Muslim Claims of Accomplishment--What Arab Civilization?

ChristiansOfIraq.com | Frontpagemagazine ^ | January 04, 2008 | Peter BetBasoo

[SJackson]

 

Muslim Claims of Accomplishment

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.

 

[RightWhale]

It was over once the Mongol Horde desrtoyed Baghdad and slaughtered the occupants. Spain hung in there a while longer, but it was over and hasn’t been back. Old empires don’t come back. EVER.

[ears_to_hear]

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?

Excellent article. One only needs to look at the 3rd/4th world conditions in the Arab countries to see that without investment and technology from other cultures would still be riding camels and living in tents. Islam ties the human spirit, unlike Christianity that frees it. its rules and regulations and violence make its members the slaves of islam with no time, desire or energy to innovate.

People that can not show any real accomplishments re write history. That seems to be what the professor was trying to do

[Aquinasfan]

Islam will never develop an intellectual tradition, simply because they believe, in their exaggerated notion of God’s free will, that God is “free” to be irrational. Christians regard human reason as a participation in the mind of God. Muslims do not. They regard rationality as a restriction on God’s so-called freedom to do good or evil.

[Vor Lady]

Shiney! Fellow Browncoat?

[windcliff]

ping

[GreenOgre]

We’re all just folk.

[Paul Ross]

Bump.

[Mrs. Don-o]

The term "Liberal" is like one of my sweaters that's been stretched too often to cover too much--- I find it way too elastic to apply meaningfully to religious controversies, and especially to controversies of the 16th century.

We're too prone to repeat the sins of "Whiggish history", mainly the idea that there was always a "progressive" and a "reactionary" side, that the "progressives" were always right, and that the opinions of sensible people of any century were always amazingly close to "our" (and especially "my") ideas right now.

I'm an agnostic in the Church of Progress.

[allmendream]

I am more interested in if the Assyrians were the ancestors of the Azir who Thor Heyerdahl thinks were the Aesir described in Norse Mythology, than if the Hittites were related to the Jews. Snorre Sturlason, who wrote in the 1200’s about the viking discovery of America (long before 1492); wrote that the Aesir migrated from the Black Sea region around 90 B.C. to flee Roman expansion, and conquered northern Germany, Denmark and Southern Sweden; and their chiefs or ‘godi’ became the ‘gods’ of the Vikings -Odin, Frey, Freya, Thor, etc.

According to the author of the article of this thread the Assyrians were a pretty sharp and influential group, I had heard the same!

[BlueDragon]

Not that I have anything in particular to base it upon, but I do wonder if some went from the Black Sea Region, North through Russia, then bend to the West to end up in Scandinavia, long before 90 BC. We do have strong evidence of Norse making the "return" trip, in later years. How did they know where to go? Just wondering...

[allmendream]

God chastizing Israel.....

Thy mother was a Hittite, and your father was an Amorite (and smelled of elderberries). Abraham did not come from nowhere, he came from a city and a people. A semetic city and a semetic people. I dont think it is literal in the sense of having an actual Hittite mother and an Amorite father, but they are saying, I think, that the semetic people are all ‘cousins’ of a sort.

Book of Ezekiel

16:44 Behold, every one that useth proverbs shall use [this] proverb against thee, saying, As [is] the mother, [so is] her daughter.

16:45 Thou [art] thy mother’s daughter, that lotheth her husband and her children; and thou [art] the sister of thy sisters, which lothed their husbands and their children: your mother [was] an Hittite, and your father an Amorite.

16:46 And thine elder sister [is] Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand: and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, [is] Sodom and her daughters.

16:47 Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as [if that were] a very little [thing], thou wast corrupted more than they in all thy ways.

16:48 [As] I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.

16:49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

[allmendream]

There was more migration and trade and movement during that time than you would think. There was the fabled “amber road” where amber was moved north to sell for furs. They found Caucasian looking people with Eastern European looking artifacts buried in the deserts of China. Marco Polo wasn’t the first, just the first to publish. Snorre Sturlason says the migration route of the Aesir was up through Russia, and Thor Heyerdahl points out that if you took boats upriver from the Black Sea, it is a short jaunt over to a river that will take you to the Baltic. Herodotus wrote around 400 B.C. that the Sarmatian people had boats that they would send downriver from Russia with a donkey and cargo, sell the cargo for other goods, fold the boat into a wagon and haul it back up river with the donkey.

More than just strong evidence of the Norse making the return trip. It is written all over history. The famed Vangarian guard of the Byzantine kings were Norse mercenaries. The famous Norse king Harald Hardrade (hard to ‘read’) served in the Vangarian guard when a messenger from home told him his father was dead and his brothers son had claimed the throne. He went back to Norway by boat (usually they went overland)burning and looting as he went. He looted one city and his men were pleased. When they came to the next city his men were daunted because it was so large, but seeing that birds nested in the roofs of the houses he set his men to catching the birds and tied embers to their feet to set fire to the houses, and they looted the town while the town fought the fire. The next city was even larger, but he pretended to be sick and dying and want to convert to Christianity before he died, they obliged him. When he died and it was asked that he be buried in consecrated earth they agreed to let his casket and unarmed casket bearers come inside the city to bury him; whereupon he lept from the casket which was full of weapons and took the gate and looted the city. He was King of Norway after the mysterious death of his co-ruling nephew, but that got boring (no looting and burning), so he went to England to support the rebellion of Harold of Northumbria against Harold Godwinson the King of England.

There was a peace meeting and Harald Hardrade, Harold of Northumbria and the messenger of Harold Godwinson conversed. Harold Godwinson agreed to recognize Harold as lord of Northumbria if he would swear loyalty to Godwinson as King of England. Harold of Northumbria asked “And what of Harald of Norway who has fought so hard on my behalf?” and was told “Of him the King says he shall gain of England SIX FEET OF EARTH or that much more that he is taller than other men.”

They fought a big battle and Harald Hardrade got an arrow in the throat and gained that six feet of English soil (or that much more that he is taller than other men).

And that was just ONE story of the interaction! But a fun one. ;)

T

[RobbyS]

The Protestant Reformers were anything but “progressive,” since they stood for a retrograde motion. to return the Church to its New Testament roots. Historical development in the great international society of the Church was seen as corruption. To a greater or less extent, they all saw themselves as prophets of the End of times. The only thing they and in commom with the “prophets” of the Enlightenment was that they looked forward to a “New Jerusalem.” But reformers and philosophes had very different images of that city.

[G8 Diplomat]

The Arabs mostly built on stuff that was already invented...algebra was already known, but they advanced it--the world algebra comes from Arabic al-jabr. Numbers came from India, but they did invent the symbol for the zero (not the concept of the zero, that came from India too). They knew a great deal about geometry (which was started by the Greeks) as shown in their artwork and architecture. They made lots of advances in medicine...the names Al-Razhes and Ibn Sina come to mind...I've forgotten what Ibn Sina did but al-Razhes wrote a large book about medicine that became the reference book for doctors thereafter.

And then came their worst invention sometime in the 7th century....

[G8 Diplomat]

A few of the ‘Arabic’ numerals don’t look too different from the Western ones, just rotated slightly in some cases. When the West first recieved these numbers they appeared as 0987654321 in the original translated documents because Arabic is written from right to left.

[G8 Diplomat]

Actually the best thing that I can think of ever written by an Arab is this:

"[S]edentary life becomes the last stage of civilization and the point where it begins to decay. It also constitutes the last stage of evil and of remoteness from goodness.... [S]edentary people have become used to laziness and ease. They are sunk in well-being and luxury. They have entrusted the defense of their property and lives to the governor who rules them, and to the militia which has the task of guarding them.... They are carefree and trusting, and have ceased to carry weapons. Successive generations have grown up in this way of life." -- Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah, 1377

Ain't it the truth. Sounds just like life today. Gun control, laziness, luxury living, trusting of the government and expecting it to take care of all the whims of the populace (nanny state).....Mohammed wasn't a prophet, maybe this guy was, lol

The 1001 Nights is another example, but it wasn't just the Arabs, it was Persians and people from all over that region of the world who contributed to it.

(And of course, we all know what the worst thing written by an Arab was....)

[Dad yer funny]

FR bookmark

[G8 Diplomat]

It’s kind of a shame. Given the advances in mathematics, etc that occurred in the Middle East, it’s a shame that Islam has pretty much squashed the advance of that society.

It really is. Islam holds them captive and blocks the way for advancement and progress, leaving them stuck in the 7th century. If only the Arabs had been Christian....imagine how much nicer the world would be today.

[Azeem]

“When the West first recieved these numbers they appeared as 0987654321 in the original translated documents because Arabic is written from right to left”

I can read and write Arabic :)

Numbers in Arabic are written left to right like English. Don’t ask me why.

[G8 Diplomat]

I can read and write Arabic

Me too, but not very much. I just started Arabic 101.