No because it was Friday night and I saw disgusting drunken people vomiting in the streets, I saw semi naked girls laying on the ground, I saw 'civilized free liberal' westerners fighting with broken glasses...I felt sick, I wished to go back to Spain. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
HHm, interesting, i didnt know coinage had travelled that far north. As for spain, an invasion is an invasion, doesnt matter much about how many died. You forgot the further incursions into France.
True. Where would the Arabs be without the Greeks? Like PM said, where the hell would we be with the Arabs? We owe classical thought like secular humanism to the Arabs, smart enough to keep the Greeks philosophies. Not only that they were the one's who brought us numerals, making psychics, and the enlightenment possible. We owe quite a bit to the Arabs.
Indeed, and where would we be without the rennaissance and teh industrial revolution. though that isnt the purpose of htis thread, so, the arabs were pretty good, thanks a lot to them.
You see, you just post general statements, I dont think these statements are helpful in any constructive debate.
I described some aspects of the modern western life style, everyon's question was meant to make fun of my heritage, so I gave him something from his own ENLIGHTED society !! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
you refer to me.? i was not making fun of any heritage. i find you frozen in time. please try to come out of it.
Well, I find you liquidated in time, please try to hold your pieces together. HE WHO CANT COMPREHEND THE HISTORY, WILL NOT BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE PRESENT AND WILL FAILL TO PREDICT THE FUTURE.
While I don't agree with that behaviour myself, I am glad that if I did wish to engage in same, I would be able to.
That would be enough to convert me to Islam. I am British, white and not-particularly-religious but I very much sympathise with the sentiments of Muslims and their reactions to "tit-at-the-Superbowl" Western society. guthrie, I am very disappointed with your post, I thought you were needlessly very rude. It is quite possible you too agree with the sentiments of Proud Muslim but your thoughts are too clouded by religious prejudice to admit it. I am not convinced Islam, or any kind of blind faith, offers a better way, but is Spain really better? Perhaps I should emigrate!
Yes, exactly. I'm not trying to degrade their position. I'm just trying to give credit where credit is due. They had some help from the Greeks, and combined with many other things the work they did helped to preserve civilization. This happened while my ancestors were busy being exterminated in pogroms. They did do a great deal and I have great respect for them. Europeans spent the whole of the Dark Ages content at believing the Muslims were inferior, and now, with the help of a magnifying glass it's quite easy to see that the opposite was true. Now the case is different. Monarchies and dictatorships and western globalization (starting in the 16th century) have left almost all of the Muslim world in poverty and despair. If it wasn't for their oil, they'd just be another set of third world countries, like South or Latin America, like Eastern Europe, like most, maybe all, of Africa.
Well, Islam turned Spain into the most advanced county in the middle ages, Islam is Islam, it never change because it is the engine for change. Islam is not blind faith, because faith alone wont do in Islam..so perhaps you ought to read more about Islam and its teachings to know that it is not build on blind faith but on reason and logic.
I disagree about the oil issue, remember, the oil was discovered in the 1930s only. We survived for centuries before the oil and we will manage to do so after the oil, after all, we, the people of the Middle East, get nothing from our oil, it all goes into either the pockets of our western-supported dictators or sent back to you in return for weapons. We built magnificent civilization in Spain WITHOUT the oil, we built it with ISLAM, Islam and only Islam is our motivation and engine for development and progress.
do you think your idea of magnificent Muslim Spain is a Jewish urban legend? "…The Golden Age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam.”. [Bernard Lewis. "The Pro-Islamic Jews," Judaism, (Fall 1968), p. 401.] Did Islam move into Spain because Islam was strong and united or because Europe was weak and falling apart? Surely the first reason Islam got a foothold in Spain was because a Muslim army beat a Visigoth army on the battlefield. This required very traditional, brutal, uncivilised violence. Then the Muslims subjected non-muslims to discriminatory taxes and second class people status in their own lands. Is that advanced? Not if you believe in modern conceptions of human rights. If Muslim Spain was advanced one may also ask how did it come to fall? The first reason Islam lost Spain is that a Muslim army got beaten on the battlefield by a French army, one that must have been backed-up by a more advanced (united, strong) society than the Muslim Spanish at that time. Is reason and logic a product of Islam or of a society's tolerance of science that Islam might or might not have? Scholars in the Islamic world did make discoveries in every area of science - in part because of what they had learned from the Hellenists. But Islamic peoples could not use their scientific learning to the full benefit of Islamic society because the laws of Islam are built on blind faith, not evidence. The caliphates and sultans ignored or destroyed scientific knowledge and institutions; such as relating to human biology (a Syrian independently discovered the heart-pump circulation of the blood hundreds of years before Europe but this did not influence Muslim medical practice, nor did Europeans hear of the work until recently) and astronomical observatories (the last Muslim observatory was destroyed in Instanbul). There is reason and logic in the Islamic world, in that humans are capable of reason and logic, but to say the actual institutions of Islamic society, such as Sharia law, uses reason and logic is a fallacy. Sharia law, its perenial ignorance of human nature and hatred of scientific institutions, relies on blind faith. If it didn't it would blow away with the sands of hot Arabian winds. Yes, Islamic scholars maintained teachings of the Greeks and passed them on to Italians of renaissance Europe who passed them on via German printing press, the French revolutionaries and the British Empire to us. This only serves to show they like those who followed them were a conduit through which scientific knowledge could flow. It doesn't say Islam is "scientific" as much as it doesn't say christianity is "scientific". Science is science, religion is religion.
I dont accept this quote because it is from famous biased anti muslim ORIENTALIST...quote me from fair unbiased sources, thank you. This is pure blatant nonesense...here is something you did not read about in the anti muslim hate sites from where you are COPYING AND PASTING: When looking at the Muslim expansion in Spain one is struck by its speed, its generally peaceful aspect and civilizational component. It took the Muslims less than three years (from 711 to 714) and one battle (at Guadalete, near Cadiz) to spread throughout the whole of Spain. In contrast to this, it took the Prophet Muhammad twenty-two years (from 610 to 632) and nineteen expeditions to get Arabia to accept Islam. This difference in both time and effort, to gain Arabia and Spain to Islam, is due to theological affinities as well as socio-cultural and politico-economical reasons which appealed to the Spaniards. Pre-Islamic Arabia was predominantly polytheist, with small Jewish and Christian communities. There, Islam had to fight against a 'world without law' (Jahiliyya) to make monotheism prevail. Pre-Islamic Spain was Christian with important Jewish communities. This difference, according to Roger Garaudy, not only explains the speed of the expansion, but also its type. W. Montgomery Watt in A History of Islamic Spain states: ''It is a common misapprehension that the holy war meant that the Muslims gave their opponents a choice "between Islam and the sword". This was sometimes the case, but only when the opponents were polytheist and idol-worshippers. For Jews, Christians and other "People of the Book", that is, monotheists with written scriptures - a phrase that was very liberally interpreted - there was a third possibility, they might become a "protected group", paying a tax or tribute to the Muslims but enjoying internal autonomy'' Besides, in the Iberian Peninsula there raged a civil war between Trinitarian Christians, who accepted the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, and Arian Christians, who saw Jesus not as God but as a Prophet inspired by God. The Council of Nicea in 325, invoked by the emperor Constantine in order to unify ideologically his empire, imposed the dogma of Trinity and condemned the teachings of Anus of Alexandria who refused these dogmas. The conflict erupted, when in 709, the Trinitarian Christians declared Roderick as king. The archbishop of Seville opposed him and the inhabitants of present Andalusia (Bétique) revolted against his rule. When Roderick invaded Andalusia, the inhabitant of the latter looked south help. The able Berber General Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed to Algeciras and a battle in Guadalete, near Cadiz took place. The Bishop of Seville as well as that of Toledo rallied to the Muslim army. The peasants had a very difficult time, were ill-treated and reduced to the status of slaves. Poverty, corruption, ignorance and instability were the order of the day. Even the free men felt themselves to be underprivileged. There was much discontent, and many ordinary people looked on the Muslims as liberators and gave them all the assistance they could. The Jews who have been persecuted for a long time under the Visigoth rule (e.g. a special decree in 694 enslaved all those who did not accept baptism), opened the gates of many cities. So deep and widespread was the satisfaction given to all classes that during the whole of the eight century there was not a single revolt of the subjects. It is difficult to understand how a small army could cross the whole of Spain in less than three years if one imagines a military invasion. The historian Dozy, in Histoire des Musulmans d'Espagne, describes the event as 'a good thing for Spain' which produced an important social revolution, setting the country free from the chains it was groaning under for centuries. Taxes were much less compared to those imposed by previous governments. The Muslims introduced land reforms by taking land from the rich and distributing it equally among serf-peasants and slaves. The new owners worked it with zeal. Commerce was liberated from the limitations and high taxes that caused its demise. Slaves could set themselves free in return for a fair compensation, something which threw in new energies. All these measures, says Dozy, created a state of well-being which was the reason behind the welcoming of the Muslims. The great Spanish writer Blasco Ibanez in Dans l'ombrc de la cathédrale talks about a 'civilizational expedition' coming from the south rather than a conquest. To Ibanez, it was not an invasion imposing itself by arms, it was a new society whose vigorous roots were sprouting from everywhere. Describing the conquering Muslims, he says: 'The principle of freedom of conscience, cornerstone of the greatness of nations, was dear to them. In the cities they ruled, they accepted the church of the Christian and the synagogue of the Jew.' History, therefore makes it clear that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through Spain and forcing Islam at the point of the sword is an absurd myth. The expansion of Islam in Spain was not a military conquest, but a liberation. Isn't absurd to apply the modern concepts of human rights to the 7th century ??? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Another inaccurate historical fact, the Muslims lost to the French 700 YEARS BEFORE THE FALL OF GRANADA.......get your facts right. Karen Armstrong is good FAIR American Historian, why you dont read something from her books about Islam ????
