I’m sure you are all familiar with the BBC narrative that promotes the ‘Golden Age of Islamic Science’ and tells us the West owes all of its progress to Islam.
It is a constant refrain, one that the BBC wants to impress upon us, the idea being that once we realise that Muslims were once very clever we will change our perceptions about Islam as a backward, violent and intolerant ideology.
Good luck with that.
The problem is that the ‘Golden Age of Islamic Science’ owes its sheen to the cultures it conquered and the accumulated knowledge of the Romans, Greeks, Persians and Indians. Muslims became great librarians as they stored up that accumulated knowledge from past centuries. It profited from an intellectual drag….once conquered the various cultures held on to their science, philosophy and intellectualism…and we had a great deal of ‘cultural appropriation’…for example…A major innovation of this period was paper – originally a secret tightly guarded by the Chinese. The art of papermaking was obtained from prisoners taken at the Battle of Talas (751), spreading to the Islamic cities of Samarkand and Baghdad. This continued until Islam asserted itself fully and began to restrict the practise and development of science and learning and notably many of the scholars were in fact not Muslim but Christians and Jews.
For a more sceptical view of Islamic claims to scientific genius you might like to read this:
How Islamic Inventors Did Not Change The World
What should be understood is that it wasn’t ‘Islam’ or the Koran urging its adherents to strive in the fields of science purely for the sake of knowledge. The scientific progress was merely a necessary adjunct to practising Islam…the need to know when to pray during the day, in which direction Mecca lay, and the dates of the various festivals and sacred days…as well as the need to administer a massive and complex empire.
Knowledge and learning were not next to Godliness, they were just a practical necessity.
Suggesting that Islam is ideologically a driver of scientific endeavour and knowledge is like saying warfare is…and by virtue of that we must all love War.
Huge leaps in scientific progress come out of war as the arms race sucks in huge funding and resources to develop war winning weaponry but there is no ideology of ‘War’ that directs and eulogises this development….the Army does not turn five times a day towards the MOD building in London and kneel in prayer as they submit themselves to the wisdom of Michael Fallon MP, Secretary of State for Defence.
Funnily enough the same people who praise Islam denounce the ‘Industrial-Military Complex’ as evil.
The magnificent Koran’s science tells us that the Sun orbits the Earth…a view still held by some….
Saudi Muslim cleric claims the Earth is ‘stationary’ and the sun rotates around it
You might want to read this to help understand how a Muslim, taking the Koran as his guide, as a good Muslim should, could make that error:
Scientific Errors in the Qur’an
The Qur’an mentions numerous times that the sun and the moon travel in an orbit, but does not mention once that the earth does too. This is consistent with a earth-centered (geocentric) view of the cosmos that places a motionless earth at the center of the universe and all “heavenly bodies” travel around the earth. This was the prevailing understanding of the universe prior to the 16th century when Copernicus helped explain and popularize a sun-centered (heliocentric) view of the universe. Tellingly, the sun’s orbit is always mentioned in the context of night and day.
It is notable that at times when a strict interpretation of Islam was followed science and culture died.
For 800 years Islam turned a land of sand into an intellectual desert, a backwater.
However, that, apparently, is an ‘invidious, ungentlemanly’ view…according to Evan Davis on Newsnight.
Craig from ‘Is the BBC Biased?’ has transcribed an interview that Davis held with Richard Dawkins who had tweeted about the lack of progress of Islamic nations…….Here is Davis at work….
…a tweet in which you drew a very invidious comparison between the number of Nobel prizes won by people from Trinity College, Cambridge and the entire Muslim population of the world. Trinity College, Cambridge comes out on top of that comparison. Now, not disputing the factual basis of it, why make such an invidious comparison? Why raise that? Why raise the issue? What’s the point of drawing attention to that?
I can think of much more gentlemanly ways of making the intellectual point that Islam has not been a great scientific…
This from the same BBC that dismisses centuries of European culture as a ‘Dark Ages’…
The Dark Ages – a period in which Europe, and scientific progress, slumbered.
“Just because Europe was stuck in the Dark Ages,” argues Jim Al-Khalili the professor of physics at the University of Surrey and author of Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science, “we shouldn’t assume that the rest of the world had stagnated. There was this great flourishing of scholarship and discovery in the Islamic world of the middle ages”.
Curious isn’t it that the BBC can rubbish European culture and then go to enormous lengths to burnish the credentials of Islam with claims that it was a culture that a thousand years ago may have produced great scientific leaps to which we all owe our modern lives to and yet, when someone comes along to suggest all is not well now with the Muslim world, they are told to shut up, told not to mention the fact that Islamic countries are intellectual and scientific backwaters, that it is just a bit rude to say so.
I did laugh because the great enemy of Richard Dawkins, the slippery Mehdi Hasan, is on Dawkin’s side on this.
In Hasan’s now infamous speech in which he labelled the non-Muslim as immoral, ignorant cattle he also said this….
The Middle East, despite all its oil wealth…is an intellectually stagnant area of the world, where one in three Arabs, 65 million human beings, Muslims, are functionally illiterate, of which two thirds are women. 10 million children in the Middle East have never stepped foot inside a classroom, inside a school. That is the modern Muslim legacy. The Middle East…is now intellectually closed off to the outside world. … Closed off to the world – and let s not hear any of this nonsense about foreign literature, or foreign books, or foreign languages, being alien to Islam. It is the only way to learn, to open your minds to non-Muslims, to open your minds to other cultures, to learn foreign languages.
Just think about our priorities as a community, as a Muslim world, think about our priorities,: because when you look at our priorities….you look for example in the field of research and development…the West as an average spend around 2% of their GPD, their national income, on research and development…no Muslim country spends more than 0.5% of its national wealth on research and development…instead we spend the money on what? On killing, bombs, bloodshed, destruction, warfare, arms. Take Pakistan, for example, the “Islamic” Republic of Pakistan, with shamefully high levels of child illiteracy, and one of the world’s worst child labour problems, and yet it spends 20% of its GDP on its military and 2% of its GDP on education.
It is no surprise then that when you look at the Muslim world you see that we 1.2 billion Muslims have just 10 Nobel prizes to our name….and our Jewish brethren who we spend so much time fighting and arguing with, 12 million Jews in the world, they have 150 Nobel prizes to their name….We are not under-armed, we are under-educated. We have lost our ability to think, to acquire knowledge, to advance intellectually, and then we wonder why our community is in such decay, why globally wherever you find Muslims we have such problems. It’s not a secret, it’s not a conspiracy, its clear to anyone who looks at the numbers.
Once again we see the BBC propaganda machine at work, you can see the cogs actually moving…Islam good, Europe bad.
The BBC is lying to us. The more we get bombed or otherwise attacked by ‘Conservative’ radical Muslims the more we get patronised and lied to by the BBC about how wonderful the ‘Religion of Peace’ is.
Why does the BBC keep pushing the lies? This might give us a clue as to the thinking behind it…
People in MI5 tell me that denying the connection between Islamism and terrorism derives from the belief that if you accept it, there’s no hope for a multicultural society in Britain: we would just have to recognise that part of the population is permanently liable to become terrorists.
The trouble is if you keep denying the connection you don’t get to a solution….you just keep getting more and more terrorists as you do not tackle the cause…the ideology…..
In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.
It seems the BBC would prefer to accept some ‘collateral damage’ amongst non-Muslims rather than upset certain communities with the truth about the causes of radicalisation and extremism.
Change the narrative about foreign policy, about Muslim victimhood and admit that what drives radicalisation is an ideology that stems from the Koran.
Not all Muslims are terrorists but most terrorists are Muslim at this time in history. Why is that? Is it ungentlemanly to ask?
You may want to read this from Nick Cohen:
The Great Betrayal: How Liberals Appease Islam
I must face the fact that there is a vast woozy mass of liberal-leftists who will never change, and would not fight back even if a bomb exploded in their own back yard.
I will not let supposed liberals forget that, by their own cowardice and lack of conviction, they have brought this dismal moment on themselves.
“Muslims became great librarians as they stored up that accumulated knowledge from past centuries.”
The great library of Alexandria was burned down by Muslim raiders in the 7th century, but Ptolemy’s Almagest was one of the works that survived the blaze.
“1001 Inventions and the Library of Secrets” claims that much of the science we take for granted was drawn from Islamic discoveries. In my first response, I discuss the relationship between science and Islam.”
Re: Islamic claim to Mathematics
Muslims lay claim to mathematics, and that without them, there would be no mathematics as we know it.
Now Mathematics has a long history of development in Greece, China, India and Mesopotamia.
To be fair, the Arabs did introduce the decimal number system and the concept of zero to Europe. But both these inventions were the product of Hindu mathematicians. The Arabs were the messengers rather then the originators of the message.
The one mathematician that the Arabs claim as their own is Al-Khwarizmi. But even in the field of Algebra, the Greeks and Hindus, several centuries prior to Al-Khwarizmi, were more advanced then he. For instance Al-Khwarizmi solved quadratics but these were developed by the Hindu mathematicians who gave general solutions rather then particular ones. Given the trade routes of the time, it is conceivable that Al-Khwarizmi got most of what he wrote from India. It is also conjectured that Al-Khwarizmi travelled to India to study Maths. Quite possible.
Given the primitive times, it is unlikely we will ever know the exact truth, but I find the Arab /muslim mentality of stealing other people’s ideas and claiming it as their own, very distasteful, though it seems to go with the general nature of Arab tribal society, where brigandage is considered a honourable profession. It is unfortunate that such a trait persists even to the modern era.
It is very difficult to secure a factual history of ancient Mathematics. Much of it was tied to philosophy, music or even meditation. But if one had to mark one event, then it has to be Pythagoras’s theorem. In this one theorem, one moves from rhetoric to proof. As G.H.Hardy, one of 20th centuries greatest mathematicians put it, “All mathematics is but a footnote to Pythagoras”.
But sticking to what is germane to this thread, it is a fact that invention, and particularly invention in abstract thought, arises only in settled societies. This is plainly obvious, as a nomadic herder society, just does not have the resource or the time to sustain an individual’s indulgence in abstract thought. OTH, a settled society does, and encourages individuals in this mode of activity. Thus all the great inventions of mankind arise only from settled societies, and none from the nomadic tribal ones. Arabs who were the first muslims, were, until the nineteenth century, essentially tribal nomadic societies. One sees this even now in wealthy Saudi Arabia, as rich Saudis play/pretend being nomads. Have Saudis, given all the wealth, and as a consequence, the free time they have, invented anything of significance in the last few decades?
What is so disheartening is that by constant repetition of a lie, even Westerners have been duped into thinking of Arabs/muslims being the progenitors of a civilisation. The Arab muslims were conquerors of civilisations because they had islam as a politico-religious ideology, which was ideally suited for warfare i.e. unity of an idea that they were destined to win, clear lines of command from allah down, and a divinely ordained distribution of booty coming to you, and in case you fell in combat, even in paradise. Having conquered though, it was not long before the civilisation that they conquered, died from atrophy, neglect, and the inability to think freely in an Islamic society.
For the BBC/Left, Islam has replaced Communism as a belief.
Nick Cohen says it as it really is but accepts sadly that the rot of liberalism has gone so far now that it cannot be other than cut out of society.
That bodes ill for the Guardian/BBC axis of stupdity. He is of the left but increasingly sounds as if he would be more at home not of the left anymore. That is for him to work out.
The arguments as to whether Islam had a golden age and what occured are now irrelevant. If it ever existed it was left far behind by the West from the 17th century onwards and is still generations adrift.
When I hear that Medieval England was a country without culture I think of Salisbury Cathedral and wonder at the idiots who hold this view.
Saudi Arabia sentences man to death for renouncing his Muslim faith and posting a video online showing him hitting the Koran with his shoe
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2966768/Saudi-man-sentenced-death-video-hitting-Koran-shoe.html#ixzz3SlGi9cnJ
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-31567728…why are the left trying to ban this documentary even before it has been shown,what are they scared of ?
BBC “Derby Road is a place where, on the whole, people of different nationalities, cultures and religions … (UH OH!)
respect and get along with each other. This will be reflected in the film.”
“there were local groups who, for their own reasons, were determined to halt production” … wonderful contradiction
… local hmmm
Derby Road was a traditional Red light area. It is virtually cut off from the rest of Southampton by a fast moving dual carriageway with the main pedestrian access through an underpass where the muggers know that your voice will not be heard.
People like you predominantly. By the way the TUC is not left wing.I havent the foggiest where you got that one from.
This nonsense about the much-vaunted golden era of Islam is easily countered by pointing out that it was essentially just a rediscovery of European Greek culture. The downplaying of one’s own culture and the unjustified elevation of other cultures is more evidence of the self-loathing pathology that sits at the heart of much of western “progressive” thinking. It is something that you won’t find anywhere else in the world, especially in the Islamic world and Asia.
It is clear that the Arabs conserved existing knowledge particularly from the Greeks. People like St Aquinas were grateful to have this material and were able to produce strong theological and philosophical developments. The notion that the Muslim Arabs were responsible for Europe’s intellectual development is fatuous and that is actually easy to demonstrate. Thus, if the Arab world had the knowledge before Christian Europe did, why did they do nothing with it? Reason in Islam shut down in the Arab world in 13th century, so the knowledge was that of a collector of ancients writings. Interesting historically but they did nothing with that knowledge; Christian Europe did. So a “librarian” is an apt description and “collector” better still, though curiosity beyond one book is limited as is development of ideas independent of said book.
I am sick to death with the BBC and the left’s constant Islamic bumlicking. They grovel on a daily basis… everyday we have to hear about Islamic this Islamic that. No other religion gets the airtime the religion of peace does. And yet, Islam is responsible for the worst violence we have seen since the war… but you never hear the BBC discuss that!
A constant stream of apolodrivel appears to be the BBC, majority of media and No10 response to anything approaching … fact, truth and reality regarding Islam.
On these claims of science and invention? … recently a Western team completed a landing on a asteroid …
A, “what have you done lately” for Islam moment …
unless mean you landing a plane in a building that is.
Maybe Islam only invented “Allah”?
or even …. “Mohamhead” 😀
but that’s another story.
A few hundred Muslims have “symbolically” formed a human chain around a synagogue in Norway. Now tell me why I think the BBC are going to milk this story for all its worth. I suppose it makes for a better repeat-story than reporting on the hundreds of Jewish graves desecrated recently in Europe or the security now needed at hundreds of synagogues across Europe.
There is a huge Muslim population in Oslo. This “security ring” for the synagogue had been planned and known about all week. What is newsworthy is the LACK of Muslims joining in. By far the silent – sullen – majority.
Yes the BBC are drawing overmuch attention to this overseas matter. Just like they always report fully on gatherings of Muslims, like the one 2 weeks ago in Whitehall wanting an end to free speech – the airwaves and the BBC website were full of it !
Excellent article. You’re right to point out that many “muslim” scholars during the middle ages were infact not of muslim origin, but were living under muslim occupation during the muslim conquests.
In fact the koran is full of unscientific nonsense; for example it says the Earth is flat and that Allah spread out the Earth on the back of a great fish. Allah pegged out the Earth like a carpet to stop it moving due to the movement of the fish etc etc.
What’s more worrying however is the way many Muslims believe all this literally and reject modern science which they regard as a Western, unislamic lie.
Remember that the words “Boko Haram” literally maen “Western Education is Forbidden”.
A few days ago ISIS supporters burned a pile of musical instruments because they consider music as unislamic. Article here
http://ibt.uk/A006FH1 via @IBTimesUK #ISIS
This site is full of unscientific nonsense too including a guy pretending to have a chemistry degree who wont allow replies.
If those instruments are related to rap music I definitely know where theyre coming from. That stuff is seriously unholy.
” The Truth About ‘Islamic Science'”
By Fjordman.
(2007.)
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/11/fjordman-the-truth-about-islamic-science
Excellent link. QED.
And they are still contributing to scientific knowledge. Don’t snigger at this claim; you might end up in jail for race hate or worse…
http://rt.com/news/233063-saudi-cleric-earth-sun/
Look on the bright side … Glad Camoron, Buraq Hussein and co
all rushed over to pander to Saudi, (the real Islam) not those savage ISIS buggers
“4 already beheaded in Saudi Arabia less than a week into King Salman’s rule”
The problem is not whether Islam made or preserved the science or merely tolerated/encouraged the Jews and Christians who did. The problem is that they no longer do any of that.
Hitler made the trains run on time and got rid of unemployment. Perhaps the BBC could treat us to a documentary praising the Nazi conquest of Europe and explaining its benefits?
Why doesn’t the BBC just make a documentary about what is generally accepted to be the history of Islam? No whitewashing, no spin, no tendentious interpretation of events; just an objective history of what Mohammed said and did. Maybe they could get Jeremy Bowen to narrate it. Wouldn’t that be a fair thing to do for most reasonably-minded people? It would at least give the British people a chance to assess this religion that seems to feature so frequently in the news.
“If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson”
In other words, good things promote themselves.
Why are the BBC acting as snake-oil merchants for islam? Why don’t they promote Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism or even Humanism to the same degree? What are they hiding?
Good news elsewhere: Imam Cameron concedes that Islamic State is a ‘death cult’. And its instruction manual is …? One step at a time Dave, one step at a time.
The Dark Ages was the ecomonic collapse of southern Europe caused by Islam. Arabs being nomadic had no interest in farming communities so let the agriculture disappear. Maybe this nomadic root is still why Arabs cannot organise a civilised society. Democratising the area is a hopeless task. It wasn’t really till the Normans settled in Sicily in the eleventh century that the basket-case economy of the Mediterranean was pushed back. History of Islam is very relevant to us now, we have to be aware of how incompatible Europe & Islam really are, multicultural Europe is a pipe-dream! The BBC is fooling us. Imagine, in a century just possibly all the art in the galleries in Europe will have been destroyed because it was considered ‘un-Islamic’!
That Mozart and Bach would be forbidden under Islamic rule is all any civilised man or woman needs to know.
For me all other arguments in favour of Islam holding any power in the West are irrelevant.
” Imagine, in a century just possibly all the art in the galleries in Europe will have been destroyed because it was considered ‘un-Islamic’! ”
Or been bought up by rich Qatari sheikhs.
The Koran also says that the sources of light in the heaven are the Sun and the Moon. Actually only the Sun is a source of light, the moon is reflected light. About time they revised the Koran to reflect the facts.
See this link http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Science/moonlight_wc.html