Posted on 01/04/2008 5:22:04 AM PST by SJackson
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Muslim Claims of Accomplishment |
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By Peter BetBasoo
ChristiansOfIraq.com | Friday, January 04, 2008
EDITOR'S NOTE: There is great need for setting the record straight on the history of the Middle East. The revisionism of the last few years will lead Western Civilization into bondage. The following letter by Assyrian scholar Peter BetBasoo is a very important step in the right direction. It was sent by Assyrian scholar Peter BetBasoo to Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett Packard Corporation, in response to a speech she presented in Minneapolis on September 26, 2001. It is reprinted by permission. Please read and pass it on to others.
Dear Madame Fiorina:
It is with great interest that I read your speech delivered on September 26, 2001, titled "Technology, Business and Our way of Life: What's Next" [sic]. I was particularly interested in the story you told at the end of your speech, about the Arab/Muslim civilization. As an Assyrian, a non-Arab, Christian native of the Middle East, whose ancestors reach back to 5000 B.C., I wish to clarify some points you made in this little story, and to alert you to the dangers of unwittingly being drawn into the Arabist/Islamist ideology, which seeks to assimilate all cultures and religions into the Arab/Islamic fold.
I know you are a very busy woman, but please find ten minutes to read what follows, as it is a perspective that you will not likely get from anywhere else. I will answer some of the specific points you made in your speech, then conclude with a brief perspective on this Arabist/Islamist ideology.
Arabs and Muslims appeared on the world scene in 630 A.D., when the armies of Muhammad began their conquest of the Middle East. We should be very clear that this was a military conquest, not a missionary enterprise, and through the use of force, authorized by a declaration of a Jihad against infidels, Arabs/Muslims were able to forcibly convert and assimilate non-Arabs and non-Muslims into their fold. Very few indigenous communities of the Middle East survived this - primarily Assyrians, Jews, Armenians and Coptics (of Egypt).
Having conquered the Middle East, Arabs placed these communities under a Dhimmi (see the book DHIMMI, by Bat Ye'Or) system of governance, where the communities were allowed to rule themselves as religious minorities (Christians, Jews and Zoroastrian). These communities had to pay a tax (called a Jizzya in Arabic) that was, in effect, a penalty for being non-Muslim, and that was typically 80% in times of tolerance and up to 150% in times of oppression. This tax forced many of these communities to convert to Islam, as it was designed to do.
You state, "its architects designed buildings that defied gravity." I am not sure what you are referring to, but if you are referring to domes and arches, the fundamental architectural breakthrough of using a parabolic shape instead of a spherical shape for these structures was made by the Assyrians more than 1300 years earlier, as evidenced by their archaeological record.
You state,
"its mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption."
The fundamental basis of modern mathematics had been laid down not hundreds but thousands of years before by Assyrians and Babylonians, who already knew of the concept of zero, of the Pythagorean Theorem, and of many, many other developments expropriated by Arabs/Muslims (see HISTORY OF BABYLONIAN MATHEMATICS by Otto E. Neugebauer).
You state,
"its doctors examined the human body, and found new cures for disease."
The overwhelming majority of these doctors (99%) were Assyrians. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries Assyrians began a systematic translation of the Greek body of knowledge into Assyrian. At first, they concentrated on the religious works but then quickly moved to science, philosophy and medicine. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Galen, and many others were translated into Assyrian, and from Assyrian into Arabic. It is these Arabic translations which the Moors brought with them into Spain, and which the Spaniards translated into Latin and spread throughout Europe, thus igniting the European Renaissance.
By the sixth century A.D., Assyrians had begun exporting back to Byzantia their own works on science, philosophy and medicine. In the field of medicine, the Bakhteesho Assyrian family produced nine generations of physicians, and founded the great medical school at Gundeshapur (Iran). Also in the area of medicine, (the Assyrian) Hunayn ibn-Ishaq's textbook on ophthalmology, written in 950 A.D., remained the authoritative source on the subject until 1800 A.D.
In the area of philosophy, the Assyrian philosopher Job of Edessa developed a physical theory of the universe, in the Assyrian language, that rivaled Aristotle's theory, and that sought to replace matter with forces (a theory that anticipated some ideas in quantum mechanics, such as the spontaneous creation and destruction of matter that occurs in the quantum vacuum).
One of the greatest Assyrian achievements of the fourth century was the founding of the first university in the world, the School of Nisibis, which had three departments, theology, philosophy and medicine, and which became a magnet and center of intellectual development in the Middle East. The statutes of the School of Nisibis, which have been preserved, later became the model upon which the first Italian university was based (see THE STATUTES OF THE SCHOOL OF NISIBIS by Arthur Voobus).
When Arabs and Islam swept through the Middle East in 630 A.D., they encountered 600 years of Assyrian Christian civilization, with a rich heritage, a highly developed culture, and advanced learning institutions. It is this civilization that became the foundation of the Arab civilization.
You state,
"Its astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration."
This is a bit melodramatic. In fact, the astronomers you refer to were not Arabs but Chaldeans and Babylonians (of present day south-Iraq), who for millennia were known as astronomers and astrologers, and who were forcibly Arabized and Islamized - so rapidly that by 750 A.D. they had disappeared completely.
You state,
"its writers created thousands of stories. Stories of courage, romance and magic. Its poets wrote of love, when others before them were too steeped in fear to think of such things."
There is very little literature in the Arabic language that comes from this period you are referring to (the Koran is the only significant piece of literature), whereas the literary output of the Assyrians and Jews was vast. The third largest corpus of Christian writing, after Latin and Greek, is by the Assyrians in the Assyrian language (also called Syriac).
You state,
"when other nations were afraid of ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive, and passed it on to others."
This is a very important issue you raise, and it goes to the heart of the matter of what Arab/Islamic civilization represents. I reviewed a book titled HOW GREEK SCIENCE PASSED TO THE ARABS, in which author De Lacy O'Leary lists the significant translators and interpreters of Greek science. Of the 22 scholars listed, 20 were Assyrians, one was Persian and one an Arab. I state at the end of my review:
"The salient conclusion which can be drawn from O'Leary's book is that Assyrians played a significant role in the shaping of the Islamic world via the Greek corpus of knowledge. If this is so, one must then ask the question, what happened to the Christian communities which made them lose this great intellectual enterprise they had established? One can ask this same question of the Arabs. Sadly, O'Leary's book does not answer this question, and we must look elsewhere for the answer."
I did not answer this question I posed in the review because it was not the place to answer it, but the answer is very clear, the Christian Assyrian community was drained of its population through forced conversion to Islam (by the Jizzya), and once the community had dwindled below a critical threshold, it ceased producing the scholars that were the intellectual driving force of the Islamic civilization, and that is when the so called "Golden Age of Islam" came to an end (about 850 A.D.).
Islam the religion itself was significantly molded by Assyrians and Jews (see NESTORIAN INFLUENCE ON ISLAM and HAGARISM: THE MAKING OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD).
Arab/Islamic civilization is not a progressive force, it is a regressive force; it does not give impetus, it retards. The great civilization you describe was not an Arab/Muslim accomplishment, it was an Assyrian accomplishment that Arabs expropriated and subsequently lost when they drained, through the forced conversion of Assyrians to Islam, the source of the intellectual vitality that propelled it. What other Arab/Muslim civilization has risen since? What other Arab/Muslim successes can we cite?
You state,
"and perhaps we can learn a lesson from his [Suleiman] example: It was leadership based on meritocracy, not inheritance. It was leadership that harnessed the full capabilities of a very diverse population that included Christianity, Islamic, and Jewish traditions."
In fact, the Ottomans were extremely oppressive to non-Muslims. For example, young Christian boys were forcefully taken from their families, usually at the age of 8-10, and inducted into the Janissaries, (yeniceri in Turkish) where they were Islamized and made to fight for the Ottoman state. What literary, artistic or scientific achievements of the Ottomans can we point to? We can, on the other hand, point to the genocide of 750,000 Assyrians, 1.5 million Armenians and 400,000 Greeks in World War One by the Kemalist "Young Turk" government. This is the true face of Islam.
Arabs/Muslims are engaged in an explicit campaign of destruction and expropriation of cultures and communities, identities and ideas. Wherever Arab/Muslim civilization encounters a non-Arab/Muslim one, it attempts to destroy it (as the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan were destroyed, as Persepolis was destroyed by the Ayotollah Khomeini).
This is a pattern that has been recurring since the advent of Islam, 1400 years ago, and is amply substantiated by the historical record. If the "foreign" culture cannot be destroyed, then it is expropriated, and revisionist historians claim that it is and was Arab, as is the case of most of the Arab "accomplishments" you cited in your speech. For example, Arab history texts in the Middle East teach that Assyrians were Arabs, a fact that no reputable scholar would assert, and that no living Assyrian would accept. Assyrians first settled Nineveh, one of the major Assyrian cities, in 5000 B.C., which is 5630 years before Arabs came into that area. Even the word 'Arab' is an Assyrian word, meaning "Westerner" (the first written reference to Arabs was by the Assyrian King Sennacherib, 800 B.C., in which he tells of conquering the "ma'rabayeh" - Westerners. See THE MIGHT THAT WAS ASSYRIA by H. W. F. Saggs).
Even in America this Arabization policy continues. On October 27th a coalition of seven Assyrian and Maronite organizations sent an official letter to the Arab American Institute asking it to stop identifying Assyrians and Maronites as Arabs, which it had been deliberately doing.
There are minorities and nations struggling for survival in the Arab/Muslim ocean of the Middle East and Africa (Assyrians, Armenians, Coptics, Jews, southern Sudanese, Ethiopians, Nigerians...), and we must be very sensitive not to unwittingly and inadvertently support Islamic fascism and Arab Imperialism, with their attempts to wipe out all other cultures, religions and civilizations. It is incumbent upon each one of us to do our homework and research when making statements and speeches about these sensitive matters.
I hope you found this information enlightening. You may contact me at keepa@ninevehsoft.com for further questions.
Thank you for your consideration.
Peter BetBasoo is an Assyrian from Iraq and the co-founder and director of the Assyrian International News Agency (www.aina.org). He can be reached at peter@aina.org.
lol...I had to teach our Sr. VP of Marketing how to cut n’ paste a line of text.
Weren’t they the ones who taught a Camel to go 7 days without drinking? /sarc
Being successful and productive is not possible for Arabs.... it’s against their religion. They have only anarchy and misery as their legacy.
It is something else. Such information are hints, little teases, that there may have existed far in the past, before the great meltdown at the end of the last ice age, highly developed civilizations.
Around 15,000 years ago, sea level was 500 feet lower than that of today. Archaeologists in India have been discovering sunken cities of stone, with pyramids, offshore of southern coastlines. Their Vedas have hinted at such things but western academics pooh-pooh the idea.
Portolan maps are reputed to show the shorelines that existed 15,000 - 8,000 years ago (pre-inundation). Columbus supposedly possessed one. All this is pretty far out, but the Assyrians weren’t the only ones who knew about the actual configuration of the solar system. So did ancient peoples in Central America.
Dear Editor:
“Muslim Spain was a perfect example of a flourishing society in which Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in mutual respect and cooperation.”
Muslim Spain was Christian Spain for over 400 years before being conquered by Islamic Armies in the 8th Century. That is the way the Islamic Religion has been historically spread, though military invasion and occupation. Treatment of conquered people has the same goal, the minimizing of other religions and conversion of the indigenous people. Among other rules for non Muslims in Muslim Spain; Christians and Jews could not bear arms — Muslims could; Christians and Jews could not ride horses — Muslims could; Christians and Jews had to get permission to build or fix places or worship — Muslims did not; Christians and Jews had to pay certain taxes which Muslims did not; Christians could not proselytize — Muslims could; Christians and Jews had to bow to their Muslim masters; Christians and Jews had to live under the laws set forth in the Koran, not under either their own religious or secular law; Christian’s and Jew’s word in a court of law was not equal to a Muslim’s Word; Christian and Jewish families had to give up a son for conversion and military service in Muslim armies and the most beautiful and largest Christian Churches were converted to Mosques. And the list goes on.
Today, 1300 years later, a Christian or Jew living in an Islamic country will still have to live nearly under these very same laws. I can see why the head of the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations would want us all to do “our part” to create such a world.
Regards,
2banana
No, it's not a hoax. They learned these things from the Sumerians, who learned it from the Annunaki.
bump for later read.
Actually, Catholic Christianity was very interested in philosophy and science, and just before Islam invaded Spain, Southern Spain was the one bright spot in the Dark Ages. St. Isidore of Seville published his huge compendium of “all human knowledge,” including the work of Aristotle and Classical scientists and philosophers, only decades before the Muslim invasion.
For various reasons, Southern Spain had not been thoroughly conquered in the barbarian invasions. The invaders were Germanic tribes that were mostly Arian Christians. They were similar to Muslims in their rejection of the Trinity and hence, of created nature, and as they spread across Europe, the effect of Arianism and other variants that followed it destroyed much of European/ME Christian culture and unity, particularly among the Byzantine churches. This in turn was one of the factors that made it much easier for Islam to pick up momentum.
The problem with Islam is that it can’t be “reformed.” Reform means that the essence of something is good and all you have to do is get back to that essence; the problem with Islam is that its essence is evil, and in fact Islamic “reform” movements are actually those that seek to root out any moderation or reason and go back to the purity of the vicious, superstitious theocratic political system dreamed up by Mohammed.
bump for posterity......
Mr. BetBasoo confirms it. Islam needs to be eliminated from the earth, as surely as the Nazis and the Soviet Communists (and, soon, the Chicoms).
Excellent post.
“.shoes...”
Thanks for the first laugh of the day!
They were my ancestors, too.
After reaching a zenith in 15th century Moorish Spain, Muslim civilization retreated back to the 7th century and had no Renaissance, Reformation nor Enlightenment. It was the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment that in the west lead to all the things that have advanced our civilization to where it is today.
Before-and-after pics of the Great Pyramid offer a good example of the influence of Arab rule. Before them, it was smooth white limestone all over, the most perfect structure man had ever built. After they skinned it and hacked a hole in the side, searching for loot, it looks like a mountain of perfect rubble.
What's amazing about this is that the Annunaki supposedly created the double helix to create man (the intertwined snakes) and the modern day inventor of the double helix discovered it while taking LSD. And then there's a hypothesis that the Lion at Giza actually had a Lion's head (based on measurements of the body vs. the head) and was altered by the Egyptians. Also, the weathering on the Lion's body is eerily similar to water erosion, which means the date is before 10,000 years ago. For me what's amazing is the fact that the pryamid sank 6 inches since its creation and the angles of the hole relative to astrology match exactly to 12,500 years ago.
Sure, Arabs did accomplish a lot. They ran caravans through the desert, and attacked and pillaged other people’s caravans. There wasn’t much else you could do in that environment.
Then along came Mohammed, an illiterate eccentric from a single-parent family, who hit on the right combination: fanatical religion as a cover for a thriving business of conquest and enslavements.
Considering how sly Arabs can be, it is remarkable how uncreative and uninventive they have been for all these years. One author has noted that the total gross domestic products of all Arab countries (not counting petroleum income) is less that the GDP of tiny Finland. Islamic Arabs are among the worlds most notable underachievers. Where they go, poverty follows.
“”... Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett Packard Corporation, in response to a speech she presented in Minneapolis on September 26, 2001. It is reprinted by permission. Please read and pass it on to others.””
don’t you remember ALL the scatology on PBS etc immediately following 911 ?
aRab contributions /history ?
we went wild.
I told my kids they couldn’t even invent a bobby pin or a Qtip.
bttt
cement “shoes” - Ha! That’s funny.
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