Europe was great because there were no Muslims in Europe

Affirmative action.

 

Muslims in France are Muslims. Muslims in Germany are Muslims. Muslims in England are Muslims. Muslims in America are Americans.

 

I used to be like you. I’m still no defender of Islam, but it is actually less anti-Christian than another religion.

 

Muslims in America are Americans.

If you say so..

 

While it is true that they acquired much of their knowledge from surrounding civilizations, including the Indian numeral system which we later adopted, this is because their leadership encouraged it. The Muslims established a house of wisdom in Baghdad in which they encouraged their scholars to travel and study the knowledge of other civilizations. The Christian nations often discouraged such studies because it was considered to be secular, where as in the Muslim world, they were encouraged to study such information. In fact, some of the information we rediscovered about ancient Greece were attained through the Arabic translations.

While the west was going through the dark ages, the Muslim world was in a golden era. This golden era ended when the Mongols conquered Baghdad, thus ending the house of wisdom.

and for the record, yes the Muslims did get their numeral system from the Gupta dynasty in India, however they are the originators of algebra. The word algebra in itself is an Arabic word. Much of our knowledge on astronomy we got from the Muslims as well. In fact, nearly 2/3rds of all starts that are named have Arabic names.

 

Here's the story. The Roman Empire stretched from Britain to the frontier of Persia. Constantine found it too unwieldy and split the Empire into Eastern and Western sections with two Emperors. The West fell to the Barbarians and entered the Dark Ages and all learning was lost. In the East first the Arabs and then the Turks conquered most of it, but Constantinople held out and preserved just about all we now have from the Greeks.

The Muslims went on a binge conquering Persia and India and much admired the Greek, Persian and Indian learning. Some Caliph, whose name escapes me, gathered all this learning in Baghdad and started a school there. The Muslim scholars did make some non-trivial mathematical discoveries especially in Algebra. This was the Islamic Golden age

But Constantinople was cut off and when the West emerged from the Dark Ages into the Renaissance the Greek learning was available only from Arabic texts of the Greek originals and the additional discoveries made by Muslims. So they called Algebra Algebra (and Alchemy Alchemy, even though that pseudo-science was Egyptian in origin).

When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1452 the Greek speaking scholars fled to Italy bearing the Greek originals, turbo charging the Renaissance.

The Muslim world entered its own Dark Ages when the Mongols shattered the eastern Muslim empire and some Muslim divine decided that rational inquiry was un-Islamic. It put a big damper on the scholars of Muslim Spain. I am sorry I've forgotten his name, too, and wish I could get it back. I found out about him here on PF.

All of this is not controversial but is not especially popular. Gibbon, of Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, disliked Christianity and the Byzantine Empire. Due to his enormous influence, it is fashionable to downplay the pivotal role of the Eastern Romans.

 

So who as Diophantus? Chopped liver?

Diophantus of Alexandria (Ancient Greek: Διόφαντος ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς; born probably sometime between AD 201 and 215; died around 84 years old, probably sometime between AD 285 and 299) was an Alexandrian Hellenistic mathematician, who was the author of a series of books called Arithmetica, many of which are now lost. Sometimes called "the father of algebra", his texts deal with solving algebraic equations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diophantus

There is no Greek text we have now that is known only through an Arabic translation and many Greek texts that never had an Arabic translation. They impeded Western Civilization by investing Constantinople which never knew a "Dark Ages."

 

Many mathematical structures are referred to as algebras, the name in itself originates from the Muslim house of wisdom's study of various mathematicians and mathematical formulas. The person who is more commonly referred to as the "father of algebra" is a Persian mathematician by the name of al-Khowarizmi, as his work comes closer to the elementary algebra we study today.

In fact, if you type in "father of algebra" into google search, it is al-Khowarizmi whose name comes up, not Diophantus.

 

Muslims occupied Spain and Portugal for 9 centuries ending in the 16 th century.Moroccans were allowed to enter Spain without a visa until relatively recently, within the past 30 years.

 

Muslims did not invent algebra,
ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians and Chinese all knew algebra thousends of years before the Persian guy

what the Muslims did was make it simpler and spread it

 

LMAO...Wow. You really should educate yourself before opening your mouth.
Your historial ignorance is appalling.

 

Jesus, a classic case of the pot calling the kettle 'black' if ever there was one? Some people have no self-awareness whatsoever have they!

 

The shoeless somali refugee on welfare nevervinvented anything of value

 

They did have a mathematical golden era, but let's not pretend that Islamic contribution to science is even 1 10000th that of Christians. The notion that without the Islamic golden age we'd all be sitting in wooden huts is wrong, they don't get credit for anything done with algebra.

All of this means nothing in terms of the individual anyway. Jews can do good science, Christians can do good science, and yes, Muslims can too.

I don't understand the compulsion to defend the group.

 

Are you trying to fake your way through this? "Many mathematical structures are referred to as algegras(!?!)" Both Diophantus and al-Khowarizmi were concerned with the computation of unknown quantities in equations. The fact of the matter is that pursuit was first attempted by the Babylonians then the Egyptians then the Greeks then the Muslims and perfected by the Europeans. The Chinese and Indians also studied Algebra.

The Muslims did advance the state of the art but can hardly be credited with "inventing Algebra."

 

What I was addressing is it was the house of wisdom who first categorized these mathematical formulas as algebras. That's literally where the word itself came from, and it was they who first taught it in the elementary form we more commonly use today. That is why al-Khwarizmi is more commonly referred to as the father of algebra.

 

But surely it is an exaggeration to suggest that we could not have landed a man on the moon without al-Khwarizmi. His and other Muslim's contributions are just not that crucial when compared to Aristotle or Newton.

It is the Greeks who are the crucial actors in Western and indeed world civilization. They were the ones who came up with natural philosophy, an activity that eluded much older and sophisticated civilizations.

Sure the Muslims did their bit for a while, but the crucial question is why did math and science fizzle out in Islamic Civilization. The Mongols dealt a severe blow. But the Islamic world recovered from that politically and economically, but not scientifically whereas Western Europe did recover from barbarian invasions.

The rejection of Greek natural philosophy was spearheaded by a man named Al-Ghazali, a tremendously influential thinker who taught "the belief that all causal events and interactions are not the product of material conjunctions but rather the immediate and present Will of God."

One scholar absolves Al-Ghazali and blames one Nizam al-Mulk:

https://en.qantara.de/content/the-decline-of-islamic-scientific-thought-dont-blame-it-on-al-ghazali

It is apparent that Islam evolved in such a way that it became hostile to scientific thinking. It is incompatible with Western culture and attempts to integrate Muslims into the West can only damage our societies.

 

Don't you normally need to make a correct point in order for people to get it? Muslims have been in Spain and Portugal for hundreds of years so....you're wrong. Again.

 

And? How did it work out for them?
I'll tell you how - when the Spanish finally managed to defeat them, they told every Muslims to get the F out. Obviously they were fed up with Islamic arrogance and trickiness. No wonder since according Sharia law "infidels" are untermenschen, subhuman, Dhimmi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi).

 

Most of them were expelled yet came back, some as former slaves, and by the end of the 18th century Muslims in the country could freely practice their religion. As of today, only about 4% of Spain is Muslim. Now keep in mind how often Spain is mentioned in the news, at least in a negative light.

 

I don't know if it's because, but both periods were linked at least.
There were positive things in the 13th and 14th century too.

From my point of view, Europe died when it betrayed its own culture in the fifties. The death of european aristocracy was too a major problem.

Despite having major slave traders, there were almost no slaves on european core territories. Slavery weaken people, slaves become dumb people and slavers lazy idiots too.

The islamic religion is superstitious to the extreme, they have the same forbidden/allowed system than judaism. In Islam, you don't eat pork, you can't have dogs, adopt children (replaced by a system called Kafala), you don't know why, it's just their god who decided.

 

You had to go back, what, 1000 YEARS to find something real good that Muslims invented? Tells us a lot about Islam.

 

WHOA, WHOA, WHOA - YOU COULDN'T BE MORE WRONG!! They've made great strides in the design and development of suicide vests (to get their 72 virgins that Mohammad promised them when they kill infidels.)

 

In science - science specifically, Muslims have let the world down when you look at their relative number of Nobel Prizes in Science. Praying so often can do that.

 

Nonsense - all Christians get BRUTALLY ROASTED in their "loving" god's "hellfire", no matter how ethical, nor how good of works they may have done....even Mother Teresa gets brutally tortured alive in Allah's "hellfire" (since she was not a Muslim.) Not sure how "another religion" could punish Christians more than that. I don't think that Christians get better or worse treatment after their death than any other religion's followers do - but I could be proven wrong.