[Helms]

Ping

[LurkedLongEnough]

...written by Baghdad Bob.

[CasearianDaoist]

Again the leftist con game of the backwardness of "Europe."
by focusing on northern Europe they totaly disregard Byzantium - the seat of European knowledge of the day. The Hellenic input into the middle ages was a direct result of greek scholars being force out of the east by the rising Turks - not some sort of "transfer" from the Arab but rather a migration from the old eastern empire. It was Greek and Latin that they were translating, not Arabian.

Also, the apogee of "intellectual culture" in the Isalmic world came during the Ottoman period. Many of the the key groups in the Sultans' governments were eastern Europeans taken in childhood from Eastern Europe. Also, the few innovations from islam come mostly from the Farsi world with its rich mixture of pre-islamic cultures.

This myth of parity in intellectual and cultural contributions bewteen the West and Isalm is a myth of liberal elites in both worlds.

I cannot understand why no oone ever publically debunks this outright lie.

[freeangel]

"it was important to find points of contact between Christanity and Islamic convergence"

Islam found an important point of convergence when it attacked the Twin Towers.

quran(9:11) For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughtout the lands of allah and for a while some of the people trembled in despair, still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of allah and there was peace.(notice the verse)

[joesnuffy]

Muslims can be charming, affable, intelligent, and your best friend
in the end if you are a Jew or Christian

(& if you are stupid enough to allow it or
put yourself in the position for them to easily do it....)

It is their sacred duty ....to convert or kill you

-Hey nothin' personal..it's just business

[rintense]

What a load of crap.

[.cnI redruM]

Helms,

The original rise of Islam proved anomolous and was enabled, in part, by miscalculations on the part of Eastern Roman Emporer Justinian.

1) Justinian deployed Belisarius on a lost cause campaign that expended the vast majority of Constantinople's deployable resources. This grinding conflict on The Italian Peninsula that made The Vietnam War look well-managed.

2) Justinian made peace with Persia and pulled forces away from it's Eastern frontier and made almost no effort to protect it's trade outposts in North Africa.

3) The Mediterranian cultures of the 7th century were totally unprepared for the fanatical nature of the original Muselman movement after the Hygira.

So, in a nutshell, Justinian squandered an excellent military machine and failed to adequately defend his Eastern border and the nature of the opponent faced was unknown.

Also, while a lot of intelligent people did originally come from Muselman cultural backgrounds, a lot of the enlightenment that modern Islamic Cultures claim as their own contribution was taken from the Mediterranian Basin as a spoil of war in much the same way that The Roman Republic appropriated and then assimilated Greek art, literature and philosophy.

Henri Pirenne's historical masterpiece "Muhammad and Charlemagne" basically debunks the idea that Justinian was a great Byzantine Emporer and explains how The Muselman religious movement was able to get control of the wealthiest parts ot The Mediterranian Basin in about a century and a half.

[Happy2BMe]

Is the author's view of "Islamic World Renaissance" reality?

Islam can only rise and expand through military conquest. This is historical fact.

True, the philosophical and cultural differences between Islamic nations (The East) and Christian nations (The West) can be viewed as two separate civilizations in competition with each other.

Both profess a divine appointment, calling, mission, and spiritual reference points. Muslims point to the Koran while Christians point to the Bible. Both the Koran and the Bible point to God as the Author of their faith and the source of their strength, but that is where the similarities end.

Islam's code requires Jihad to perpetuate itself in "unbelieving" nations resistent to the teachings of Muhammed.

Christianity's code requires mercy, forgiveness, and a turning away from violence and hatred even towards those resistent to the teachings of Christ.

The act of proselyting a Muslim by a Christian in an Islamic nation is punishable by death. In fact, Christianity itself is outlawed in most Islamic nations (and ultimately punishable by death).

The act of proselyting a Christian by a Muslim in a Christian nation has no legal or physically harmful ramifications to the Muslim.

The Muslim in a Christian nation is free to proselyte whereas a Christian in a Muslim nation does so at the risk of death.

This struggle will continue until Islamic nations cease to expand Jihad into Western Christian nations. Or until their desire to do so is broken by military brute force.

Of course, this reality may not be universally accepted in either Islamic or Christian cultures.

For that matter, what is reality?

[dead]

the likelihood of the Islamic world regaining its foothold in history and becoming again a mighty intellectual, scientific and, inevitably, military force.

Hopefully, if that happens, Charlton Heston’s spaceship from the past will crash-land there and he’ll straighten things out.

[LiteKeeper]

INTREP

[Publius6961]

Islamic World Renaissance/Becoming again a mighty intellectual, scientific,inevitably, military force

Again?
Again?

One out of three ain't bad. For the ignorant and the propagandists.

Islam is efficient only as a military force, if allowed to do so.
Everywhere it has spread its cultural filth it always appropriates, gathers and uses the local existing knowledge, uses it, keeps it secret and immediately arrests all intellectual inquiry.

It doesn't take a mental giant to see why they are all still stuck in the 8th century (except in weapons research).

Continue treating them as normal homo sapiens at our peril.

[FairWitness]

How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe

"From the fall of Rome to the rise of Charlemagne -- the "dark ages" -- learning, scholorship and culture disappeared from the European continent. The great heritage of western civilization -- from Greek and Roman classics to Jewish and Christian works -- would have been utterly lost were it not for the holy men and women of unconquered Ireland." (from the book jacket)

[<1/1,000,000th%]

It was the Abbasid dynasty, founded after an internal Muslim coup in the year 750, that absorbed the Hellenic legacy at a time when, under Charlemagne, Europe intellectually withered.

And where is the evidence for this cultural achievement?? There has to be more than just translating Indian and Latin into Arabic.

[Southack]

It isn't a clash of civilizations so much as a clash of cultures.

And the Islamic world has lost the culture war already, even if it still maintains some semblance of a civilization (and make no mistake, compared to some war zones in Africa and South America, many parts of Arabia and Persia look downright civilized).

As a culture, Muslum boys are spoiled and exalted by their mothers. They are not expected to do much of the household work, and they have a religious aversion to taking mundane jobs such as those found in manufacturing. Nor does the Islamic culture look kindly on those who work in the service industries, many of whom are considered to be no better than slaves.

And while that sort of elitist attitude might work OK for a rich Saudi shiek, it fails to properly educate and innovate throughout the full society. The rich shiek thus has power only because he can sell something such as oil that has was given for free; something that will eventually run out (cultures think in terms of millenia). Those few in the Muslim world who have great wealth can indeed have power so long as they maintain that wealth, but that's a system based upon financial power (and rather limited financial power at that) rather than upon a dynamic, innovating, thriving Western culture where more patents are filed every day than oil wells or mines are drilled or dug.

And it is because Muslims subconsciously recognize that they have lost the culture war that they are so depressed, angry, and violent in their dying defense of their own system.

[eyespysomething]

I got a book my in-laws were throwing out titled "The Last 2 Million Years" full of fascinating info on past civilizations.

The advances made by Arabs, Islam, the Persians et al were a tremendous benefit to the world.

The point they are at now is a pity, because they have frozen in time, from a time long long ago. Why? Dunno.

They used to allow unbelievers to live amongst them, but only as second class citizens. I am unsure when the "kill all the infidels" came about.

But one cannot dismiss their achievements to the modern world. They mapped stars, invented the almanac( an arabic word), invented the numbering system which we use today, invented paper, explained why the sun and moon appeared larger on the horizon, developed the basis for modern algebra(another arabic word) geometry, trig, calculus, in fact they were one of the first peoples to use the scientific method for experimentation. They also translated many Greek works into Arabic, which were then passed to early Europeans who translated them back into their languages. Many of these would have been lost during the Dark Ages of Europe.

Yes, Islam now sucks. It is a religion without tolerance, full of hate, which promotes killing to further its agenda.
But thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago, they contributed much to the world.

[denydenydeny]

Indexing.

[Billthedrill]

Silliness. Those characteristics of the Islam that existed between around AD 800-1200 are not a part of the current fundamentalist interpretation at all, these being religious tolerance, cultural openness, and the ability to integrate existing infrastructure essentially unchanged. None of that exists in the hard-line theocratic model around which the fundamentalists are designing their fantasy worlds. The likelihood of any intellectual renaissance in the presence of this sort of stifling orthodoxy is nil. How, I wonder, do commentators such as this one anticipate any result different from the universally dismal one such governments have shown in the past?

[tet68]

faiths it had to be realized that human knowledge could never be more than conjectural. If there is a truth, it can be understood only by means of mystical intuition.

Bill Clinton WROTE this, didn't he?