| superchunk said: Granted, I’m sure they were not allowed to come out and openly denounce Islam, but that would be the only real difference between the Arab Empire then and the common use of Freedom of Religion in the western world now. (1) What do modern inventions have to do with any of this thread? You mention these as if the foundations of most of this were not based in various parts of the world including the Arab/Islamic empire. Where did the foundation of all higher math come from? (Algerbra) (2) Why is the numbering system used by the entire world called the Arabic numeral system? (3) Who saved the, essentially, entire Greek thought and literature from devastation? (4) Who had the largest and first real world library, until it was destroyed by the Mongols, who themselves very soon afterward became Muslim? (5) Who advanced the study of the stars far beyond where the Greeks and others started? (6) Who created distillation, purification, oxidization, ethanol, 2,000 various medical substances, various highly used acids, arsenic, coffee, restaurants, sugar refining, tons of spices put into foods (this is mainly towards the west), kerosene, petroleum industry, various specialties in pottery and fabrics, kerosene lamp, waste removal, surveying instruments, modern soap, toothpaste, perfumes and deodorants, Agencies, College, charitable trusts, drugstores, medical schools, public hospitals (including the sanitation of), various forms of automation (including programmable), abacus (i.e. the first computer), various pump designs, gas masks, adhesive bandages, surgical suture, tracheotomy, marching bands, fireproof clothing, abus gun, metal cased rocket artillery, mechanical analog computers of various types for navigation, basis of observation tubes which later begat the telescope, homing pigeons, scientific method itself, guitar,(7) … |
(1) Non-islamic people had much less rights than islamic people in islamic countries. Non-christians and non-jews had almost none.
(2) Algebra is pretty basic mathematics and it comes from India. It's called algebra because it was introduced to Europe through the Arabs.
(3) Same as above. Europeans didn't know it was invented by indians.
(4) Medieval monks. On the other hand the islamic conquest of the Byzantine empire almost wiped them out. The final destruction of the library of Alexandria happened during the early islamic rule by the way.
(5) Libraries are an invention of the late antiquity.
(6) The (hellenistic) greeks already knew the size of the circumference of the earth, the mechanics behind the tides, the eliocentrism and a lot of things. Not to mention the calendar, which is a pretty difficult astronomical task.
(7) You may be surprised to know the origin of the most part of these things.
By the way, Saudi Arabia and Yemen abolished slavery in 1962, UAE in 1963, Oman in 1970.
