Folks are just too fast to give the "camel jockeys" credit for things that the "camel jockeys" JUST APPROPRIATED for themselves.
They liked to fight, seize other folks homes because they WERE NOMADS...with the arrival of mohamed, he wanted them to settle down and also,to spread his POWER/religion by the sword. They did..and now we have had 9/11 and other jihad cr@p!!
Look for more "fun" and thrilling exploits of "super camel jockey" in the coming weeks...darn it.
Next they will claim to have invented FLYING GREAT BIG AIRPLANES INTO VERY TALL BUILDINGS IN ORDER TO KILL OR MAIM PEOPLE IN THE U.S.A.....or perhaps, even sending anthrax through the mail.
AH, progress....jihad style...
YUK!
Without Islam, we would not even know half of the Greeks we know today. After the Romans fell, no one in Europe gave a damn about the Greeks, but Islam kept the knowledge alive.
Islam also produced the world's first real "Historian/Social Scientist" in the sense that prior to Ibn Khaldun, history was a mere retelling of facts without explanation. Ibn Khaldun demonstrated that there were natural cycles in the history of empires and regimes. Everything was ultimately caused by Allah, but there were many explained intermediary effects due to causes.
I would also wager based on similarities in reasoning that Adam Smith, the first "economist" had read Ibn Khaldun at some point. Their explanations for the division of labor are quite similar.
Islam's Golden Age may have been a LONG time ago, but it was a true golden age with MANY, MANY accomplishments.
From an Islamic site, Meccacentric
And of course, Indian knowledge was also transmitted to West Asia, not only in the field of medicine and astronomy, but in mathematics. That's one of the reasons why today, we borrow from the Indians what is called the Arabic 'zero'. It came to us from India but it was popularized in the West by the Muslims. So it is now identified as the Arabic numerals, because the Arabic numerals carried to the West the concept of a 'zero'. We wouldn't have computers today if that civilizational knowledge was not borrowed from the Arabs by way of the Indians."The Arabs didn't invent "Arabic numerals" or algebra. They acted as a bridge for developments in India, as well as a library for Greek thought.
Thread over. The Arabs have added "zero" to civilization.
Advances. Algebra (Al-Gebra), early theory of medicine and sanitation, dissemination of the use of suturing (don't recall if it was original to them or not), changes in arch style that led to the flying buttress, improved steels, preservation of the works of the early philosophers, dissemination of "Arabic" numbering, advances in geometry and number theory, advances in stellar navigation, advances in ship and sail design...
One of the things about Islam is that it calls for a pilgrimage to Mecca to be made at least once in each person's life. And the Koran calls for learning as an absolute positive. The combination, up until the 14th-16th century or so, meant that Islam was a _major_ positive force for learning and change. Scholars were treated the way that we treat rock stars and travelled throughout the Dar Al Islam with impugnity. Groups would be gathered by Kaliphs and think and expound and develop and invent. In its heyday, Islam was a center of learning and culture. However, right at its peak there was a philosophical split between the followers of Averroes, who believed that the Koran could only be truly understood by the literate, and for all others it had to be interpreted, and the Fundamentalists who believed that each statement had to be obeyed in a Fundamental way.
Guess who won?
...try, MCMXCIX for 1999...:)
So Obama is a Muslim?