What have the Arabs ever done for us? Zero to begin with

[Abdur_Rahman]

What have the Arabs ever done for us?

Zero, just to begin with, and incalculably more than daytime-TV presenters, writes Derek Brown

Thursday January 15, 2004

It is pretty universally acknowledged that an informed world view is not a prerequisite for success in daytime television. Even so, Robert Kilroy-Silk's anti-Arab diatribe is not only offensive and stupid; it also speaks of a startling degree of ignorance.
"We owe Arabs nothing," he wrote. "Apart from oil, which was discovered, is produced and is paid for by the west, what do they contribute?" Arabs, according to the sage of the sob story, are "suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors".

It is slightly ironic that, at the time this balderdash was printed in the Sunday Express, Mr Kilroy-Silk was topping up his studio tan in a Spanish beach resort. Had he been in the mood for a slightly more demanding cultural shift, he could have gone to the south of that country, to Granada in the province of Andalucia, where he could have seen some of the most beautiful architecture in Europe. Arab architecture. Planned, built and exquisitely decorated by the ancestors of the people Mr Kilroy-Silk apparently thinks so inferior.

It is not only in Spain that Arab architecture has left a European mark. The pointed arch, so eagerly adopted by medieval builders and known today as gothic, was an idea copied from the east, and brought to the west by the early crusaders. And while those religiously crazed bigots were burning and slaughtering in the holy land, Arab poets, mathematicians, astronomers, philosophers and scientists were advancing human civilisation to unprecedented peaks of sophistication.

The Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad, which flourished for half a millennium from about AD750, was arguably the most dazzling of regimes the world had seen up to that date. Arab scholars picked up from where the Greek ancients had stopped centuries earlier, and extended human understanding in virtually every field. As every schoolboy knows, the mathematical concept of zero was discovered by Arabs, when northern Europeans were still wearing horns on their helmets. In fact, as a Guardian reader pointed out this week, every schoolboy is probably wrong: the zero idea almost certainly came from India, but, crucially, it was first written down by an Arab.

Writing is a key part of the Arab nation's bequest to the world. Paper was introduced from China before the end of the first Christian millennium, freeing Arab writers from the costly straitjacket of parchment and papyrus, some 300-400 years before paper reached western Europe. The result was a torrent of poetry and prose, philosophy and scholarship, learning and entertainment. This was the era of The Thousand and One Nights and of vast public libraries. There were astronomical observatories, pharmaceutical laboratories and medical schools. And most of these were flourishing before England's King Alfred was born.

Mr Kilroy-Silk might argue that these are spent glories, and that the modern Arab culture is debased. He would be compounding his ignorance to do so. More poetry than prose is published in Arabic today. The visual arts are vibrant. Music, both popular and traditional, is flourishing. Calligraphy, that most elegant of arts, continues to fascinate users of the flowing Arabic scripts. Arab cuisine - Lebanese mainly, but increasingly Egyptian and other north African - is being belatedly discovered in the west.

For sure, the Arab world has more than its share of despotic rulers and religious bigots. But to lump everyone together under Mr Kilroy-Silk's puerile labels is not only false, but plain daft. Cultures and their values are not only measured by historical achievement, but also in terms of day-to-day living.

I lived in the holy land for nearly four years as the Guardian correspondent. I was greeted and treated by virtually every Arab I met with the greatest courtesy and grace, even in the most trying and sometimes downright tragic circumstances. Sometimes I would poke a little fun at close friends by making up absurdly flowery compliments in the local style - my best invention was "May the womb of your favourite she-camel never wither!" - and invariably they would giggle helplessly. Indeed, the Arab propensity for laughter and friendship is one of my fondest memories of those times.

The Arab people have been traduced enough in the western world and - let's be honest - the western media. It is perhaps time we poured our collective bile over a more deserving target. Cheap, mindless, voyeuristic, shallow, nasty, lobotomised daytime telly, to take a random example.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1123787,00.html

[amee_patla_na]

aright, for the muslims, the arabs gave us Pr. Mohammad and all his followers


and for the ppl of the west: arabs gave them their numbers, astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, medicine, chemistry, and mathematics, etc etc.

It was the Arabs who recorded and preserved the traditions of nations such as the ancient Greek, Persian and Indian. They observed and recorded the accounts of religion, philosophy, literature, chronology, astronomy, manners and customs and the legal and social establishments from neighboring peoples. They studied under many of the ancient civilized peoples, learning and adopting their concepts in areas such as medicine, mathematics and science.

there are many reasons for the west to be grateful to arabs and muslims, on a whole. if he derek brown fella is talkin about christian arabs, then they didnt bring much use.

welik, if youre reading this, go away. you havent got to quote me or abduraman or anybody. leave us alone with your stupidity.

[Arya-Putra]

ll Namaste ll


amee_patla_na:

"arabs gave them their numbers, astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, medicine, chemistry, and mathematics, etc etc.

> I dont know how youve managed to beleive that load of rubbish. Arabs gave very little besides maybe exotic foods and clothes. The (HEAVY) influence of Hindus and Greeks resulted in the arabs gaining such knowledge. Since the intereaction with western civilization was greater with the arabs at the time, the west picked up these ideas from them. But in no way did they originate in arab lands or muslims for that matter. Do some research on basic things like the history of algebra (al-jabra in arabic) and the yunani medicine system, the numbers system (HINDU-arabic numbers, as opposed to MUSLIM-hindu numbers). Even then you will find that the Greeks (pagans at that time) learned much from the Hindus and there-after modified it.

"It was the Arabs who recorded and preserved the traditions of nations such as the ancient Greek, Persian and Indian"

> If anything, they were the annihilators of such great cultures. They have nothing, or at the most, next to nothing, to show in terms of preserving other traditions. Learn and adopt they did, from others. But they also went about destroying more than 'preserving'.

"there are many reasons for the west to be grateful to arabs and muslims, on a whole. if he derek brown fella is talkin about christian arabs, then they didnt bring much use."

>> If you could name a few reasons it would maybe give me a chance to look at the world through your eyes. Btw, how do you manage to keep the arab muslims on cloud 9 while burying christian arabs in the same sentence? Very wishy-washy to me. Especially since the arab muslims really didnt bring much use to persia when the overtook it, or any other country. Most of the things youve said are hard to swallow.



ll Pranaam ll

[desi-soul]

Originally posted by amee_patla_na
aright, for the muslims, the arabs gave us Pr. Mohammad and all his followers

Who thought they had some divine right to invaded lands, massacre natives, and spread Arabism in name of Islam.

and for the ppl of the west: arabs gave them their numbers, astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, medicine, chemistry, and mathematics, etc etc.

Fyi, civilizations did existed before bare footed demented arabs, took to pillage round the world in 7th century.

Astronomy was a well developed science in anceint Persian Magis.

Medicine, Biology, physics, chemistry was already welknown amongst hindus and greeks. Just steal knowledge which others develope, is called theft, not invention.

the Decimal system was "invented" by muslims? Ha! Another system which existed well before the muslims stole the credit.
here is the link to the whole history of the system.
http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/univer...17/han.htm

read this-
"In 3000BC the Hindus culture flourished and large numbers were used (inscriptions).
From the middle of 2000BC Indo-European tribes were making their way from the N.W. towards India. They introduced Sanskrit - earliest knowledge of maths from this time.
In Sanskrit there are number words for 1-9, 10, 100 and further powers of 10 - up to 10 - definitely a decimal system."

"The Arabs played an essential part in the dissemination of the numeral system - no number system of their own."

I agree though, muslims definitely introduced the "zero concept" - in all fields of life

It was the Arabs who recorded and preserved the traditions of nations such as the ancient Greek, Persian and Indian. .

And may i know from where has this brainwave struck you??
Greeks, Persians and Indians races were contributing steadily to the human civilization for last 5,000 years. Arabs did exactly the opposite. They destroyed there heritage, culture, religion beyond recognization.
Just look at Iran, Iraq or present day Pakistan. Once they were cradle of human civilization. Thanx to Arabs taking over, they are reduced to third world countries whose only export and imports are islamic extremism.

They observed and recorded the accounts of religion, philosophy, literature, chronology, astronomy, manners and customs and the legal and social establishments from neighboring peoples. They studied under many of the ancient civilized peoples, learning and adopting their concepts in areas such as medicine, mathematics and science.

earlier you said, 'and for the ppl of the west: arabs gave them their numbers, astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, medicine, chemistry, and mathematics, etc etc.'

So basically, nothing atal was arab contribution, they were just passing someone else's knowledge to others, by calling it their invention.
Thank you, we could have done without their Great Contribution.

And if you really think, these fringging Arabs were brains behind mathemathics and pshysics and chemistry....why have they stopped inventing cars and computers for us???
On their own, they can't even dig a oil-well on their own land....so much for their intellegence.

Only thing very original about them are their camel races, with lil' southasian kids tied on them. I am sure,you are a great fan of those races.
hmm!! me too!!












[Edited by desi-soul on 26th January 2004 at 19:01]

[Star]

.H. Denison said in (Emotion as the Basis of Civilisation) the following:


"In the fifth and sixth centuries the civilised world stood on the verge of a chaos. The old emotional cultures that had made civilisation possible, since they had given to men a sense of unity and of reverence for their rulers, had broken down and nothing had been found adequate to take their place...


"It seemed that the great civilisation which it had taken four thousand years to construct was on the verge of disintegration and that mankind was likely to return to that condition of barbarism where every tribe and sect was against the next, and law and order was unknown...


"The old tribal sanctions had lost their power. The new sanctions created by Christianity were working division and destruction instead of unity and order. It was a time fraught with tragedy. Civilisation, like a gigantic tree whose foliage had over arched the world and whose branches had borne the golden fruits of art and science and literature, stood tottering... rotted to the core.


"Was there any emotional culture that could be brought in togather mankind once more into unity and to save civilisation? It was among these Arab people that the man Muhammad was born who was to unite the whole known world of the east and south". Sir William Muir said in (The Life of Muhammad):


"For few and simple were the precepts of Muhammad. His teaching had wrought a marvellous and mighty work. Never since the days when the primitive Christianity startled the world from its sleep and waged moral combat with heathenism had men seen the like arousing of spiritual life, the like faith that suffered sacrifices and took joyfully the spoiling of goods for conscience's sake.''

[amee_patla_na]

But of course...

...your own culture & ppl are always better then the rest.

I see it now!! My mistake for being so naive at first.

[samtel]

Originally posted by Star
.H. Denison said in (Emotion as the Basis of Civilisation) the following:

" where every tribe and sect was against the next, and law and order was unknown...


" It was a time fraught with tragedy. Civilisation, like a gigantic tree whose foliage had over arched the world and whose branches had borne the golden fruits of art and science and literature, stood tottering... rotted to the core.

The story as told was for the uncivilized Arab world and applies even now. Can we expect anybody like Mohammad now??? Nop! The last seal has been put