Aristotle vs. Allah

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jan 6, 2012 at 10:16

BB King wrote :

> Ianus, first it seems that you still view me as a Muslim or favoring Islam, when I keep on telling you that I am an atheist.<

Do you know what country was the first to diplomatically recognize Saudi Arabia? The USSR ! Islam has had in its history so many and so improbable defenders, apologists and fellow travelers that I am not surprised at all that an (alleged?) atheist like you moves boldly to the front row to whitewash and defend it.

> You said "when your Islam burns books," what do you mean by my Islam? I have no relation to Islam.<

I take back the possessive pronoun "your" but still I think that by your defensive action on behalf of Islam you have more to do with it than you realize. I am afraid though that Moslems will "reward" your spirited defense of it one day just as the Saudis rewarded the Soviet atheists for championing ibn Saud's kingdom internationally.

> I think you're frankly biased in my opinion and have a myopic view of history and configure it to reflect your views.<

Well, I conclude from the above that unlike me you're not "biased", have no "myopic view of history" and don't "configure it to reflect your views".

You make far-reaching claims which it will be very interesting to compare to reality.

> You wrote that the Muslim world is in (or was in rather) opposition to "all Hellenism stands for."

That's simply not true. The Muslim world embraced Hellenism for a time being and made great advances in science, technology and other branches of knowledge.

The source I am about to give you for this is an anti-religion website so please don't dismiss it as being pro-Muslim, it is actually a site for skeptics and it criticizes Islam in other articles.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/baghdad-summer.html

<

Will you agree that words mean something ,which is tantamount to saying that they don't mean arbitrarily anything else and definitely not their very opposites? Will you agree in other words that Aristotle's law of non-contradiction has universal validity ? To refresh your presumably excellent knowledge of ancient Greece let me remind you that in his Metaphysics (B.4c.3 ) Aristotle says :

" Evidently then such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect; we must presuppose, to guard against dialectical objections, any further qualifications which might be added. This, then, is the most certain of all principles, since it answers to the definition given above. For it is impossible for any one to believe the same thing to be and not to be, as some think Heraclitus says. For what a man says, he does not necessarily believe; and if it is impossible that contrary attributes should belong at the same time to the same subject (the usual qualifications must be presupposed in this premiss too), and if an opinion which contradicts another is contrary to it, obviously it is impossible for the same man at the same time to believe the same thing to be and not to be; for if a man were mistaken on this point he would have contrary opinions at the same time. It is for this reason that all who are carrying out a demonstration reduce it to this as an ultimate belief; for this is naturally the starting-point even for all the other axioms."

Now as I notice that you are not very particular about semantics and distinguishing meanings, let me ask you how you understand "Hellenism"? Does it mean anything, including its opposite, to you ? Am I mistaken judging that you have no clear idea of what it is as your dubious site quoted suggests ?

Let me note that , first, the authors of the site haven't bothered to make use of any books published before 1980-ies and knowing what politically correct spirit prevails in our epoch let me express my doubt of this resource which is ,secondly, reinforced by the unwillingness of the authors to include anything that might even hint at a doubt about the idyllic picture of early Islam they outline. I wouldn't refer therefore to the webpage as "the source" because strictly speaking there are no sources there worth the name (i.e. original evidence, documents etc.), but a few arbitrarily collected books from which arbitrary quotes were made to prove a definite preconceived and politically correct point of view and which can't hold against Aristotle's law of non-contradiction.

Hellenism means a definite thing which you can't arbitrarily distort to make the opposite of its meaning. At its core lies "η παιδεία" "paideia" (Werner Jäger needed 3 thick volumes to describe this concept) - Hellenic education based on a free rational, humanistic worldview. This worldview doesn't accept anything without evidence, without critical discussion and inquiry. It does reject anything which is absurd,illogical,contradictory and inhumane. This is what in short Hellenism stands for.

Now let's take a look at what Islam, the Quran and Allah stand for! Islam is obscurantism par excellence! It's a primitive,arbitrary,irrational, supremacist and inhumane worldview reflecting a low stage of mental and social development. It's a violent dogma spread and imposed by terror and kept alive by deceitful lies and propaganda with rigorous exclusion of any free thought and inquiry and punishing those who reject its absurd claims with death. Islam's religious views are unverifiable,gross and primitive. Its founder was a notoriously illiterate and perverted gangster.Its mythology is unimaginative and vulgar and ridiculous. Allah is the ultimate, omnipotent, cruel and bloody monster.

Now given the meaning of the two notions how can you seriously assert that "the Muslim world embraced Hellenism"? Have the Muslim world that allegedly "embraced Hellenism" relegated the Quran to its only rightful place - the dustbin of history- as the Hellenic spirit requires ? Or how can your authors you call "the source" in earnest make us believe in "Hellenized Moslems","enlightenment", " a crucible of innovation"? Why do they call enslaving human thought by a violent barbarian cult "preserving and extending much of classical knowledge"? And the most incredible sentence of all is this "Muslim intellectuals adapted knowledge to the needs of Islam, but for the most part they were free to explore wide horizons and made inventions and discoveries unimagined in Christendom." A religion which proudly calls itself slavery (=Islam) allows out of a sudden its followers to be "free to explore" anything??? I'd be interested to know how this "freedom" can in principle coexist with Islam's claims to be "the only true knowledge" making of all things non-Islamic "jakhilya" or "stupidity", "ignorance"? Does your "source" - which looks like pasted verbatim from a CAIR or another Islamic website - address the issue? Of course,it doesn't as , ironically enough, Islamic sites don't either. So maybe your Islamizing atheists are waiting for the Moslems to invent a good lie to paste it unto their own site and to add it to the explanation that explains nothing "In a tragic irony, the Islamic world, trapped in oligarchic theocracy, stultified further development and began centuries of stagnation and decline."

What Moslems do with Hellenism is well illustrated by the way they - to quote you - "embraced Hellenism" in its very cradle - Athens. "If it was not in 1458 that the Parthenon was made the Main Mosque of Athens conquered by the Turks, then at the latest in 1460 the angry sultan Mehmed II must have given order to change it into a mosque. So the second metamorphosis of the stunning temple of Pallas Athena took place[...]Inside the temple the Muslim mirbar or pulpit was set up and the mihrab or prayer niche was directed towards holy Mecca.Soon in the south-west corner of the temple , in the former traesure-room of Pallas Athena , a tall minaret was erected which was higher than once the statue of Pallas or the tower of the Francs. It was the most conspicuous symbol of the Islamic rule of the Turks over the city. From that moment on up the steep stairs built from ancient stones five times a day a muezzin used to climb to the top of the minaret to proclaim in his shrill voice into the silence of the humiliated and oppressed city of Solon and Plato that Allah is the only god and that Muhammad is his true prophet". (F. Gregrovius, History of the city of Athens in the Middle Ages, Dresden 1927 , p.556 )

This is what happens when Islam enslaves a civilization. It bears little resemblance to the fairy tale you are trying to sell here of "The Muslim world embraced Hellenism", doesn't it ?

And by the way it is the deep reason why Islam means invariably regress and decline.Islam like every parasite perishes with the host it sucks dry and destroys.

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