misunderstanding

Submitted by Abdul Rahman Reijerink (Australia), Jun 30, 2006 at 10:40

Dear Spanky,

glad to see the tone chilled down.

As a student of Ancient History, it would be very embarrasing to assert that muslims invented mathematics, when there are such interesting reports in Livy(?) about the marvelous contraptions designed by maths used to defend Syracuse from Roman assault.

No, what I meant was that Muslim scientists made many important contributions to the natural sciences like mathematics cartography and astronomy. google that! Do you remember doing algebra, well what sort of name does that sound like? It comes from a word meaning "the restoration".The zero did not exist untill muslim scientists invented or discovered it. How to calculate using decimals was advanced tremendously by a Muslim scientist. One of the first books translated from Greek was by Euclid. Muslims in former years took the Qur'anic injunction to go and study the creation to find proofs of the majesty, mercy and wisdom of its creator seriously. It is largely through the translations into Latin that Europe got kickstarted out of the "Dark Ages" ("western" science historians say this stuff), interestingly often via the medium of Jewish scholars who understood the arabic.

As an aside, it is considered rude to address someone as abdul, a more polite form would be abdul rahman or shorten to abdullah. an easy mistake to make.

Thank you for recognising that the evil perpetrated by sinners in the name of my religion has no basis in it.

As a christian, I think you could look more to the small details for defing the criterion of good, it is not just earth shaking events that desreve this attention. Yes, there is a lot of stagnation in Islamic practise and the culture of the believers, but this does not mean that Islam does not continue to enrich the world we live in on a daily basis. I am a better person for it in so many ways, and so are many who had gone well beyond the pale of civilised society like murderers, who now accept the evil of their deeds and have repented and refromed. This is a beautiful mercy from God.

The meek shall inherit the Earth.

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