Make sure that you tune in tomorrow night to BBC 4 where “in the first of a new series entitled “Science and Islam” physicist Jim Al-Khalili travels through Syria, Iran, Tunisia and Spain to tell the story of the great leap in scientific knowledge that took place in the Islamic world between the 8th and 14th centuries. Its legacy is tangible, with terms like algebra, algorithm and alkali all being Arabic in origin and at the very heart of modern science – there would be no modern mathematics or physics without algebra, no computers without algorithms and no chemistry without alkalis. For Baghdad-born Al-Khalili this is also a personal journey and on his travels he uncovers a diverse and outward-looking culture, fascinated by learning and obsessed with science“.
LOL – you couldn’t make it up. Outward-looking culture.
The same nonsense is also promulgated by Adam Lebor: “Without Al-Khwarizmi, there wouldn’t be computers” (sic; or rather sick. The scientifically illiterate have this tendency to make utter fools of themselves).
Outward-looking culture = with an eye on invasion
We English have had an outward looking culture in recent centuries, but curiously the BBC don’t celebrate it all that much.
Shh, Ed, that’s racist.
That’s right. We clearly had a working understanding of Astronomy etc to build not just Stonehenge but many other monuments.
The `ex’ muslim, Ibn Warraq noted in his book `Why I am not a muslim’ that `it is a myth that Islam encouraged science’. Much of their knowledge came from the ancient Greeks and in fact, they discovered no scientific laws. Islamic countries are generally rather backward when compared to those in the `west’, with their Judeo-Christian heritage.
I, for one, will be giving this latest piece of Al Beeb Islamic propaganda a big miss!
The acid test: how many Nobel prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine.
*tumbleweed and a distant church bell*
The BBC need to go MUCH further back in history and discover that India made many of the discoveries that Arabia/Islam is often given credit for.
The most glaring example is the invention of the number zero, which made higher mathematics possible and came about long before Christ and Mohammed. It was brought to Europe via Arab traders.
Fractions, algebraic formulas, astronomy and perennial movement have origins in Vedic literature, some as early as 1500 B.C.
The so-called “Pythagorean theorem” was in fact proved in Baudhayana’s Shulva Sutra, circa 600 BC.
And so on…
Much of the so-called ‘scientific discoveries’ Islam likes to attribute to itself were stolen or translated for them by other peoples; Greeks, Hindus and subjugated Non-Muslim Arabs in particular.
But no doubt the BBC won’t let that get in the way of good, fawning hagiography.
Here is a potential corrective to BBC’s hyping of Islam as usual in its TV series ‘Science and Islam’:
“Fjordman: Islam, the Greeks and the Scientific Revolution”
(- a long essay in 3 parts, critical of Islam’s role).
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/018368.php
Alongside the BBC’s ‘Science and Islam’ TV series, also starting tomorrow, in case we have not got the BBC’s dhimmi message, there’s a repeat of ex-Beeboid, Rageh Omaar’s ‘Islamic History of Europe’.He’s now with Arabic-owned, Hamas-supporting, Al-Jazeera English’. His BBC TV production is a phoney history and eulogy to Islam in Europe, as we should expect from someone from Somalia.
A corrective:
‘The Myth of the Golden Age of Tolerance in Medieval Muslim Spain’.
by Norman Berdichevsky.
[Opening extract]:
“Apologists for Islam never tire of referring to the ‘Golden Age’ of tolerance that supposedly characterized seven centuries of Muslim dominated Spain. This fundamentally flawed assessment draws the wrong conclusion based on fragmentary evidence and distorts the larger picture. It ignores the reality of enormous destruction wrought by the three Arab-Berber Muslim invasions that repeatedly sought to hold on to control and rule over the indigenous peoples of Spain who had been reduced to second class citizens in their own homeland. ”
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=4205&sec_id=4205
algebra : invented by the ancient Babylonians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebra#History
developed further by Diophantus from Greece – “the father of algebra”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diophantus
Muslim v Jewish nobel prize winners
http://www.jewishmag.com/99mag/nobel/nobel.htm
another link on muslim v jewish nobel prize winners
http://www.masada2000.org/nobel.html
what the fuck have they done with ALL that oil money?
People might like to also check out http://www.1001inventions.com
It is a largely government funded project to celebrate the “contribution” of Islam to the modern world, and features education packs that are distributed throughout UK schools. Some of the information on their website has been taken down, but at one time it claimed that Muslims had invented glass and the arch, and even manned flight. I suspect this is still in the schools pack. It’s a tissue of lies, which anyone with any rudimentary historical knowledge will realise. Nevertheless it is still rammed down the throats of our schoolchildren. I suspect the BBC series is just a continuation of the pro-Islam drive instigated by our government.
Don’t take the bait folks.
Concentrating on Islamic “achievement” in the secular realm serves to distract from and conceal the reality of Islam.
Put simply, the most Islamic country in existence today is actually Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabis is not exactly a model of Islamic tolerance and secular achievement.
To put it in terms of Godwins law: The Nazi’s made great strides in the field of Rocketry, therefore should the scientists at join the Nazi party?
Nalanda University destroyed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda
“Nalanda was one of the world’s first residential universities, i.e., it had dormitories for students. It is also one of the most famous universities. In its heyday it accommodated over 10,000 students and 2,000 teachers.”
“The library of Nalanda, known as Dharma Gunj (Mountain of Truth) or Dharmagañja (Treasury of Truth), was the most renowned repository of Buddhist knowledge in the world at the time. Its collection was said to comprise hundreds of thousands of volumes, so extensive that it burned for months when set aflame by Muslim invaders.”
“Ahir considers the destruction of the temples, monasteries, centers of learning at Nalanda and northern India to be responsible for the demise of ancient Indian scientific thought in mathematics, astronomy, alchemy, and anatomy.”
No doubt this pro-Muslim documentary will expend a goodly section on the burning of the Library at Alexandria by – you’ve guessed it, the invading Arabs in the mid-7th century. The caliph Omar reasoned thus: “if the books’ contents are in accordance with the Koran, we may do without them, for in that case the book of Allah more than suffices. If, on the other hand, the contents are not in accordance with the koran, there can be no need to preserve them. Proceed, then, and destroy them.”
And some people wonder why there are no Muslim Nobel laureates?
Some questions I hope this series will answer.
If Science is such an integral part of Islam, why isn’t Mecca a veritable ‘mecca’ of discovery and invention? After all, the centre of Islam has been in continuous Muslim hands since the 7th Century, so that’s time a plenty to show what the religion can do with Science.
How many of those attributed to being Islamic scientists where in fact regarded as heretics in their own lifetime? How many were even actual Muslims as opposed to just dhimmified Jews and Christians?
Why is Islam being associated with Science, and Christianity not? Many eminent Western Scientists such as Copernicus and Newton, were devout Christians. Some were even members of the clergy like Gregor Mendel. Yet no one at the BBC would seriously suggest associating Science with Christianity, quite the opposite in fact. So why the double standard with regard to Islam and Science?
I forgot my sources, should Jim al-Karsi wish to educate himself:
‘The dialogue of John Philoponus with the Emir’, in Eutychius’ Annals (II, Pococke’s ed p. 316) and (for muslims only) Ibn al-Kifti’s “Ta’rikh al-Hukama” (‘Chronicle of Wise Men’).
yYu have to wonder if everytime there is a huge Saudi or gulf contract in the offing for British armaments or building conmpanies. The FCO throws in the sweeteners of another kind by simply offering another Islamic adulation program care of the BBC.
How much is a series of western barbarism on the Crusades worth
or Newton’s laws were stolen from Islam or Spain lived in total bliss until the reconquista destroyed it.
Just as well Boris put a small spanner in the works before Al beeb really gets into islamic propaganda gear.
there must be lots of dosh in it. wait til the unis get on the band wagon.
hey and did those potential islamic nobel prizes simply miss out because the commitee were Islamophobic?
“Why is Islam being associated with Science, and Christianity not?”
Because they want to destroy you.
Islam invented manned flight? Would that be the “manned flight” enjoyed by airborne suicide bombers strapped up with explosives? They certainly have perfected this branch of science at least.
Next the BBC will be telling us Islam invented the rent boy.
This goes back to a touring exhibition two years ago fronted by bbc man Adam Hart-Davies, 1001 inventions claimed to be Islamic.
Heartily debunked below:
http://www.faithfreedom.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18360&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=105
That one is a VERY anti Islam site lightly moderated. I linked in later, you can always look back through the thread. The final PDF has timed out.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/13/1255202
Long thread on that one too.
Enjoy.
The most important islam invention for the past 1400 years:
The suicide bomber!
P.S.: Is it just me or are there a lot of new names contributing?
What can we expect from the British Pravda?
“Last week mighty Pravda (which claims 2,000,000 copies daily) gave three of its 24 columns to a claim that the principle of conservation of matter,* attributed by Westerners to Lavoisier (1775), was really discovered by an 18th Century Russian poet-scientist-philosopher named Mikhail Lomonosov. This week the Russians claimed again that a Russian flew the first power-driven heavier-than-air machine 21 years before the Wright brothers got around to their 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C. In recent years, official Communist publications have claimed that the incandescent lamp, the radio, the steam engine, penicillin, and many basic discoveries in theoretical sciences were Russian products. A few of these claims have shreds of truth to them; most are the wildest fantasy.”
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,780118,00.html?promoid=googlep
looking forward to the BBC documentary on “Science and Judaism”…
lets start with Einstein.
there’s enough in that topic for a series to last several years, broadcast EVERY week…
it is silly isnt it – the concept.
science is science. it makes ZERO difference if Einstein was a Jew , or if Newton was a Christian.
Science is just that – science.
Has anyone asked Richard Dawkins about this latest BBC tripe?
The BBC is not concerned about what you or I think, but it does want to plant ideas in the ordinary non-thinking majority that soak up it’s propaganda. The young growing up know no nothing else – The BBC has a free hand to wre-write history to suite the brave new world that it is working towards.
archduke | 04.01.09 – 11:32 pm |
And I thought Einstein was a muslim!
More BBC horse shit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7810846.stm
The bBC, its Muslims were the first scientists articles and half the story.
The ‘first true scientist’
For, without doubt, another great physicist, who is worthy of ranking up alongside Newton, is an Iraqi scientist born in AD 965 who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7810846.stm
More crap from the bBC about how the west owes Islam. (A little like how Francis Drake owed it all to Allah)
Well as written above here are a few Greek scientists who lived well before Islam saw the light of day.
http://www.livius.org/gi-gr/greeks/scientists.html
In fact well before the greeks the ancient Eygptians mapped the stars. In fact if that so call BBC article writer had bothered his arse he would find that the location of the Pyramids is based on the stars in the sky. In fact the BBC even wrote an article on the subject.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1024779.stm
and now they try and tell me Allah got there first.
Please.
The bBC, the uptake of British Asian women into ‘O'(piate) Level Chemistry and half the story.
More Asian women ‘use hard drugs’
A growing number of Asian women are using Class A drugs, according to leading Asian drugs charity Nafas.
Ten years ago drug misuse amongst British Asian women was unheard of.
Now, Nafas says it is treating 20 to 25 women for heroin addiction a year in east London alone – a figure it believes is just the tip of the iceberg.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7809758.stm
Why is it when the bBC wants to hide bad news about Allahs little helpers they always refer to them as Asians.
I mean its not as if the clues aren’t there.
East London
Bethnal Green
large Asian communities like Birmingham, Bradford and Lancashire.
and then I clicked on that leading Asian drugs charity Nafas link.
http://www.nafas.org/
Here is how they describe themselves;
Nafas is a multifaceted specialist resource established to meet the drug and drug related education, prevention and treatment needs of primarily the Bangladeshi community in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
Asian Indeed.
The bBC, the uptake of British Asian women into ‘O'(piate) Level Chemistry and half the story.
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Kate
http://educationonline-101.com
Wow Kate,
educationonline-101.com must make you so astute, but they didn’t teach you how to spell ‘accross.’
Well here we go it’s started with the subtle debunking of Newton.
Who else would suffice one has to ask?
In all aspects of human achievements, it is also the BBC mission to minimize the achievements of western culture and to point out the supremacy and superiority of ISLAM.
Its now clear that it is not only their duty to spread antisemism and Israeli hatred whilst lauding the achievements of their appointed victims Hammas and hesbollah but to present Islam as the centre world achievements and the universe.
Next thing that will have to go is the perception of greek and roman democracy which is obviously outranked by Sharia law and its incredible subtleties.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7810846.stm
Notice the house arrest bit which unlike Galileo Galilei’s inquisition was a much more civilised affair.
Again folks like Kepler and copernicus who worked out the mechanics of elliptical orbiting would have been stuck without Ibn al-Haytham whom they had never most probably heard of!!
Melvyn Bragg is on radio four now talking about the early life of Charles Darwin.
A lefty called Jim Moore is slagging off the church of England, describing Cambridge in Darwin’e time as being like Teheran today.
Really, did they hang homosexuals along the backs? I never knew.
But both Bragg and Moore quickly make clear they are talking out of their arses as they agree that Darwin himself would have believed in Transubstantiation at the time.
Transubstantiation is a Catholic doctrine, and students in Darwin’s day had to sign a form explicitly rejecting such papist teachings.
BBC wrong, anti-Christian, ignorant and biased.
They just can’t help it.
Michael Fabricant MP: I have long defended the BBC but the World Service’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict means I can no longer do so
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2009/01/michael-fabrica.html
There is a basic mistaken premise by the BBC that we give a shit about “Islaam and Science”. Rather, they want us to know, and want to tell us whether we want to know or not. Listen! It’s good for you! It’ll learn you. You will see Islaam in a new light. It’s our duty to promote “social cohesion”
Frankly we don’t care what their glorious history is, I know what I see today – a barbaric medieval death cult. I don’t care if they invented the mobile phone. All they have done with it is create unreliable bomb detonators with them. (“I’m sorry, the bomb you are calling is not available right now. Please try again later”)
And if their scientific heritage is so great, why are most of their nuclear scientists and biological warfare experts trained at Imperial College and other British Universities?
This is an extremely disturbing blog. It frightens me to come across such ignorance and hatred.
M
if the truth frightens you, dont come to this site
you give no examples of the ignorance or hatred you state,
ppl here speak the facts not bollox or propaganda like Al beeb
have a nice day
M:
This is an extremely disturbing blog. It frightens me to come across such ignorance and hatred.
M | 05.01.09 – 11:05 am | #
Gosh, the wittle wibberal is soooo easily fwightened.
I presume it’s M for Metrosexual?
Watcha gonna do when the bad islamos come for you?
Tom: Actually, they arrested them and put them in a homely Victorian gaol.
Much of their knowledge came from the ancient Greeks
And India.
“Watcha gonna do when the bad islamos come for you?”
Hmm. I suspect “M” may well be short for a name also held by the founder of the world’s least – er, most -peaceable religion.
science is science. it makes ZERO difference if Einstein was a Jew , or if Newton was a Christian
Not so. Cultures that encourage a broad education and an enquiring mind, promote scientific progress. That is why such a huge percentage of Nobel prize winners are Jews.
How many are Arabs or Moslems? Arabic & Moslem cultures stifle free enquiry, and always have. A handful of Medieval Arabs copied Greek and Indian ideas in astronomy and maths, but the overall contribution to science of these cultures is vanishingly small.
I don’t object to a programme about “Arab” mathematics at all – the problem is that you just know that it’ll be standard BBC dhimmi fare, which will ignore the interesting questions about who all these “Arab” mathematicians and scientists were. In fact most of ’em were not Arabs at all, but people like Assyrian Christians and Jews (and forced converts to Islam from those traditions) who lived in the areas conquered by the Muslim Arabs, and built on the Greek civilisation that had been there since Alexander (and the earlier local traditions, such as Babylonian mathematics.) That’s not to say that there were no Arab mathematicians, but the cultural tradition that produced all this learning was not Arab or Islamic, but the cultures of the people who were living there before the Arabs arrived. Which explains why the surge of “Arab/Islamic” culture died out within a couple of hundred years of the Arab conquests. By then Islamisation had squished the inquisitive local cultures.
So it’s quite wrong to imagine that the Ancient Greeks had thought it all up and nobody discovered anything new till Newton. The BBC won’t feed us that line – instead we’ll get fed an equally silly line – that Arabs and Islam were responsible for Middle Eastern mathematical and scientific thought between 700 and 1000 AD. In reality they were responsible for strangling it.
MORE ARAB MUSLIM BREAKTHROUGHS IN SCIENCE:
1. The mobile phone bomb.
2. The Shoe Bomb
3. The Television (invented in 1673 by Sheik al-Beeb)
4. The internal combustion engine (invented in 1813 by Da-imler Ben zahar)
5. The microchip (invented in 1746 by Ibm Arafat)
ipreferred | 05.01.09 – 11:58 am
Actually, they arrested them and put them in a homely Victorian gaol.
No, it was worse than we thought. They were still hanging them when Darwin was at Cambridge.
Wot about the Persians?
Tom: Oh, well, guess it was all a bit Tehranian then what with needing to be sponsored by the CofE (or rather rich) to become a student in the first place.