Posted on 12/31/2006 8:12:14 PM PST by quidnunc
As Saddam was being hung, the voices of several of those present in the room were heard crying out. They didn't cry out "a bicameral legislature!" They didn't cry out "checks and balances, for god's sake let us have checks and balances." They didn't cry out "we want a government of limited powers." No, they cried out "Moqtada al-Sadr, Moqtada al-Sadr."
Amurath an Amurath succeeds.
And will, until it is realized that people suffused with the tenets and attitudes of Islam are not interested in Western parliamentary democracy. Nor are they interested in guarantees of the rights of minorities and especially of the individual, or in the Spirit of Liberty, which is defined by Learned Hand as the spirit that is "not quite sure that it is right." Try to imagine a Muslim Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, James Wilson, Clay or Webster or Calhoun or John Randolph of Roanoke, Lincoln, or for that matter a Muslim John Marshall, a Muslim Louis Brandeis, a Muslim Oliver Wendell Holmes. You can't. And you know why.
And unless, and until, the Camp of Infidels understands that it must not only understand, but make its constant theme, the connection between those assorted amuraths and the politico-religio-legal system of Islam, that refuses to locate legitimacy in the will of mere mortals, all of them rightfully slaves of Allah, and that urges submission to the ruler, no matter how despotic, as long as he is declared to be a Muslim, you never will be able to imagine such creatures. They will continue to be chimerical as long as the connection between the inshallah-fatalism of Islam and the economic backwardness, despite the OPEC trillions, of Muslim lands (where the only real economies are found, in some form, in those countries where Islam has been constrained — as in Turkey or Tunisia) continues to go unnoticed. And the connection between the social failures, the moral failures, the intellectual failures, of Muslim societies must be connected to the doctrines, the teachings, the attitudes, the atmospherics of Islam. The case for such a connection is overwhelming. It will not be easy to deny it, and at the very least, the world's Infidels will see that connection, and so will the most advanced people born into Islam. It will put Islam permanently on the defensive among its own adherents, who will indeed begin to wonder why their countries have a series of despots succeeded by other despots, why their countries are so naturally violent in their politics, why they are, despite such oil revenues, unable or unwilling to create advanced economies, why their societies, so hostile to non-Muslims and to women, will remain estranged from the rest of the world as that world passes them by, and why the habit of mental submission encouraged by Islam will always prevent them from the enterprise of science, or from all else that requires the encouragement, and not the punishment, of free and skeptical inquiry.
-snip-
KING HENRY V:
This new and gorgeous garment, majesty,
Sits not so easy on me as you think.
Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear:
This is the English, not the Turkish court;
Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,
But Harry Harry.
ORCS !!!!!!
Islam on the other hand got hold of the information centuries earlier but did nothing with it. Ever.
Also, the idea of "Dark Ages" was a Victorian construct. Things actually weren't as dark as they were painted by the Victorians, who loved to pigeonhole things. The Middle Ages were full of music, art, architecture, faith, love, chivalry -- even though a good deal of the knowledge of the Roman Empire was (temporarily) lost.
The Africans are sitting on incredible natural resources and yet their continent is the most impoverished on the face of the earth.
Just one of many examples.
The leftists are in denial about the fact that the United States of America is the most successful nation in the history of mankind. Why? Our system is comprised of a government of laws and not of men, a government checked and shackled by a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, a government of limited and well-defined powers. Our culture is centered around individual freedom and individual responsibility, and the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. And, our system is based on Judeo-Christian morals and ethics, regardless of what the historical revisionists may say.
We are a city on a hill; the whole world is watching us.
On the eve of a new year here in Northern Virginia, Reagan's words still ring true:
"And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that; after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home."
Thank you! I had no idea the word was that old.
I know.
The early Muslims are credited with inventing distillation and could distil just about anything - from alcohol to perfume. Hygiene is very important in the Muslim world so they invented and manufactured soap - centuries before the West - and hundreds of bathhouses were built throughout Muslim cities. They understood the fundamentals of light and how we see, and gave us the camera obscura. They invented algebra and worked out the angle of the tilt of the earth. They built the first windmill, pioneered the concept of the crank rod, and designed the first ever torpedo. Muslim creativity also led to the invention of a unique instrument called the astrolabe – it could find the direction of Mecca, tell the time and, with the help of the stars, navigate you across deserts and oceans. But perhaps most important of all they pursued the cause of knowledge, translating and preserving the works of the ancients and building the world's largest libraries – their 'houses of wisdom'.That's not a lot at all....
Much better we still be living in mud huts. Some myth....
I think you owe an apology to the producers of MD 20/20 and brown paper bags.
Moreover, with al the attention to enviornmentalism and global warming, I think peoploe should note how Muslims have raped the land they have inhabited. By contrast, the Europeans have been good stewards. The contrast could not be more stark.
There were a number of Turkish Ottoman sultans named Amurath.
One of them formed the Jannisaries to counter an insurgence.
Gertrude Bell, the famous English explorer of Arabia published a book titled 'Amurath to Amurath' in the 1920s.
Oh well alright then. I thought we were basing our views on actual history not some Hollywood tripe. Funny, I thought 'conservatives' were right off of Hollywood (well unless I suppose it furthers the myth that 7th-11th century Islamic cultures were a pack of warring mongrels then it's good right?) Islamic culture was not the apex of learning but it offered quite a bit to the Western world.
The European Dark Ages are so-called because — compared to other periods of history — they are dark to us.
Outside of some monestaries — especially in Iteland — scholarship ceased to be.
There aren't many written records for scholars to study.
Actually, the Romans had them earier. Check out the life and works of Claudius Galen.
Well stated!
It's not Hugh, but you, who needs to do a bit of reasarch in to the history of Islamic cultures.
Islamic intellectial culture was NEVER far more advance than "Western" culture. Now, "Eastern" culture WAS more advanced, but it sure wasn't "Islamic", it was the remanants of the Christian, Zoraoastrian, and other per-Islamic cultures that Islamic parasitism hadn't yet succeded in killing completely off.
As time has passed since then, the remnants of the advance science, medicine, and other aspects of cultures that pre-existed Islam have pretty much died, and what we have left is what you see today - the "culture" that the Muslims brought to the party: violence, ignorance, mind-numbing conformity, enslavement, and poverty in every sense.
When you say that "Islamic cultures kept alive learning when other parts of the world were mucking about in the Dark Ages," you are really missing the mark. Islam was actively killing off that learning, kept alive by the Christians, the Zoroastrians and others, but simply had lacked the time needed to finsih the job.
Horse tootle. Almost every physician in the Islamic lands druring the "Middle Ages" was an Assyrian Christian. If there was a Muslim physician, you can be sure he was trained in a Christian hospital, not a Muslim one. Such a thing did not exist, but typcially, Muslims like to take credit for things they had no hand in creating.
The period of enlightenment in the Middle East was mostly before the rule of Islam. Baghdad was a center of culture, science, learning, and beauty. This was before the Islamic expansion and conquest. The real Irony is the Middle East would be the major center of power, learning, science and knowledge if not for Islam. Islamic doctrine laid waste to a great civilization. It reminds of the lyrics from one of Bob Dylan's songs, "and you threw it all away."
Maybe. Maybe not...
Ironic how the ME ancients build fabulous irrigation systems throughout the ME for those would-be soapy Muslim Bathhouses and how those irrigation systems fell into disrepair, were abandoned then rebuilt by invading crusaders.
By the way, since they could distill just about anything, why didn't the distill that black stuff oozing out of the ground or, harness that smelly air-that-burns.
I'm as angry with Islam - yes, the overall religion, not just its influential fanatics - as most, for its adherents failing to face the fact that it has been hijacked and driven into a retrograde position with respect to jihad. But we cannot deny its vital historical role in passing to the West some truly vital cultural underpinnings. Yes, the translations of Aristotle were done primarily by Nestorian Christians and transmitted to us by Muslims. Yes, the basics of algebra and the concept of zero were Indian and transmitted to us by Muslims. Medicine, astronomy, agriculture...the list goes on and on. But they were transmitted, and we would have been the poorer for that not to have taken place.
The key to this is Muslim scholarship. It was that, and not any particular prediliction for advance in science, that led Muslims to occupy this role. There is nothing dishonorable in becoming a keeper of the flame even if one cannot light it oneself. But it meant that once transmitted, the role was done.
Muslim scholarship today has devolved to an obsessive focus on scripture for two reasons - first, that it's the basis of Islamic law and hence political power, and second, that the Turks no longer rule the empire. The Arabs who once did are long gone. What has been transmitted to them is what the Turks allowed them - the Caliph, but not the Sultan. And it is the Sultan who makes the modern world.
And so I must agree with you as well - intellectually Islam is a spent force, a dry well with only memories to comfort it. But do please allow it the memories - that was once the truth, and we would have been the poorer for it not to have been.
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