Cool thanks! I'll look into those.

It is interesting how the Islamic world fell from being (perceived as?) the centre of knowledge it once was.  I was just reading about 1001 Arabian Nights today, and Baghdad was totally cosmopolitan back in the day.  

I'm also really intrigued by the rise of conversion to Islam in the UK, and what appeals to people about it.  

It certainly seems to offer a lot of community to deprived areas, and I think that really appeals. I lived in two very run down inner-city areas of Nottingham Uk for about 7 years. The one that was dominated by agnostic white folks was a really bad scene.  Loads of drugs, alcohol and gun problems (by uk standards)  The one which was inhabited by predominantly asian muslims was poor, but very, very friendly and safe by comparison. Family bonds seemed very strong, and there was a good work ethic. It sounds cliched, but it was abundantly clear on the ground.  They also did awesome curry for everyone, for free at the muslim community centre, which was awesome when I was extremely poor!

I think those kind of things has given Islam a growing appeal over here amongst the very poor.  Its a definite bringer of order and values where secular society and the anglican church fail miserably.  Just my own anecdotal type observations.  I suppose we should get back to talking about omg evul muzloms bombing everyone who isn't wearing a hijab. Or something...

Quote from: HodgsonI think those kind of things has given Islam a growing appeal over here amongst the very poor. Its a definite bringer of order and values where secular society and the anglican church fail miserably. Just my own anecdotal type observations. I suppose we should get back to talking about omg evul muzloms bombing everyone who isn't wearing a hijab. Or something...

I was just about to put on my Dominus Nox mask and remind you that even a broken watch is right twice a day.

!i!

Fundamentally Islam is very much about community, moreso than even Christianity.  Recall if you will that one of the Five pillars of faith is Charity, or the giving of alms if you wish.

Mohammed took to his preaching because, in part, he was dismayed at how the local power structure of Mecca, and by extension the Arabic tribal culture, treated orphans and the dispossessed.  Islam was sort of a 'meta-tribe' made up of all muslims, with duties and responsibilities towards the most needy members of the community.  Taken from his teachings, and as intended, Islam is certainly just as 'nice' a faith as the Christianity of Jesus, and a bit more organized.

There is a lot of goodness in that, and a wide based appeal in community minded individuals.

As for the Fall of the Islamic world: The Muslims did not really invent all those advances in math, science and learning. Many of them were imported from India, or the Jewish scholars, or even the west. As they grew more settled, more... decadent if you will, they veiwed themselves more as the center of the world, and thus anything from outside was viewed as inferior (or else it would have been revealed to the faithful first), and thus unworthy of concern.   This ranged from their dismissal of generated electricity as a 'toy with no value' to something as mundane as clocks and measured time.  The sweeping problems that came from their rejection of measured time can be found in music and the military, among other applications. In other words, the Islamic world stagnated into the second class 'region' it became, and remains to this day.

Dude, chemistry alone owes a debt to the discoveries of some of the Arabic alchemists of antiquity.

People don't think much of the term alchemy these days, picturing mad wizards trying to make gold from lead and all that, but it was the foundation of what would become chemistry, and the Arab world was a big contributor to the world of alchemy.

Well, certainly they were keepers and patrons of the sciences at a time when things were less enlightened elsewhere.

!i!

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaWell, certainly they were keepers and patrons of the sciences at a time when things were less enlightened elsewhere.

!i!

All cultures, societies, and civilizations have their golden ages and their downturns.

The Middle Ages were one of the great peaks of Arabic culture, and right now it's in a downturn.

Just as European society was in a downturn in the Middle Ages and then ramped right up again with the Rennaissance.  

History goes in cycles.

Quote from: J ArcaneDude, chemistry alone owes a debt to the discoveries of some of the Arabic alchemists of antiquity.

People don't think much of the term alchemy these days, picturing mad wizards trying to make gold from lead and all that, but it was the foundation of what would become chemistry, and the Arab world was a big contributor to the world of alchemy.

Now imagine if the Western World not only refused to hear about the discoveries of those alchemists but actively dismissed them (allowing for no reverse engineering) and all that sprang from them for not being 'western in origin'. What would that do to our understanding of chemestry?  Quite a bit and none of it good.

Starting roughly 400 hundred years ago, that is very much the case with the Islamic world. They rejected foriegn innovations for not being 'islamic enough' and eventually rejected anything not discovered or written in antiquity by muslim scholars, their entire culture stagnated.  

Currently some of the feircest 'defenders' of Islam reject ANY western thought as 'impure' or 'corrupting'. So its isn't quite a thing of the past.

Quote from: SpikeAs for the Fall of the Islamic world: The Muslims did not really invent all those advances in math, science and learning. Many of them were imported from India, or the Jewish scholars, or even the west. As they grew more settled, more... decadent if you will, they veiwed themselves more as the center of the world, and thus anything from outside was viewed as inferior (or else it would have been revealed to the faithful first), and thus unworthy of concern.   This ranged from their dismissal of generated electricity as a 'toy with no value' to something as mundane as clocks and measured time.  The sweeping problems that came from their rejection of measured time can be found in music and the military, among other applications. In other words, the Islamic world stagnated into the second class 'region' it became, and remains to this day.

It could be argued that the Islamic world acted as a catalyst for the Renaissance. After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman turks, advances in maths, sciences and learning based upon those examined in Greece started trickling into Western Europe, either through the crossroads of Constantinople or through Grenada and the Iberian peninsula. Through europe's dark ages, when the humanities had largely been lost, the arabic world was pretty much the custodian of the sciences and only when the Ottomans started their conquest and through the intervention of the Moors in Spain, did that start to come back into widespread use in western Europe.

As these forgotten lores formed the basis of the Renaissance...

I'm actually starting to think that our Nox may be expressing an authentic lumpenproletarian view. Problem is, everybody else in this thread comes across as something of a bourgeois snob.

While early Islam was quite beneficial for science, one should not forget that quite some of those discoveries wouldn not have been possible if they didn't have the advantage that some of the old Greek texts weren't lost to them and that quite some interesting things were trickling in from India.
Geography had a lot to do with the height of Islamic civilisation...

Long, long ago, during the time of the crusades, Saladin and Richard the lion hearted, the islamic world was the bastion of civillization, and europe was gripped by the dark ages. At that time islam was the civillized world and the west was rules by barbarism.

That was then. Now the situation has basically reversed itself totally. The islamic world if firmly rooted in the dark ages while the west has advanced.

Still got that reading comprehension problem, eh, Dominus Nox? You ask a question, people respond, you are unwilling or unable to read what they wrote.

I know that your time is precious, but still, it's usually considered good form to read the posts in a thread you started.

Quote from: Dominus NoxRichard the lion hearted

Sorry to piss all over your fantasy history, Donkey, but it is Richard the lion heart. Not lion hearted. Some research on this newfangled doohickey called the Internet could actually give you some factual stuff to bolster that self made bull excrement that you type habitually.

Quote from: AnthrobotSorry to piss all over your fantasy history, Donkey, but it is Richard the lion heart. Not lion hearted.

Oh who gives a fuck what you britts call your fucking kings?

Quote from: Dominus NoxOh who gives a fuck what you britts call your fucking kings?

You obviously don't give a fuck about the crap that you post on this site, since you never let research rear its factual head in your ignorant rants. You are a textbook example of an ignoramus who doesn't know anything about the real world. Which is why you will be posting cold cure remedies on this site when you are 30 years old, instead of going out and getting laid.