Reply

Submitted by ahmed (Canada), Apr 10, 2007 at 21:13

There are more historians who agree than those who disagree, you've attempted cherry picking by recalling wrongs and overlooking contributions. We all expect a little more honesty in arguments.

Some beautiful monuments left to tell the truth in cities of Europe on one end and India's famous architecture of the mogul dynasties are a witness to some contributions, which loudly express the engineering and artistic genius preserved in them.

Not only Islam, but other faiths too condemn philosophical attempts that try to reshape the form of faith one has established. In Christianity it goes further than that, it also condemned scientific contributions of Galileo and Copernicus to name a few.

Not to ignore Al Ghazali, the famous Descartes have based his works on the latter's contribution which is quite condemned by many scholars today.

I bet you forgot to recall, while cherry picking some great contributors, naming two only is enough: Gaber bin Hayyan (the father of modern chemistry) and Ibn Khuldoun (the father of historiography and forerunner of sociology), I named one from science and one from humanities showing the interest in both the scientific areas of life as well as the social exploration (unlike the nomadic impression given).

Yes, the civilization deteriorated, the Mongols did it and threw hundreds of thousands of books into the river, causing a great loss (the ignorant themselves didn't know back then).

Why do you go so far as the Persian empire and compare it to Iran in theory as practicing slavery, when you have a very recent example of actual practical slavery in America? Unless of course you somehow are inclined towards America and refuse to recall anything wrong in their history just as you refuse to recall any good of the Islamic one!

I almost forgot, let's talk about Nobel PEACE PRIZE, it took me only 10 minutes of Internet search to come up with enough evidence, here are two:

NORWATCH, a news service, revealed that parts of the Nobel Foundation's capital is administered by a fund manager (The American investment management firm T Rowe Price) who is a major investor in missiles and cluster bombs.

The Foundation has refused to reveal which companies it invests in and has no ethical guidelines for how its capital should be used, reported the Norwegian paper DAGASAVISEN.

Two examples are Lockheed Martin, which produces parts of cluster bombs and advanced nuclear missiles, and Honeywell International, which has a central role in the USA's nuclear weapon's program.

And I save the best for last, in 1938; Hitler Adolf was nominated for the Nobel peace prize!!!

I need say nothing more than this to show that the base of judging people throughout humanity's history upon a short lived span of Nobel prize or any other is unfair, for if we look back, we could credit the wheel to the Sumerians, the pyramids to the Egyptians, etc.

Back to our main topic, if you deny islam being any different than the taliban in the past, you're being unjust, today's taliban and yesteryears' islam are way different and we need to strongly distinguish between the two cultures. Also, an advise is crucial, that we need to look closer at both edges of an argument, we all here expect our arguments to stand the test of honesty and justice if we intend to act like scholars with opinions;

with thanks

ahmed

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