindled. But if the attempt to offer The Glory That Was Islam extends to art, and artistic expression, then non-Muslims will come to realize how thin is the civilizational contribution of Islam, for all sculpture (because Muhammad would not, a famous hadith tells us, "enter a house that had dogs or statues in it"), and all depictions of humans in paintings, were forbidden, and this naturally limited artistic expression in the Muslim world, to calligraphy (often Qur'anic calligraphy), and to architecture (usually, mosque architecture, because until the oil made possible those xanadus in the oil states, the only buildings that were built to impress were mosques, with the odd ruler's monument to himself -- see Moulay Hassan's Moroccan palace, built by Christian slaves, or the Taj Mahal, that "tear in marble" built by Hindu slaves.
Oh, he's opening a can of worms with his cheesy suggestion, is Minister Knight. The Cheese and the Worms. No, that's another civilization, and history, altogether.
It's not British who should be learning about the so-called contributions of Muslims, it's Muslims who should be learning about and appreciating the contributions, history and culture of the British. Muslims should learn to take pride in British achievements, and learn about the debt they owe to Britain. If they have a problem with this, they should go back to Dar-al-Islam.
"or the Taj Mahal, that "tear in marble" built by Hindu slaves."
Hugh
Is it true that he had the architects eye put out so he could never build anything better?
typo "eyes"
UK minister: Teach British children what Muslims did TO us.
A slight change in the title that we can all agree with.
"eyes put out"
No idea if the story is true. But it is certainly verisimilar.
The problem with these pushes is curricula is that the curricula are slanted to whitewash and glorify Islam. I've actually read several of the textbooks in use here in the States and have noted the trend, which has intensified since 9/11. Putting in all the whitewash and glorification has squeezed out other important elements of the curricula, as noted above by several commenters.
A good book on the topic: The Trouble with Textbooks.
When I was at school, we were taught about the great ancient civilizations: Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Then about the advances in Europe during the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment.
Islam didn't get a look in.
Will they be teaching about the Barbary pirates?
Yup, they invented coffee, and that's about when their 'civilization' stopped advancing. Somewhere between the 'invention' of the 3 course meal and coffee they decided that was plenty of progress for them.
Will they be teaching about the Barbary pirates?
In Britain on the few occasions they are mentioned the liberal line is that many of the pirates were not muslims but Dutch, French etc. who used islam as a cover. We are also told that being carried off as a slave to North Africa could be a life enhancing experience. Why, one English girl in the 10th century became queen of Morocco and in the 16th century an Englishman was the chief executioner in Tunis!
It's wrong to downplay the achievements of, say, the Abbasid period. The point is, how do you interpret them?
It's important to remember that the Arab conquests meant a takeover of what was already the most advanced, sophisticated & cultured area of the planet for most of the preceding 3,000 years. The region had the greatest human capital of anywhere on earth. The Arab achievements should be seen in that light.
Compare it with, say, the Yuan Dynasty in China. We all know that the invader Kublai Khan absorbed and built upon the cultural capital of previous Chinese dynasties. If we're evaluating the growth of Chinese cartography or literature under his rule, we see the roots of these advances in the Chinese society he had conquered, not the society he had come from. So it was with the Arabs.
Giving Islam the credit for Abbasid era contributions to human knowledge is rather like giving the Catholic Church the credit for Copernicus, Galileo & Darwin. We don't know what these individuals actually believed - as opposed to what they found it prudent to say they believed. But we can say this. Islamic faith was not a necessary precondition for their work. They built on infidel Greek and Indian sources, &, in turn, infidel westerners built on their work. Describing the work of Al-Khwarizmi as "Islamic astronomy" is like describing the work of Viktor Safronov as "Marxist astronomy". The stars are where they are. They don't care whether their human observers believe in Muhammad, Marx or L. Ron Hubbard.
Huge the Muslim invent the crankshart to turn rotary
motion into up and down motion. They where the first one to come up with the germ theory of what cause illness in the 8th century. They invent windmill to use in the desert. They where the first to discover smallpox vaccion 50 year before the english man did.
BUT YOU RACIST DONOT WANT FOR EVIL REASON REFUSE TO ACCEPT WHICH MAKE YOU RACIST.
Ah - but as Eddie Murphy would say "what have you done for us lately?"
;)
To be fair - yes - we do owe the Islamic world for several great inventions - but we also (and the Muslim world) owe the Jews for great inventions. We also owe the Hindus and Siekhs, Christians and other world religions for great inventions too.
We also owe the Muslim world for the Crusades.
Don't give me that crap it was the West who started all that off; that's like saying that if you punch a dog often enough and it eventually bites back it was the dog who started the fight.
I'm pretty certain if all the Muslims decided to go back to the Middle-East we would get by just fine, as it seems that it's in the West where most of the modern advancements are being made.
Oh - and enough of the "racism" thing - Islam is NOT a race.
I'm pretty certain that nearly everyone who posts here have very good relationships with their local Siekhe and Hindu communities.
Where muslims excel is their capability to invent an endless stream of lies
Type II female genital mutilation and exploding underwear. That's an exhaustive list of what Islam has given the world.
And Vampire Jack, read PIG to Islam and the Crusades. Muslims started it. And Christians continued it to take back the land that was stolen by the Muslims. They should have taken back North Africa and half the Middle East too. We owe them nothing. They owe us everything.
To quote Ibn Warraq:
A culture that gave the world the novel; the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert; and the paintings of Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Rembrandt does not need lessons from societies whose idea of heaven, peopled with female virgins, resembles a cosmic brothel. Nor does the West need lectures on the superior virtue of societies in which women are kept in subjection under sharia, endure genital mutilation, are stoned to death for alleged adultery, and are married off against their will at the age of nine; societies that deny the rights of supposedly lower castes; societies that execute homosexuals and apostates. The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems, that make no provisions for the handicapped, and that leave 40 to 50 percent of their citizens illiterate.
And actually, those societies would be 99+% illiterate if we were to apply Western standards of literacy (an eigth-grade education) to them. Kids should be studying what it is that's so great about the Free World that led to every worthwile advancement in the history of time: education, freedom of conscience and inquiry, debate and exchange of ideas, honesty (a waning value), equality, and hard work.
teaching children from other backgrounds about the debt we all owe to Muslims – from coffee and pinhole cameras to the three-course dinner and advancements in maths.[...]
If contributions due to individual muslims can be interpreted as a generalization about all Muslims or Islam, then must the students recognize the terror, destruction and tyrrany contributed to the world by individual muslims as a contribution from generalized Islam as well?
Islam's 'contribution' to the world.
An estimated two hundred and seventy million human beings butchered systematically on the altar of 'allah' for the heinous sin of preferring their own gods to 'allah' the war-god of the arabs, and their own laws and customs to the unlaw that is sharia. Do the maths: 270 million in 1350 years is about 200 000 people a year, every year, for 1350 years, most of the butchery happening at a time when the total population of humans in the world was much smaller than it now is.
Most of them were Africans and Indians. Most of them probably defenceless POWs and noncombatants such as priests, the elderly, women, and children.
Then we can add up all the destroyed works of art and buildings: tens of thousands of Hindu and Buddhist temples, for starters.
Then we can add in all the millions and millions who were enslaved, and died as a result of the viciously cruel treatment to which they were subjected during their lives as slaves.
Then we can start thinking about the ecological/ agricultural collapse that is documented and verifiable for huge regions of Anatolia, the Balkans, eretz Israel, and North Africa, in the wake of, and throughout the entire period of, Muslim domination, and that continues today in all places where Islam rules. Try to put *that* in money terms: burned forests, burned crops, towns laid waste, agricultural terraces collapsing, massive soil erosion.
John Quincy Adam summed up the effects of Islam thus: "desolation and delusion".
*THAT* is what the Arabs' cult of war, the Arab Imperial Religion, has given to the world.
defenderofislam-
You can keep the windmills and the theory of germs. Spain and Italy oh a tremendous and vital debt to Islam - the invention of the siesta .
"Muslim invention" is practically an oxymoron. PC "self-esteem" militancy has perverted facts such that hardly anything mainstream related to this topic can be trusted, but luckily a little digging can usually find the truth. Practically without exception, "Muslim" inventors were either apostates threatened and even killed by the clerics, Arab Christians, Jews, or so second-rate and derivative they would not merit mention had they been from the West.
The most that can be said is they were remarkable people, considering the harsh theocratic conditions they had to work in, which were far worse than anything Galileo experienced.
Here's more:
http://bravenewsworld.blogspot.com/2008/07/great-saudi-scientists-inventors.html
Hi all,
Remember London bombing? Remember these faces?
tinyurl.com/6q65z5
British Mullah Mr. Anjum Chaudri reaffirmed that the "Killing of Innocent" of non-Muslims civilians in the suicide bombing is "Legitimate".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-klYdTlDnWc
This Mullah is not alone among Muslim who process such view. You be the judge!
Wouldn't it be better to teach British Pakistanis about the Indus Valley civilization, and Bengalis about Rabindranath Tagore? They are not Arabs, and their ancestors were not part of any Caliphate.
Polish Catholics don't need to take credit for Michelangelo's work on the Sistine Chapel, purely on the basis of a common religious affiliation with the Italians, in order to feel good about themselves.
DefenderofIslam -- Islam is not a race. You can't use that excuse. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that those of you who claim racism might actually be the racists yourselves. Has it occurred to you that there are more than one race of people who actually believe in your cult?
DefenderofIslam -- Islam is not a race. You can't use that excuse. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that those of you who claim racism might actually be the racists yourselves. Has it occurred to you that there is more than one race of people who actually believe in your cult?
I see some people don't realize that stringing out sentences in all capitals amounts to screaming at everyone else.
Either that, or he doesn't know how to use HTML, which was, of course, invented by Muslims...
1400 years of islam have transformed a vibrant, innovative people into an ignorant, dull-witted, totemic gaggle of herd mentality losers. If they suddenly had to manage on their own, without western and oriental knowledge and inventiveness, in six months they'd be rationing sand.
Shouldn't that be 'teach kids what Muslims did TO us"? (unless he is proposing re-writing history)
That's one reason I've never been a fan of the Taj. Hope it one day goes the way of the Babri Masjid.
1400 years of islam have transformed a vibrant, innovative people into an ignorant, dull-witted, totemic gaggle of herd-mentality losers. If they suddenly had to manage on their own, without western and oriental knowledge and inventiveness, in six months they'd be rationing sand.
Posted by: suprkufrB at October 18, 2008 5:45 AM
That's hilarious.
You do paint a picture.
Thanks for the chuckles.
"Teach British children what Muslims did for us"
It is amusing that the blathering official's statement about Islam's contributions to the world contains not one concrete example of such.