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Comment by drieddust | Hacker News Reader

Islam never produced anything of value. Works cited as Arabic are copy paste translations from India.

Question to be asked is if Islam is so progressive then why it insists on blind following of weird and regressive rulers. How can someone develop scientific temper when you can be simply stoned, hanged flogged for merely having an opinion.

Arabia was still a desert with no social,architectural, or technological progress up until oil was discovered. Ottoman ruled for many centuries but I don't recall any "scientific" achievements under there rule. I would love hear if someone has counter view.

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> Islam never produced anything of value

That's a sickening statement to see here and running into things like this makes me ashamed of this site.

Needless to say, religious flamewar is a bannable offense on HN. No more of this, ever, please.

I wish Rumi were here so we could all see what a sweet and learned response he would supply, but unfortunately we have to make do without him.

≈‘In spring, the roses hide the thorns they have on earth, | My rosery springs up and takes away my thorny mood’ from the Divan (Ghazal Foruzanfar-1945) maybe.

You need to learn history my friend. And FYI I'm not attacking nor defending Islam here.

What is referred to as "Islamic" culture did not come from Arabia/modern day gulf countries. It came from Iraq, the Levant, Egypt and North Africa. The Caliphates' capitals were based in Damascus, Baghdad, Egypt or south of Spain. These were diverse societies and "Islamic" progress was diverse by people from different religions and races.

Also, the Ottomans never occupied Arabia/the Gulf. They stopped at the Levant. Because there was simply nothing to occupy in an empty desert.

You're confusing Arabia, Levant, Iraq, Egypt and North Africa. Arabia has a very distinct culture and different languages & history.

The Levant, Iraq, Egypt and North Africa are far far from "still a desert with no social, architectural or technological progress". They don't even have oil, apart from Iraq.

I am also not attacking Islam but the premise of the article that it ushered an era of "scientific progress".

> Also, the Ottomans never occupied Arabia/the Gulf. They stopped at the Levant. Because there was simply nothing to occupy in an empty desert.

AFAIK Ottoman ruled up to Mecca yet it remained undeveloped. Seems a little bit strange that they had made advancements in architecture yet did not develop the holiest place.

I know you're not attacking Islam, just prefacing that I am not.

Mecca was never important. It was symbolic but that's where it ends. Ignore the Ottomans, even the first few Caliphs, the minute they left Arabia, no one cared about Mecca beyond symbolism.

That you see espoused as "religious" is almost always BS. Its all politics and economics. You cannot develop anything in a desert. Why would you focus on a desert when you can focus on much richer areas by the Mediterranean with already a lot of culture and resources and wealth?

I guess al Biruni was measuring circumference of fake earth in Punjab then?

https://astronomy.com/news/2017/02/muslim-contributions-to-a...

This piece of article is filled with misinformation. Indian calender system called "panchang" incorporated the motion of earth, sun, moon and stars long before the dates mentioned in this article[1]. Various Sanskrit Astronomy treatise calculated and continuously refined the calculation.

> Dharmic (Hindu) scholars kept precise time by observing and calculating the cycles of Surya i.e. the sun, moon and the planets. These calculations about the sun appear in various astronomical texts in Sanskrit, such as the 5th-century Aryabhatiya by Aryabhata, the 6th-century Romaka by Latadeva and Panca Siddhantika by Varahamihira, the 7th-century Khandakhadyaka by Brahmagupta and the 8th-century Sisyadhivrddida by Lalla.[24] These texts present Surya and various planets and estimate the characteristics of the respective planetary motion.[24] Other texts such as Surya Siddhanta dated to have been completed sometime between the 5th century and 10th century present their chapters on various deified planets with stories behind them.

Hindu India have names for time scale ranging from 10e-17 to 10e22 long before Greece and Arabia[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_calendar#Texts

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time

I really don’t understand the ethnocentric zero-sum perspectives from some people responding in this thread. People seem to forget that knowledge is cumulative. While there is no doubt that plenty of knowledge predates the Arabic philosopher-scientists, and surely they inherited traditions from those who came before them, but it is also clear that they added to the universal body of knowledge. To pretend otherwise or to downplay those accomplishments in order to raise up others, is (to my mind) profoundly sad and anti-scientific. If we are giants, it’s because we stand on the shoulders of giants. And to paraphrase Terry Pratchet, it’s giants all the way down.

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