http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Projects/Pearce/index.html

["Obama is not much of a “student of history” if he believes this. Almost every advance he attributes to the Muslims was due to someone else."]

Obama never even claimed that Muslims “invented” anything, but merely stated that they “developed” those things. Learn the difference.

["The non-Muslim Chinese invented the magnetic compass and printing (Gutenberg invented not printing, but movable type). The non-Muslim Hindu Indians invented algebra and the decimal numbering system. The non-Muslim European Christians invented the university."]

Gutenberg invented the movable type? Who are you kidding here? It was the Chinese who invented the movable type and the Koreans who invented the metal movable type, not Guttenberg. Granted the Muslims were only responsible for transferring printing and possibly the compass from East to West, but if you think Obama is bad enough for claiming that Muslims merely “developed” them, then you’re even worse for claiming that Europeans “invented” them. As for algebra, the Hindus did make important contributions to the subject, but it was Muslims who founded algebra as an independent discipline, developed the methods we use today to solve algebraic equations, and advanced the subject far more than any civilization before them. As for universities, the University of Al-Karaouine (founded by a Muslim woman, in fact) and Al-Azhar University were founded centuries before the first universities in Europe.

["I can’t address advances in medicine, but I have studied the history of astronomy and physics. The Muslims contributed nothing."]

Completely and utterly wrong. Again, just because you teach the subject, that does not make you an expert on the subject’s history. Ever heard of Ibn al-Haytham, otherwise known as Alhazen? Or what about Avicenna, Biruni, al-Tusi, Ibn al-Shatir, and many more Muslim physicists and astronomers? If you don’t even know who these men are, then your ignorant claims like “Muslims contributed nothing” mean nothing.

["All modern physics descends from Galileo (1564 -1642); all modern astronomy from Copernicus (1473-1543). If you study Galileo’s works carefully, as I have, you see that he started with the achievements of the Greek mathematical physicist Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC - c. 212 BC). If you study Copernicus’ works carefully, as I have, you will see that Copernicus’ great book On the Revolutions is essentially a heliocentric re-working of the geocentric astronomy textbook by the Greek Ptolemy (c. 90 AD - 168 AD). Copernicus mostly used even Ptolemy’s data for the positions of the planets."]

Wrong again. Ibn al-Haytham, or Alhazen, was developing an early form of experimental physics for his work in optics centuries before Galileo did the same for mechanics. Alhazen is now rightly regarded as the “father of optics” and is credited for developing the scientific method. Alongside the scientific method, even Galileo’s own theories in mechanics were strongly influenced by the theories of Islamic philosophers like Avicenna and Avempace. As for Copernicus, his heliocentric model was virtually identical to Ibn al-Shatir’s geocentric model but simply reversed to make it heliocentric. Copernicus also employed the Tusi couple and Urdi lemma (both developed by Muslim astronomers) for his model. Without the original contributions of Muslim astronomers/physicists/philosophers, the work of Galileo and Copernicus would never have been possible. As for Ptolemy, he was more likely a Hellenized Egyptian rather than a Greek. Again, crediting Europeans for the achievements of others (i.e. Chinese and Egyptians) isn’t helping your anti-Islamic agenda at all.

["Note the dates for Archimedes/Galileo and Ptolemy/Copernicus. It is as if the Muslim world never existed. As far as their fundamental contributions to physics and astronomy, it did not."]

That comment alone shows how ignorant you are of medieval history. Not only are you ignoring the work of Muslim scientists and philosophers during that time, but even the work of Christian European scientists and philosophers. The work of Galileo for example would never have been possible without the theories of John Philoponus or Jean Buridan, or the work of Roger Bacon (who introduced Alhazen’s scientific method to Europe).

["If one reads history of science textbooks prior to about 1980, one will find very little mention of Muslim “contributions” to physics and astronomy. This is reasonable, because there weren’t any. In the past generation, however, political correctness has dictated that Muslims be given credit for discoveries they did not make."]

Or rather, you are just bitter about the fact that your cherished traditionalist Eurocentric version of history is no longer accepted by a majority of historians. This is reasonable, because there are still millions of scientific Arabic/Persian/Chinese/Indian manuscripts waiting to be discovered in manuscript collections across the world. As time passes, it only makes sense that we will discover more about the contributions of those civilizations. As for “political correctness”, don’t even get me started on that ridiculous term. It’s a concept that doesn’t even exist as far as I’m concerned. And stop trying to drag politics into the discipline of history. History should be studied for its own sake, not for the service of politics. While Obama can also be criticized for this to some extent for re-wording historical facts for a political goal, you are even worse for actually changing history for the purpose of your political agenda.

["Certainly, the Muslims were a conduit for the discoveries of others. The word “algebra” is indeed derived from an Arabic word. The books of Archimedes and Ptolemy used by Galileo and Copernicus were indeed translations into Latin from the Arabic. But let us never forget that Archimedes and Ptolemy wrote their books in Greek, not Arabic. They were Greeks, not Muslims."]

Again, Ptolemy was more likely a Hellenized Egyptian rather than a Greek.

["The reason Muslims never developed fundamental physics is because the leading Muslim theologians declared the idea of fixed physical laws to be heretical. The Qur’an (verse 6:64) states: “The Jews have said, ‘God’s hand is fettered.’ Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will.” The standard Muslim interpretation of this passage has been that there cannot be unchanging physical laws because Allah may change the laws at any moment. In 1982, the Institute for Policy Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan, criticized a chemistry textbook by saying: “There is latent poison present in the subheading Energy Causes Changes because it gives the impression that energy is the true cause rather than Allah. Similarly it is unIslamic to teach that mixing hydrogen and oxygen automatically produces water. The Islamic way is this: when atoms of hydrogen approach atoms of oxygen, then by the Will of Allah water is produced.” The implication is clear: next week, Allah may change his mind about water being a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. With this sort of worldview, how could one possibly be a scientist?"]

Not only are you are extending a single present-day Muslim interpretation of science across the entire Muslim world, but across the whole of Muslim history too? Muslims in Pakistan do not share the same opinions as Muslims elsewhere, nor do Muslims of today share the same opinions as Muslims of the Middle Ages. Your presentist approach to history would immediately fail you as a student of history.

["The cosmology of the Qur’an is obviously geocentric, and as a consequence, Al-Azhar University, which Obama singles out for praise in his speech, still teaches Ptolemaic astronomy."]

That proves nothing. Most universities in the world teach Ptolemaic astronomy as part of the history of astronomy. There is nothing “backwards” about teaching a historical system of astronomy.

["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."]

Oh really? There are millions of Muslims, expecially Pakistanis, who proudly proclaim Abdus Salam as one of their own.

["During the Cold War, it was commonplace for leftist academics to attribute many discoveries to scientists in Communist countries, discoveries that had actually been made in the West. So now leftist academics attribute to Muslims discoveries that had actually been made by others."]

I have seen some academics who exaggerate the contributions of Muslims, but completely ignoring them altogether (like what you have been doing) is a far worse example of “history in the service of politics”.

["I never expected to hear a president of the United States do so."]

Again, learn the difference between “developed” and “invented”. Obama was clearly being careful with his wording there.

Without Islamic culture, the inventions noted by Obama may never have reached the West. Although China and Greece contributed some underlying knowledge, without Islamic centers of learning, the West would have lost all of these inventions to the dark ages. Islam made the Renaissance possible. Technicalities aside, Obama’s speech pointed out the basic truth that without Islam, the West would be vastly different, and intellectually impoverished.

Peace.

Yes, the arab muslims did not create any of that, but certainly they kept and transmitted the knowledge the West had lost: that is their merit. And that’s not a small one. Obama should know better. By claiming the muslim world invented and discovered that, he does a misfavor to those people and makes a fool of himself.

When facts are wrapped in hyperbole and rhetoric like we saw in Cairo, we have an obligation to tell ‘conscious of people’ that these are exercise of ‘global electioneering’ and mass branding of intellect means nothing if the aim is to make everyone happy.

The policies since 911 have continued but wrappings are being changed as polite, yet we all know that without elimination of hyper-orthodoxy on all side of religious divide we as mankind are doomed.

Does President Obama need to get his historical facts right?
News Type: Event — Sun Jun 7, 2009 5:48 PM BST

Obama’s overgeneralizations are a dangerous precedent: Algebras and magnetic compass plus paper came from cross fertilization of Islamic societies with the sub-continent and China. An American president has to be careful with reference to history. Giving credits of accomplishments without highlighting the cause will further add to moans and groans of a society that fails to understand the reason of its continual decline in the field of intellect for last 1000 years.

One needs to appreciate the influence of the Indian subcontinent on the course of sciences and intellect of renaissance. The Indian subcontinent export of the ‘mastery of mathematics’ through Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Mo’ayyeduddin Urdi, and Ibn al-Shatir helped like a catalyst to expedite the imminent dawn of reason-based enlightenment in Baghdad and Cordoba. That was cut short in its infancy by the intervention of dogmatic idea that any knowledge outside the book of God is irrelevant. Reason, logic, and rationalism were sacrificed at the altar of dogma and incoherence of philosophy. Dogma and clergy reigns supreme across the crescent of instability. The message of connectivity with the world and cohabitation with great cultures, due to which the Golden age of Islam flourished, was lost to winning hearts and minds by short term political overgeneralizations.

Decline of the Islamic golden age was due to supremacy and ascendancy of dogma over rationalism – for example, the lack of separation between faith and reason – that is why the Muslim Arab world fell into scientific slumber just as the Christian world woke up. Internecine wars, infighting and murder of rationalism were the main causes for the decline of Islam. It is often disputed why Muslims being 19.6% of the world’s population, i.e. 2 billion, only have three Nobel laureates in Science and literature, whereas Jews being only 0.2% of the world’s population, i.e. 14.1 million, have received 122 Nobel prizes in science, economics, medicine and literature. This is the exact challenge the Islamic world faces today, this was the point that needed to be made.

The truth about indifference towards great thinkers within Islamic Diaspora is chilling. The reason why ‘Ibn Khaldun,’ ‘Al-Muqaddimah’, or ‘The Introduction,’ is not part of madrassas’ syllabus, or why in the world of Islam no one reads or talks about Al-Farabi: ‘Kitab al-musiqi al-Kabir’, or ‘The Great Book of Music,’ or Al-Firdawsi: ‘Shahnameh’, or ‘Book of Kings,’ or Ibn al-Jubayr, ‘Rihlat Ibn Jubayr’, or ‘The Travels of Ibn Jubayr,’ Jabir Ibn Haiyan, Khawarizmi, Abu Yousuf Yaqub Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi, Omar Khayyam Al-Farabi, Averroes and others, are little known to the faithful. Most of them were termed as heretics. I wish Obama would have given the true credits to great scientists and free thinkers of Islam and traced the history little deeper.

One Ummah ‘Obama’ refers to only exists in the minds of Hizb ul Thareer or the ultimate faithful; otherwise there are 1000 divides within the Islamic world. The mother of them all is the Shiite-Sunni divide that extends to in the shape of two camps – the Iranian and Saudi ( a 700 million/300 million divide on global Islamic populations basis); next, the Sunni internal divide between Wahabbi hardliners and Wahabbi softliners, this sits above the divide between Hanifites and Malikis that extends between sub-continent Muslims. The terror prone Asir region is cast solidly in the first divide whereas Taliban are the product of desert Islam with connections to the hardest of the ideological schools under Salafis.

Now to portray Darfur and Bosnia in one line is a great argument, yet a poor one. In Darfur, Arab descended Sudan’s Al-Bashir is behind the ruthless murder of his own black indigenous Muslims; in Bosnia it was strife between Serbs and Muslims, both Slavs but ideology divided them. The revenge of Ottoman rule was taken from the rich farmers and land owners who historically benefited from the Ottoman rule.

These colours are important to learn, yet for Obama to try to sew a rainbow all under one tabernacle is far bigger and much more complex a challenge. The political demands at the seams of Islamic majorities are clear; in Palestine the Hamas wants no Israel, in Saudi Osama wants no Sauds, in Hijaz they want no Sauds, in Iran they want the promised one to conquer regions for which they have been promised by Allah and restore the Ahl-e-Bait, that is the house of Banu Hashim, to its equitable place. The nuke option for Iran is no way acceptable to Saudis as well as Osama. Khomeini’s Islam is a far away call from Islam that Abdul Wahab practiced. Iraq has its own sectarian problems alongside the Kurdish issue.

http://iqballatif.newsvine.com/_news/2009/06/07/2905355-does-president-obama-need-to-get-his-historical-facts-right

The comments that a black person invented this or that is completely off the point. Who cares? Irrelevant to the issue. We do know that the issue of black slavery to the in North America could not have happened without help from blacks in Africa. Everybody is guilty on that black and white. African and European.

The point is Obama is confused or a liar – take your pick.