Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

World Arab writers vow to fight Israel's cultural influence
HaAretz ^ | 1/10/10 | Haaretz Service

Posted on 01/10/2010 1:09:23 PM PST by Nachum

The Arab Writers Union formed a Damascus bureau meant to prevent the infiltration of Hebrew terms into Arab culture, Israel Radio reported on Sunday, adding that the new group said it would prevent the "normalization" of cultural ties with Israel.

Hussein Jumaa, the head of the AWU, said that the formation of the new bureau was meant to curb the influence of Israeli culture on the Arab world.

(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Israel; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: arab; fight; israel; writers

1 posted on 01/10/2010 1:09:27 PM PST by Nachum
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Nachum

This is so like the French regarding English.


2 posted on 01/10/2010 1:12:49 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Nachum

Third world Barbarians against some of the greatest minds that ever walked the Earth. I’m betting on Israel.


3 posted on 01/10/2010 1:14:35 PM PST by fish hawk (It's sad that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. Isaac Asimov)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Nachum
Arab Writers?

What do they write? The formula for PETN?

(can't even get that right).

4 posted on 01/10/2010 1:18:22 PM PST by Blado (Hear Bambi talk about his "Holy Koodan" youtube.com/watch?v=tCAffMSWSzY)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dennisw; Cachelot; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; Lent; GregB; ..
Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

5 posted on 01/10/2010 1:47:21 PM PST by SJackson (In wine there is wisdom, In beer there is freedom, In water there is bacteria.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Blado
Well, it's been a while.
6 posted on 01/10/2010 1:50:43 PM PST by Pharmboy (The Stone Age did not end because they ran out of stones...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Nachum

“Hussein Jumaa, the head of the AWU, said that the formation of the new bureau was meant to curb the influence of Israeli culture on the Arab world.”

Hmmm ... this is very good. Please, Arab world, cut off all links to Israel and Jews, and do be sure to do without any innovations derived therefrom. Let’s see now ... the Jews will continue to produce for the benefit of humanity, on a per capita basis compared to the Arabs, MANY more scientific results, technological innovations, contributions to medicine, law, scholarship of all kinds, etc. (For example, 1 (!) Muslim Nobel Laureate in physics, with a world population of more than 1.2 billion muslims, and 47 Jewish Nobel Laureates in physics with a world population of 14 million Jews.)

And the Arabs? Setting aside Arab, and indeed, Muslim, contributions made many centuries ago (when, frankly, the competition was a Europe mired in the Dark Ages - i.e., not much competition, so that merely being literate put one ahead), the recent Arab/muslim contributions are mainly restricted to rock throwing and pederasty. Good luck with that.


7 posted on 01/10/2010 2:01:39 PM PST by leebee vmizrach
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Nachum

Would someone please elaborate on Arab culture?


8 posted on 01/10/2010 2:20:17 PM PST by golf lover
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: golf lover

The Arts in the muslim world are nearly all in the “secondary” or “Decorative Arts” category.

For example, instead of GREAT WRITING, we see great Calligraphy.

Instead of great paintings, there are symmetrical carpets done to a pattern.

Instead of innovative architecture, there is stilted derivative architecture, covered with exquisite mosaics which, is , of course, also done to a strict pattern.

Part of this can be attributed to the Koran’s prohibition against making images of living things, but it may also be because of Islam’s communal and conforming nature.

It is the nature of the true artist to WANT to rise above the crowd. This desire pushes the artist to ever increasing levels of creativity and expertise until he finally bursts forth with something that generations will cherish.

The closest thing in the Islamic world to that would be the Taj Mahal, which like nothing else in that genre, was motivated by LOVE.


9 posted on 01/10/2010 2:38:03 PM PST by left that other site (Your Mi'KMaq Paddy Whacky Bass Playing Biker Buddy)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

Comment #10 Removed by Moderator

To: Nachum
And now, the Arab Writer's Shaheed Chorus with their latest composition:

The Jooos, the Jooos, the e-evil Joooss,
We hate it when they make the news,
It makes us cry in our our burnoose,
and pound our heads with someone’s shoes.

11 posted on 01/10/2010 3:01:03 PM PST by GAB-1955 (I write books, love my wife, serve my nation, and believe in the Resurrection.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Nachum

“The Arab Writers Union”

all five writers..


12 posted on 01/10/2010 3:11:11 PM PST by dervish (I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Nachum
There have been a lot written about the lack of books in Arabic. Did a little search and came up with this:

Google found the same remarkable U.N. statistics on Aljazeera: although there are approximately the same number of Spanish and Arabic language speakers in the world (270 million), more books are translated into Spanish in a single year than have been translated into Arabic in the last millennia!

Here is one of the roots of their problems as a cutlure.

13 posted on 01/10/2010 3:18:54 PM PST by engrpat (A village in Kenya is missing their idiot...lets send him back)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: AdmSmith; Berosus; bigheadfred; Convert from ECUSA; dervish; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Fred Nerks; ...

thanks Nachum.

Israel dips into hummus world record
ABC Australia | Sat Jan 9, 2010 | Ben Knight
Posted on 01/10/2010 11:33:34 AM PST by fishhound
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2425282/posts


14 posted on 01/10/2010 6:51:10 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Happy New Year! Freedom is Priceless.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Nachum

time to fire the big gun:


November 7, 2001

Carly Fiorina

Hewlett-Packard

3000 Hanover Street Palo Alto,

CA 94304-1185

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-Mulsims 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, 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; see here.) 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 the author lists the significant translators and interpreters of Greek science. Of the 22 scholars listed, 20 were Assyrians, 1 was Persian and 1 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 which 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. For more information, refer to the web links below. You may contact me at keepa@ninevehsoft.com for further questions.

Thank you for your consideration.

Peter BetBasoo


15 posted on 01/10/2010 7:34:54 PM PST by Fred Nerks (FAIR DINKUM!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Paleo Conservative

Or French tariffs on American films. The very fact that they feel compelled to do this is itself revealing.

Arabic has so many words in it that are close to or virtually identical to their Hebrew equivalent, they’re going to have problems.

Aval ein baya. Beseder.


16 posted on 01/11/2010 2:34:18 PM PST by Eleutheria5 (www.publishedauthors.net/benmaxwell/index.html, http://sites.google.com/site/thevuzvuz/)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson