Islam is not bad, too many of you are ignorant of history.

[superchunk]

Booh! said:

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.

1) Every society the ruling party has advantages over the others. However, I was referring directly to religious freedoms and in that Islamic empire was centuries ahead of anyone else at the time and FAR more advanced that today's Muslim nations. This supports my OP in that Islam is not the cause of this extremism, but its the extremists themselves and their made up Hadiths.

2) You're basically right. The basics of what became algebra do date to Indians. However, Arabs are the ones who finalized it as a distinct math discipline as well as much of its techniques. From Wikipedia:

While the word algebra comes from the Arabic language (al-jabr, الجبر literally, restoration) and much of its methods from Arabic/Islamic mathematics, its roots can be traced to earlier traditions, most notably ancient Indian mathematics, which had a direct influence on Muhammad ibn MÅ«sā al-KhwārizmÄ« (c. 780–850). He learned Indian mathematics and introduced it to the Muslim world through his famous arithmetic text, Book on Addition and Subtraction after the Method of the Indians. He later wrote The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, which established algebra as a mathematical discipline that is independent of geometry and arithmetic.

3) I actually did not know this. I thought only the concept of zero came from Indians, but the use of a decimal based system stemmed from Arabic.

4) I wouldn't fully agree here. When the Roman Empire fell to barbarians, Greek literature was being tossed out. The Islamic Caliphs had already begun translating and hording great literature from the rest of the ancient world and among that was the Greek literature. This is specifically why a lot of astronomy uses Arabic words, which were simply translated from previous Greek names and works. Also, the Library of Alexandria's destruction is not actually known. There are some Arab sources that claim it was from Arab invaders, but many disagree with this for various reasons. Is it possible, yes, is it fact, no.

http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm

5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom This is the library I was referring to. I did not state it was the invention of all libraries, just the first that's specific intent was to house all the world's knowledge. Granted, that title of 'first' probably belongs to the Library of Alexandria, but none the less, this library shows the great lengths the Islamic empire went for in studying information and knowledge. Something its clearly not known for now, but was an essential part of early Islam where there was no distinction or confrontation between science and religion.

6) Again, I did not state they invented Astronomy. Just propelled the tools and knowledge base from what they gained in Greek literature. Many unique tools and the beginnings of the telescope all stem from this expansion of the study of astronomy.

7) You may be simply washing aside anything an Arab or Muslim has accomplished over time. I prefer to stick to actual history and historians view points.

8) What does slavery have to do with this? First of all, slavery in the Qur'an is heavily mitigated and based on those rules it is no where near the same as slavery in the US. There are more ways to get a person out of slavery in Islam than to be a slave. Fact is, slavery was simply a part of society then and isn't even discussed in other religious literature, so by that can we take it to mean it was also accepted in any form for others?