The Clash of Samuel Huntington and Amartya Sen

masadi #6

`` Crack open some history books hmmm let me think off hand, optics, the germ theory of disease, the circulation of blood, c-section operations, that have saved countless lives, the modern university, the scientific methodology of experimentation, the modern hospital, checks to facilitate commerce, advanced mathematics based on original work as a field, historiography, sociology etc... You only need to look at their works, like the work of Ibn Khaldun which are filled with quotations from the Quran, which is both the source of their inspiration and unique insights as well. Just because they were smart enough to build upon what they could find of use in works of other civilizations (all knowledge progresses in this fashion) does not mean their original contributions were none existance. Only a damn fool and a historical idiot and bigot would deny that. I have already posted a couple of posts on this go thru my posts on your own time. ``

Germ theory was discovered by Louis Pasteur. Using his work a lot of scientists came up with drugs, antibiotics etc.

Why do you think the population exploded in the 20th century ?

There is no proof any of those achievements in Arab civilization improved the quality of lives for the masses.

`` Here is a quotation by the historian Robert Briffault, in his ``The Making of Humanity`` which might ease your bigotry a little bit: ``

You are the only bigot around here.

``It is highly probable that but for the Arabs, modern European civilization would have never assumed that character which has enabled it to transcend all previous phases of evolution.``

The quote talks about Arabs not Muslims.

So what ? If not for the Jewish scientists from Europe America might not have built the nuclear bomb. Would have, could have, should have - those are the words of losers.

If Islam had a great influence on Science and Technology why are all the famous Muslim scientists are Arabs ? How come you do not have any Africans, Indonesians, Indians, Turks, Afghans or Central Asians ? I do not expect someone with a pea sized brain to figure out answers to such trivial facts.

janji #10

`` And to you Arjun and babu, want to get yourself really familiarized with Avicenna, the Prince of Physicians, for his famous medical text ``Al-QANUN``, ``the canon``, just like lense came from lentil (adsa in arabic, was invented by arabs) go to this site to quench your thirst for more evidence ``

Arabs had a record of decent Islam influenced civilization for a few centuries (700 - 1400 AD). They inherited some major pre-Islamic civilizations - Egyptian, Mesopotamians etc.

You attribute work by a dozen or so Arab and Berber individuals to Islam. Sorry what kind of logic are you coming from ?

If Islam was dominant factor in motivating scientific progress how come all other Muslim societies are backward - Indonesia, Indian Muslim, Afghan, Central Asian, African ?

`` i do not think anyone was denying indian civilization, in evolution process things are borrowed, improved and invented same time...my good friends do not give the impressions: ``hey guys i m here too, give me atttention`` ...becasue there were chinese, greeks, persian, incas, african and others cvilizations not only indian and islamic, all contributed to the modern days science and technology and you guys did not mention of them. It smells like some kind of complex. I hope the smart asses from chinnai, banglore and hyderabad can do a good job with what bill gate and the rest of the western enterpreneurs have passed on to them to at least give the india its glory back, which was lost centuries ago... and make all of us happy and proud again in the sub-continent. Becasue in farsi they say``pidarum sultaan bood``, means my ancestors were kings, they were...what are you now? ``

Most of the India`s current progress has been due to outsourcing boom. Give the Americans credit where it is due. If Indians are smart they will figure a way to beat Americans at their own game.

#17bbabu writes

<<< Why do you think the population exploded in the 20th century ? >>>

The population explosion of the ``2oth century`` had little to do with medical advances, population explosion of European societies started much earlier than the 20th century and it was not because of the germ theory of disease for sure, it had to do with better diet, better hygiene, etc The only significant medical contribution were antibiotics which didnt appear until 1929, long after the explosion in European popuation had already taken place. You want to deny the Muslim invention of the germ theory of disease, a fact well established by scientists and you do that using your ignorance. Asking bigots to check their facts is apparently asking for too much.

Further when historian Robert Briffault talks about Arabs in thier contribution to science, he is not talking about pre Islamic Arabs, he is talking about Muslim Arabs. Only an idiot can isolate part of that quote and say the Arabs he is talking about are non-Muslim Arabs. Show me thier contribution to science in the pre-islamic era, there is NONE.

Then this damn fool in asking janji writes

<<< If Islam was dominant factor in motivating scientific progress how come all other Muslim societies are backward - Indonesia, Indian Muslim, Afghan, Central Asian, African ? >>

Now he is confusing two different historical eras, one as a factor of Islam that led to magnificent scientific discovery, the other after the demise of that factor and as a factor of colonization that led to misery and catastrophy for the Muslim masses and other third world masses around the globe. Of course when a person is a sorry bigoted sob, he wont see all this, he will pick and choose anything that feeds his stereotype and present it as such.

masadi #19

`` The population explosion of the ``2oth century`` had little to do with medical advances, population explosion of European societies started much earlier than the 20th century and it was not because of the germ theory of disease for sure, it had to do with better diet, better hygiene, etc The only significant medical contribution were antibiotics which didnt appear until 1929, long after the explosion in European popuation had already taken place. You want to deny the Muslim invention of the germ theory of disease, a fact well established by scientists and you do that using your ignorance. Asking bigots to check their facts is apparently asking for too much. ``

If you think anti-biotics is the only major medical invention of the 20th century you have a lot of learning to do.

Louis Pasteur is rightfully credited for the germ theory and pasteurization. How could a Arab scientist in the twelve century even view germs without a microscope.

`` Further when historian Robert Briffault talks about Arabs in thier contribution to science, he is not talking about pre Islamic Arabs, he is talking about Muslim Arabs. Only an idiot can isolate part of that quote and say the Arabs he is talking about are non-Muslim Arabs. Show me thier contribution to science in the pre-islamic era, there is NONE. ``

You have shown no reason that the work by a dozen or so Arab individuals has anything to do with Islam.

`` Now he is confusing two different historical eras, one as a factor of Islam that led to magnificent scientific discovery, the other after the demise of that factor and as a factor of colonization that led to misery and catastrophy for the Muslim masses and other third world masses around the globe. Of course when a person is a sorry bigoted sob, he wont see all this, he will pick and choose anything that feeds his stereotype and present it as such. ``

Iran was colonized by the Arabs in the 7th century. They were independent of European rule. Sorry they were not advanced in any way.

Afghanistan were never colonized by Europeans until the 19th century. They are backward.

Facts make no difference to a loony tune like you.

#20 by bbabu on April 24, 2006 0:44am PT


How could a Arab scientist in the twelve century even view germs without a microscope.


According to comrade masadi, IBn-whoever didn`t need a microscope..Everything he wanted to know was in the koran(which is a truly amazing book if he hasn`t told you that already)..

Re: # 14

I think Huntington is the flavour of the moment. At least for a few moments. There are of course some truths in what he says. But it is only an hypothesis.
There are some truths in what Sen says too. However both tend to look at arguments that support their points of view and gloss over things that do not. Much like all of us.

An interesting review of Sens book by Fouad Ajami

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/30/AR2006033001553.html

One could say much the same about Huntington`s stuff.

An interesting article.

Ciao

Not that comrade masadi and I agree upon much but in this case he is quite correct. Muslim--Persian, Spanish-Arab, etc--physicians were far in advance of the Western butchers that called themselves doctors until well into the 18th century at least. Ibn Sina`s work was the standard Western medical reference book and it wasn`t Harvey who discovered the circulation of blood! Check out the ``Islamic medicine`` category on, for eg., Wikipedia for more detail. However, the Arabs/Muslims did inherit the great Persian teaching hospitals and medical traditions when they conquered Iran, so they had a very strong base to build upon. Perhaps the Persians borrowed from Hindu India; that I don`t know about.

Masadi is also correct about improved public health measures, clean(er) drinking water and better nutrition being responsible for the European population growth in the 19th century; better medicine had very little to do with it.

re: masadi (various interacts)

Historically, the role of the Arabs from 700s to 1400s was to preserve the thoughts and ideas of European antiquity, while Europe was suffering under the Dark Ages. The Arabs expanded on the texts of the Greeks and the Romans, but they did not create any new work of originality. The Arab expansion in intellectualism was based on the works already in existence and the Arabs simply took them a step a further and Arab brilliance of the time was due to the stark contrast of an uneven levels of learning made possible by Europe`s own choice of existing under ignorance and phobia. It was this inequality, which lended itself to the saliance of Arab achivement over the intellectual traditions of the west (700-1500) and not because the Arabs arrived at any path breaking innovations in the knowledge base of the world at that time.

The credit to the Arab intellectual tradition is given for conserving the works of the ancient Europeans and helping in their eventual textual dissemination back into Europe, as the Europeans would re-discover their ancient texts on the cusp of the renassiance. The word renassiance itself means ``re-birth`` and it implies that Europe would finally reclaim the intellectual ownership of the works of the Romans and the Greeks from the Arabs as it moved beyond renassiance into the age of enlightenment. The Arabs acted as a bridge to the revival of learning in Europe, transfering knowledge and ideas back to Europe after safe guarding them and the Arabs did not improve upon the knowledge they retained as much as they codified the various European texts into one unified code of knowledge.

In medical knowledge, for example, the Arab contribution was to gather, organize and edit the ideas of Galen into one book, which would become the canon of European medical science till the 1700s. Like wise in philosophy, the Arabs collated the works of the ancient Greeks and translated them into Arabic from Latin and when Europe regained its intellectual bearings, Europeans would re-translate them from Arabic back into Latin and this practice, thus, gave the iimpression that the Arabs contributed significantly towards the European intellectual traditions.

As to the ciphers, the concept of a ``zero`` originated in India and ``zero`` was reflection of a Hindu concept of a nothing; nothingness. Again, it was the adoption by the Europeans of the Arabic numberals as a subsitute to their use of the Roman numberals, which were proving problematic in mathematical calucations and also, the European discovery of a co-axial rudder for navigation, which would start the European process of discovery and colonization was borrowed from the Muslims, who had borrowed the idea from the Chinese.

The value of the Muslim rule, and it was indeed a great value, was that since it straddled the the Silk Route and it was able to facilitate the transfer of ideas from east to west and vice versa and in doing so, it was able to create a very dynamic fusion of ideas.

In fact, other than this confluence, historically the Muslim intellectual thought was unable to improve upon this knowledge in any significant manner, because though they had this information for nearly 700 years, they did not offer any new innovations as a result of having this knowledge and in fact, the Muslim thought stagnated and despite its ``ownership`` of these ideas, it could not compete with Europe in building on these ideas. The European success was not only in adopting these ideas, but also in accepting a process of change and intellectual questioning, which further increased the bounderies of knowledge. It was the European habit of questioning and not accepting any intellectually established facts as an unchallenged dogma and favoring the secularization of learning, as the Muslims were moving towards the theocratization of knowledge, which would finally make Europe leave the Muslim world behind in terms of knowledge and progress.

Also, the decline and fall of the Muslim had started a long time before the period of colonization and it was the result of the politics of Muslim lands not to evolve and adapt to new realities. When confronted with new challenges, the Muslims opted for orthodoxic dogmas and favored stability over change, because change was always implicated with a process of uncertainty and this meant a loss of political power, which was not acceptable to the increasingly absolutist rule of Muslim rulers. A good example of this was the British rule in India, because the Muslims of their own free chose not to learn English as a medium of the new socio-economic and political power reality and thus, through their own actions marginalized themselves in the Indian politics of the post-Mughul period.

A good example of the present day Muslim intellectual thought is the debate, which is taking place in Malaysia. Malaysia is planning on sending two people into space and the ulema of Malaysia are debating as to how a Muslim can pray in space; which direction will he turn to pray and how will be perform ``wazoo``, as water use will be restricted and how many times is he suppsosed to pray?

Apprently, the International Space Station, where the Malaysian astronaut will stay circles the earth 16 times in a 24 hour period; so there will be, technically speaking ``16 days in a 24 hour period`` and if one is supposed to pray 5 times a day, multipled by 16 times that comes to around 80 prayers. Does this mean that an orbit will be considered as a ``day`` and the Malaysian astronaut will pray 80 times a day, which implies that an average time for a prayer will be less than two minutes. Now the learned ulema are wondering, whether a prayer that is rushed is an acceptable prayer or not?!

The point of narrating this story is that it is time that the Muslim ulema should applaud the accomplishments of a Muslim nation in sending people into space instead of wondering what is the role of religion in science or for that matter, space itself. There is a place, where religion belongs and then, there is a place, where religion does not belong and the Muslims have to learn to distinguish between these two places. The reason the Muslim world is in such a sorry intellectual state, is because the Muslims seem to favor dogma over innovation and the final blame, then ultimately, rests on our own misactions as to why the world is leaving the Muslims behind and the rage of impotence, which engulfs the Muslim world is nothing more than the result; the outward expression of the Muslims own inability to understand the reasons for their own failures.

The Muslim world can come out this pit of ignorance, but it would mean that we have to understand the causes of our intellectual decline and we will never grasp the lesson of our decline if we keep crowing about our success in the past tense, but never take steps to regain our past success, in the sense of the future, by learning from our mistakes.

When we do not learn from our mistakes and improve ourselves but continue to boast about our past, there is a reason why the world laughs at us, because we remind the world of a rooster on a dung heap and as that proverbial rooster, our misfortune is that we are confused; in our present stage, we can not tell the difference between dawn and twilight. :)

Ciao

It is the culture stupid!. Amartya Sen and other enlightened lefties will keep missing the point until.. well until it will be no longer possible to deny the raging conflict based on cultural lines. Majority of german population, i am sure, were peace loving minding their own business kinda good folk back in the 30s.

Given jihadis` conviction to battle it out and defend their culture which is dying a slow death due to the creeping cancer of a materialistic amoral culture - the question of whether most of the people in the dar-al-Islam are peace loving or have complex identities becomes irrelevant.

Re: # 16
Dear Mr. Gopalan:
I have not read his book,``Identity and Violence``, yet. But I have read his Argumentative Indian which was derived from a series of Essays written over many years. It is bit repetitive.

Anyway. . I suggest you read the latest critic of this book by contributing Editor of Wall Street Journal-Tunku Varadarajan . Here is the Link...

Identity and Violence
Why we can`t get along.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110008272
BY TUNKU VARADARAJAN - Friday, April 21, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
He is not very kind to him. May be you should read and form your own opinion!

#19 bbabu writes

<<< If you think anti-biotics is the only major medical invention of the 20th century you have a lot of learning to do. >>>

We were not talking about major medical inventions, we were talking about their relation to population. You have a lot of learning to do. You get stumped in the non-points you raise and then you detach them from their context and pick one case out of many to deceive and distort. Idiots ``reason`` in that fashion and you fit the profile of them to a dot

Then he writes

<<<
Iran was colonized by the Arabs in the 7th century. They were independent of European rule. Sorry they were not advanced in any way.

Afghanistan were never colonized by Europeans until the 19th century. They are backward.>>>

Iran appears backwards to you today, in a post colonization world, back in the 7th century, compared to standards around the rest of the world it was quite advanced and not backwared in anyway, similar is your conclusion about Afghanistan. Not only are you a damn fool but you lose all sense of temporal logic while arguing.

Then Ferozk writes

<<< The Arabs expanded on the texts of the Greeks and the Romans, but they did not create any new work of originality. >>>

Firstly, all human knowledge is an expansion of some kind or the other. None of the ``inventions`` of modern science would have taken place if you remove the ``expansion`` under the Muslims. Further, saying that they did no original work,is a bigoted lie and no historian worth the name, other than the pseudo historian idiots who write on Ann Coulter`s website will discount the original contribution of Muslims to the development of modern science.

Then he writes <<< When confronted with new challenges, the Muslims opted for orthodoxic dogmas and favored stability over change >>>

This happend after the clergification of Islam, had nothing to do with the original Islam and I had already suggested this in my post. However the condition they find themselves in today is much worse comparatively than any that existed then compared to other parts of the world and that is a direct result of colonization.

# 20 bbabu: A lot of Muslim luminaries were non Arabs, who wrote in Arabic.
Realizing this won`t necessarily put India or Hinduism in any danger.

Re: # 27 Tunku appears to be aspiring toward neo-con notoreity. Don`t get him started on Pakistan...

Anyway, the WSJ has a long standing gripe against Sen, whose Nobel it condemned in a front page editorial.

Gopal:

It seems to me that Amartya Sen is on to something. Religion and culture are two completely different entities although they certainly impact each other. In fact a person does have multiple identities.

Muslims in Iran or Afghanistan are completely different than say muslims in the USA. The muslims in the USA also have a large number of identities. Some are Irani Americans, Pakistani Americans and Arab Americans.

Even within say Pakistani Americans there are multiple identities. Majority of pakistani Americans are muslims but there are at least four major groups.

So when Musharraf sided with the USA, every Pakistani did not agree with him.

Frankly, I have changed 180 degree since coming to the USA. Initially, I had negative feelings about Hindus and Jews due to partition in 1947 and then subsequent wars.

In the USA, I have found that good and bad people are in all communities.

The religion in the 21st century is not a matter of choice. It is a matter of birth which beyond anyone control. A person is born in a religion and then shaped by parents and environment.

Now, I have hindu and christian and jews friends and we agree on most of the issues.

So I have a feeling that as communication builds up in this global village, the majority will not be fooled by the politicians or priests.