The many faces of taqquia.

This should teach you not to believe the press on such matters.

Oh, professor, we lizards know all about this ....
lol

All I said is that the decimal fractions were finally used as numbers for the first time during Islamic times

pray tell, what is a decimal fraction?

Thanks for the correction on this one. The poor guy probably gave an honest academic lecture which some Islamist journalist decided to use as propaganda.

The press took some quote out of context to make it fit a meme? Not the press!

/It's so unlike them.

That'll lurn ya'.

Well I thiught he was a raving nut. But now I have respect for the man.

But really, why would anyone trust a Muslim publication in the first place?

re:

Just imagine - all those textbooks from the Pali Instutite of Science History now being thrown into the great shredder of Islamic thought.

It dosen't matter.....esteem for the Muslims/Arabs could not be lower in the United States..... Truth or lies, we still don't believe you.

re:

re: #3 thabo

All I said is that the decimal fractions were finally used as numbers for the first time during Islamic times

pray tell, what is a decimal fraction?

I suppose he means tenths.

So what was the demographic of Damascus at this time (A.D. 952)? Wasn't it still predominantly Christian (Nestorian/Chaldean/Antiochian) with Muslim overlords?

This should teach you not to believe the press on such matters. I never said what is attributed to me in that report.

Newspapers lie?....tell me it ain't so.

More weird science:

Mmmmmmmm: Fizzy, bottled ham

SEATTLE - Coming soon next to the Coke and Pepsi in a store near you: ham-and latke-flavored soda to make your holiday feast complete. It even will be kosher, the company making it says — including the ham.

Infidel Science!

Haven't we heard this same drivel from several sources though, I mean over the years? I'm not sure I believe the guy. Who you gonna trust? Al Jazzeeeeerrraaa types, or a college professor? :) tough call, i know.

re: #3 thabo

All I said is that the decimal fractions were finally used as numbers for the first time during Islamic times

pray tell, what is a decimal fraction?

Using 3.25 instead of 3 ¼.

re: #11 Far Sparkle

It dosen't matter.....esteem for the Muslims/Arabs could not be lower in the United States..... Truth or lies, we still don't believe you.

I have nothing against Arabs.

. The number of Muslims in the U.S. is 8.5 million trillion under the sexagessimal system.

re: #19 Tumulus11

. The number of Muslims in the U.S. is 8.5 million trillion under the sexagessimal system.

I thought that was Lancet Math.

:^þ

re:

re: #15 NJDhockeyfan

More weird science:

All I know is Westerners trying to teach girls to read & write in Islamic Afghanistan & Iraq get blown up into bits by moslems.

Remember when Iraq (Mesopotamia in the time before Islam) was famous in history as the "cradle of civilization"? Hammurabi's law codes were written in cuneiform, etc., long before the koran was cribbed by an illiterate warlord.

There was civilization before Islamization in the Middle East, but not much after the invasions of Mohammed.

re: #22 Spiny Norman

re: #15 NJDhockeyfan

More weird science:Mmmmmmmm: Fizzy, bottled ham

SEATTLE - Coming soon next to the Coke and Pepsi in a store near you: ham-and latke-flavored soda to make your holiday feast complete. It even will be kosher, the company making it says — including the ham.

Infidel Science!

::hurl::

Can you spray it from an airplane?

There no "By line" in the Pakistan today article but if I were to guess I'd bet the story came from a student journalist from the Columbia MSA chapter.

I wouldn't believe a muslim if he claimed that 2 plus 2 equals 4.

O/T, but dead-on, and not misquoted thought of the day from Joe Llieberman, where the foreign press did not get it wrong:

"[Today's Democrats] are inclined to see international problems as a result of America's engagement with the world and are viscerally opposed to the use of force - the polar opposite to the self-confident and idealistic nationalism of the party I grew up in."

Today's London Financial Times.

re: #21 pat

re:

re: #26 Kim Hartveld

I wouldn't believe a Muslim if he claimed that 2 plus 2 equals 4.

A Muslim would never agree to the idea that 2 + 2 = 4 unless it preceded the words In shallah.

And then only if he attended school (please notice I did not say she) because according to Islamic thought women's opinions in matters of importance is not equal to that of a man.

A journalist lied? Well, if that don't beat all!

re:

re:

OT but good: (wonder if the main stream media will report this high-level anti-Chavez slam)

King Juan Carlos of Spains shouts at Hugo Chavez to shut up during a Ibero-American Summit, after Chavez made disparaging comments about former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar

[Link: www.larazon.es...]

This isn't just a Muslim media outlet trying to buck up the self esteem of the uumah - its fundamental premise is anti-Western. And it isn't just the Muslim media. Pajamas Media has a new piece up on France2's cynical manipulation of the Al Dura fraud.

Here the evidence provided by the Al Dura affair suggests that, in some sense, journalists are “in” on the public secret. When representatives of France2 were confronted with the pervasive evidence of staging in Talal’s footage, they both responded the same way. “Oh, they always do that, it’s a cultural thing,” said Enderlin to me in Jerusalem. “Yes Monsieur, but, you know, it’s always like that,” said Didier Eppelbaum to Denis Jeambar, Daniel Leconte, and Luc Rosenzweig in Paris.

As an echo of this astonishing private complacency, Clément Weill-Raynal of France3 made a comment to a journalist that he meant as a criticism of Karsenty: “Karsenty is so shocked that fake images were used and edited in Gaza, but this happens all the time everywhere on television and no TV journalist in the field or a film editor would be shocked.”

FYI Saliba is a Lebanese Christian and a pretty decent guy, despite some moments of unfortunate Oriental excitability (i.e. "you're not a Semite"). I know this because I was a student in his Contemporary Islamic Civilization class in 1999, and it was this class, in fact, that left me thinking, "damn, so these people are basically screwed, I guess?" In fact I got an A in a paper where I wrote about the extremely political purpose of the hijab - which in fact he personally complimented me on.

He may go with his own people, occasionally, or perhaps only in moments of unofrtunate anger against Israelis or Jews in general - I don't know. But he isn't an Islamist. There are, however, other Islamists in the faculty (Dabashi, Khalidi, and the rest). Just my 2 cents.

...and a Grinnell student today admits that a Clinton aide planted a question for her to ask Hillary at a speech in Iowa.........
not that it'll matter.

re: #36 tradewind

...and a Grinnell student today admits that a Clinton aide planted a question for her to ask Hillary at a speech in Iowa.........
not that it'll matter.

Could someone ask the Hildebeast a question on the subject of Dihydrogen Monoxide? I would bet that she won't get the joke.

re:

re: #4 Killgore Trout

Thanks for the correction on this one. The poor guy probably gave an honest academic lecture which some Islamist journalist decided to use as propaganda.

I don't know about that. Take a look at some of his publications.

Rethinking the Roots of Modern Science: Arabic Scientific Manuscripts in European Libraries

The Astronomical Work of Mu'ayyadal-Din al-'Urdi (d. 1266): A Thirteenth Century Reform of Ptolemaic Astronomy

He seems to teach that Copernicus owes his achievements to Muslims, and that the "roots of modern science" are to be found in Muslim manuscripts.
I wouldn't put it past someone like Prof. Saliba to make those comments.

One of, if not the most, best-selling Islamic apologetics books is The Bible, The Qur'an and Science by Maurice Bucaille, whose influence cannot be overestimated as its arguments about the scientific and historic genius of the Quran lead many to trust in the Quran because doing so is "rational" and scientific. (This book has been very thoroughly rebutted by Dr. William Campbell in The Qur'an and the Bible in the Light of History and Science.) But beyond the science of the Quran, the scientific, artistic, and cultural contributions of Islam--exaggerated as they are-- are iingrained to the point of brainwashing, which contributes for the desire to purify Islamic practices and return to the glory days of Islamic civilization. Perpetuating this myth of Islamic cultural superiority contributes to part of the motivation for jihad and must be challenged on the facts. This particular example is not a fluke or fringe statement or accusation, I hear this Islam-is-the-source-of-all-things-good claim all the time.

re:

re: #21 pat

re:

Fjordman has an essay on this very topic on today's DhimmiWatch.

All I said is that the decimal fractions were finally used as numbers for the first time during Islamic times, and in particular in a manuscript written by Uqlidisi in Damascus around the year 952 AD where the decimal point is clearly marked in the text.

Uhh, sorry, Prof, but that's the wrong answer.

The first occurrence of decimal fractions in a surviving work of mathematical literature is to be found in the writings of Liu Hui in the mid-third century A.D. The fractions occur in two contexts; with measurements and in solutions to equations. In his commentary on the classic Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art (first century A.D.), Liu Hui expresses a diameter of 1.355 feet. The Nine Chapters itself had spoken of extracting square roots and getting results which were not integral, that is, which left fractions. But fractions were not good enough for Liu Hui, who was, as (Joseph) Needham says, concerned about what he called those 'nameless little numbers', and stated that the answers should be expressed as a series of decimal places. Needham adds; 'These decimal roots were undoubtedly computed with counting rods and the results expressed in decimal fractions'.

- Temple, Robert. The Genius of China; 3000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Invention. Introduction by Dr. Joseph Needham, FRS, FBA (the book is based on his encyclopedic work, Science and Civilization in China.) New York; Simon and Schuster, 1986. ISBN 0-671-62028-2. Chapter 6, "Mathematics", p. 142.

So, either the Professor hasn't done his homework, or he's trying to pull off an academic fraud. Neither one speaks well of either his expertise or his honesty.

Or his IQ, for that matter, if an ignoramus like me (I flunked Trig in college) can fact-check his ass and catch him out wrong by reference to my own library. The book in question normally sits on a shelf about five feet from where I sit typing this, between Rocket Power and Space Flight by G. Harry Stine and 200 Miles Up; The Conquest of the Upper Air by J. Gordon Vaeth.

/Yes, I have weird taste in reading for relaxation, and I used to work in the library when I was in school. Which means I alphabetize everything.

cheers

eon

re:

Wow.

I would like to know if he really said this:

The Islamic obligation to pray in the direction of Mecca several times each day, for example, led to significant developments in astronomical calculations, including a new, more correct measurement of the tilt of the earth's axis and the invention of the law of sines, Saliba said.

re:

The UN itself (yes, that UN) recently wrote a report on the backward condition of moslem countries.

And if the UN says moslem countries are backward, I believe it! After all, Mohammed El Baradei keeps telling us Iran can't or doesn't yet have nuclear weapons capabilities. And all those inspectors said Iraq couldn't have modern weapons of mass destruction, much less have gassed all those Kurds in Halabja with modern poison gasses of mass destruction.

Islamic science today is improvised, as in improvised exploding devices (IEDs), improvised exploding persons (splodey dopes), etc.

re: #45 wahabicorridor

re:

re: #28 Spiny Norman

re: #21 pat

Another curiosity about the Golden Age of Islam and so-called "Dark Age" Europe: as recorded in the Domesday Book, there were more water-powered engines (waterwheel-driven mills and irrigation pumps, mostly) in 11th Century Yorkshire than in all of the Muslim world. The "Muslim Enlightenment" never trickled down to the masses in any appreciable way.

    You don't think a preponderance for desert environments might not have had something to do with the slow growth of water-powered engines?

}:)     [Sorry, damned Devil's Advocate reflex ... ]

re:

#45 wahhabi corridor

Hola WC and happy veterans day weekend--please forgive my nearly outing you recently--lo siento mucho and wish to hear about your new line of work. Thank you for all you do fighting the terror.

re:

The Daily Times is known for quoting and carrying articles from the west that are pro-islamic, it's educational for instance to note the western writers they carry for political editorials.
To use the DT, you must read some other publications from Pakistan as well before quoting them. They tend to exagerate at times for Islam, but on the other hand they are actively moderate as publications go in Pakistan.

re: #50 Kulhwch

re: #28 Spiny Norman

re: #21 pat

Another curiosity about the Golden Age of Islam and so-called "Dark Age" Europe: as recorded in the Domesday Book, there were more water-powered engines (waterwheel-driven mills and irrigation pumps, mostly) in 11th Century Yorkshire than in all of the Muslim world. The "Muslim Enlightenment" never trickled down to the masses in any appreciable way.

    You don't think a preponderance for desert environments might not have had something to do with the slow growth of water-powered engines?

}:)     [Sorry, damned Devil's Advocate reflex ... ]

Actually, considering that most Islamic cultures centered on the great rivers of the region (the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, etc.), that is just the opposite of what I'd expect. Especially since all their "precursor" cultures (Egyptian, Persian, etc.) were what are known as "hydraulic states" based on the need for a large bureaucracy to control and allocate resources to build canals, catchbasins, reservoirs, etc, for crop irrigation. (China, referred to earlier, is another such "hydraulic state", and the largest of its type in history.)

And since the Muslims had access to more of the ancient Greek and Roman texts on such subjects, due to their control of Egypt and the Library of Alexandria, I'd think that at least one of their scholars might have looked up "Archimedes" or "Vitruvius" in the card catalog.

Unless, of course, the legend about the burning of the Library is factual. Namely the one which credits this quote to the Muslim leader who took the city in 702 A.D.;

"If the books there are not in the Holy Qu'Ran, they are demonic. And if they are in the Holy Qu'ran, they are unnecessary. Burn them all."

Muslim "scholarship" in action?

cheers

eon

re: #50 Kulhwch

re: #28 Spiny Norman

re: #21 patAnother curiosity about the Golden Age of Islam and so-called "Dark Age" Europe: as recorded in the Domesday Book, there were more water-powered engines (waterwheel-driven mills and irrigation pumps, mostly) in 11th Century Yorkshire than in all of the Muslim world. The "Muslim Enlightenment" never trickled down to the masses in any appreciable way.

You don't think a preponderance for desert environments might not have had something to do with the slow growth of water-powered engines?

}:)  [Sorry, damned Devil's Advocate reflex ... ]

Well, not entirely: by the 11th Century, the world of Islam encompassed a great deal more than the Arabian Penninsula: it had reached Spain in the west and the Indus valley in the east. Lots of major river systems in between, and lots of irrigation and grain milling going on. Muslim scholars certainly knew about European (and Indian, and Chinese) innovations, but saw no reason to implement them: why invest in labor-saving machines when they have an unlimited supply of slaves.

re:

#46

The Islamic obligation to pray in the direction of Mecca several times each day, for example, led to significant developments in astronomical calculations, including a new, more correct measurement of the tilt of the earth's axis and the invention of the law of sines, Saliba said.

It's not where you stand but where you face that counts. Now you can know for sure.
I checked mine and as I sit at my desk I'm facing right up the camel's ass.

Islamic civilization?

OK, some of you people are just weird.

I have a couple of hundred books, and arrange them more or less by subject matter - sci-fi, fantasy and alt-history, classic 19th century novels, current events and modern history, aviation and military history and so forth - but not alphabetically or by Dewey Decimal. They're arranged on the shelves more for visual effect. I know exactly where everything is*, but someone else might find it a puzzle.

*Or was... because most are packed away as I am in the midst of a home remodel.

Weeks become months. Months become years...

This made me laugh.

re: #59 Age Of Freedom

Islamic civilization?

Only if you define civilization as meaning,

"I'm tired of us always killing each other.

So let's get together, gang up on somebody else, and kill them instead."

There is no entry for "Civilization" in Ambrose Beirce's The Devil's Dictionary.

But if there were one, I'm quite sure that Islam would be a prime example of the above-stated postulate.

cheers

eon

re:

re: #63 eon

re: #60 Spiny Norman

For a couple of hundred books, that works just fine.

I have about eight thousand to deal with. Dewey isn't a quirk- it's a necessity.

/Having 8,000 books in a 2,100 square foot house is a quirk.

cheers

eon

We're stuck with ~10,500 in about the same amount of space. I find that Dewey works well for non-fiction, but we just alphabetize all the fiction by author. Periodicals and tech journals are psuedo-Deweyed, kept together by publication and chronological order. One of these days we'd like to get everything into a database, but there are only so many years in a life...

Try delicious library. I don't think they have it for PC though.

re:

Now if he can only train his fellow Muslims (and the balance of Americans too while he is at it) into not believing the press until they cross-check the facts.

he said, they said

/all lies

re:

re:

Here's some not so weird science that wasn't created by muslims...

[Link: waterpoweredcar.com...]

[Link: [Link: [Link: www.panacea-bocaf.org...]...]...]

re: #40 Orde

One of, if not the most, best-selling Islamic apologetics books is The Bible, The Qur'an and Science by Maurice Bucaille, whose influence cannot be overestimated as its arguments about the scientific and historic genius of the Quran lead many to trust in the Quran because doing so is "rational" and scientific. (This book has been very thoroughly rebutted by Dr. William Campbell in The Qur'an and the Bible in the Light of History and Science.) But beyond the science of the Quran, the scientific, artistic, and cultural contributions of Islam--exaggerated as they are-- are iingrained to the point of brainwashing, which contributes for the desire to purify Islamic practices and return to the glory days of Islamic civilization. Perpetuating this myth of Islamic cultural superiority contributes to part of the motivation for jihad and must be challenged on the facts. This particular example is not a fluke or fringe statement or accusation, I hear this Islam-is-the-source-of-all-things-good claim all the time.

Great post, so I'll quote it. The view that Islamic science led to the Western scientific revolution is deeply embedded in college classes and textbooks.

If I were a student today, I would write a paper on how this view became so embedded. The writings you cite above may provide some clue.

College students: I hope you are reading my post. This subject would make a great term paper. Go for it.

re:

re:

re: #69 Shr_Nfr

re: #64 Malatrope

www.abe.com is a good place to get books that are long out of print. Frequently the same folks that are on Amazon in the used book area, but cheaper through abe.

Never heard of abe; thanks, I'll check it out. As for the collapsing shelves issue (cats?) I recommend bookcases with doors :)

The bugblatter beast of Traal IV makes a nice snack for tourists.
.
.
Correction, -of- tourists.
/hitchhikers' guide to the galaxy

Always keep your towel with you and you'll be fine...

Who would have thought? Science marches on elsewhere and in the strangest places. Here's a graf from
[Link: webexhibits.org...]

on butter making:

"Naturally, it is presumed that in four thousand years there has been considerable improvement in the manufacture of butter although we, of course, know little more of the method by which Sarah produced butter for the angels than we know of the means employed in the construction of the pyramids. The earliest details of method of manufacture are derived from the Arabs and Syrians, who appear to be as well satisfied with the original process of making butter as they are with other habits, since they have remained unchanged for centuries. The original practice of the Arabs and Syrians, so far as is known, was to use vessel made from goatskin for a churn. "

I sent the original article to a friend who teaches the history of science. His reply to me was:

George is a good friend who I have known for nearly forty years. He is a very fine historian of Arabic science, mostly astronomy, and he would never say anything the way this article conveys. I think I know what happened. I can tell by the title of the lecture that it is related to a book he recently published on the historiography of Arabic science, concentrating on its origin in the seventh and eighth centuries and on the later part of its transmission to Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (not on the earlier transmission in the twelfth and thirteenth). He must have pointed out, correctly, that any number of things in Arabic science, in mathematics and astronomy especially but also in other areas, were transmitted to Europe, and this led to the article being written the way it was about ALL modern science being Arabic, or as the article puts it, Muslim, which is not the same thing since some of the people who wrote science in Arabic were not Muslim. Anyway, this is a dumb article on what was surely a far more sophisticated lecture.

OK, a quick count of my (now, apparently puny) boxed-up library turned up about 380 (+/-) books, about 80-85% of which are hardbacks. They fit rather nicely in four 3' x 7' bookcases plus a 6' high corner bookcase that holds the large-format ones.

Over the last few years I've been replacing many of my favorites I once owned in paperback with first editions (or hardcover reprints). Used book stores in odd, out-of-the-way places can sometimes yield a treasure trove...

Estate sales can also be fruitful.

re:

There are 11,110,100,001,001,000,000,000 muslims in America according to US census records. Aren't binary numbers useful?

That's only 7a1200 in hexadecimal.

re: #80 Spiny Norman

OK, a quick count of my (now, apparently puny) boxed-up library turned up about 380 (+/-) books, about 80-85% of which are hardbacks. They fit rather nicely in four 3' x 7' bookcases plus a 6' high corner bookcase that holds the large-format ones.

Don't feel bad. Living with a book population that equals a small city also means that unless you have space to build a new wing on your house, basically you are living in a library. Some people get freaked out by that...

Thanks Charles for the update. I feel better.

re:

re:

re:

re: #87 Once and Future Angeleno

re: #35 kulthur
...attachment to my book collection. No one else seems to understand .... !

People walk into our house, then look at us as though we are completely and totally crazy. We understand.

What's this?!? Inaccuracies reported from Fazl-e-Hussain Hall?
I'm shocked, shocked.

re: #86 Malatrope

re:

re:

I should amend what I just said: I'm sure regular roach-type roaches are found in the deep south, I just didn't go looking for them. Hell, everything you walk on down there bites, stings, burns your feet, or squishes and explodes.

re: #69 Shr_Nfr

re:

Aha! Here ya go:

My disgusting insectoid Merrimack gizmo is a Florida woods cockroach - Eurycotis floridana.

Here is a standard palmetto bug.

And this is what I think of as a northern city roach.

Amazing the things one is motivated to go look up based on the random thoughts that float by on LGF :)

This thread is well and truly dead, and all this talk about bugs is making me hungry. Later, lizardia.

re:

re: #95 Malatrope

re:

re:

re:

The claims made for the invention of everything by
Muslims are at least triply sad.

1. This past summer, I traced citations in an article in
a western academic journal (published in Netherlands,
I think, editors are US) describing a newly discovered
Arabic manuscript -- well, actually 13 manuscripts --
which conveniently fill all the missing links in the history
I am studying. At that point, it became clear to me
that it was fraud, a point the referees seem to have missed.
Oh, and the medieval manuscripts are shown as poor
photocopies. No photographs, and insufficient reference
as to where they were found.

2. The person the earliest manuscript was attributed to
was an actual medieval Muslim scholar. There were
lots of them, and they did more than just copy the
Greeks and Romans. The nostalgic Muslim has an
actual golden age to look back to -- no need for
fabrication.

3. I have taken the documents I've collected to a
couple of Arabic manuscript scholars. They can't
follow my reasoning and bring themselves to say
the "new" manuscripts are fake. Neither can they
say that my reasoning is faulty. (I'm quite satisfied
to be wrong. Just show me evidence.) Maybe it's
just the practice in humanities scholarship to avoid
throwing stones.

One of the "great" things about Arabic is that the
language has been frozen for so many centuries,
the medieval stuff is still readable to modern eyes.

Any lizards who are medieval Arabic scholars?
I will be happy to discuss specifics privately.

ocelot

re:

There was a time when the Muslim world was the leader of civilization's advances. But over time it fell further and further behind, until now it trails miserably.

Muslims are asking "What Went Wrong?" (which is the title of a book by the scholar Bernard Lewis).