Islam gave birth to the Western civilisation

[Abdullah]

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf gave an account of how the western 'invaders' dismantled one traditional Islamic university after another untill the last one fell..., and they replaced the priority of Islamic education, with things like medicine and engineering and put the priority of learning about Islam at the bottom; they said to the muslims that it was due to the 'backward' Islamic education that the muslims got conquered; he [Shaykh Hamza], after asserting that the muslims got conquered INSPITE of their Islamic education [he said 'why did they dismantle the Islamic educational institutions if that was the reason we got conquered?], then proceeded to show the irony of that claim:

He said, quote, "The western university system is litterally stolen, without any credit [to those that this knowledge/system was taken from], from the Islamic system of training individuals, ...and these studies have been done extensively by several orientalists of the later period; early orientalist admitted some [of the Islamic] influence but did not want to admit the [shear] extent of the influence, because it is verry unnerving when your attacking a people and calling them backward and barbaric, and then have to admit that in fact, that the reason you have become civilised and humanised is those very people. That is problematic, if you have to admit that the reason that you take baths is because of Muslim cleanliness, that the reason you have gardens to enjoy, is because of Muslims love of reminding themselves in this world, what they expect in the next world, because gardens are uniquely a eastern and western Islam pehnomenon; you find them [in that era] in asia also amongst these civilised Asians because the Asians were far more civilised than the Europeans; gardens do not show up in Europe untill they conquer Andalusia...They [the Europeans] used to throw out their garbage and feaces out the window; the plague that happened in Europe is a result of it.

Then the Shaykh gave an account of an ancient Muslim Scholar who gave an example of meeting a Christian Scholar and found that he did not have any foundation for speaking, because he didn't understand the intellectual underpinning of 'munadhara' ['dialectic', I think he translated as]; the Scholar taught him a sound Islamic intellectual principle and then as they discussed the Christian view of Jesus [pbuh], the Christian said that the proof that Jesus [pbuh] is 'god' [astagfirullah] is that he brought the dead to life, the Scholar said that according to that analogy, he has to also believe that moses [pbuh] was a 'god' too for he brought an inanimate object to life, the Christian said, "no we do not say that", the shaykh said, "but is it not a sound intellectual principle/analogy that I just told you"?, the Christian said "I'm confused"!.

Another Scholar commented on that saying, "the Christians [even their Scholars] had a hard time understanding things".

Shaykh Hamza continued: well how is it now that they [the westerners] teach fozzy? logic, how is it now that they teach bhumian logic and all these intellectual sciences, well if you study how they learn it, you will see that they learnt it by interaction with muslims; Roger Bacon who was teaching in England used to wear a Saracen robe and a turban and he got acused by the Church of England of apostasy because he was teaching the people that the muslims actually had important things that they should learn.

The following points were made by the Shaykh:

The pope used to send Christians to andalusia to learn from Muslims.

There was no universites in the west untill they started looking at how the Muslims were teaching their children.

The western university introduced the concept of 'lesensia losendi' [licence to teach'], whcih was a direct translation from Islamic sources.

the Islamic word] 'Doc-Tur' [Doctor] is infact a person who had a license to teach and before a person got a license to teach, he had to bring forth a fatwa and defend it before a group of Scholars; the west copied the word 'doctor' and copied the same methodology...

The word 'Chair' [as in 'Chairman', 'the chair of the organisation' etc,] is from Islam; Islamic teachers used to sit on the chair, and they used to be called 'Chair of Fiqh', 'Chair of Hadith', etc ,etc, and the students used to sit on the floor.

The gown and the 'tussle hat' used when a western student graduates, is from Islam; this is what Muslim 'graduates' used to wear, and even the tussle on top of that hat is taken from Islam too; Muslim 'graduates' used to be given a hat with a tussle so as to remind them that Allah has them by the naseeyah [forelock] and they should fear Allah.

Then the Shaykh went on to mention something verry funny; he said that the western graduate, after a 'lifetime' of education, is told he knows something now [as the certificate he recieves says so] but he realises that he has learnt nothing... For the stuff that he has learnt for his 'batchelor of arts', are:

Grammer, logic, rhetoric, maths geometry, astronomy, and music; those are the stuff [excluding the music] which Muslim students learnt, JUST TO BE ABLE TO STUDY, LOL ,LOL!

 

[Abdullah]

Listen to shaykh Hamza say that the most of the American Bill of Rights is "right out of Islamic teaching" on the following video [see from 30:30]:

Changing The Tide - With Shaykh Hamza Yusuf#



and here is another speech from the great western Scholar shaykh Hazma Yusuf:

If you look at the sciences of the muslims, the Arabic Grammer is the first deep intellectual analysis of language; prior to that, grammer was verry superficial. The Arab Grammarians went into such depth and profundity into the language that they presaged all of modern linguistic thought and theory; if you take old grammer books from Basra and Kufa, which were the two great centres for grammer in the classicial Islamic world, and you look at the ideas that these people were talking about, you litterally become overwhelmed and amazed at the subtlety and depth of this intellectual tradition; they scientifically broke down the Arabic language; they recognised patterns that had not been recognised in language before; what they now call semantic trees, diagraming, they [the muslims] were doing all these things;

they taught the Jewish people grammer of Hebrew; prior to that hebrewic grammer was extremely rudementary, if you look, the hebrews did not even know that their language was based on trilitteral roots, the muslim grammarians taught them that; the muslim grammarians taught them adjectives; the Hewbrew language was extremely poor in adjectives; all of medevil Hebrewaic poetry is based on Arabic metres of poetry developed by Al-Khalid Ibn Ahmed; the jews did not have sophisticated poetry prior to that; there great poetry is all based on Andalusian Jewish poets, who were imitating the metres of the Muslim poetry; so they [the jews] have massive intellectual debt [to the muslims].

And I really think that the intellectual debt that Europe [owes Muslims for] what they call the 'Judeo.Christian' culture, which is a fabricated word invented in the 1930's or sometihng; prior to that, they used to call it the Greco-Roman culture and suddenly this word pops up, and now they call it the Judeo-Christian culture; obviously, during the progroms that existed, no Christian would want the name 'Judeo' attached to the Christian culture; that would be an ethema, I mean, why were they kicking them out?; these people [The Jews and Christians, athiests, Europeans and Americans] owe a massive debt to the Muslim Ummah [community] that goes beyond explanation, I mean, you just have to look at their own sceinces...
One of their theory; this is the traditional European theory about Islam; is that all of the classical Hellenistic traditions were deposited in the bank of the muslim Caliphate; in other words, we got all these books and put them in our banks and we never looked at them and there was no accruing of intellectual interest and they just stayed there; and then these great Europeans re-discovered them, and that was it!.

That is a complete fabrication of what happened; the Muslims took Hellenistic thought and expanded on it, critisized it, threw out large sections of it, used sections of it and re-introduced it in Europe solely with commentary, in other words, there is no St. Thomas Aquinas without Ibn Rushd, and he [St.Thomas] is there greatest medevil Scholar and he litterally is the foundation of the Catholic Church; St. Thomas Aqunias does not exist without Ibn Rushud, and you could look at his [St. Thomas'] section on Just war and recognise that it is just a translation of Islamic Jursiprudence from Ibn Rushud's book, he [St. Thomas] talks about Muslihah, Mufsidah, I mean it's massive [the copying].

Mathemetics: there is no Newton without Ibn Kurrah, there is no Newton without Khawarizmi, there is no lebenige, there is no calculus without Algebra, which is a contribution of the muslims, there is no Higher mathemetics without people like Omar khayam, it's impossible, and this is true, this is fact, why then, you see out of this Arrogance, why then are they so abusive? [then the Shaykh went on to talk about what he thinks one meaning of the end of time sign that the slave girl with give birth to her master, is; he said]: I think one of it's meaning is that; the Muslims were an intellectually humble people, based on slavehood to Allah and it gave birth to the western civilisation, then Europe turn around and treats the Muslims like some pathetic amma, that they can just order around, destroy with impunity, go in and do whatever they want and not give any attribution of what they've stolen; I say stolen simply because, knowledge is free for everyone, but you steal it when you dont attribute it to the source; to where it was derived from; there is an intellectual responsibility that goes with taking the ideas of others, and this is why, even in this culture they footnote everything, well why dont you footnote that our whole civilisation came from the Islamic civilisation; theres your number one footnote.

I read a book called the History of knowledge by Charlse Vanadoran and in it, one of the people he dedicates it to is Ibn Khaldun; but the truth is, he should have dedicated the whole book to the Islamic civilisation, who were not only the caretakers of human knolwedge for 800 years, but who also added to it great thought; great ideas, and then gave it to us; the muslims used to teach Christians in Andalusia; the Christians used to sit at the feet of the muslims and the muslims allowed them to sit in their circles; some of the [Islamic] Scholars used to critisize this; infact Qadi Iyad said that we shouldn't allow Christians to sit in our circles because they take all of our knowledge back to their people and don't tell them where they got it from; the intellectual legacy [of the Muslims] is Awesome and overwhelming.

 

[Abdullah]

they [non-Muslim Europeans, Americans, etc] dont even know that much of the Rahma [blessings and good things] that they have now is a result of his [the Prophet muhammad's [saw]] Ummah [community, i.e Muslims], the medicine that they have is a result of his ummah, the universities they have are a result of his ummah, the fact that they enjoy gardens is a result of his ummah, the fact that they enjoy much of the modern things that have made their lives easier is a result of his ummah because they [the Muslims] took the word iqra ['read'; the first word that was revealed of the Quran] seriously and they studied and they transferred their knowledge to the Europeans and it was with the knowledge of this ummah that they [the Europeans...] achieved what they achieved,

they dont realise that much of what they have is a result of the Rahma [Mercy and blessings that the prophet Muhammad [saw] brought to this world] of the prophet [saw]; they were barbarians before the muslims, they didn't even wash; the Eurpoeans used to put oranges, they wore oranges with cloves stuffed to get rid of the stench because the christians thought that to take care of the body was a bad thing untill the muslims taught them about the hammam [baths]; thats where they took it from because the Hammam is from the muslims; they wouldn't even have a bath, they woudln't even have a basin, if it wasn't for the Rahma of this ummah...'

see from 1:55:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6ANMei1Kus

 

[farhan]

video no longer available

 

[Lunitik]

Please list some inventions that we can thank the Arab's for, I can honestly think of nothing.

This thread has provided much humor, though, so I thank you.

I would suggest you look into how the Arab's decided to sell oil, and know if this did not occur, the region would still be tribal in nature - it largely still is despite this. Know that the West outgrew tribalism with the Roman Empire. That is how far behind the West the region still is - by my math at least 1700 years. It is also interesting to note the number of Royals which study in the West because their own education systems are laughable.

 

[farhan]

Please list some inventions that we can thank the Arab's for, I can honestly think of nothing.

This thread has provided much humor, though, so I thank you.

The article doesnt say anything about Arabs. As far as your question is concerned, try this link.

MuslimHeritage.com - Discover 1000 Years of Missing History

 

[radarmark]

Lunatik, think upon arabic numerals (doing calculus with Roman numerals would be quite impossible). Or modern medicine or modern astronomy. The Caliphs kept the Dark Ages from destroying the Grrek and Latin classics (as well, but then the Irish helped save them again a bit later).

Pax et amor vincunt omnia. radarmark

 

[Bhaktajan II]

think upon arabic numerals (doing calculus with Roman numerals would be quite impossible).

Why do not the Muslim Arabic numbering, as used in the Present Mordern Age, still the same as the western Civilisation uses it.

Arabic is still written Right-to-Left, yes? Yet the "10" Decimal System is read and calculated left-to-right.

Did Roman Engineers & Architects do their mathematical calculations using Roman Numerals?

Did Pythagoras discribe proportions and Triangle Angles using Roman Numerals. IMO, Roman Numerals were used as a Lingua-Franca in Public Declarations & Piblic Notices for commoners to read.



Pax to You'all too.

 

[radarmark]

Well, let's see now... since the European mathematicians read left to right, they kept that convention. Actually Greek and Roman engineers and architects used a rather cumbersome geometry and trigonometry (if my memory seves me well). There is a rather complete discusssion made by Modern Greeks in their restoration of the Parthenon.

I believe al-Khwarizmi first published his adaption of the Hindu numerals in the 9th century and Fibonacci caught it up in the twelveth. The idea caught fire among the number-crunchers but the general populace (remember the large percentage of the general population was illiterate) did not take it up until sometime later. Because they had a traditional value, as you said, they continue to be used in a lot of public notices.

I do know that if you look up old Latin works that have some engineering (like laying out camps in "The Gallic Wars") the descriptions are quite figure-and-geometry intense.

Not that that is bad, just a different way of doing math (like Hestenes' alternative to standard algebra). But, not having the work of al-Khwarizmi probably would have greatly hampered the development of Western Math and Science in my opinion (I could not have done the calculus with them I know).

Hestenes re-envigorates abstract algebra with a hefty dose of the "more obvious" geometry, I think.

Pax et amor vincunt omnia. radarmark

 

[Bhaktajan II]

Thank you.

But the question still stands?

The Arabic Muslims do not use the Arabic Numerals that westerners use.

Simply check the page index of a Koran ---IMO, you will not recognise any numerals [or may be one at most].

How would base 10 numeral quantification be overlooked by engineers?

 

[radarmark]

Let's see now again. It is called evolution (see below for a description by Jean Montucla):




Why and how did base ten quantification get overlooked? Simple, they did not think of it (you forget that we still use Babylonian divisions in time and for cartography). That is why engineering really did not flower until the Renaissance, the tools were not available. Just like "real time" calculations had to await the Calculus. It is a matter of the scientific method.

Luckily for us modern physicists the mathematics of matrices and waves and non-Euclidean Geometry had been discovered. Someone had to discover base 10 (the ancient Hindus), someone had to apply the notion to Greek thought (alal-Khwarizmi), someone had to apply it in Europe (Fibonacci), and the first classic engineers (Da Vinci? I dunno) had to apply it to mechanical designs.
Pax et amor vincunt omnia. radarmark

 

[Bhaktajan II]

Thanks again.

It is said, "A picture says a thousand words"

But your cited chart repeats the same statement.

Where is the evolutionary flow chart of numerical digits [BTW, digits, as in 10 fingers].

The question still stand, "Why does the Koran not use Arabic Numerals?"

 

[Bhaktajan II]

the first classic engineers

Per La Gloria D'Roma!


The first classic engineers built basic stuff like:

I guess "Form follows function" esp for a thirsty populus.

 

[radarmark]

Wow. Why is making this point so important to you? Yes is is civil engineering. And if you look at the Parthenon data you will find that the methods used are quite ingenious. That ssys nothing to the issue. Neither the Egyptians, Grrks, or Romans used arabic numerals or base 10. The ball is in your court, find some proof (like I sent you when you challenged the notion of us not using arabic numerals).

Pax et amor vincunt omnia, radarmark

 

[Lunitik]

Arabic has no numerals...

The Arabs use letters to signify numeric value, it is quite similar actually to roman numerals in this regard.

It can give you quite a headache if you look into Baha'i prophetic fulfillment because often simply words are used to define a particular date or passage of time - I use this example as it is my main exposure to this.

It is fact, however, that the Greeks have at least built the foundations of Calculus and Geometry, just as the Egyptians have founded most knowledge of medicine.

Muslims have arrived some 1000 years after many of the Greek foundations, and the time frame is 2-3 times more when we look at the Egyptians. At the very most, we can say Muslims have advanced these platforms, but to give credit to them? It cannot be justified at all.

 

[Lunitik]

The article doesnt say anything about Arabs. As far as your question is concerned, try this link.

MuslimHeritage.com - Discover 1000 Years of Missing History

I see no list here, and am not interested in reading propaganda... please direct me to such a list.

Honestly, this is utterly irrelevant, claiming superiority for a particular group based on past advancements does not assist us in moving to the future. That said, just reading the pasted text from Abdullah and I see many faults.

 

[radarmark]

You are entitled to that definition. However that is nor the one used by the world of mathematicians, engineers and scientists. And you are also entitled to believe that Greeks built the foundations of anything you like. But again, science and mathematics does not support you.


Pax et amor vincunt omnia radarmark.

 

[Lunitik]

You are entitled to that definition. However that is nor the one used by the world of mathematicians, engineers and scientists. And you are also entitled to believe that Greeks built the foundations of anything you like. But again, science and mathematics does not support you.


Pax et amor vincunt omnia radarmark.

Democritus is credited as building the foundations of calculus.

Pythagoras is credited as building the foundations of geometry.

I am sorry, but these are both Greek men, so it seems history does support me, whether science and maths disagree or not. You will note, also, that both of these people lived around 1,000 years before Muhammad, so again Muslims simply cannot be given credit.

 

[bob x]

The crucial invention (by the Hindus) was not base-ten, but the "zero" symbol. Older systems were base-ten, but distinguished tens and hundreds etc. from the units by using a different series of symbols for each: Germans like Romans used repetitive "sticks" for ones, "crosses" for tens, "hooks" for hundreds, and Egyptians earlier had a similar system; Arabs like Greeks, and the Hebrews before either, divided the alphabet into three blocks of nine (extra letters were needed to get the number of marks up to 27) for ones, tens, and hundreds. The "Arabic" numerals are so-called because the Arabs popularized them, after learning about them in India (a couple centuries after the start of Islam); sometimes they are called "Hindu-Arabic" numerals to give proper credit to the inventors. They are written left-to-right because that is how it was in India; Arabs and Europeans both continued that practice, although it was less natural for Arabs than for Europeans.

The crucial contribution of Islam was to break down the barriers between western and eastern cultures; the numerals are just one example of the cross-fertilization. Before, the border between Roman and Persian empires was a serious communication blockage. For example, Roman Mithraism was actually not much like anything in Persia, precisely because its adherents had little contact with the Persian cult of Mithra (it started, apparently, with one mass border-crossing, of a batch of Roman prisoners-of-war finally repatriated after decades of assimilating in Persia). There was a two-way trade in fancy cloths and dyes between Rome and China-- but, because it was handled through Persian middlemen (who did not travel into either Roman or Chinese territory, but took over the goods from their counterparts across the borders), Rome and China didn't even know each other's names! Rome just called China "the silk country" (and knew little about it except that silk came from out there) and China called Rome "the purple country". Justinian sponsored maritime expeditions down the Red Sea and straight across to India to cut out the Persians, but not much came of this (he was trying to get silk more cheaply out of concern about-- some things never change-- the balance-of-trade problem between the West and China; silk imports outweighed dye exports so gold and silver coins kept flowing eastward, and the Chinese well knew the faces, if not the names, of the Caesars; "purple" came to be associated with "royalty" because domestic usage of the rarer dyes was tightly regulated, to force exportation, so when Paul refers to "Lydia the purple trader" he is indicating that his sponsor is not just wealthy but also, necessarily, well-connected with the government).

After Islam, peoples of Semitic culture, who had previously been suspicious of and hostile to the Greco-Roman culture, felt freer to study Greek learning (the Semites were on top now, after all); and became able to learn also from Persia, and then from India and China. Islam flowered because it had access to all the best ideas from all over Eurasia. Western Europe at the time was going through a low point in literacy (except in Ireland) as well as political organization, and even after Charlemagne brought the political stability that enabled Irish monks (with his patronage) to found schools and promote learning again, Christendom was culturally isolated not only from the Islamic world, but even from the Greek (Byzantium resented Charlemagne's claims to "imperial" status, and Byzantine Christianity never accepted the Popes' attempts to seize supremacy).

The Crusades, awful as they were, did have the effect of bringing Europe back into contact with developments in the East. And yes, the opening post is quite correct to point out that Europeans needed to learn a thing or three from the Muslims before the modern technological civilization could get started.

 

[radarmark]

Bob, I di not learn it that way but will research... I hope it is not as exhausting as the last time I had to research a problem in Indian Thought (no not a problem with how iIndians think, but what is induction-abduction in the Nyaya School of Logic).

Lunatik, let us pass by in the night. You are entitled to your opinions. We differ, that is all.

Pax et amor vincunt omnia radarmark.