Saturday, July 30, 2005
thanks for the kick in the butt irina! : )
for the past 2 weeks my mental flow chart went like really up and shot really down!acadenically i did pretty well but somehow i know somepart of me went bezerk the instant i can't make up a word madam lili my programming lecturer lectured.on a higher note i did an excellent job in my CAD paper.worst,i somehoe forget to ask mr google for the answer.for a guy who always say " kau google aje" for answer when ask question i can't answer i forgot entirely the signifact part of my mind!argh it just kills.luckily irina my girlfriend kicked me in the butt metaphorically!haahaahaa "padan muka aku!"...felt better.maybe another year or two i'll slap jumy and ask him where is his million?he told me to do so.so i'm authorised to do so.shit monster's garage on...till sat lagi.i shall wonderin the blue yawnder!chiow
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
todays quote
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. quoted from an unknown
Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity. *edwin land*
i have to be honest i don't even know this edwin land guy.he must have been famous of sumthing?when you are a somebody,you can just comeout with sumthing crummy and people will go like "WOW!"...why don't i think of that?deep down,perhaps they did.
Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity. *edwin land*
i have to be honest i don't even know this edwin land guy.he must have been famous of sumthing?when you are a somebody,you can just comeout with sumthing crummy and people will go like "WOW!"...why don't i think of that?deep down,perhaps they did.
sharing is giving
I got this via a comment.Should share it with you peeps out there.
How Muslims should address the war on terror.We, as Muslims, know that the motivation for any so-called Jihadist activities is not a "hatred for freedom," but rather a reaction to foreign policies and the encroachment of the West on Islamic world. Is the violence justified? No. Is the violence the best reaction to the policies? No. Does the West want the violent reactions? Yes. Why? So the West can continue its encroachment on the lives of Muslims everywhere. What should Muslims do about it? Muslims in the world should drop the resistance and anger against the West. The greatest fear of policymakers in the West is not the violence; the violence can be quelled, but rather the explosive growth potential in the population of the Muslim World. Muslim nations have the youngest average age of all nations in the world, and therefore the greatest potential for population growth. This is what drives fear in the West and why it reacts with such hatred; the world through demographic change will become more Islamic by default. With the West bringing the war to the Islamic world and killing thousands of Muslims today, the West is actually killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of Muslims a few generations from now. This is at the heart of the West's war on terror agenda. The West must slow the growth of the world Islamic population. If there really is a war between the West and Islam right now, it will not be won or lost with guns, but rather birth rates. Demography is destiny. Muslims will only survive by living peacefully as the Quran teaches, and focusing on the growth and stability of the family as they have done for many generations.
How Muslims should address the war on terror.We, as Muslims, know that the motivation for any so-called Jihadist activities is not a "hatred for freedom," but rather a reaction to foreign policies and the encroachment of the West on Islamic world. Is the violence justified? No. Is the violence the best reaction to the policies? No. Does the West want the violent reactions? Yes. Why? So the West can continue its encroachment on the lives of Muslims everywhere. What should Muslims do about it? Muslims in the world should drop the resistance and anger against the West. The greatest fear of policymakers in the West is not the violence; the violence can be quelled, but rather the explosive growth potential in the population of the Muslim World. Muslim nations have the youngest average age of all nations in the world, and therefore the greatest potential for population growth. This is what drives fear in the West and why it reacts with such hatred; the world through demographic change will become more Islamic by default. With the West bringing the war to the Islamic world and killing thousands of Muslims today, the West is actually killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of Muslims a few generations from now. This is at the heart of the West's war on terror agenda. The West must slow the growth of the world Islamic population. If there really is a war between the West and Islam right now, it will not be won or lost with guns, but rather birth rates. Demography is destiny. Muslims will only survive by living peacefully as the Quran teaches, and focusing on the growth and stability of the family as they have done for many generations.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
facts
Why Have Muslim Scholars Been Undervalued Throughout Western History?
By Ahmad Bakir Tarabishy
One of history's greatest crimes is the almost complete omission of the debt the West owes to Islam and the Muslims.
The history books that fill our bookshelves are indispensable recollections of past civilizations’ glories and failures, achievements and abominations. Unfortunately, history can never be completely objective, since it is written by men, and men have a tendency to restrict their thoughts to a single point of view. While history has created in our minds many heroes from murderers, and criminals from saints, one of its greatest crimes is the almost complete omission of the debt the West owes to Islam and the Muslims. W. Montgomery Watt describes the problem:
Because Europe was reacting against Islam it belittled the influence of Saracens and exaggerated its dependence on its Greek and Roman heritage. So today an important task for us is to correct this false emphasis and to acknowledge fully our debt to the Arab and Islamic world. (Ghazanfar, Islamic World and the Western Renaissance)
Students in Western Universities might have heard that Muslims were once leaders in science, but their accomplishments are often belittled, and their scientists are reduced to but borrowers who translated Greek and Persian works then assumedly hid them on a bookshelf so the West can later expand and build on them once it awakes from its sleep during the dark age. Donald Cardwell, in the Fontana History of Technology, claims that technologies imported into Europe during the Dark Ages "originated in China and India and were merely passed on by the Arabs." While cultural bigotry plays a major role in this distortion of the facts, the achievements of the Muslims have been left out of Western historical records as a result of the hatred of Islam embedded in the Judeo-Christian world, which shall be traced to many factors.
Before thoughtlessly calling out "conspiracy" as many Muslims today so often do, one must show that the Muslims actually did have an integral role in scientific development. Due to the wealth of achievements, however, this is not very hard to find.
The book of Allah and the example of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings upon him) set the basis for an intellectual tradition in the Islamic world which relied on reason and honesty. The purpose of knowing the natural world in Islam is to reveal the signs that Allah set in his creation. "We shall show them Our portents on the horizon and within themselves until it will be manifest unto them that it is the Truth" (The Holy Quran, 41:53). While Greek philosophy was based on the relativity of truth and change, in Islam, as Seyyed Hossein Nasr comments:
The arts and sciences came to possess instead a stability and a ‘crystallization’ based on the immutability of the principles from which they had issued forth; it is this stability that is too often mistaken in the West today for stagnation and sterility. (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/nasr.html)
The Muslims made numerous advances in many fields, one the most important being physics. They received the physics texts of the Greeks, then translated, corrected, and expanded on them greatly. The basis of the study of optics can be attributed directly to the Muslims. Al-Hassen bin Al-Haythem is considered the founder of this field. He and Al-Beirouni also logically came to the conclusion, in disagreement with Aristotle, that the speed of light is constant and that light is composed of extremely small particles moving at extremely high speeds, which is the basis of the quantum nature of light, an endlessly celebrated tribute to 20th century science (Mahmoud 112-113; Davies 29).
Muslim scholars also laid the foundations of mathematics. Muslims were the first to recognize the importance of and use the zero effectively, borrowed from the Indians, bringing to Europe what is now called "Arabic numerals". Otherwise, the scientists and mathematicians of Europe would probably still be counting on their fingers or fumbling with clumsy roman numerals when analyzing data. Muhammad bin Mousa Al-Khawarizmi is considered the founder of modern algebra, and the mathematicians that followed made ever more impressive contributions. Ghiath Edden Al-Kashi, approximated pi to 16 places past the decimal point. The system know as Pascal’s triangle, which assists in factoring equations in the form of (a + b)n, was developed by Al-Karkhi, and not Louis Pascal. Later Muslim mathematicians were able to factor equations as complex as fourth degree equations; fifth degree equations are impossible to factor. (Mahmoud 137-147) The contribution of Muslim mathematicians to algebra is integral to the development of all sciences as mathematics is frequently referred to as the language of science. Newton would have had quite a difficult time quantitatively describing his laws of motion without using the algebra first implemented by the Muslims.
The Muslims made monumental strides in the practice and study of medicine. Ibn Sina’s text the Canon of Medicine, was used as a text in Europe for centuries later, and its popularity dwarfed the books of Galen and Hippocrates. Physicians like Abul Qasim al-Zahrawi, Ibn Sina, and Ali Abbas, wrote texts on surgery that would form the foundations of Western Surgery (Shustery 152-153). A story by the Muslim physician Usamah bin al-Manqaz serves as a good example of the superiority of Muslims doctors over their European contemporaries:
Among the marvels of the medical affairs on incident is this that Sahib Munitrah wrote to his uncle that there was need of a doctor to treat his companions. My uncle sent a Christian doctor, Thabit, to them, but he came back within ten days. We asked him, "Have you been able to treat the patients in such a short period?" He said, "They had brought to me a soldier who had a boil on one of his feet. When a bandage dipped in the juice of Linjah (a plant) was applied, the abscess got burst. There was another patient, a woman whose dry and chapped skin had developed itch and was giving her trouble. I kept her on a restricted diet as a preventive and tried to make her dry skin moist. But suddenly an English doctor appeared on the scene and told the people there about me, "What does he know of medical science and treatment of patients?" Then he asked the soldier with the abscess on his foot whether he would like to live with one leg or die with both. The soldier said he would prefer to live with one leg only. So the soldier and a sharp axe were brought and I was witness to this scene. The English doctor straightened his leg on a wooden board and asked the soldier (executioner, Tr.) to chop off his leg with a single stroke of his axe. He made a stroke with the axe, and I was a witness to that, and found that it failed to sever the leg. So he made a second attempt. The bone marrow was thrown out and the patient died immediately.
The author then reveals how the English doctor poured water on the woman with dry skin, and she too died a sudden, painful death. (http://www.erols.com/gmqm/sibai10.htm)
While historians have written many books on the high level of sophistication and learning of the Muslims compared to the Europeans during the dark ages, few have thought to make the connection between Muslim science and the scientific explosion that was to occur later in Europe. The dependence of the latter on the former, however, is immense. It would not be controversial to say that the scientific revolution that took place in 17th Europe could not have occurred without the help of the Muslims.
The maelstrom brought upon Europe by the intellectual tradition taken from the Muslim world had far-reaching consequences on European life. Slowly as education spread throughout Europe, with Universities arising in the major cities, the authority of science grew exponentially. Even the powerful Church of Rome would soon go down as it foolishly tried to challenge rationality and scientific proofs with superstitions and the fading doctrine of papal authority. The West would take this tradition and run amok with it, venturing in directions never before taken by humanity. Soon Europe, which was during Islam’s golden age dismissed by Ibn Khaldun as "those parts", had superseded the Muslim World in every way imaginable: scientifically, militarily, economically, and administratively. (Eaton 32-33)
However, a perplexing relationship existed between the Muslim world and Europe. It was not one of mutual reverence and respect, nor was it one of a father-culture, daughter-culture nature. There was an overpowering sentiment of hate embedded in European culture that outweighed any benefit or advancement the Muslims would give to them.
For hundreds of years the Muslims would take a permanent place in the forefront of the European mind. Wave after wave of Muslim armies crashed into Europe, coming with superior military training, unseen technology, and a culture alien to all what the European knew. Gai Eaton explains:
The "menace of Islam" had remained the one constant factor amidst change and transformation and it had been branded on the European consciousness. The mark of that branding is still visible… "The fact remains", says the Tunisian writer Hichem Djaït, "that medieval prejudices insinuated themselves into the collective unconsciousness of the West at so profound a level that one may ask, in terror, whether they can ever be extirpated from it." (30-31)
This fear would turn into hate and aggression as Europe regained its strength. The Muslims also would serve as a means for Europe to do so. These "pagans" as Europeans saw them, would be the perfect enemy for Europeans to rally together. They did so, quite pathetically, in the crusades. The crusades, in terms of human losses, were one of the most lopsided military campaigns in history, with the exception of the savage massacres of Muslim civilians by the Christian armies. However, the crusades, initially being a crushing defeat for the Christians, would introduce them to the enormity of the gap between them and the Muslims.
At the same time, Europeans scholars were learning at the hands of the Muslims in Spain. The translated Greek works would intoduce the Europeans to an indigenous intellectual tradition they never knew existed. This helped spark a new self-confidence among the scholars of Europe. Unfortunately, the scholars of Europe were torn between their intellectual loyalty and the strong hatred of their teachers present in their culture. Karen Armstrong explains:
The Arabs in particular were a light to the Christian West and yet this debt has rarely been fully acknowledged. As soon as the great translation work had been completed, scholars in Europe began to shrug off this complicating and schizophrenic relationship with Islam and became very vague indeed about who the Arabs really were… There is an unhealthy repression and doublethink about people who are at one and the same time guides, heroes, and deadly enemies. This is very clear in the scholarship about Islam. (64-65, 225-226)
This hatred, however, was, for the most part of Islamic history, one-sided. The Muslims had little reason to hate, or even to be concerned about Europe. To them it was a land of barbarism and backwardness, of a foreign landscape and weather. The battle of Poiters, for example, is considered by the Europeans as one of the major turning points in history, where the French armies repelled a Muslim raid into southern France. However, rarely is the battle mentioned by Muslim historians, and when mentioned it has been described as but a trivial raid. (Armstrong 42)
Another factor that plays alongside the long-standing hatred of Islam in Europe is the phenomenon known as orientalism. This concept was first articulated by Edward Said in his landmark book Orientalism, which is now considered required reading for anyone studying Middle Eastern culture or history. Orientalism is the result of the elaboration of the imaginary distinction between East and West: geographically, culturally, morally, and intellectually. The result of orientalism are claims that go along the lines of " ‘We’ are like this, but ‘they’, for unexplainable reasons, are fundamentally different, and in due course, inferior." This in turn serves as justification for "Us" to rule "Them", to exploit "Them", to guide "Them" to our enlightened ways. Academic orientalism gave rise to arrogant, seemingly humanistic ideals which drove imperialism, whose effects are felt very painfully in the Muslim, as well as most of the third, world. As Said explains it:
It [orientalism] is… a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts; it is an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distinction (the world is made up of two unequal halves, Orient and Occident) but also of a whole series of "interests" which, by such means as scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological description, it not only creates but also maintains; it is rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world; it is, above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political (as with a colonial or imperial establishment), power intellectual (as with reigning sciences like comparative linguistics or anatomy, or any of the modern policy sciences), power cultural ( as with orthodoxies and canons of taste, texts, values), power moral (as with ideas about what "we" do and what "they" cannot do or understand as "we" do). Indeed, my real argument is that Orientalism is—and does not simply represent—a considerable dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the Orient than it does with "our" [Western] world. (12)
[Italics in original text]
One may ask after looking at the reasons why Muslim scholars are vastly undervalued in Western books is "Why should we care now?" The scholars are dead. The ink in the history books has dried. What good will it bring Muslims, besides a headache, to raise this issue now? It is done to restore confidence to the Muslim Ummah, to remind believers what is needed to be great again. The Muslims ruled from France to India, not only because of being blessed with the true message, but also of being superior to the conquered people in all other "worldly" ways. The Muslims would have never conquered the Persians without superior military planning and tactics. The people of the Roman Empire in greater Syria and North Africa would have never converted to Islam if the Muslims were not materially superior to the Romans. The Khatib who gives the Friday sermon, who believes that Muslims will become great again once they start using their miswaks more often, is missing the whole story. Islam does not spread through prayer and piety—people go to the Jannah through prayer and piety. Islam provides a system that allows individuals to reach their fullest potentials in this life, and to encourage worship that allows individuals to reach their fullest potentials in the next.
Studying the lives of the Muslim scholars also provides modern-day Muslims with a portrayal of the prototypical modern scientist. He is one who devotes his efforts to discovering Allah’s signs in this world and who tries to direct his or her discoveries those that produce social benefit.
For the Westerner, it is important to change these historical inaccuracies to help improve the relations between the West and the Muslim world by finally acknowledging the enormous debt owed to the Muslims. However, as the celeritous progress of Western science pushes on, it is more likely that the increasing arrogance and faith in Western science with its purely Western (Greek) origins will keep this overdue apology from occurring. While a historian may mention "Avicenna" or "Averroes" fleetingly in one of his or her books, the problem is that what is left out is far greater than what is told. The eminent historian George Sarton criticized those who "will glibly say ‘The Arabs simply translated Greek writings, they were industrious imitators…’ This is not absolutely untrue, but is such a small part of the truth, that when it is allowed to stand alone, it is worse than a lie."
Works Cited
The Holy Quran.
Armstrong, Karen. "Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today’s World". Doubleday: New York, 1991.
Davies, Paul. "Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature". Penguin: London, 1995.
Eaton, Gai. "Islam and the Destiny of Man". The Islamic Texts Society: Cambridge, 1994.
Mahmoud, Yusuf. "Al-Injazat Al-Ilmiyya fil Hadara Al-Islamiyya". Dar Al-Bashir: Amman, 1996.
Reichmann, Felix. "The Sources of Western Literacy: The Middle Eastern Civilizations". Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, 1980.
Said, Edward. "Orientalism". Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1978.
Shustery, A. M. A. "Outlines of Islamic Culture". Sh. Muhammad Ashraf: Lahore, 1976.
This page was done for my "Scientific Legacy in Islam" (Turath al-'Ilmi al-Arabi al-Islami) course that I took for the summer at the University of Jordan.
All good is from Allah, all misinformation is from me.
By Ahmad Bakir Tarabishy
One of history's greatest crimes is the almost complete omission of the debt the West owes to Islam and the Muslims.
The history books that fill our bookshelves are indispensable recollections of past civilizations’ glories and failures, achievements and abominations. Unfortunately, history can never be completely objective, since it is written by men, and men have a tendency to restrict their thoughts to a single point of view. While history has created in our minds many heroes from murderers, and criminals from saints, one of its greatest crimes is the almost complete omission of the debt the West owes to Islam and the Muslims. W. Montgomery Watt describes the problem:
Because Europe was reacting against Islam it belittled the influence of Saracens and exaggerated its dependence on its Greek and Roman heritage. So today an important task for us is to correct this false emphasis and to acknowledge fully our debt to the Arab and Islamic world. (Ghazanfar, Islamic World and the Western Renaissance)
Students in Western Universities might have heard that Muslims were once leaders in science, but their accomplishments are often belittled, and their scientists are reduced to but borrowers who translated Greek and Persian works then assumedly hid them on a bookshelf so the West can later expand and build on them once it awakes from its sleep during the dark age. Donald Cardwell, in the Fontana History of Technology, claims that technologies imported into Europe during the Dark Ages "originated in China and India and were merely passed on by the Arabs." While cultural bigotry plays a major role in this distortion of the facts, the achievements of the Muslims have been left out of Western historical records as a result of the hatred of Islam embedded in the Judeo-Christian world, which shall be traced to many factors.
Before thoughtlessly calling out "conspiracy" as many Muslims today so often do, one must show that the Muslims actually did have an integral role in scientific development. Due to the wealth of achievements, however, this is not very hard to find.
The book of Allah and the example of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings upon him) set the basis for an intellectual tradition in the Islamic world which relied on reason and honesty. The purpose of knowing the natural world in Islam is to reveal the signs that Allah set in his creation. "We shall show them Our portents on the horizon and within themselves until it will be manifest unto them that it is the Truth" (The Holy Quran, 41:53). While Greek philosophy was based on the relativity of truth and change, in Islam, as Seyyed Hossein Nasr comments:
The arts and sciences came to possess instead a stability and a ‘crystallization’ based on the immutability of the principles from which they had issued forth; it is this stability that is too often mistaken in the West today for stagnation and sterility. (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/nasr.html)
The Muslims made numerous advances in many fields, one the most important being physics. They received the physics texts of the Greeks, then translated, corrected, and expanded on them greatly. The basis of the study of optics can be attributed directly to the Muslims. Al-Hassen bin Al-Haythem is considered the founder of this field. He and Al-Beirouni also logically came to the conclusion, in disagreement with Aristotle, that the speed of light is constant and that light is composed of extremely small particles moving at extremely high speeds, which is the basis of the quantum nature of light, an endlessly celebrated tribute to 20th century science (Mahmoud 112-113; Davies 29).
Muslim scholars also laid the foundations of mathematics. Muslims were the first to recognize the importance of and use the zero effectively, borrowed from the Indians, bringing to Europe what is now called "Arabic numerals". Otherwise, the scientists and mathematicians of Europe would probably still be counting on their fingers or fumbling with clumsy roman numerals when analyzing data. Muhammad bin Mousa Al-Khawarizmi is considered the founder of modern algebra, and the mathematicians that followed made ever more impressive contributions. Ghiath Edden Al-Kashi, approximated pi to 16 places past the decimal point. The system know as Pascal’s triangle, which assists in factoring equations in the form of (a + b)n, was developed by Al-Karkhi, and not Louis Pascal. Later Muslim mathematicians were able to factor equations as complex as fourth degree equations; fifth degree equations are impossible to factor. (Mahmoud 137-147) The contribution of Muslim mathematicians to algebra is integral to the development of all sciences as mathematics is frequently referred to as the language of science. Newton would have had quite a difficult time quantitatively describing his laws of motion without using the algebra first implemented by the Muslims.
The Muslims made monumental strides in the practice and study of medicine. Ibn Sina’s text the Canon of Medicine, was used as a text in Europe for centuries later, and its popularity dwarfed the books of Galen and Hippocrates. Physicians like Abul Qasim al-Zahrawi, Ibn Sina, and Ali Abbas, wrote texts on surgery that would form the foundations of Western Surgery (Shustery 152-153). A story by the Muslim physician Usamah bin al-Manqaz serves as a good example of the superiority of Muslims doctors over their European contemporaries:
Among the marvels of the medical affairs on incident is this that Sahib Munitrah wrote to his uncle that there was need of a doctor to treat his companions. My uncle sent a Christian doctor, Thabit, to them, but he came back within ten days. We asked him, "Have you been able to treat the patients in such a short period?" He said, "They had brought to me a soldier who had a boil on one of his feet. When a bandage dipped in the juice of Linjah (a plant) was applied, the abscess got burst. There was another patient, a woman whose dry and chapped skin had developed itch and was giving her trouble. I kept her on a restricted diet as a preventive and tried to make her dry skin moist. But suddenly an English doctor appeared on the scene and told the people there about me, "What does he know of medical science and treatment of patients?" Then he asked the soldier with the abscess on his foot whether he would like to live with one leg or die with both. The soldier said he would prefer to live with one leg only. So the soldier and a sharp axe were brought and I was witness to this scene. The English doctor straightened his leg on a wooden board and asked the soldier (executioner, Tr.) to chop off his leg with a single stroke of his axe. He made a stroke with the axe, and I was a witness to that, and found that it failed to sever the leg. So he made a second attempt. The bone marrow was thrown out and the patient died immediately.
The author then reveals how the English doctor poured water on the woman with dry skin, and she too died a sudden, painful death. (http://www.erols.com/gmqm/sibai10.htm)
While historians have written many books on the high level of sophistication and learning of the Muslims compared to the Europeans during the dark ages, few have thought to make the connection between Muslim science and the scientific explosion that was to occur later in Europe. The dependence of the latter on the former, however, is immense. It would not be controversial to say that the scientific revolution that took place in 17th Europe could not have occurred without the help of the Muslims.
The maelstrom brought upon Europe by the intellectual tradition taken from the Muslim world had far-reaching consequences on European life. Slowly as education spread throughout Europe, with Universities arising in the major cities, the authority of science grew exponentially. Even the powerful Church of Rome would soon go down as it foolishly tried to challenge rationality and scientific proofs with superstitions and the fading doctrine of papal authority. The West would take this tradition and run amok with it, venturing in directions never before taken by humanity. Soon Europe, which was during Islam’s golden age dismissed by Ibn Khaldun as "those parts", had superseded the Muslim World in every way imaginable: scientifically, militarily, economically, and administratively. (Eaton 32-33)
However, a perplexing relationship existed between the Muslim world and Europe. It was not one of mutual reverence and respect, nor was it one of a father-culture, daughter-culture nature. There was an overpowering sentiment of hate embedded in European culture that outweighed any benefit or advancement the Muslims would give to them.
For hundreds of years the Muslims would take a permanent place in the forefront of the European mind. Wave after wave of Muslim armies crashed into Europe, coming with superior military training, unseen technology, and a culture alien to all what the European knew. Gai Eaton explains:
The "menace of Islam" had remained the one constant factor amidst change and transformation and it had been branded on the European consciousness. The mark of that branding is still visible… "The fact remains", says the Tunisian writer Hichem Djaït, "that medieval prejudices insinuated themselves into the collective unconsciousness of the West at so profound a level that one may ask, in terror, whether they can ever be extirpated from it." (30-31)
This fear would turn into hate and aggression as Europe regained its strength. The Muslims also would serve as a means for Europe to do so. These "pagans" as Europeans saw them, would be the perfect enemy for Europeans to rally together. They did so, quite pathetically, in the crusades. The crusades, in terms of human losses, were one of the most lopsided military campaigns in history, with the exception of the savage massacres of Muslim civilians by the Christian armies. However, the crusades, initially being a crushing defeat for the Christians, would introduce them to the enormity of the gap between them and the Muslims.
At the same time, Europeans scholars were learning at the hands of the Muslims in Spain. The translated Greek works would intoduce the Europeans to an indigenous intellectual tradition they never knew existed. This helped spark a new self-confidence among the scholars of Europe. Unfortunately, the scholars of Europe were torn between their intellectual loyalty and the strong hatred of their teachers present in their culture. Karen Armstrong explains:
The Arabs in particular were a light to the Christian West and yet this debt has rarely been fully acknowledged. As soon as the great translation work had been completed, scholars in Europe began to shrug off this complicating and schizophrenic relationship with Islam and became very vague indeed about who the Arabs really were… There is an unhealthy repression and doublethink about people who are at one and the same time guides, heroes, and deadly enemies. This is very clear in the scholarship about Islam. (64-65, 225-226)
This hatred, however, was, for the most part of Islamic history, one-sided. The Muslims had little reason to hate, or even to be concerned about Europe. To them it was a land of barbarism and backwardness, of a foreign landscape and weather. The battle of Poiters, for example, is considered by the Europeans as one of the major turning points in history, where the French armies repelled a Muslim raid into southern France. However, rarely is the battle mentioned by Muslim historians, and when mentioned it has been described as but a trivial raid. (Armstrong 42)
Another factor that plays alongside the long-standing hatred of Islam in Europe is the phenomenon known as orientalism. This concept was first articulated by Edward Said in his landmark book Orientalism, which is now considered required reading for anyone studying Middle Eastern culture or history. Orientalism is the result of the elaboration of the imaginary distinction between East and West: geographically, culturally, morally, and intellectually. The result of orientalism are claims that go along the lines of " ‘We’ are like this, but ‘they’, for unexplainable reasons, are fundamentally different, and in due course, inferior." This in turn serves as justification for "Us" to rule "Them", to exploit "Them", to guide "Them" to our enlightened ways. Academic orientalism gave rise to arrogant, seemingly humanistic ideals which drove imperialism, whose effects are felt very painfully in the Muslim, as well as most of the third, world. As Said explains it:
It [orientalism] is… a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts; it is an elaboration not only of a basic geographical distinction (the world is made up of two unequal halves, Orient and Occident) but also of a whole series of "interests" which, by such means as scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological description, it not only creates but also maintains; it is rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world; it is, above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political (as with a colonial or imperial establishment), power intellectual (as with reigning sciences like comparative linguistics or anatomy, or any of the modern policy sciences), power cultural ( as with orthodoxies and canons of taste, texts, values), power moral (as with ideas about what "we" do and what "they" cannot do or understand as "we" do). Indeed, my real argument is that Orientalism is—and does not simply represent—a considerable dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the Orient than it does with "our" [Western] world. (12)
[Italics in original text]
One may ask after looking at the reasons why Muslim scholars are vastly undervalued in Western books is "Why should we care now?" The scholars are dead. The ink in the history books has dried. What good will it bring Muslims, besides a headache, to raise this issue now? It is done to restore confidence to the Muslim Ummah, to remind believers what is needed to be great again. The Muslims ruled from France to India, not only because of being blessed with the true message, but also of being superior to the conquered people in all other "worldly" ways. The Muslims would have never conquered the Persians without superior military planning and tactics. The people of the Roman Empire in greater Syria and North Africa would have never converted to Islam if the Muslims were not materially superior to the Romans. The Khatib who gives the Friday sermon, who believes that Muslims will become great again once they start using their miswaks more often, is missing the whole story. Islam does not spread through prayer and piety—people go to the Jannah through prayer and piety. Islam provides a system that allows individuals to reach their fullest potentials in this life, and to encourage worship that allows individuals to reach their fullest potentials in the next.
Studying the lives of the Muslim scholars also provides modern-day Muslims with a portrayal of the prototypical modern scientist. He is one who devotes his efforts to discovering Allah’s signs in this world and who tries to direct his or her discoveries those that produce social benefit.
For the Westerner, it is important to change these historical inaccuracies to help improve the relations between the West and the Muslim world by finally acknowledging the enormous debt owed to the Muslims. However, as the celeritous progress of Western science pushes on, it is more likely that the increasing arrogance and faith in Western science with its purely Western (Greek) origins will keep this overdue apology from occurring. While a historian may mention "Avicenna" or "Averroes" fleetingly in one of his or her books, the problem is that what is left out is far greater than what is told. The eminent historian George Sarton criticized those who "will glibly say ‘The Arabs simply translated Greek writings, they were industrious imitators…’ This is not absolutely untrue, but is such a small part of the truth, that when it is allowed to stand alone, it is worse than a lie."
Works Cited
The Holy Quran.
Armstrong, Karen. "Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today’s World". Doubleday: New York, 1991.
Davies, Paul. "Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature". Penguin: London, 1995.
Eaton, Gai. "Islam and the Destiny of Man". The Islamic Texts Society: Cambridge, 1994.
Mahmoud, Yusuf. "Al-Injazat Al-Ilmiyya fil Hadara Al-Islamiyya". Dar Al-Bashir: Amman, 1996.
Reichmann, Felix. "The Sources of Western Literacy: The Middle Eastern Civilizations". Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, 1980.
Said, Edward. "Orientalism". Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1978.
Shustery, A. M. A. "Outlines of Islamic Culture". Sh. Muhammad Ashraf: Lahore, 1976.
This page was done for my "Scientific Legacy in Islam" (Turath al-'Ilmi al-Arabi al-Islami) course that I took for the summer at the University of Jordan.
All good is from Allah, all misinformation is from me.
be a kid...
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.*pablo picasso*
don't throw away the childish part in us
look back
ponder
dig deep
now smile...
don't throw away the childish part in us
look back
ponder
dig deep
now smile...
language
now that i'm in unikl-bmi and being part of language club i have 2 modules to complete.1 in each semester.as for this semester module 1 i have to attend japanese classes.tuesdays 8-9pm
wednesday 2 hours of mandarin classes 8-10pm
japanese cool!
mandarin cooler!
nothing beats having to increase our brain capacity and capability.....
till then i shall wonder for i am shaq the wonderer...
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. *einstein*
wednesday 2 hours of mandarin classes 8-10pm
japanese cool!
mandarin cooler!
nothing beats having to increase our brain capacity and capability.....
till then i shall wonder for i am shaq the wonderer...
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. *einstein*
comments
i love constructive comments and comments in general.it just helps you a lot.when you pen down your thought and a small or big trail of comment(s) takes place it just gives me an overwhelming feeling.a feeling of gratitude and appreciation from those reading your a small piece of you.literally.
i've not blogged as often these days due to classes but i'll try my best to make attempts to blog!i've just finished reading a dose of senor jumy.i shall venture to the others real soon.
currently i'm finishing my tutorial on CAD.right now i'm finishing my technical drawings.old skool days!LK days.jumy was the maestro back then.well back then.history.i'd reckon his skills are still there.maybe a bit rusty?!maybe not?!we shall see.plus,i'm still familiarising with mac's.
finally,electronics makes more sense into myself!thank you to madam alipah pawi.my electronics lecturer.unfortunately,i can't seem to find a decent electronics shop selling breadboard around here!have to steal time to jalan pasar somewhere around this upcoming week.no worries...members of the same "council" are abundant!hahaaa.after all these years!erkkkkkkk.....i'm not that good in electronics.i shall change that!i will!i will!telling yourself you're weak and not capable of change ain't gonna help!be POSITIVE.i'm gonna be really good at it!insyaAllah.
most of my lecturers in bmi looks like ustaz!?very cool calm and collected.some a bit out of this world type.but man they're good.
its good to know one of me mates is going back to skool!welcome to the club.but that lucky bloke still earns money doing so.cis!sememangnya aku jeles.this is a good jealous type.like what the khatib at uia said about muslim being jealous...first on a person who is knowledgable.secondly being jealous of a kind and generous and pious rich man!jealousy is an excellent tool.when use appropriately,it will give you the heights of........go figure!muahahahhaaaaa
i'm still reading the 48 laws of power.very informative but at times contradict laws of Islam.very capitalistic oriented but still very informative.esp in identifying certain people's character and etc.
so till next time.no thought provoking issues here.not just yet.insyaAllah sooner or later.till next time cheers folks!smile always : ) and God bless.....Amin
i've not blogged as often these days due to classes but i'll try my best to make attempts to blog!i've just finished reading a dose of senor jumy.i shall venture to the others real soon.
currently i'm finishing my tutorial on CAD.right now i'm finishing my technical drawings.old skool days!LK days.jumy was the maestro back then.well back then.history.i'd reckon his skills are still there.maybe a bit rusty?!maybe not?!we shall see.plus,i'm still familiarising with mac's.
finally,electronics makes more sense into myself!thank you to madam alipah pawi.my electronics lecturer.unfortunately,i can't seem to find a decent electronics shop selling breadboard around here!have to steal time to jalan pasar somewhere around this upcoming week.no worries...members of the same "council" are abundant!hahaaa.after all these years!erkkkkkkk.....i'm not that good in electronics.i shall change that!i will!i will!telling yourself you're weak and not capable of change ain't gonna help!be POSITIVE.i'm gonna be really good at it!insyaAllah.
most of my lecturers in bmi looks like ustaz!?very cool calm and collected.some a bit out of this world type.but man they're good.
its good to know one of me mates is going back to skool!welcome to the club.but that lucky bloke still earns money doing so.cis!sememangnya aku jeles.this is a good jealous type.like what the khatib at uia said about muslim being jealous...first on a person who is knowledgable.secondly being jealous of a kind and generous and pious rich man!jealousy is an excellent tool.when use appropriately,it will give you the heights of........go figure!muahahahhaaaaa
i'm still reading the 48 laws of power.very informative but at times contradict laws of Islam.very capitalistic oriented but still very informative.esp in identifying certain people's character and etc.
so till next time.no thought provoking issues here.not just yet.insyaAllah sooner or later.till next time cheers folks!smile always : ) and God bless.....Amin
Thursday, July 21, 2005
tunggu sir hisham
so here i am at the bmi e-learning centre.i'm writing this using a mac.since i'm not so familiar with mac's i'll just give it a go and try to get use to it.besides i have to use it for my CAD classes in weeks(years!) to come.great!class is now strating!chiow
Saturday, July 16, 2005
growing pains
my dear pal rafiqa told me bout her student who placed a blog under her name.goodness gracious.i'm not pissed or saddened by that fact.plain humorous and immaturity exposed at its best!kah kah kah.ok kids will be kids.its just a phase.similarly like those skinheads punks grunge and what not.sooner or later insyaAllah slow down.well,if things don't subside,serious mental issues!hah-hah...come to thing of it i do make some silly mistakes and some so called "smart" decisions back then.maybe at times trying to hard!hahaaaa.now,i can look back and give myself a good laugh!padan muka aku.you learn from these things!that is the fun of growing up and searching for our so called identity!
Friday, July 15, 2005
another week passes by
my life as a student shifts from the induction week to the start the classes week.swell!i get this itchy twichy feeling of can't blog as much.argh.darn it.sir hisham was right 40 days of doing the same thing turns it into habit!btw sir hisham is my CAD lecturer.cool huh?!i'm actually learning CAD.i'm actually trying to access his online tutorials and notes and more stuff but to no avail.server down.ping timed out!i'm aslo learning a thing or two in programming.C++,finally some serious stuff.unlike the old pascal thing i used to learn.good news is the lecturer knows her stuff.thank god!we have to refer our lecturers as madams for the female staffs and sir for you know who.oh!now that i'm working on CAD,i got to lay my hands on iMAC's!and end of the semester we're gonna learn MAYA...yup for our 3D modelling class!hahahhahaaa......kewl kewl kewl.and yes there is the usual maths class.hmmppphhh...insya Allah ok.e&e....ok jugak.lecturer best!we also have open access lab.lab 24-7!hahhahaaa.....something to blow!yippiee.......actually i'm still getting used to the new environment.still getting myself familiar.as for english,we have to be well versed and we're learning technical communications skills and communications.sounds so canggih!i still can access the pc and mac labs since my proper matrix card is still ain't ready.oh well!one at a time.my name is up.the first casualty.tak dapat loan MARA.apparently,my parents are considered rich!ok,they're the ones with money but not me!still i still need the cash!takpe maybe that is a sign for the Almighty for me to work really really hard more like work really really smart and help others as well along the way.baiklah!tuan tuan dan puan puan.i'm signing off now.slowly but surely i'll be up to my full self!yippie.peeps wish me luck and pray for my success as well.kenangi daku dalam doamu!chiow.more stories to come.bye
Sunday, July 10, 2005
finally
it has been almost a week now.god i'm tired.the whole orientation week was grusome yet i saw things in a different pespective.that is a good sign of aging!muahahahahhaaaa.i'm enrolled in unikl-bmi on the july 3rd.it was on sunday.coincidently i bumped into a lobg lost face.yup,it was sir mazlan.my long lost ava teacher.him aside.as usual,i was registering myself alone.dah besar la katakan(NOT!) shortening the story,orientation commences around 630 pm.the usual screaming and shouting galore from the orientation committee(OC)...i smiled and said to myself."here we go again!"
our first pep talk took place on the volleyball court(our roll calls are held here!).the main point is that everyone there is considered to be spm leavers.oh okay,now i'm years younger!and again i smiled...so then the was dinner,the normal going to surau and ceramah and such and then off we go running to gemilang hall.penat sih.panting panting for O2!the 1st of the team building.oh!lupa we were devided into sports houses.mine is yellow.house name...brighton.oh how british.ok we slept late!and god we have to be up by5am!arghhhhhh
so now its monday.....manic!i woke up 5am.mandi-manda!the water is so so so SO bone chilling.maklumlah dok kat bukit!sungai pusu to be exact!where?yes sungai pusu.go figure.anyway,after the subuh prayers and breakfast(applies to the days to come!breakfast was ok...edible)off to hall!run run run!good news i'm still smiling.penat ooohhhhhh......lepas makan kena lari.....gilo apo!hahhahahaaaaa...anyway the usual ceramah and all.basically a week of enduring this and that.made up mostly of lari and ceramah-ceramah and motivational talks!but i had fun...the talks were good.they garb hold of good penceramahs!thanked god for that.
so like wise everything was never good enough to please the oc's.which is normal.i heard voices of dissatisfaction grumbling.normal.bottomline it was exactly what i have expected and knowing that was a sensational feeling.i helps a lot in preparing oneself to endure these thing.so think and plan ahead.i helps.the other cool factor is our drill sargeant cried and asked for forgiveness for what he had done.a human inside after all.kewl since everyone got to shake each other hands and let bygones by bygones.now we're like an extended family.true to the nature of it all.my group got to stay in the drain sebab one of our members kantoi hp!hhmmmmppppp...whats wosrt he is the group leader and muka mcm malaikat!muaahahhahaha...never judge a book by its cover.
the penceramah were mostly made up of our soon to be lecturer.yes most of them have an aura of excentrism!i find that vey pleasing.the kind of people so passionate in what they do.as they speak you can analyse their passion of nurturing young minds!one of them in sir kamal.he calls himself cikgu kamal.and we students have the option of calling him by the term cikgu or sir.i prefer cikgu actually.i managed to grab hold of him,i told him i'm really looking forward for your classes sir.he replied humbly and said insyaAllah we're go through it together.best sungguh rasanya.
actually part of me still aches here and there,i hope i'll do extremely well here and i hope my family and friends will pray for my success cause prayers is an important aspect in a muslims life!i hope all my friends succed in life and i always do!
i can't blog as much as i always do.but weekly i hope.so till next time.bye peeps
our first pep talk took place on the volleyball court(our roll calls are held here!).the main point is that everyone there is considered to be spm leavers.oh okay,now i'm years younger!and again i smiled...so then the was dinner,the normal going to surau and ceramah and such and then off we go running to gemilang hall.penat sih.panting panting for O2!the 1st of the team building.oh!lupa we were devided into sports houses.mine is yellow.house name...brighton.oh how british.ok we slept late!and god we have to be up by5am!arghhhhhh
so now its monday.....manic!i woke up 5am.mandi-manda!the water is so so so SO bone chilling.maklumlah dok kat bukit!sungai pusu to be exact!where?yes sungai pusu.go figure.anyway,after the subuh prayers and breakfast(applies to the days to come!breakfast was ok...edible)off to hall!run run run!good news i'm still smiling.penat ooohhhhhh......lepas makan kena lari.....gilo apo!hahhahahaaaaa...anyway the usual ceramah and all.basically a week of enduring this and that.made up mostly of lari and ceramah-ceramah and motivational talks!but i had fun...the talks were good.they garb hold of good penceramahs!thanked god for that.
so like wise everything was never good enough to please the oc's.which is normal.i heard voices of dissatisfaction grumbling.normal.bottomline it was exactly what i have expected and knowing that was a sensational feeling.i helps a lot in preparing oneself to endure these thing.so think and plan ahead.i helps.the other cool factor is our drill sargeant cried and asked for forgiveness for what he had done.a human inside after all.kewl since everyone got to shake each other hands and let bygones by bygones.now we're like an extended family.true to the nature of it all.my group got to stay in the drain sebab one of our members kantoi hp!hhmmmmppppp...whats wosrt he is the group leader and muka mcm malaikat!muaahahhahaha...never judge a book by its cover.
the penceramah were mostly made up of our soon to be lecturer.yes most of them have an aura of excentrism!i find that vey pleasing.the kind of people so passionate in what they do.as they speak you can analyse their passion of nurturing young minds!one of them in sir kamal.he calls himself cikgu kamal.and we students have the option of calling him by the term cikgu or sir.i prefer cikgu actually.i managed to grab hold of him,i told him i'm really looking forward for your classes sir.he replied humbly and said insyaAllah we're go through it together.best sungguh rasanya.
actually part of me still aches here and there,i hope i'll do extremely well here and i hope my family and friends will pray for my success cause prayers is an important aspect in a muslims life!i hope all my friends succed in life and i always do!
i can't blog as much as i always do.but weekly i hope.so till next time.bye peeps
Friday, July 01, 2005
more laws?
LAW 2
NEVER PUT TOO MUCH TRUST IN FRIENDS,LEARN TO USE ENEMIES
Judgement
Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly,for they are easily aroused in envy.They also become spoiled and tyrannical.But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend,because he has more to prove.In fact,you have more to fear from friends than from enemies.If you have no enemies,find a way to make them.
LAW 3
CONCEAL YOUR INTENTIONS
Judgement
Keep people off balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions.If they have no clue what you are up to,they cannot prepare a defense.Guide hem far enough down the wrong path,envelop them enough smoke,and by the time they realize your intentions,it will be too late.
Hmmmpphh 3 laws out of the 48 laws of power.Frankly,I'm not going to write them all.The publisher might have issues with me!muaahahhahahaaa.It's Friday.2 days left as I shall embark on a journey to schoolhoodism(I made this word up).i was suppose to get some matters straighten up but well I didn't do so.For some reason I woke up a bit late today.I've been waking up early this week to get the body going and acclamatizing to wake up early since I'm going to be institutiolized again!Arghh...
Last night I went to Cotton Club.It's a jazzaurant(weird huh?).Basically a club playing all sort of jazz.Located at the Wisma TH(same building as UniKL).Its a jazz club and restaurant.The jazz takes place upstairs(the bar) and on the groundfloor is where the restaurant is.I like the interior of the restaurant.The bar part looks kinda jazzy...got feel la.A nice place to hang out.Actually I wet there to pick up my cousin.He works there as a chef.
No ballistic entry today,my mind is not up to pace.Till later....I shall wonder
NEVER PUT TOO MUCH TRUST IN FRIENDS,LEARN TO USE ENEMIES
Judgement
Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly,for they are easily aroused in envy.They also become spoiled and tyrannical.But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend,because he has more to prove.In fact,you have more to fear from friends than from enemies.If you have no enemies,find a way to make them.
LAW 3
CONCEAL YOUR INTENTIONS
Judgement
Keep people off balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions.If they have no clue what you are up to,they cannot prepare a defense.Guide hem far enough down the wrong path,envelop them enough smoke,and by the time they realize your intentions,it will be too late.
Hmmmpphh 3 laws out of the 48 laws of power.Frankly,I'm not going to write them all.The publisher might have issues with me!muaahahhahahaaa.It's Friday.2 days left as I shall embark on a journey to schoolhoodism(I made this word up).i was suppose to get some matters straighten up but well I didn't do so.For some reason I woke up a bit late today.I've been waking up early this week to get the body going and acclamatizing to wake up early since I'm going to be institutiolized again!Arghh...
Last night I went to Cotton Club.It's a jazzaurant(weird huh?).Basically a club playing all sort of jazz.Located at the Wisma TH(same building as UniKL).Its a jazz club and restaurant.The jazz takes place upstairs(the bar) and on the groundfloor is where the restaurant is.I like the interior of the restaurant.The bar part looks kinda jazzy...got feel la.A nice place to hang out.Actually I wet there to pick up my cousin.He works there as a chef.
No ballistic entry today,my mind is not up to pace.Till later....I shall wonder
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