Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
I find “Big Victory” too depressing to say anything on, so I’ll tap this one.
Regrettably, this is a collection of half-truths, misunderstandings and cliches, the kind of article written by someone who has read lots of other articles on the same subject and who thus thinks he knows something about it.
For example, there is no way one can talk about “arabic science” without mentioning anywhere that I can see the huge Hittite and Syriac civilizations swallowed whole by the Islamic conquest. That was why, for example, the Abbasids had access to so many Greek texts and knew how to translate them, but then had no clue what to actually do with them.
Similarly, any scholar who claims that Europe by 800 was in darkness, backwards and bereft of ancient knowledge reveals only his own ignorance on the subject.
I would have you note that of all the names dropped as “great arab scientists,” few of them were actually arab, despite their being given arab monikers, and the one exception I see, al-Farabi, was a thoroughly vehement critic of Islam. As were most of the alleged “arab scientists,” if you scratch their works more than an inch deep.
Zane,
It’s debatable.
Darkness fell after/shortly before the Mongol wipeout of the civilization. They took it out at the top but they also utterly destroyed it. Hillel’s and Mr. B’s points are valid.
And my money says that Europe. All of it. Was deep in the darkness until the Renaissance and Enlightenment. You can see it now. The arabs. The only monuments they build are the biggest mosques in the world. Can’t you see Egyptian engineers now out rigging explosives on the Pyramids in order to blow them up and the Great Sphinx? Mr. Awsome, a superb engineer hated anyone referring to him as an arab. He was Egyptian. Ran a place I once was needing some serious repair work in the Middle East.
In 5 years living over there I never once not one time met an Arab engineer or scientist or 20th century mechanic who could fix cars built in this century. All the governments contracted for that sort from the West.
It’s sad.
Right next to Milne, Saki and some others was Omar Khayyam when I was growing up.
Nothing worth reading from them since then. I never read the frady cats books. Probably never will.
Actually, I’m being a little too harsh on Ofek, he has a better grasp of it than most of the sources he cites. Worth reading if you’re not familiar with the subject, but beware of the cliches and journalistic misunderstandings.
The article is interesting, for sure. His overarching theme looks right, that continual investment in decimating science is it’s own reward. The most honored men were those that published sound works of reason. Without continued energy and openness, dogma choked out reason. He does lay out the differences in science between Christianity and Islam, with learned discourse on how a rigid islam stagnates.
He notes political upheaval gets in the way. He leaves out the dire impact the Mongols had on Islam. One thing he does not dwell on is how the arrogance of the leader in Bagdad directly led to the destruction of his city (Bagdad was a wondrous planned city). The sack of Baghdad was a body blow to Islamic Science. The learned were dispersed or killed, and Islam’s political unity were fractured by the Mongols. This is really laid out in The Devil’s Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe by James Chambers.
Lastly, I aver that science is under threat today, so the parallels hit close to home. We seem to be on the edge of throwing away a golden age, and those that want to process are outnumbered by the control freak and looters.
Ironic to think 1984 came to Islam about 1000 years ago… end of deductive reasoning, thought police and all.
those that want to
processprogress are outnumbered by the control freak and looters. FIFYLex,
Not being an intellectual, this is particularly difficult for me, but when your recommended Sunday reading includes lines such as:
Arabic science thrived for as long as it did thanks to “an incredibly complex concatenation of contingent circumstances.”
you really should suggest grabbing a pot of joe not a mere cup.
Beyond that, I found the following two quotes most useful to trying to understand Islam:
“. . . it is helpful to briefly compare Islam with Christianity. Christianity acknowledges a private-public distinction and (theoretically, at least) allows adherents the liberty to decide much about their social and political lives. Islam, on the other hand, denies any private-public distinction and includes laws regulating the most minute details of private life. Put another way, Islam does not acknowledge any difference between religious and political ends: it is a religion that specifies political rules for the community.
and
“. . . for Islam, religion and politics were interdependent from the beginning; Islam needs a state to enforce its laws, and the state needs a basis in Islam to be legitimate.”
Seems to me that the people who go nuts about school children singing Christmas Carols are not going to be happy when (I’d use “if” except that the PC-crowd is working too hard on its own, and our, destruction) Islam comes to America.
Regards,
Mick
They hate Christianity, but are indifferent about Islam, for the most part. Unfortunately, atheists and other leftists are the biggest enemies of science in the west.
The author certainly challenges some of the understandings I held about Arabic science and philosophy. I knew they translated many Greek works, but I understood the translations were not very good. It was the fall of Byzantium/Constantinople that brought the original Greek works west and it was then discovered how poor the Arab translations were. Muslims are credited with the origin of Algebra, but as I recall, it was fully developed in Europe and not the ME.
The article is interesting, but there is a great deal it leaves out. The point, however, of ossification and punishment of dissent should be well taken. We are seeing the same kind of nonsense here with science whoring itself out for political purposes. We saw that with the soft sciences of sociology and Psychology, and we are in the first stages of it with the hard sciences and Engineering.
I found the bit about the Ash’arist belief system to be the most telling. By 880 Islam had stopped questioning anything. They believed that all important legal questions had already been answered.
Which explains why honor killings, amputations and stoning are still considered appropriate punishments. I’ve often said that Islam is trapped in the 5th century; I can amend that to the 9th century I guess.