Then it won't be hard to show where the Chinese moved to in Arab lands from the 700s until the Mongol invasions.
:bugeye: What are you talking about? As if asking how many Chinese were living in New Amsterdam before trade started in the Americas makes any sense? Of course, there were ZERO Chinese in New Amsterdam BEFORE trade started! So What? After trade started they were welcomed and settled there to conduct trade with China. How many Arabs were living in the Tang capital of Chang'an before sea trading routes were opened with Arabs? Oh, that would be ZERO. But AFTER trade started about 4000 Muslims lived and worked in Chang'an. The Chinese Emperor also provided land within his capitol city and paid for and Chinese Citizen built a Mosque for the Muslims living there. Wherever Chinese merchants were welcomed they settled and traded. Again, the obvious answer is staring you in the face. Islam teaches there is One God. It is inherently hostile towards people of different faiths. It teaches only the people of the book are accepted religions. It teaches to tax people if they are not Muslims. It teaches to treat non-Muslims with hostility. Because of these hateful ideologies non-Muslim have not been welcomed into cities like Mecca in the way Muslims have been welcomed into other peoples cities. It's exactly the same TODAY. This is so obvious you'd have to be completely blind not to see it.
With swords to their necks and with riffles aimed at their heads from the British and the French invaders. The Christians used and are still using proselytising tactics everywhere they can .
Christianity has been used as a means to advance colonization since the Age of Discovery. \ Islam has been used as a means to advance colonization since the Islamic Crusades. Without doing some serious back-flipping monotheism will never accept that another people's belief system is as valid as its own. Sure the Xians made some concessions for Socrates and Plato etc.. but ONLY because they were before Christ. The same may be true for Buddha (at least for Catholics - although I'm not 100% convinced that's true). More often than not Christians used the idea of bringing the Word of God to the heathens as a way to sanctify their colonization. As did the Muslims.
Huh.....!!!. Natives had their own deities and they were very different from Christianity . The British and the French brought Jesus to the natives with rifles, swords and blood shed .....yikes !!!.
Some rich men came and raped the land, Nobody caught 'em Put up a bunch of ugly boxes, and Jesus, people bought 'em And they called it paradise The place to be They watched the hazy sun, sinking in the sea You can leave it all behind and sail to Lahaina just like the missionaries did, so many years ago They even brought a neon sign:"Jesus is coming" Brought the white man's burden down Brought the white man's reign Who will provide the grand design? What is yours and what is mine? 'Cause there is no more new frontier We have got to make it here We satifsy our endless needs and justify our bloody deeds, in the name of destiny and the name of God And you can see them there, On Sunday morning Stand up and sing about what it's like up there They call it paradise I don't know why You call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye The Last Resort - Eagles
Something interesting I was reading on Wiki: How were Muslims able to found and build Baghdad and yet not even be able to keep their Kaaba from flooding a few decades prior? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Notice again how few cities were founded during the supposed 800 year " long "Islamic" Golden Age. It's interesting to uncover the propaganda used to magically enhance superstitions or credit them for various mystical Utopias and "Golden Ages" ... too funny Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
786 theorized that perhaps Europeans may have been bigoted by Christianity and therefor couldn't (or wouldn't) appreciate the deep insights into humanity expressed by GOD in the Qur'an. and yet these same Christians had no problem with other Philosophies. Again, we're left with the more simpler answer being that the Qur'an wasn't really written by a magical sky-God at all and more than likely was an inferior peace of literature. The Qur'an probably wasn't constructed as a means to lead to enlightenment about humanity and so wasn't valued by neither Chinese nor European intellectuals.
What seems to have skipped you is that Islamic Empire was a direct threat to them, or did you not care to read that, I gave the example of Japanese in America. Have fun jumping to conclusions Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Peace be unto Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Islam had a pretty profound effect on China.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_China And then the low count for Muslims in China is over 20 million. Not that I am especially a fan of Islam. I haven't managed to read the Koran - or the whole Bible, or Ulysses by James Joyce, or Adam Smith's works, for that matter.)
??? Do you think Arabs and Chinese started trading only after Islam? Where did you learn history? Why do you think the Chinese did not construct temples to pre-Islamic Arab faiths?
They did, of course - unless you intend to dismiss Zoroastrianism and the like as non-Arab. And there is the age old pattern of such religions, usefulness to empire: Embracing Islam, one way or another, is something despots and tyrants and feudal lords have often found useful - Saudi Arabia a recent small example. The low count for the Chinese is over a billion. And the discussion was not of the influence of Muslims, or even Islam, but of the Quran directly on Chinese philosophy or intellectual work. It appears to have been little, if any.
Zoroastrianism is Arab? I will tell my BIL. He keeps calling me Taliban Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I don't think your point was about Arabs carefully defined, but about Islam compared with other trader's religions from the Middle East area- at least, the ones that built temples. But if you want to dodge on the technicality, so be it. The Chinese built temples or churches to basically all the major religions - certainly all the empire-scale ones - that traded in their borders.
The Arabs were never considered as Zoroastrians. Their pagan religions were always distinct. Zoroastians like Jews are born, not made and have kept themselves ethnically "pure" since the last 2000 years in India [most Judaism is borrowed from Zoroastrianism]. Ever hear of Hatim Ta'i? Ta'i is what the Arabs were before they were Arabs. They were vassals under the Persians, just like the Nestorians. A two second google search http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200504/the.seas.of.sindbad.htm
The Chinese built temples for the Zarathustrans and the Muslims, the Buddhists and the Taoists, the Christians and I will bet you the Jews. They did not build temples for the Mongol shamanism, and other such religions, most likely because there was no temple building involved. Now, about the blank page where the observations of the Quran's influence on Chinese intellectual endeavor are to be recorded - - - I've read the book in translation, and I can well understand why someone with the Analects or the Tao Te Ching or the I Ching or the many others might find it underwhelming. But there is something, surely?
The doesn't explain why European Christians translated Arab Philosophers into Latin. They certainly weren't threatened enough to skip over those treaties. Oh, they read the Qur'an they just didn't think it was as good as Greek, Roman, Indian, Chinese or Arab philosophy. GOD, for inexplicable reason, wasn't valued as highly as mortals.