Once Upon A Time: When The World Spoke Arabic

If hindians are getting irritated there must be a raw nerve somewhere.
It should really be alarming whenever they are lovey-dovey.
Another partion WILL happen. From Two-N-T to Three-N-T and onwards to Four-N-T and even more. Allah has left 140 million muslims there for a reason & hindus have left Pakistan and Bangladesh for a reason too. Hindostaan must be reshaped into hundreds of states---back to its pristine-state before the British saviour of hindus.

#89:rsridhar & other hindus who keep on harping that converted-from-hinduism muslims are still just-like-hindus.Maybe they are not even as ``good`` as hindus, maybe they are not ``rich`` as hindus, maybe they are not as ``educated`` as hindus...etc etc.

But never ever ever forget , they are NOT just-like-hindus. That is definitely no way to befriend a muslim.

Never in human history have some group been abandoned & kicked but like a leeech it still wants to exhibit this shameless ``love``--Oh please do not leave, please do not part with us, Please do not partition us, please do not have your own home--live with us``. O what wet blankets are these the fast disappearing remnants of idolators & kuffars.

Muslims in India & Pakistan simply love urdu, farsi, and arabic. So what the hell can you do about it? Till recently farsi was the official language of Hindostaan as well. How come hindus are not proud of that heritage but keep on harping about the hindu molly-coddler Akbar, the-heathen.

Whether you guys like it or not a muslim just cannot imagine a hindu having the gaul to behave in a condescending style. know your place. Never behave this way `` you should...`` kind of garbage.They are hindus , for Allah`s sake!. Is that not enough of a caste-ridden curse on them?.


So to rub it in and rankle the uppity-acting hindus and for some who might have missed---here is the wish, desire and hope of some of the most respected in recent history.

ENJOY!---It is VERY relevant to the subject matter of the article above. STAY on course. Always!
____________________________________________________________
Napolean Bonaparte as Quoted in Christian Cherfils, ‘Bonaparte et Islam,’ Pedone Ed., Paris, France, 1914, pp. 105, 125.
Original References: ``Correspondance de Napoléon Ier Tome V pièce n° 4287 du 17/07/1799...``


``Moses has revealed the existence of God to his nation. Jesus Christ to the Roman world, Muhammad to the old continent...
``Arabia was idolatrous when, six centuries after Jesus, Muhammad introduced the worship of the God of Abraham, of Ishmael, of Moses, and Jesus. The Ariyans and some other sects had disturbed the tranquility of the east by agitating the question of the nature of the Father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. Muhammad declared that there was none but one God who had no father, no son and that the trinity imported the idea of idolatry...

``I hope the time is not far off when I shall be able to unite all the wise and educated men of all the countries and establish a uniform regime based on the principles of Qur`an which alone are true and which alone can lead men to happiness.``

Sir George Bernard Shaw in `The Genuine Islam,` Vol. 1, No. 8, 1936.

``If any religion had the chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam.``
``I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Savior of Humanity.``

``I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today.``

Bertrand Russel in ‘History of Western Philosophy,’ London, 1948, p. 419.

``Our use of phrase `The Dark ages` to cover the period from 699 to 1,000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe...
``From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary...

``To us it seems that West-European civilization is civilization, but this is a narrow view.``

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The problem the Arabs faced was not scientific development, but the lack of mass publication to spread the knowledge. The Ulema refused to allow printing presses to be used when Europe introduced them. That played a key role in halting the development.

re:#59 by GhalibZaman
Instead of harping on the Islamic past, why not talk about the present? Do you feel proud, as a muslim, being associated with an Arabic past when most of the Arabs are viewed with suspicion in the civilised world today. Majority of the men who blew up the Twin towers were Arabs. They were also probably proud Arabs, proud of their religion and proud of their islamic past. Does it ever bother you that these men never thought twice about the thousands of innocent lives they would be taking in that single act of lunacy? Why does your religion today not disown these religous fanatics and reclaim its past glory?

It is useless to paste all the glories of Islam. I am not denying that Islam was at one point a great religious revival but then it became a tool in the hands of invaders, rulers and the mullahs. It is for common folks like you to remedy this situation. As long as you keep harping on some stupid glories of the past, the present will never be rectified.
Sridhar

re:#60 by ali87
The choice with the Indian muslims is very clear. Either assimilate or migrate to Pakistan. We do not want to revisit another partition.
Sridhar

re:#73 by ali87
What educated muslims in India (people like you) are doing is to cut yourself off from the broader cultural root and view yourselves as only muslims. can i blame Pakistanis of turining their back on the Indic past when you living in India are doing so. You seem to be proud of your Islamic roots (not just being a muslim but also the Arabic past etc). Do you not cherish the art and culture of India`s past and present as your own since you have made India your home? Bismillah Khan recently gave a concert with Ravi Shankar during NRI meet in Delhi. Most muslim musicians steeped in Hindustani music cannot disavow the Hindu influence. When Nusrat Fateh Ali visited Ajmer, he spent better part of his concert on songs in praise of Krishna! Muslim musicians and artists in India (or visiting India)have experienced the kind of artistic freedom unimaginable in Pakistan. Many seem to be proud of this freedom as well as proud of their hindu past which they have now inherited in the form of arts and music (a reversal of this process can be seen in Pak which calls Hindustani music as Classical music and has changed the name of many ragas with hindu sounding names). In doing this, they have not sacrificed their identity or islamic roots. They seem to be proud of their roots. YOu, OTOH, seem to draw your inspiration from an islamic past that cannot be termed glorious (from an Indian`s POV). How can some achievements of Arabic scholars in Arts and Science in 13th or 14th century make you feel proud? Do you claim your ancestors were from Arabia or Turkey (i already see my Turkish friend laughing)? More likely, your ancestors were hindus and were forcibly converted to islam at some point of time.

It is surprising that muslims in India, even after partition, keep harping back on their islamic past instead of taking advantage of the kind of freedom they get in India (which is denied most muslims the world over). Seen in this context, BJPs hindutva ideology seems to make sense. They are trying to assimilate everyone under one cultural and historical umbrella. I only wish they were not violent and did not have any anti-muslim bias.
Sridhar

THE WWORLD SPEAKS FARSI AND URDU,

Iranian Pm was in india, he wanted a pipe line through pakistan to india. Pakistan also wants it, I mean the generals, not the people. The people sent a clear message in urdu, by blasting gas pipes in pakistan.

Well islamic civilisation is arabic, that is what ahmed bin mustafa of faisalabad pakistan told be as he was going for salat instead of namaz.

Mr. Yaqoob Bangash,

You wrote: ``Once Upon A Time: When The World Spoke Arabic.`` Which era are you refering to? Arabic has been limited from North Africa to Iraq right from the inception of Islam till now. The Sahara limited its spread in Africa, Turkey held faithful to their language to the West, and Persians never stopped speaking Pharsi.

Did one had to speak Arabic to exist in that mythical period? When did it make sense to say ``I speak Arabic, therefore I am?`` Or perhaps you meant at one time the ``mawalis`` that didn`t speak Arabic didn`t count.

Today, if you want to count you better learn Economics, Physics, Mathematics, and Biology in whatever language you choose. Read too much of the obselete 600 AD book in Arabic or any language and soon you wouldn`t count much either.

QuantumQuark

Ghalb Zaman

Ith inking you are hero! Are y ousungle?

Salaam!

ali87 #77 What you note about political institutions evolving with technological changing is of course also at the core of Marx`s theories - and indeed one of the few things he said which has stood the test of time. And you rightly point to the fact that this point is lost on the mullahs. Indeed, the reaction of mullahs to technological progress is an interesting one: typically, they will start by rejecting a new invention and terming it the ``tool of the devil``. Next step they will adopt it, misuse it and turn it into a devilish artifact. Thus, 19th century mullahs I understand inveighed against the loudspeaker as the ``devils voice``, and today the mullah and the loudspeaker are inseperable.
Interestingly, the only place where the Quran references a state is in the context of non-muslim states. It condemns the pharaonic state of egypt for its cruelty. It praises Queen Sheba`s pagan state on account of the fact that she consulted her advisors (before choosing to meet King Solomon) - clearly indicating its democratic leanings, consistent with the early muslims as you indicate, but lost soon enough by the quite undemocratic muslim dynasties of the past millenium. The other state it mentions, and in full support of (!) is the Holy Roman Empire (with an entire sura, Sura Rum, devoted to very touching words of support for the Roman christians who were then suffering defeat and in retreat ``in a land far away`` at the hands of the pre-Islamic persians. But clearly, issues of statehood are incidental in the Quran, while the individual person (long suppressed as a non-entity in muslim, and indeed in all, kingships) is central and most important.

more to brother ali,

The bhumian statues of afghanistan survived all of the muslim invaders for 3000 years, it needed the pure paki-islam from the books to destroy it, the true version, un-modified by any culture.

Let me conclude by a line from sammer which goes something like this, `` a civilisation dies very hard...``, if there was an islamic civilisation, then pakistan could not have regressed to what it is today in such a short time. There are no guiding principles, if they were there pakistan could not have danced with US to sent U2 planes, then with the chines to get the bomb, then with the US to create taliban, again with the uS to kill taliban. When there are no guiding principles, when the so called civilisation is reduced to cavering the face, killing the animals in a perticular way, the nation reduces to a condom. Only hope for pakistan is to revive the cultural remnants of the kafirs, declare basant a national holiday, extoll the western culture and honour Abdus Salam, take some Ravi Verma paintings from kerala.

The nation, the people of pakistan are waiting, looking eagerly to the east, for liberation.

Brother Ali # 73,

What you have demonstrated in your post is your utter ignorence of religion. You have read a book, taken excerpts from it, as you do in any book. That is the scriptural religion, which is as important as books by John Smith. What is important is the operational religion, and pakistan is a clear example of operational islam.

Pakistan started with a clean slate, cleaned theorghly in the first ten years so that the kafirs reduced to less than 2 percent. It started with the vision of an islamic state, formally endosed into constitution by including the objective resolution as part of it. It is an islamic republic, sheria court is the supreme. It challenged the riba, collection of interest on its own.

The sheria court did not challenge the legitimisation of honour killing, the hoodood ordinance, the blasphemy laws, the laskers and the hundreds of other jihadic organisations. It did not challenge the deathsentence on a prof. Ali, that is operational religion. The learned judges on the sheria courts are not readers of the book, they make their decisions based on precedent and other operational spects of the religion.

You are no islamic sholar, you are posting on the chowk while sipping merlot ( sorry hamidm), you are only projecting your kafirian thinking to select passages from a book. No sir that is no understanding of religion, you are only reading a book.

Look at the institutions of pakistan, the evolution of it in the last 50 years as the influence of the hindu kafirs slowly vanes. That is the true face of islam, unmodified by the culture. If you want to see islam modfied by culture, as harimau says, come to kerala. Islam came to kerala because a ruler of kerala, cheraman perumal went saudi, met the man himself, came to keral to spread the religion. Come to Cheram Mosque in Kodugalloor, mosque built by the ex-hindu ruler, or visit his still preserved tomb in Oman.

Pakistan is the leader of islam, the land of the pure, islam from the books.

It seems the cyber gremlins gobbled up this post.
Very relevant to the subject. Please read & distribute.

Once upon a time:When the world spoke Arabic.
O What A Great Civilisation it was---the likes of which the world has yet to see again. O how glorious were those centuries. If one harks them & yearns for them diligently & laboriously enough----they will be back. InshAllah!

Well this is what everyone who mattered said, till very recently.
No?---Then Read! IQURAA
____________________________________________________________
Napolean Bonaparte as Quoted in Christian Cherfils, ‘Bonaparte et Islam,’ Pedone Ed., Paris, France, 1914, pp. 105, 125.
Original References: ``Correspondance de Napoléon Ier Tome V pièce n° 4287 du 17/07/1799...``


``Moses has revealed the existence of God to his nation. Jesus Christ to the Roman world, Muhammad to the old continent...
``Arabia was idolatrous when, six centuries after Jesus, Muhammad introduced the worship of the God of Abraham, of Ishmael, of Moses, and Jesus. The Ariyans and some other sects had disturbed the tranquility of the east by agitating the question of the nature of the Father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. Muhammad declared that there was none but one God who had no father, no son and that the trinity imported the idea of idolatry...

``I hope the time is not far off when I shall be able to unite all the wise and educated men of all the countries and establish a uniform regime based on the principles of Qur`an which alone are true and which alone can lead men to happiness.``

Sir George Bernard Shaw in `The Genuine Islam,` Vol. 1, No. 8, 1936.

``If any religion had the chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam.``
``I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Savior of Humanity.``

``I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today.``

Bertrand Russel in ‘History of Western Philosophy,’ London, 1948, p. 419.

``Our use of phrase `The Dark ages` to cover the period from 699 to 1,000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe...
``From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary...

``To us it seems that West-European civilization is civilization, but this is a narrow view.``

H.G. Wells

``The Islamic teachings have left great traditions for equitable and gentle dealings and behavior, and inspire people with nobility and tolerance. These are human teachings of the highest order and at the same time practicable. These teachings brought into existence a society in which hard-heartedness and collective oppression and injustice were the least as compared with all other societies preceding it....Islam is replete with gentleness, courtesy, and fraternity.``

Dr. William Draper in `History of Intellectual Development of Europe`

``During the period of the Caliphs the learned men of the Christians and the Jews were not only held in great esteem but were appointed to posts of great responsibility, and were promoted to the high ranking job in the government....He (Caliph Haroon Rasheed) never considered to which country a learned person belonged nor his faith and belief, but only his excellence in the field of learning.``

Thomas Carlyle in ‘Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History,’ Lecture 2, Friday, 8th May 1840.

``As there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans (i.e. Muslim), I mean to say all the good of him I justly can...
``When Pococke inquired of Grotius, where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet`s (Muhammad`s) ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof!...

``A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; Something better in him than hunger of any sort, -- or these wild arab men, fighting and jostling three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close contact with him always, would not revered him so! They were wild men bursting ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity; without right worth and manhood, no man could have commanded them. They called him prophet you say? Why he stood there face to face with them; bare, not enshrined in any mystry; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them: they must have seen what kind of man he was, let him be called what you like! No emperor with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. During three-and-twenty years of rough actual trial. I find something of a veritable Hero necessary for that, of itself...

``These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, - is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Granada! I said, the Great man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame...``

Phillip Hitti in `Short History of the Arabs.`

``During all the first part of the Middle Ages, no other people made as important a contribution to human progress as did the Arabs, if we take this term to mean all those whose mother-tongue was Arabic, and not merely those living in the Arabian peninsula. For centuries, Arabic was the language of learning, culture and intellectual progress for the whole of the civilized world with the exception of the Far East. From the IXth to the XIIth century there were more philosophical, medical, historical, religiuos, astronomical and geographical works written in Arabic than in any other human tongue.``

Carra de Vaux in `The Philosophers of Islam,` Paris, 1921.

``Finally how can one forget that at the same time the Mogul Empire of India (1526-1857 C.E.) was giving the world the Taj Mahal (completed in 1648 C.E.) the architectural beauty of which has never been surpassed, and the ‘Akbar Nameh’ of Abul Fazl: ``That extraordinary work full of life ideas and learning where every aspect of life is examined listed and classified, and where progress continually dazzles the eye, is a document of which Oriental civilization may justly be proud. The men whose genius finds its expression in this book were far in advance of their age in the practical art of government, and they were perhaps in advance of it in their speculations about religious philosophy. Those poets those philosophers knew how to deal with the world or matter. They observe, classify, calculate and experiment. All the ideas that occur to them are tested against facts. They express them with eloquence but they also support them with statistics.``...the principles of tolerance, justice and humanity which prevailed during the long reign of Akbar.``

Marcel Clerget in `La Turquie, Passe et Present,` Paris, 1938.

``Many proofs of high cultural level of the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent are to be found in the development of science and law; in the flowering of literary works in Arabic, Persian and Turkish; in the contemporary monuments in Istanbul, Bursa, and Edirne; in the boom in luxury industries; in the sumptuous life of the court and high dignitaries, and last but not least in its religious tolerance. All the various influences - notably Turkish, Byzantine and Italian mingle together and help to make this the most brilliant epoch of the Ottomans.``

Michael the Elder (Great) as Quoted in `Michael the Elder, Chronique de Michael Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d’ Antioche,` J.B. Chabot, Editor, Vol. II, Paris, 1901.

``This is why the God of vengeance, who alone is all-powerful, and changes the empire of mortals as He will, giving it to whomsoever He will, and uplifting the humble beholding the wickedness of the Romans who throughout their dominions, cruelly plundered our churches and our monasteries and condemned us without pity, brought from the region of the south the sons of Ishmael, to deliver us through them from the hands of the Romans. And if in truth we have suffered some loss, because the Catholic churches, that had been taken away from us and given to the Chalcedonians, remained in their possession; for when the cities submitted to the Arabs, they assigned to each denomination the churches which they found it to be in possession of (and at that time the great churches of Emessa and that of Harran had been taken away from us); nevertheless it was no slight advantage for us to be delivered from the cruelty of the Romans, their wickedness, their wrath and cruel zeal against us, and to find ourselves at people. (Michael the Elder, Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch wrote this text in the latter part of the twelfth century, after five centuries of Muslim rule in that region. Click here for a relevant document sent to the monks of St. Catherine Monastery in Mt. Sinai, 628 C.E.)

Sir John Bagot Glubb

“Khalif (Caliph) Al-Ma`mun`s period of rule (813 - 833 C.E.) may be considered the `golden age` of science and learning. He had always been devoted to books and to learned pursuits. His brilliant mind was interested in every form of intellectual activity. Not only poetry but also philosophy, theology, astronomy, medicine and law all occupied his time.”
“By Mamun`s time medical schools were extremely active in Baghdad. The first free public hospital was opened in Baghdad during the Caliphate of Haroon-ar-Rashid. As the system developed, physicians and surgeons were appointed who gave lectures to medical students and issued diplomas to those who were considered qualified to practice. The first hospital in Egypt was opened in 872 AD and thereafter public hospitals sprang up all over the empire from Spain and the Maghrib to Persia.”

On the Holocaust of Baghdad (1258 C.E.) Perpetrated by Hulagu:
“The city was systematically looted, destroyed and burnt. Eight hundred thousand persons are said to have been killed. The Khalif Mustasim was sewn up in a sack and trampled to death under the feet of Mongol horses.

“For five hundred years, Baghdad had been a city of palaces, mosques, libraries and colleges. Its universities and hospitals were the most up-to-date in the world. Nothing now remained but heaps of rubble and a stench of decaying human flesh.”
____________________________________________________________

The author writes:

[In the field of astronomy, the length of the solar year was accurately calculated five hundred years before the west was to publicly accept the notion that the earth is round. Arab astronomers also calculated the length of a terrestrial degree at 56 2/3 miles, within one half mile of the correct value.]

While the West under Christendom might have been forced to consider that the earth was flat, the truth is that Eratosthenes (ca. 284-192 BC) had calculated the earth`s circumference to be 250,000 stade or about 24,466 miles. He calculated this from the fact that when the sun was directly overhead at the town of Syene, a small shadow was cast at Alexandria. He measured the angle of the shadow and based on the distance between Syene and Alexandria, calculated the earths circumference. His figure of 24,266 miles compares very favorably to the currently accepted figure of 24,860 miles.

[In mathematics, al-Kwarizmi introduced and explained algebra.]

Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khowarizmi, borrowing from the Hindu mathematician Brahmagupta and from Greek mathematicians, produced a book on arithmetic and algebra. Al-Khowarizmi illustrated the solution to the quadratic equation of the form ax**2 + bx + c = 0. The roots of this equation had already been derived by Brahmagupta. Al-Khowarizmi`s presentation of the solution is entirely verbal without the concise algebraic symbolism currently employed. His book was titled ``Hisah al-jabr w`al muqabalah`` which was translated into Latin four centuries later under the title ``Ludus algebrae at almucgrabalaeque` and the namw ``algebra`` eventually stuck.

The Arabs also introduced the West to the Hindu numeral system for which they were mistakenly given credit for centuries. The decimal number system and the zero were Indian, nay, Hindu inventions.

The fact is that the Arabs saved whatever they could after the burning of the library at Alexandria and translated them into Arabic. When the Crusaders came to the Middle East, they were astounded at the knowledge of the Arabs and the West absorbed the knowledge that had been saved by the Arabs.

But the Arabs made NO contribution worthy of the name to the science of mathematics.The Greek idea of proof never appealed to the Arabs and thus you do not find any original mathematical discoveries by Arabs.

[Thus, not only was the old information of the Greeks, Romans, Persians, and Hindus translated into Arabic and preserved for coming generations...]

This is true and the Arabs must be given credit for this.

[......but great strides in the physical as well as medical sciences were made—all under the patronage of the Abbasid Caliphates, even in the face of occasional religious objections.]

This is an extrapolation of facts for which no satisfactory proof exists.

Ref ali87 #73

You should really go easy on Brother Jay. He really would like to see Muslims in the rest of India make the same progress as the Muslims of Kerala. If in fact you want to see what a united India might have looked like, Kerala is your testbed, your laboratory. With Muslims constituting a third and Christians a fourth of the population, Hindus are not a majority in the state and all governments have ensured equal opportunity for members of all religions. If Pakistan and Bangladesh had been part of a united India, there is no way Muslims could be kept down. On the other hand, Karachi would possibly have continued electing a Parsi or a Hindu as its mayor once in a while, demonstrating Muslim tolerance too.

[If your mother and sister covers herself today you should thank Islam for it. I dont think you would be too comfortable if your female relatives would abandon their dress today (Please dont get upset meant only as theoritcal argument). ]

Don`t bet on that. Brother Jay would proudly inform you that Islam came to Kerala much before bin Qasim landed in Sindh. Kerala had its first Jewish settlers arriving in 279 AD and the first Christian preacher was no less than St. Thomas the Apostle himself. Despite all of them and the efforts of Christian missionaries under British rule, Kerala women went topless till about 80 years ago.

As to women`s rights, Brother Jay would point out that in Kerala inheritance was entirely through the female line of the family. The men were employed pretty much like drones in a bee colony: do odd jobs around the house, occasionally impregnate the wife, and make oneself scarce when important decisions were to be taken.

#76 by harimau on January 28, 2003 9:01pm PT

:)