Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Obama, Islam and Science

Speaking to the Muslim world from Cairo recently, President Barack Hussein Obama talked about the contribution of Islamic civilization to the world of science and discovery. He said, “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar University — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing.”

As with other parts of the Obama speech, the reference to Muslims' scientific contributions has also become the subject of debate. A prominent critic of Obama's acknowledgment of Islamic contribution is Professor Frank Tipler of Tulane University, America's right-wing scientist and author of "The Physics of Christianity".

Tipler questions Obama's speech in an attempt to diminish the contribution of Muslims by calling them a "conduit" of knowledge from ancient Greeks and dismisses the idea of any Islamic contribution beyond that. The only exception he makes is for Dr. Abdus Salam of Pakistan. Here is how Tipler talks about Salam: "There was one truly great “Muslim” physicist, the Nobel Prize winning Pakistani, Mohammed Abdus Salam. I put “Muslim” in quotes, because Salam belonged to the Ahmadi sect of Islam, a sect that accepts modern science. But in 1974, the Pakistani parliament declared the Ahmadi sect heretical, and its members are currently being persecuted in Pakistan. Contemporary Muslim historians generally do not list Salam as an important Muslim scientist. Had he remained in Pakistan, he quite possibly would have been killed."

The assertion that Muslims or Pakistanis do not take pride in Dr. Salam is patently false. Dr. Pervez Hoodhoy, Chairman of the Physics Dept. at Islamabad University, regards Dr. Salam as his inspiration, as do many other Pakistani scientists.

The claim of Muslims as being mere "conduits" of knowledge has been rejected in "Lost Discoveries" by Dick Teresi. Says Teresi, "Clearly, the Arabs served as a conduit, but the math laid on the doorstep of Renaissance Europe cannot be attributed solely to ancient Greece. It incorporates the accomplishments of Sumer, Babylonia, Egypt, India, China and the far reaches of the Medieval Islamic world.

Tipler's claims are further exposed by Teresi by his description of the work done by Copernicus. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, a Persian Muslim astronomer and mathematician, developed at least one of Copernicus's theorems, now called The Tusi Couple, three hundred years before Copernicus. Copernicus used the theorem without offering any proof or giving credit to al-Tusi. This was pointed out by Kepler, who looked at Copernicus's work before he developed his own elliptical orbits idea.

A second theorem found in Copernican system, called Urdi lemma, was developed by another Muslim scientist Mu'ayyad al-Din al-Urdi, in 1250. Again, Copernicus neither offered proof nor gave credit to al-Urdi. Columbia University's George Saliba believes Copernicus didn't credit him because Muslims were not popular in 16th century Europe, not unlike the situation today.

Tipler completely ignores the great contribution of another giant of science from the Islamic world, Ibn Haitham (Alhazen), who developed the "Scientific Method". Alhazen is also considered the father of modern optics. The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled us to see. The first person to explain that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab word qamara for a dark or private room). He is also credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.

The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of Egypt in 953 after he demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink in a reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a combination of gravity and capillary action.

The algebra as we know today came from the Muslim world. Al Khwarizmi wrote the first book on algebra. The term "algebra" was first used by him. Al Khwarizmi was born about 790 in Baghdad, Iraq, and died about 850.

The word for "Algebra" comes from the Arabic word for "al-jabr" which means "restoration of balance" in both sides of an equation. Algebra was based on previous work from Greeks, Alexandrians in Egypt, and Hindus who had preserved the work from ancient Egyptians and Babylonians.

In the ninth century, al-Khwarizmi wrote one of the first Arabic algebras with both proofs and examples. Because of his work, he is called "the Father of Algebra." Al-Khwarizmi was a Persian born in the eighth century. He converted (changed) Babylonian and Hindu numerals into a workable system that almost anyone could use. He gave the name to his math as "al-jabr" which we know as "algebra".

A Latin translation of al-Khwarizmi's book on algebra appeared in Europe in the 12th century. In the early 13th century the new algebra appeared in the writings of the famous Italian mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci. So, algebra was brought into Europe from ancient Babylon, Egypt and India by the Arabs and then into Italy.

In his 1864 book "The History of the Intellectual Development of Europe", English-born American scientist J.W. Draper wrote that “I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has contrived to put out of sight our scientific obligations to the Mohammedans. Surely they can not be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancor and national conceit cannot be perpetuated forever".

Tipler appears to part of the campaign to deny credit to Arabs, Persians or Muslim for their significant contributions to humanity. Clearly, he, and others like him, are not happy with Obama's outreach to Muslims. He is simply using the Obama speech to advance his agenda.

Here's a documentary on Islam narrated by Benazir Bhutto:



Here's a video of a BBC documentary about Al Andalusia or Muslim Spain:

 

Related Links:

Obama Speaks to the Muslim World

Lost Discoveries by Dick Teresi

Physics of Christianity by Frank Tipler

What is Not Taught in School

How Islamic Inventors Changed the World

Jinnah's Pakistan Booms Amidst Doom and Gloom

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

The assertion that Muslims or Pakistanis do not take pride in Dr. Salam is patently false.

No kidding. That's why Zia put up an official "Pakistani" candidate for a UN position against Dr Salam. Oh, and that he wasn't given a proper "Muslim" burial. Pakistan has chosen to identify with that intellectual and cultural wasteland called Saudi Arabia. We're seeing the glorious fruits of that association.

As for Barry Obama's eloquent words on "civilizational debt" there's one word to describe that: pandering. Droning on about seminal contributions 1000 years ago amounts to manufacturing the light at the end of the loooong tunnel.

Naveen KS said...

In India Ahmedias are free to profess their version of Islam unlike in Pakistan.

Anyways I would like to bring to ur and other Pakistanis' notice about what Indian Muslims think about Obama's speech.


http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20090605&fname=jason&sid=1

wajid ali babar and kiran khan said...

زندگی بے وفا کیوں ہوتی ہے

وفا کرنے کی سزا کیوں ہوتی ہے

چھوٹی سی بات پہ بہا دیتے ہیں خون

انسان میں اتنی اناء کیوں ہوتی ہے

کرتا ہوں میں جس سے باربار توبہ

الہی مجھ سے وہی خطا کیوں ہوتی ہے

بناتے تو ہیں ہم اپنے ہاتھوں سے مسجد

نماز اپنی ہی پھر قضاء کیوں ہوتی ہے

Anonymous said...

It is all illusion. Science tells us in all kinds of ways, there is no such thing as a solid object.

This doesn't avoid believing there are solid objects, however.

For practical reasons, see the video on the following site:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4232897377629019446

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a quote from Paul Davies who also happens to be a physicist

" The numerical values that nature has assigned to the fundamental constants, such as the charge on the electron, the mass of the proton, and the Newtonian Gravitational constant, may be mysterious, but they are critically relevant to the structure of the universe that we perceive. As more and more physical systems from nuclei to galaxies have become better understood, scientists have begun to realize that many characteristics of these systems are remarkably sensitive to the precise value of the fundamental constants. Had nature opted for a slightly different set of numbers, the world would have been a very different place and WE WOULD NOT BE HERE TO SEE IT."

Known as the Anthropic principle in cosmology, this is not disputed by a single physicist, what is disputed is how to get around its logical conclusion of a God.

Another famous physicist Einstein was one of the founders of quantum mechanics, yet he disliked the randomness that lies at the heart of the theory. God does not, he famously said, play dice. However, quantum theory has survived a century of experimental tests, although it has yet to be reconciled with another of Einstein's great discoveries - the general theory of relativity.

Riaz Haq said...

Here is an interesting excerpt from an article on the evolution of modern hospitals in the Islamic world, written by François P. Retief and Louise Cilliers:

During the Golden Age of Islam the Muslim world was clearly more advanced than its Christian counterpart with regard to the magnificent hospitals which were built in various countries, institutions which eventually became the true forerunners of the modern teaching hospital.

Riaz Haq said...

Arab protesters demand democracy, but not secularism, says Michael Scheuer, former Bin Laden hunter at the CIA:

The Arab world’s unrest has brought forth gushing, rather adolescent analysis about what the region will look like a year or more hence. Americans have decided that these upheavals have everything to do with the advent of liberalism, secularism, and Westernization in the region and that Islamist militant groups like al-Qaeda have been sidelined by the historically inevitable triumph of democracy—a belief that sounds a bit like the old Marxist-Leninist claptrap about iron laws of history and communism’s inexorable triumph.

How has this judgment been reached? Primarily by disregarding facts, logic, and history, and instead relying on (a) the thin veneer of young, educated, pro-democracy, and English-speaking Muslims who can be found on Facebook and Twitter and (b) the employees of the BBC, CNN, and most other media networks, who have suspended genuine journalism in favor of cheerleading for secularism and democracy on the basis of a non-representative sample of English-speaking street demonstrators and users of social-networking sites. The West’s assessment of Arab unrest so far has been—to paraphrase Sam Spade’s comment about the Maltese Falcon—the stuff that dreams, not reality, are made of.

A year from now, we will find that most Arab Muslims have neither embraced nor installed what they have long regarded as an irreligious and even pagan ideology—secular democracy. They will have instead adhered even more closely to the faith that has graced, ordered, and regulated their lives for more than 1400 years, and which helped them endure the oppressive rule of Western-supported tyrants and kleptocrats.

This does not mean that fanatically religious regimes will dominate the region, but a seven-year Gallup survey of the Muslim world published in 2007 shows that a greater degree of Sharia law in governance is favored by young and old, moderates and militants, men and even women in most Muslim countries. While a façade of democracy may well appear in new regimes in places like Egypt and Tunisia, their governments will be heavily influenced by the military and by Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda. If for no other reason, the Islamist groups will have a powerful pull because they have strong organizational capabilities; wide allegiance among the highly educated in the military, hard sciences, engineering, religious faculties, and medicine; and a reservoir of patience for a two-steps-forward, one-step-back strategy that is beyond Western comprehension. We in the West too often forget, for example, that the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda draw from Muslim society’s best and brightest, not its dregs; that al-Qaeda has been waging its struggle for 25 years, the Muslim Brotherhood for nearly 85 years; and that Islam has been in the process of globalizing since the 7th century.

As new Arab regimes develop, Westerners also are likely to find that their own deep sense of superiority over devout Muslims—which is especially strong among the secular left, Christian evangelicals, and neoconservatives—is unwarranted. The nearly universal assumption in the West is that Islamic governance could not possibly satisfy the aspirations of Muslims for greater freedom and increased economic opportunity—this even though Iran has a more representative political system than that of any state in the region presided over by a Western-backed dictator. No regime run by the Muslim Brotherhood would look like Canada, but it would be significantly less oppressive than those run by the al-Sauds and Mubarak. This is not to say it would be similar to or more friendly toward the West—neither will be the case—but in terms of respecting and addressing basic human concerns they will be less monstrous.

Riaz Haq said...

Islamic Science Rediscovered
California Premiere
Limited Engagement. Opens Saturday September 3, 2011 at The Tech Museum in Silicon Valley, CA.

Did the Wright brothers soar in the sky first?
Was Leonardo da Vinci the first to describe "machines of the future"

* Centuries before Orville and Wilbur Wright took flight, Abbas ibn Farnas was soaring over the hilly Spanish countryside in a one-man glider - a thousand years before the famed Wright flight in North Carolina.
* Al-Jazari busied himself laying the foundations of modern engineering and writing the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices in 1206, where he described fifty mechanical devices along with instructions on how to build them, more than 200 years before Leonardo da Vinci became revered for his technological ingenuity.

Challenge your perspective.
Long overlooked or often misattributed, the remarkable contributions of Muslim scholars in science and technology have quietly floundered as no more than common footnotes of world history.

Designed to unearth the scientific know-how of an Islamic Golden Age that is all too strange and unfamiliar to Western culture, discover the innovation, science, and technology mastery of one of today's most misunderstood cultures in Islamic Science Rediscovered.

This global touring exhibition celebrates the contribution of Muslim scholars to science and technology during the Golden Age of the Islamic World (circa 8th to 18th centuries CE) and the influence of their discoveries and inventions on contemporary society.

Amazing ancient Islamic inventions are brought to life by more than 40 stations with interactive and sensory exhibits and videos to recreate the ingenuity. The exhibition covers the main fields of Islamic scientific endeavor including: architecture, arts, astronomy, engineering, exploration, fine and utilitarian technology, flight, mathematics, medicine, options and water control.

http://www.thetech.org/islamic_science_rediscovered/

Riaz Haq said...

In his book "On China", Henry Kissinger mentions the name of Zeng He, a 15th century Muslim admiral, who commanded the first Chinese Navy and made seven major expeditions under Emperor Yongle during Ming dynasty.

He was the great great great grandson of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a Persian who served in the administration of the Mongolian Empire and was appointed governor of Yunnan during the early Yuan Dynasty.

Kissinger says that the world history would have been very different if the Chinese emperors who succeeded Yongle had not decided to end the expeditions.

Riaz Haq said...

Atheist Richard Dawkins has recently disparaged Muslims by pointing out that the entire Muslim world has had fewer Nobels (10) than Cambridge's Trinity College (34). While Dawkins is correct in that assertion, it;s important to recognize that the history of humanity is not just 100 years old. It did not begin with the launch of Nobels in 1901. It stretches much further back. The defining work of Muslims in earlier centuries included development of decimal number system (still called Arabic numerals), Algebra, the idea of algorithms, first camera, fountain pen, etc. In "Lost Discoveries" by Dick Teresi, the author says, "Clearly, the Arabs served as a conduit, but the math laid on the doorstep of Renaissance Europe cannot be attributed solely to ancient Greece. It incorporates the accomplishments of Sumer, Babylonia, Egypt, India, China and the far reaches of the Medieval Islamic world." Teresi by his description of the work done by Copernicus. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, a Persian Muslim astronomer and mathematician, developed at least one of Copernicus's theorems, now called The Tusi Couple, three hundred years before Copernicus. Copernicus used the theorem without offering any proof or giving credit to al-Tusi. This was pointed out by Kepler, who looked at Copernicus's work before he developed his own elliptical orbits idea.

A second theorem found in Copernican system, called Urdi lemma, was developed by another Muslim scientist Mu'ayyad al-Din al-Urdi, in 1250. Again, Copernicus neither offered proof nor gave credit to al-Urdi. Columbia University's George Saliba believes Copernicus didn't credit him because Muslims were not popular in 16th century Europe, not unlike the situation today.


http://www.riazhaq.com/2009/06/obama-islam-and-science.html

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Detroit Free Press piece on Muslim contributions in the United States:

It has been said that ignorance and prejudice go hand in hand. If anyone can prove that statement true, it’s Michigan Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema.

Following a litany of inflammatory questions about the contributions of American Muslims, some lawmakers have amped up calls for his resignation. While publicly renouncing his bigoted views is important, it is also necessary to reject them because they are riddled with falsehoods.

On Facebook last month, Agema shared a widely circulated blog that highlighted the charity work of the Catholic church before asking a series of mocking questions about Muslims. Some included: Have you ever been to a Muslim hospital? Have you heard of a Muslim orchestra? A Muslim marching band? Have you witnessed a Muslim charity? Can you show me one Muslim signature on the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, or Bill of Rights? Have you ever seen a Muslim do anything that contributes positively to the American way of life?

The questions were intended to be rhetorical, with an implicit answer of “no” resounding after each one. Muslims, Agema believed, had not done any of these things. But a closer examination of history proves that Muslims have done many of them. They are an important and integral part of America’s national fabric and contribute in many meaningful ways to its success and growth.

■ American Muslims have a substantial presence in the health care industry. The Islamic Medical Association of North America, one of many such organizations, estimates that there are more than 20,000 Muslim physicians in the United States. Similarly, an analysis of statistics provided by the American Medical Association indicates that 10% of all American physicians are Muslims. While no Islamic hospitals exist in the United States, per se, several Muslim-based health clinics do. And let’s not forget that the hospital itself is not an American invention — it’s an Egyptian one. For that matter, the father of modern surgery wasn’t an American Protestant pioneer, either, but a 10th-Century Muslim physician from Spain, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi.

■ Criticism over the absence of Muslim orchestras in the United States rings hollow, as well. Few orchestras are comprised exclusively of members from one particular faith, and many are organized along ethnic or other lines. The National Arab and New York Arabic Orchestras are two examples of groups whose members include numerous Muslims. Similarly, marching bands are obviously affiliated with high schools or universities, not mosques or churches, and surely Muslim students make up these musical groups, which, as it turns out, trace their roots back to the military bands of the Muslim Ottoman empire. The violin, too, finds its origins within the 10th-Century bowing instruments of Islamic civilization.

■ Muslim charity groups in the United States are too numerous to catalog, though the Bay Area Islamic Networks Group, the UMMA Clinic in Los Angeles, the Chicago-based Inner-City Muslim Action Network and Dearborn’s ACCESS are examples of groups that provide crucial services and empower the underprivileged. In 2013, the Muslim charity Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD) was rated among the top 10 charities in the United States....


http://www.freep.com/article/20140128/OPINION05/301280121/dave-agema-racism-gay-remarks-muslim-republican-gop-michigan

Riaz Haq said...

Here are excerpts of an interesting discussion on debates of Imam Al Ghazali (AlGazel)vs Ali Sina (Avicena) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) during Omayyad and Abbasid periods:
-----------
he eleventh-century Arabic-language skeptic Al-Ghazali, known in Latin as Algazel wrote a diatribe called Tahafut al falasifa, which I translate as “The Incompetence of Philosophy.”

Algazel’s attack on “scientific” knowledge started a debate with Averroës, the medieval philosopher who ended up having the most profound influence of any medieval thinker (on Jews and Christians, though not on Moslems). The debate between Algazel and Averroës was finally, but sadly, won by both. In its aftermath, many Arab religious thinkers integrated and exaggerated Algazel’s skepticism of the scientific method, preferring to leave causal considerations to God. The West embraced Averroës’s rationalism, built upon Aristotle’s, which survived through Aquinas and the Jewish philosophers who called themselves Averroan for a long time. Many thinkers blame the Arabs’ later abandonment of scientific method on Algazel’s huge influence. He ended up fueling Sufi mysticism, in which the worshipper attempts to enter into communion with God, severing all connections with earthly matters.
------------
there’s a lot more to this that you’re missing.

the true debate was between ghazali and ibn sina, known as “avicena.” “averoes,” ibn rushd, (see my notes on him below) came later. ghazali’s “incoherence of the philosophers” was a full-blown, line by line, refutation of ibn sina’s major works.

ibn sina (avicena) did much more than just face off with al ghazali. his life’s work was to mesh greek philosophy with monotheism. this was incredibly important because it saved christian civilization the trouble. this debate between ghazali and ibn sina had several hundred years of historical precedence in the islamic world, and it would continue after both their deaths. this process of synthesis took quite a few iterations of “islamicization” (read: “monothisation”) of greek thought, starting first with the translation of greek texts into arabic and persian, and ending not only with their study, but their eventual enveloping into a monotheistic world view. bare in mind, while all this was going on, europeans were farming dirt and cutting each other’s heads off at the beginning of the dark ages.

ibin sina is considered to be the master of this synthesis of monotheism and greek philosophy – ibn rushd, who came after, was able to use ibn rushd’s work, whereas only one man before ibn sina came close to the achievement (al farabi). when ibn sina’s works entered the christian world, he served up the hundreds of years of work that muslim philosophers had done to make greek thought palatable to a monothesitic reality. at that time (the end of the european dark ages), christians were far more punishing to heretics than muslims – if you had dropped greek thought into europe without the work that ibin sina had done, anybody who had read it out loud would have had their balls chopped off shortly before being burned at the stake. such a seed would have never had the chance to grow.
-------

The difference between Christian/Western civilization’s progress (Al-Ghazali influenced Kant later on) and Islam’s is that, when we challenged pure reason with theology/spirituality in the philosophical ring, our theology won. Not hard to do since ours was a more strictly guarded and authentic tradition. It was all straight from the mouth of the religion’s founder.

----

My own response on the subject in the same forum some time later during a discussion on Ibn Rushd (Averroes),

http://difaa0.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/did-al-ghazali-stifle-science-and-innovation-in-the-muslim-world-re-orthodox-islam-and-asharis-vs-mutazilah-in-science/

Riaz Haq said...

Two-thirds of the stars have Arabic names. We use Arabic numerals. Words like Algebra and Algorithm are from Arabic. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an American astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium, discusses how Islamic scholars contributed to the Islamic Golden Age and how over time independent reasoning (ijthad) lost out to modern institutionalised imitation (taqleed) present in the wider islamic society today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDAT98eEN5Q

Riaz Haq said...

From Huffington Post:
Here, the Huffington Post Germany presents eight things we owe to great Muslim civilizations.

1. Algebra

Many Westerners, Germans in particular, are proud of their feats of technology and engineering. But where would engineers be without algebra?

The mathematical system became known in Europe in the twelfth century, when British Arabist Robert of Chester translated the writings of Arab scholar Al-Khwarizmi. Al-Khwarizmi, for whom algorithms are named, is known as the developer of modern algebra.

2. The toothbrush

Islam was the one of the first world religions to place particular emphasis on bodily hygiene. The Qur’an includes instructions for ritual washing. It is no wonder, therefore, that dental hygiene also grew in popularity as Islam did. Admittedly, the ancient Egyptians are thought to have chewed on twigs from the “toothbrush tree.”

However, the twigs, also known as “miswak”, only became known to a wider public when the Prophet Mohammed regularly used them to brush his teeth. While there is no mention of miswak twigs in the Qur’an, they are mentioned many times in writings by Muslim scholars.

3. Marching bands

Military marching bands date back to the Ottoman Mehterhane. These were bands which played during the entire battle and only ceased their music-making when the army retreated or the battle was over.

During the wars with the Ottoman Empire, the bands are thought to have made a considerable impression on European soldiers – after which they adapted the principle for their own use.

4. The guitar

The guitar, as we know it today, has its origins in the Arabic oud – a lute with a bent neck. During the Middle Ages, it found its way to Muslim Spain, where it was referred to as “qitara” in the Arabic of Andalusia.

It is said that a music teacher brought one to the court of the Umayyad ruler Abdel Rahman II in the ninth century. The modern guitar developed as a result of many influences, but the Arabic lute was an important predecessor.

5. Magnifying glass/glasses

Not only did the Arab world revolutionize mathematics – it also revolutionized optics. The scholar Alhazen (Abu al-Hasan) from Basra was the first person to describe how the eye works.

He carried out experiments with reflective materials and proved that the eye does not sense the environment with “sight rays,” as scientists had believed up until then. He also discovered that curved glass surfaces can be used for magnification.

His glass “reading stones” were the first magnifying glasses. It was from these that glasses were later developed. Furthermore, Alhazen wrote important scholarly texts on astronomy and meteorology.

6. Coffee

Coffee is the best known of the Muslim world’s exports. While it originated in Ethiopia, it soon found its way over the Red Sea to the Arabian peninsula, where it grew in popularity.

It is thought that an Ottoman merchant brought the bean-based beverage to London in the 17th century. Venice gained its first coffee house in 1645, while Germany got to know the drink following the retreat of the Turks from Austria in 1683. Legend has it that the Sultan’s soldiers left sackloads of coffee behind.

7. Hospitals

The first modern hospital with nurses and a training centre was in Cairo. In the Ahmed Ibn Tulun hospital (named for the founder of the Tulunid dynasty), which was established in the year 872, all patients received free health care – a Muslim tradition which was institutionalized with the advent of the hospital.

8. Surgical Innovations

The Andalusian-born doctor Albucasis (Abu al-Kasim) was one of the most significant medical figures of the Middle Ages. In the more than 30 volumes he wrote, the tenth-century Arab scholar described how important a positive patient-doctor relationship is, and argued for the same standard of medical care for all, regardless of social class.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/06/8-inventions-we-can-thank_n_6424836.html

Riaz Haq said...

What if I told you that Islam once produced the world's most scientifically advanced and intellectually productive civilization?

It's true, and you'll probably hear more about it, this being 2015, the United Nations International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies, in which Islamic science will be showcased.

Many Americans might find far-fetched the idea that Islam spawned the most advanced and sophisticated civilization of its time -- especially now that some Islamic sects slaughter thousands of innocents in their bloody campaign to spread tyrannical Sharia law.

Yet Islam's Golden Age, extending from the 7th century to the 13th century, flourished while Europe and Christendom wallowed in the Dark Ages. Western society was considered a backwater, if considered at all.

Islam generated impressive advances in medicine, chemistry, physics, mathematics, astronomy, optics and philosophy. It created cities, observatories and libraries, and it engaged in far-flung commerce well before Christopher Columbus set sail.

Credit Islamic genius for the magnetic compass and navigational innovation, for algebra and the refinement of the numbering system that originated in India, for papermaking and the scientific method. While Greek and Roman learning faded in the medieval West, Islamic scholars were preserving and enlarging it -- long before the European Renaissance or Age of Enlightenment.

All this and more will be spotlighted during the International Year, which will open Jan. 19 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris and will aim to raise awareness of light science and its importance to mankind.

And by doing that, it necessarily will have to highlight Islamic achievements. For example, the opening event will focus on the multiple accomplishments of the 11th century polymath Ibn al-Haytham in optics, mathematics and astronomy. The Golden Age will get more attention Sept. 14 during a conference on its impact on "knowledge-based society."

So, what went wrong? How did Islamic society fall from one so open and inquisitive to the repressive and closed one that has produced few scientific advances and staggering intolerance?

Historians have offered complex and conflicting explanations that seem to fall along two lines: (A) It's our fault. Or, (B) it's their fault.


Read more at http://www.arcamax.com/politics/opeds/s-1604819

Riaz Haq said...

Why do all the planets have Arabic names?

Where did much of math come from?

Algebra? Algorithm?

Niel deGrasse Tyson explains Islam 800-1100 AD

Astrolabe, Celestial Navigation

Neil deGrasse Tyson, an American astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium, discusses how Islamic scholars contributed to the Islamic Golden Age and how over time independent reasoning (ijthad) lost out to modern institutionalized imitation (taqleed promoted by Al Ghazali) present in the wider islamic society today.


And then revelation replaced investigation and Muslims declined.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDAT98eEN5Q

Riaz Haq said...

Did #Arab #Muslim Scholars Discover #Evolution in the Ninth Century? Inb-Khadun al-Jahiz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-asher/did-arabic-scholars-disco_b_11165778.html … via @HuffPostScience

It may not be a coincidence that many aspects of our understanding of the world have roots in this age. Arab and Persian scholars (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) not only translated the writings of the Greeks, but also made original contributions about mathematics, medicine, and social science (among other topics). Regarding biology, one of the more interesting claims that surfaces from time to time concerns evolution:

The theory of biological evolution in its complete form was presented by a great early zoologist, al-Jahiz in the ninth century.
wrote the Turkish theologian Mehmet Bayrakdar in a 1983 issue of the London-based Islamic Quarterly. But in its complete form?
Not quite. There are indeed some tantalizing quotes that evoke evolutionary ideas from medieval Arabic scholars. The Englishman John William Draper famously referred to “The Mohammedan Theory of Evolution” in his 1874 book History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, probably in reference to the Arabic scholar Ibn Khaldun, who wrote in his 14th century The Muqaddimah,

creation ... started out from the minerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner, to plants and animals. The last stage of minerals is connected with the first stage of plants, such as herbs and seedless plants. The last stage of plants, such as palms and vines, is connected with the first stage of animals, such as snails and shellfish ... the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the first stage of the next group.
And 500 years before Khaldun, al-Jahiz articulated a kind of biological selection in his Kitab al-Hayawan (Book of Animals).
In 1930, the Spanish scholar Miguel Asin Palacios translated one such passage from al-Jahiz:

In sum, no animal can survive without nourishment. The hunting animal cannot escape being hunted. Every weak animal devours those that are weaker; every strong animal cannot avoid being consumed by those that are stronger.... God, in sum, made some beings the cause of life to others, and in turn made these the cause of death to yet others.
These two observations—- continuity of existence across different forms of life (and indeed non-life) from Ibn Khaldun, and a struggle for existence among individuals from al-Jahiz—- are indeed relevant to the contemporary theory of biological evolution. However, this is a far cry from “biological evolution in its complete form”. First of all, the goal of al-Jahiz’s Book of Animals was, according to the German historian Herbert Eisenstein, “not actually the study of animal species, but a proof of the existence of the Creator that is evident from his creation“ (p. 122 in Einfürung in die arabische Zoographie). Moreover, al-Jahiz was a gifted philosopher and theologian interested in biology, not vice-versa. He saw free will and the autonomy of God’s creation as the reason why animals were “created” with the means (e.g., claws, fangs, spines) to attack others and defend themselves. According to Einsenstein (continuing the passage quoted above), al-Jahiz wrote that

when you see an animal ... of great danger, and concerning whom Man must be very careful, such as snakes and wolves provided with fangs ... thus may you know ... that God—- sublime and powerful is He—- gives to the steadfast, those who understand that free will and rational experience could not exist if the world were purely evil or entirely good.
Whether or not you think this argument is convincing (and it remains a key part of modern religion’s approach to theodicy), the point is that al-Jahiz was less interested in the natural mechanisms by which life became diverse over time than he was in understanding nature in the context of monotheistic philosophy.

Riaz Haq said...

Did #Arab #Muslim Scholars Discover #Evolution in the Ninth Century? Inb-Khaldun al-Jahiz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-asher/did-arabic-scholars-disco_b_11165778.html … … via @HuffPostScience


It may not be a coincidence that many aspects of our understanding of the world have roots in this age. Arab and Persian scholars (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) not only translated the writings of the Greeks, but also made original contributions about mathematics, medicine, and social science (among other topics). Regarding biology, one of the more interesting claims that surfaces from time to time concerns evolution:

The theory of biological evolution in its complete form was presented by a great early zoologist, al-Jahiz in the ninth century.
wrote the Turkish theologian Mehmet Bayrakdar in a 1983 issue of the London-based Islamic Quarterly. But in its complete form?
Not quite. There are indeed some tantalizing quotes that evoke evolutionary ideas from medieval Arabic scholars. The Englishman John William Draper famously referred to “The Mohammedan Theory of Evolution” in his 1874 book History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, probably in reference to the Arabic scholar Ibn Khaldun, who wrote in his 14th century The Muqaddimah,

creation ... started out from the minerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner, to plants and animals. The last stage of minerals is connected with the first stage of plants, such as herbs and seedless plants. The last stage of plants, such as palms and vines, is connected with the first stage of animals, such as snails and shellfish ... the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the first stage of the next group.
And 500 years before Khaldun, al-Jahiz articulated a kind of biological selection in his Kitab al-Hayawan (Book of Animals).
In 1930, the Spanish scholar Miguel Asin Palacios translated one such passage from al-Jahiz:

In sum, no animal can survive without nourishment. The hunting animal cannot escape being hunted. Every weak animal devours those that are weaker; every strong animal cannot avoid being consumed by those that are stronger.... God, in sum, made some beings the cause of life to others, and in turn made these the cause of death to yet others.
These two observations—- continuity of existence across different forms of life (and indeed non-life) from Ibn Khaldun, and a struggle for existence among individuals from al-Jahiz—- are indeed relevant to the contemporary theory of biological evolution. However, this is a far cry from “biological evolution in its complete form”. First of all, the goal of al-Jahiz’s Book of Animals was, according to the German historian Herbert Eisenstein, “not actually the study of animal species, but a proof of the existence of the Creator that is evident from his creation“ (p. 122 in Einfürung in die arabische Zoographie). Moreover, al-Jahiz was a gifted philosopher and theologian interested in biology, not vice-versa. He saw free will and the autonomy of God’s creation as the reason why animals were “created” with the means (e.g., claws, fangs, spines) to attack others and defend themselves. According to Einsenstein (continuing the passage quoted above), al-Jahiz wrote that

when you see an animal ... of great danger, and concerning whom Man must be very careful, such as snakes and wolves provided with fangs ... thus may you know ... that God—- sublime and powerful is He—- gives to the steadfast, those who understand that free will and rational experience could not exist if the world were purely evil or entirely good.
Whether or not you think this argument is convincing (and it remains a key part of modern religion’s approach to theodicy), the point is that al-Jahiz was less interested in the natural mechanisms by which life became diverse over time than he was in understanding nature in the context of monotheistic philosophy.