Iranian book claims Leonardo DaVinci converted to Islam

The one thing I always see that muslims came up with is algebra. Ok - let's agree that's the case.

No, John, it is NOT the case. They applied an arabic name to the branch of mathematics predating islam by many centuries started by Babylonians and followed by Greek and Indian mathematicians. They are obsessed with pasting names to already existing things - some of them quite ugly. Only people with completely corrupted sense of aesthetics would change the beautiful name of Yerushalaim (Jerusalem) to something as atrociously sounding as El-Quds.

The only purely islamic invention they rightfully claim is using three pebbles for wiping the posterior. It was the idea of their prophet and it is recorded in the hadithhs. Until now no other civilizations has challenged the exclusive rights of muslims to this monumental cultural accomplishment.

Oh, don't worry - i don't believe for one second that muslims came up with algebra. i simply meant that I keep hearing/reading/seeing it on TV, so let's suppose it's the case for the sake of argument, for just one second, as an exercise. The fact they then did absolutely nothing with this incredible so-called 'islamic achievement' speaks volumes as much as the ludicrous claim to having invented it in the first place.

I also dislike that numbers are often referred to as 'arabic numerals' when they are indian/hindu in origin.

Don't forget, Neil Armstrong heard the call to prayer on the moon, and converted - sorry, REverted, to Islam. That's my favourtite one, maybe...

Shakespeare quite possibly misunderstood Judaism, yet to tar him with 'that' brush seems a trifle unmerited an accusation.

Don't forget, Neil Armstrong heard the call to prayer on the moon, and converted - sorry, REverted, to Islam. That's my favourtite one, maybe...

LOL! this is probably the most comical one I have heard until now.
Thanks for sharing, John.

Steffen,

I've become contrary and henceforth I´ll refer to Aldebaran and Rigel as Alpha Tauri and Beta Orionis.

I am glad to tell you that you are not alone.

And I hope you remember referring to Deneb as Alpha Cygni.

I think you are very wrong seeing "The Merchant of Venice" as a hateful antisemitic tirade.

Here is Shylock's address:

"He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew.
Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge.

Now, would a Jew-hater put in the mouth of Shylock that profoundly moving, passionate monologue? Would he let a Jew express so powerfully the truth of being a human just as good and as bad as the rest of us? Doesn't it make us aware of the injustice done to that man? Doesn't it make us share his suffering?

I stand with Shakespeare!

Combine this with the Arab honor/shame concept sanctioning all conduct and values, add the Quranic persecution complex, and you have a pretty volatile mix.

I stand with Shakespeare!

It is impossible for a Westerner not to.

He is also know for his highly individualistic portraits such as the "Mona Lisa"—perhaps the most famous picture in all of art...

Rumor has it that Da Vinci was having a difficult time getting just the right facial expression from his subject, until one day, almost by chance in passing with a bit of badinage, he mentioned facetiously "Signorina, penso che si convertono all'Islam e di viaggio per Istanbul..." ("I think I shall convert to Islam and travel to Istanbul...") -- at which point Mona could not help but unsuccessfully stifle a smirk.

"Perfettissima! Non muovere nemmeno un muscolo...!"

("Perfect! Don't move even a muscle!")

Shylock’s speech is not about tolerance or acceptance. Rather, its meant to ridicule the notion that Jews are humans worthy of being treated as equals. People don’t sympathize with Shylock as a result of that speech: they hate him, fear him and laugh at him - something made even easier by the usual casting of an ugly, farcial or demonic looking actor in his role. In that sense, that play is not much different from Nazi propaganda movies about Jews, or Hizbullah films that show Jews drinking the blood of a Gentile. Also, Shylock is full of spite, whereas all the Christians in the play are portrayed as merciful. Recall the other Jewish characters in the play? Well, Shylock's daughter Jessica, in order to escape being a Jew in an anti-Jewish society, married Lorenzo, and her character too is contorted by depicting her as stealing her father's gold and decamping.

No, Shakespeare ain't off limits. The only alleviating thing about him, like Goebbels, is that he's dead, while Muslim propagandists are alive. However, this play plays to the Muslim gallery, and is, in Shakespearean terms, manna to the Muslims: Shylock is essentially their image of a Jew, just like he was for Shakespeare, and frankly, contemporary 16th century English society.

Unless the Westerners in question happen to be shrews... or Jews

Can't help but feel you're flogging a dead horse on this Shakespeare tact, IP.

For me there are four, not two, culminating moments of high western Christendom.

Dante in poetry.

Shakespeare in drama.

Rembrandt in painting.

And towering above them all, Johann Sebastian Bach, in music: Soli Deo gloria.

I've heard, somewhere, about a painting called 'The Laughing Madonna.' Is that by da Vinci ?

''Shylock’s speech is not about tolerance or acceptance. Rather, its meant to ridicule the notion that Jews are humans worthy of being treated as equals.''

Sorry, don't agree - I think the phrase, 'if you prick us, do we not bleed ?' very moving. Shakespeare's all about interpretation, isn't it ?

''Shylock’s speech is not about tolerance or acceptance. Rather, its meant to ridicule the notion that Jews are humans worthy of being treated as equals.''

Wow! A real bombshell.

Somehow it makes me rather uninterested in paying attention to the rest of your analysis of Shakespeare.

And towering above them all, Johann Sebastian Bach, in music: Soli Deo gloria.

A pity I haven't met you when I was young, DDA.

Darn. I thought antisemitism started with Christianity as an organized institution.

@Skeen66: "Why, Robert, didn’t you know:
That the Saudis developed oil wells and refining technology, but Westerners stole it all? …..
That John Galt, Howard Roark, Cyrano de Bergerac, Hester Prynne, Mike Hammer, Philip Marlowe, Winston Smith, Bulldog Drummond, Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft, Miss Marple, the Lone Ranger, Zorro, Wyatt Earp, the Avengers, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, Rowdy Yates, Gunga Din, and The Prisoner were all crypto-Muslims, but that literary studies still mask these facts in our schools?"

Very funny! Oh how they steal! And they obfuscate, invert, retrovert, pervert, 'revert' truth and knowledge with their unholy texts of Mohammad's Allah Koranic diktats, that "thou shalt obey in total submission and never raise a reasonable doubt" if not in that virulent book... or it is death. But the truth wills out.

OT - Even the EU's Court decided to rule on the side of rational sanity: Abu Hamza US extradition backed by European Court. Is there a glimmer of hope in the anti-jihad from across the pond?

'' Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycoft ''
Ouch . . . That was thought-provoking. :-x

Jan wrote:

I've heard, somewhere, about a painting called 'The Laughing Madonna.' Is that by da Vinci ?
...................................

Jan, "The Laughing Madonna" is a book by novelist Betsy Burke about a fictional lost work by Leonardo.

But the idea is very much based on his actual work. Much previous art presented aloof or serene Madonnas, and Leonardo's were both transcendent and very human.

This may well have been the work that inspired the book, the "Madonna with the Flower". It features a very young Mary laughing as she plays with her child:

http://www.gfmer.ch/Art_for_Health/Images/Italian_Renaissance/Leonardo_Madonna_Flower.jpg

Infidel Pride wrote:

No, Shakespeare ain't off limits. The only alleviating thing about him, like Goebbels, is that he's dead...
.................................

With all respect, Infidel Pride, you are way off base re Shakespeare. Of course, he was a man of his time in many ways. But all of his characters are deeply human, in a way that is true of no previous author.

And his influence has been remarkable—none of the vivid characters of 19th and 20th century literature would have been possible without his model.

It is all too easy to look back from the perspective of the modern period and pick apart the shortcomings of historical figures without recognizing their achievements. Cocky but uninformed undergraduate students have been doing just that for the last several decades.

I remember a fellow classmate who airily declared that Harriet Beecher Stowe was a "racist" and that Amelia Bloomer had "bought into her own oppression". Short-sighted, and ridiculous in context.

Shakespeare's work is enormously psychologically complex and was entirely without precedent.

Certainly, no artist is or should be beyond criticism, but I'd advise you to revisit his rich body of work—with an open mind this time.

Hi GI. It was a good thing I decided to read through the comments before posting; otherwise, I would have repeated this (but probably not as well):

Both Islamic supremacists and non-Muslim multiculturalist dhimmis promote this nonsense, albeit for vastly different reasons: the non-Muslims think that by falsifying history and exaggerating the achievements of Muslims and the legacy of Islam, they can show Muslims that they're welcome in the West, ease the concerns that more sensible non-Muslims have about jihad and Islamization, and prove that they're not "racist," "bigoted" and "Islamophobic." Islamic supremacists, meanwhile, think that these claims advance and demonstrate the superiority of Islam and of Muslims as the "best of nations" (Qur'an 3:110).
.

So all I can do is add this to your observation (and that of IstanbulChick): We have been through this before. It took place mainly in the late 1980's and throughout the 1990's and it took place mainly in the U.S.

I am referring to Afro-centric history, a silly attempt at revising the historical narrative by injecting black personages into crucial moments in history. Actually, this was more than revising a narrative, it was out-and-out lying about history.

For instance, according to the afro-centric historians and professors, Cleopatra was black, as was Sejanus the Roman Emperor. Hell, they even claimed that Ramses II, was Black. Somehow they always missed the fact that Ramses had red hair and his mummy shows no evidence of having any black ancestry. They also missed the fact that Cleopatra was a descendant of Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Great's Macedonian Generals. They also missed the fact that the successors of Ptolemy had incestuous marriages to preserve their Macedonian identity. Etc. Etc. Etc.

So shoddy were the analyses and so bereft of supporting evidence were the contentions, even a High High School student could have shot them down.

The leftist academics who supported this tripe did so because they thought it was okay to create a multicultural approach to history. I think their main goal was to get this stuff taught in school so that the black students could be made to feel good about themselves through their historical legacy. I also think it was done to create social tension by subconsciously making the black students feel that another part of their heritage had been stolen from them by the 'white race.'

As far as I know, this particular approach to perverting history stopped just prior to this millennium; but maybe not. Perhaps it will resurface if the problem Robert Spencer is pointing out somehow finds acceptance in the west.

Oh the humanity! As it is, they are claiming that the Napoleonic Code is Islamic. Can the Da Vinci code be far behind?

Thanks, graven, and for the link to that beautiful painting.

PETER SHEARER wrote:

Hi GI. It was a good thing I decided to read through the comments before posting; otherwise, I would have repeated this (but probably not as well):

Both Islamic supremacists and non-Muslim multiculturalist dhimmis promote this nonsense...
.................................

Ah, Peter—I wish I could claim those fine words, but they are not mine. They are the erudite Robert Spencer's, from the story above. I just reposted them in order to comment on them.

More:

So all I can do is add this to your observation (and that of IstanbulChick): We have been through this before. It took place mainly in the late 1980's and throughout the 1990's and it took place mainly in the U.S.

I am referring to Afro-centric history, a silly attempt at revising the historical narrative by injecting black personages into crucial moments in history. Actually, this was more than revising a narrative, it was out-and-out lying about history.
.................................

Yes—it started even before that, outside academia. Ridiculous, ahistorical things like those Anheuser-Busch placards for inner-city liquor stores featuring the "Black Kings and Queens of Africa"—including, absurdly, Nefertiti and Hannibal.

Here's the latter:

http://playahata.com/images/otherpics/kpq_hannibal.jpg

There's an excellent book from a few years back systematically debunking this ridiculous canard, Mary Lefkowitz's "Not Out Of Africa: How 'Afrocentrism' Became An Excuse To Teach Myth As History".

More:

The leftist academics who supported this tripe did so because they thought it was okay to create a multicultural approach to history. I think their main goal was to get this stuff taught in school so that the black students could be made to feel good about themselves through their historical legacy. I also think it was done to create social tension by subconsciously making the black students feel that another part of their heritage had been stolen from them by the 'white race.'
.................................

Absolutely. A similar issue is the whole "Anonymous was a Woman" thing. One unintended consequence of this factually-challenged idiocy is that it distracts from *genuine* achievements, which often seem diminished when compared to the myths.

But whatever the intent, this kind of bullsh*t is *always* harmful.

More:

Oh the humanity! As it is, they are claiming that the Napoleonic Code is Islamic...
.................................

Apparently that one's been around for awhile. It seems to have begun with Islamophilic Frenchman Christian Cherfils, who wrote "Bonaparte et L'Islam : d'après les documents Francais et Arabes" (Bonaparte and the Islam: from French and Arabic files) 1914.

There's even the claim—surprise, surprise—that Napoleon converted to Islam, taking the laughable name "Ali Boneaparte".

He supposedly wrote:

“I hope the time is not far off when I shall be able to unite all the wise and educated men of all the countries and establish a uniform regime based on the principles of Quran which alone are true and which alone can lead men to happiness.”

What crap. And the idea that the largely civilized Napoleonic Code was based on the irrationality and savagery of Shari'ah law could not be more absurd.

"For Muslims this will come as no surprise when they realise that 96% of the Code-Civil i.e. The Code Napoleon is drawn entirely from Islamic jurisprudence based on the Fiqh or rulings of Imam Malik..."

That would be Imam Malik Ibn Anas (711-795 AD), founder of the "Maliki school" of Islamic jurisprudence, which asserts such barbarities as death for apostasy and stonings.

Apparently this ridiculous book has another meretricious aspect, as well—that of claiming that Napoleon had established some sort of proto "workers' paradise" in the lands he conquered.

More false history...

"There's even the claim—surprise, surprise—that Napoleon converted to Islam, taking the laughable name "Ali Boneaparte"."

I think one fact in that tissue of factoids and myths is that many Muslims respected Napoleon and gave him an honorary title of "Sheikh" -- apparently because he was ruthless in his treatment of them, and perhaps because in him they recognized a bit of the madness of imperialist supremacism that afflicts them. And perhaps it was a respect in some ways similar to the one they would cultivate later for Hitler. (Recall that Hitler greatly admired Napoleon, and made a special point of personally visiting, and honoring, Napoleon's tomb after the Nazis conquered Paris.)

LemonLime wrote:

I think one fact in that tissue of factoids and myths is that many Muslims respected Napoleon and gave him an honorary title of "Sheikh" -- apparently because he was ruthless in his treatment of them, and perhaps because in him they recognized a bit of the madness of imperialist supremacism that afflicts them. And perhaps it was a respect in some ways similar to the one they would cultivate later for Hitler.
..................................

I absolutely agree. Muslims tend to respect power and its ruthless wielding, and little else.

GI You are my Hero!!! Well, for today anyway.

I have been trying to remember the "Not out of Africa" title for years now. I had read the book a couple of years before 9/11 and decided it was a keeper and therefore, I promptly lost it. So thanks a hundred times over.

Also, thanks for the additional info on this phenomenon. Just about everything you said was new to me.

A philosophical question for you: What does it mean that the Islamists are claiming as their own, all sorts of famous people that we won't let them foist on themselves but the one personage that we try to foist on them, (BHO), who probably is a Muslim, they won't take?

A philosophical warning to you: Don't ever do anything that makes you famous. If you do, 100 years from now, Jihad Watchers will be reading an article by Robert Spencer IV, in which the Muslims claim that Gravenimage converted to Islam.

Glad to help, Peter. I agree—Lefkowitz's book is excellent.

You wrote:

A philosophical question for you: What does it mean that the Islamists are claiming as their own, all sorts of famous people that we won't let them foist on themselves but the one personage that we try to foist on them, (BHO), who probably is a Muslim, they won't take?
..................................

I've wondered about that one, myself. Certainly, Muslims could either embrace Obama as one of their own, or, equally, denounce him as an apostate and sentence him to death.

My guess is that there is a sort of tacit agreement to wait and see how things turn out with him first. Certainly, he's a useful idiot, but *how* useful? After all, it's still pretty Kuffar to be president of the Great Satan...

And by the way, here's some wag—a Spaniard, by the look of things—who photoshopped La Gioconda as she would appear if Leonardo really had been Muslim:

http://www.culsans.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/22_Leonardo_Gioconda-Burka.jpg

Of course, as amusing as this is, it still would have been too Haram for truly pious Islam...