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Discover 1000 years of missing history

13.10.06, 23:12
Adam Hart-Davis; Photographer, Writer and TV Science Presenter of BBC
Series ‘What the Ancients Did for Us’.

www.1001inventions.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=main.viewSection&intSectionID=405

www.muslimheritage.com/timeline/default.cfm
to be or not to it is amazing history
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    • szahtut Prince Charles 14.10.06, 16:00
      Prince Charles, Heir to the British Monarchy in a recent public speech at
      Oxford University stated:


      "If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there
      is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilisation owe to
      the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straight-
      jacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from
      central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men
      of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of
      the West, as an alien culture, society, and system of belief, we have tended to
      ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history."

      www.muslimheritage.com/about/default.cfm

      • usenetposts Re: Prince Charles 14.10.06, 21:11
        Yeah, but we can see from that why it was that HRH the Prince of Wales only got
        a third class honours degree.

        He is no arbiter of the state of any nation or people's state of learning.
        • babiana Re: The enemy of my enemy is stil my enemy 17.10.06, 00:59

          The Enemy of My Enemy Is Still My Enemy
          By BERNARD HAYKEL
          WITH Israel at war with Hezbollah, where, you might wonder, is Al Qaeda? From
          all appearances on the Web sites frequented by its sympathizers, which I
          frequently monitor, Al Qaeda is sitting, unhappily and uneasily, on the
          sidelines, watching a movement antithetical to its philosophy steal its thunder.
          That might sound like good news. But it is more likely an ominous sign.

          Al Qaeda's Sunni ideology regards Shiites as heretics and profoundly distrusts
          Shiite groups like Hezbollah. It was Al Qaeda that is reported to have given
          Sunni extremists in Iraq the green light to attack Shiite civilians and holy
          sites. A Qaeda recruiter I met in Yemen described the Shiites as "dogs and a
          thorn in the throat of Islam from the beginning of time."

          But now Hezbollah has taken the lead on the most incendiary issue for jihadis of
          all stripes: the fight against Israel.

          Many Sunnis are therefore rallying to Hezbollah's side, including the Muslim
          Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan. The Saudi cleric Salman al-Awda has defied his
          government's anti-Hezbollah position, writing on his Web site that "this is not
          the time to express our differences with the Shiites because we are all
          confronted by our greater enemy, the criminal Jews and Zionists."

          For Al Qaeda, it is a time of panic. The group's Web sites are abuzz with
          messages and questions about how to respond to Hezbollah's success. One
          sympathizer asks whether, even knowing that the Shiites are traitors and the
          accomplices of the infidel Americans in Iraq, it is permissible to say a prayer
          for Hezbollah. He is told to curse Hezbollah along with Islam's other enemies.

          Several of Al Qaeda's ideologues have issued official statements explaining
          Hezbollah's actions and telling followers how to respond to them. The gist of
          their argument is that the Shiites are conspiring to destroy Islam and to
          resuscitate Persian imperial rule over the Middle East and ultimately the world.
          The ideologues label this effort the "Sassanian-Safavid conspiracy," in
          reference to the Sassanians, a pre-Islamic Iranian dynasty, and to the Safavids,
          a Shiite dynasty that ruled Iran and parts of Iraq from 1501 till 1736.

          They go on to argue that thanks to the United States (the leader of the
          Zionist-Crusader conspiracy), Iraq has been handed over to the Shiites, who are
          now wantonly massacring the country's Sunnis. Syria is already led by a Shiite
          heretic, President Bashar al-Assad, whose policies harm the country's Sunni
          majority.

          Hezbollah, according to these analyses, seeks to dupe ordinary Muslims into
          believing that the Shiites are defending Islam's holiest cause, Palestine, in
          order to cover for the wholesale Shiite alliance with the United States in Iraq
          and Afghanistan.

          Ultimately, this theory goes, the Shiites will fail in their efforts because the
          Israelis and Americans will destroy them once their role in the broader
          Zionist-Crusader conspiracy is accomplished. And then God will assure the
          success of the Sunni Muslims and the defeat of the Zionists and Crusaders.

          In the meantime, no Muslim should be fooled by Hezbollah, whose members have
          never fought the infidel on any of the real battlefronts, like Afghanistan,
          Bosnia, Chechnya or Kashmir. The proper attitude for Muslims to adopt is to
          dissociate themselves completely from the Shiites.

          This analysis — conspiratorial, bizarre and uncompelling, except to the most
          diehard radicals — signals an important defeat for Al Qaeda's public relations
          campaign. The truth is that Al Qaeda has met a formidable challenge in Hezbollah
          and its charismatic leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who have made canny choices
          that appeal to Al Qaeda's Sunni followers. Al Qaeda's improbable conspiracy
          theory does little to counter these advantages.

          First, although Sheik Nasrallah wears the black turban and carries the title of
          "sayyid," both of which identify him as a Shiite descendant of the Prophet
          Muhammad, he preaches a nonsectarian ideology and does not highlight his group's
          Shiite identity. Hezbollah has even established an effective alliance with
          Hamas, a Sunni and Muslim Brotherhood organization.

          Second, Hezbollah's statements focus on the politics of resistance to occupation
          and invoke shared Islamic principles about the right to self-defense. Sheik
          Nasrallah is extremely careful to hew closely to the dictates of Islamic law in
          his military attacks. These include such principles as advance notice,
          discrimination in selecting targets and proportionality.

          Finally, only Hezbollah has effectively defeated Israel (in Lebanon in 2000) and
          is now taking it on again, hitting Haifa and other places with large numbers of
          rockets — a feat that no Arab or Muslim power has accomplished since Israel's
          founding in 1948.

          These are already serious selling points. And Hezbollah will score a major
          propaganda victory in the Muslim world if it simply remains standing in Lebanon
          after the present bout of warfare is over and maintains the relationships it is
          forging with Hamas and other Sunni Islamist organizations.

          What will such a victory mean? Perhaps Hezbollah's ascendancy among Sunnis will
          make it possible for Shiites and Sunnis to stop the bloodletting in Iraq — and
          to focus instead on their "real" enemies, namely the United States and Israel.
          Rumblings against Israeli actions in Lebanon from both Shiites and Sunnis in
          Iraq already suggest such an outcome.

          That may be good news for Iraqis, but it marks a dangerous turn for the West.
          And there are darker implications still. Al Qaeda, after all, is unlikely to
          take a loss of status lying down. Indeed, the rise of Hezbollah makes it all the
          more likely that Al Qaeda will soon seek to reassert itself through increased
          attacks on Shiites in Iraq and on Westerners all over the world — whatever it
          needs to do in order to regain the title of true defender of Islam.


          Bernard Haykel, an associate professor of Islamic Studies at New York
          University, is the author of "Revival and Reform in Islam."
    • babiana Re: Discover 1000 years of missing history 17.10.06, 01:26
      szahtut napisał:
      > to be or not to it is amazing history

      And sad reality
      The 22 member countries of the Arab league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States,
      have a total population of 300 millions, larger than the US and almost as large
      as the EU before its expansion. They have a land area larger than either the
      US or all of Europe. These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural
      resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgium
      and equal to half of the GDP of California alone. Within this meager GDP, the
      gaps between rich and poor are beyond belief and too many of the rich made
      their money not by succeeding in business, but by being corrupt rulers. The
      social status of women is far below what it was in the Western World 150 years
      ago. Human rights are below any reasonable standard, in spite of the grotesque
      fact that Libya was elected Chair of the UN Human Rights commission. According
      to a report prepared by a committee of Arab intellectuals and published under
      the auspices of the U.N., the number of books translated by the entire Arab
      world is much smaller than what little Greece alone translates. The total
      number of scientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less than that of 6
      million Israelis. Birth rates in the region are very high, increasing the
      poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline. And all of this is happening
      in a region, which only 30 years ago, was believed to be the next wealthy part
      of the world, and in a Moslem area, which developed, at some point in history,
      one of the most advanced cultures in the world. It is fair to say that this
      creates an unprecedented breeding ground for cruel dictators, terror networks,
      fanaticism, incitement, suicide murders and general decline. It is also a fact
      that almost everybody in the region blames this situation on the United States,
      on Israel, on Western Civilization, on Judaism and Christianity, on anyone and
      anything , except themselves.

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