I have an overall conspiracy theory of the contemporary rise of Extremely Violent IsLam (EVIL): the petrol plutocrats from the US promoted it, because it was an ideology antagonistic to Europe. The petrol men from the USA wanted to push the French and the British out of the Middle East, just as if they were a bunch of Indians, and get the oil. It worked. The US petrol men breathed with (con-spirare) Ibn Saud, and soon President Roosevelt, a deep hater of French influence, gave them his complete governmental support (it made sense as FDR was a blue blood plutocrat, so he could only hate France, why loving to grab other nations’ resources).
So the mentality I foster is that this Wahhabist inspired modern terrorism has extremely deep roots found in the USA (and it’s demonstrated by the CIA’s instrumentalization of the Shia in its coup against Mossadegh). A mood can spread far. And it’s spreading. The mood that authorities in the USA have been sneakily behind the rise of Extremely Violent IsLam, is spreading. Even among Very Serious People. Consider:
Rudolf Guliani, ex-mayor of New York, just declared: “[Hillary Clinton] had her chance to (rally people against ISIS) — she helped create ISIS. Hillary Clinton could be considered a founding member of ISIS… her DNA is all over it.”
AL KHWARIZMI
The point is that Rene’ Descartes was the inventor of analytic geometry. Nobody says that Christianism invented analytic geometry (all modern mathematics rest on it, including differential calculus). Actually, Descartes, a nominal Catholic, fled to the Netherlands, to be out of reach of the Roman Inquisition. Most great thinkers under Islam got into trouble with authorities, and some were killed. Overall, top thinkers fared less well under Islam than under nominal Christianism, and this is exactly why most breakthroughs thinkers of the Middle Ages were under nominal Christianism.
A reason was that the European leaders were only nominally Christian. With the exception of occasional clowns like Saint Louis, they viewed themselves as descendants of Roman emperors (legally, they were: long story, told in other essays). Thus they did not need to justify themselves with the most fanatical application of religion, they were above it.
Another reason: in 400 CE, the fathers of the “Catholic Orthodox” church decided that the Bible and Evangels should not be interpreted literally. (Although many did interpret them literally later, for selfish reasons.)
Similarly, the great distance between Khwarizmi, depicted above, and Mecca, is no coincidence. “Islam” was at its highest, intellectually speaking, the furthest it was from Literal Islam (“Salafism, Wahhabism, EVIL, etc.). Geographically, or practically (see the “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad; or the Spanish Caliphate founded by a tall guy with red hair).
Luis questions the following quote of mine: “Thus, from the beginning, Islam was conceived as war ideology against civilization.” (The idea behind the quote cannot be really contested, because The Prophet himself, PBUH, said so…)
Luis: “Why do you equate “civilisation” per se as the “Roman-Greco West”? Used in this way, “civilisation” becomes simply a loaded word which can be wielded to produce whatever meaning one wants. But didn’t Islamic civilisations exist? Weren’t they, indeed, ahead of Europe for a long time in terms of science?”
No, “they” were not. That is a… racist myth. Yes, racist. Inverted racism is still racism. Identifying “Muslim” and “Arab” is a form of racism. So is identifying anybody living in the Muslim Imperium as a “Muslim” foremost. One does not define Abelard, Fibonacci, Buridan, Leonardo Da Vinci, or even Oresme, as “Christian” thinkers (although Oresme became a bishop!) They are defined by what they contributed to humanity: new ideas. Everybody with a modicum of culture knows that their work imperiled the fascist religious establishment.
It’s of great import: in a few decades, the Arabs conquered the world’s largest empire.
I am not saying that Muhammad was against science. Actually, the exact opposite is pretty much certain. The Prophet was smart, observant, progressive, and, according to him, poisoned by jackals, who claimed he was delirious, and prevented him to write his will, as they claimed the Qur’an was enough (see below).
In the Muslim imperium, people who were not Muslim had to wear special marks on their clothing, were condemned to special taxes, and were subject to many indignities, vexation, and denial of basic human rights. Those who did not want their children to be submitted to this, superficially embraced Islam during the long centuries of Islam occupation.
The Prophet mentioned not just the “Romans”, as a civilization to raid, but also the Persians. (He considered only the Romans to be following God, Allah, but to be doing so poorly; later some Muslim authorities reluctantly deigned to consider Zoroastrians “people of the the book”).
The conventional point of view claims that Arab science was more advanced than Europe’s. This is conventional, but convention does not truth make. Studying the situation carefully reveals otherwise. See my “Shocking Arabophilia”:
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2014/11/15/shocking-arabophilia/
That “Arabic science was more advanced” than that of Europe, is much repeated, but a form of racism. Indeed, not everybody inside the Muslim Imperia, the Caliphate(s) was an Arab. Actually “Arabs” were always a small minority inside the empire they created (so, in particular, North Africans are not “Arabs”).
“Arabic numerals” are actually Indian (mostly, although the Ancient Greeks initiated the notation a bit). The ZERO was created by an Uzbek. Faced with this complex situation, please don’t despair, please read Al-Khwarizmi‘s On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals (ca. 825). The author, a famous thinker and mathematician, was born in Eastern Greater Iran, now called Uzbekistan.
Many of the “Arab” superior thinkers were… Jewish. In any case the breakthroughs in philosophy and science were made in Europe
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Islam As An Homicidal Software Program:
Hela Ouardi, a Tunisian researcher (digging inside the texts) points out the many assassination attempts against the Prophet Muhammad. And the fact he was very officially abused by his companions on his death bed. They forbade him to write the testament he wanted to write (Muhammad’s son had died a few months prior). Muhammad believed he was being poisoned. Not just as he died, but in previous circumstances. At one point he was given a remedy. He forced everyone to drink it, to make sure it was not poison. Two days to bury him, unusual.
Fatima, the daughter of the prophet, mom of the grandsons whom the Prophet beloved, was assassinated within weeks of her father’s death.
Hela Ouardi says that this is the initial flaw of Islam, the recourse to violence, right from the start, comparable to a programmatic mistake in a computer, right from the start.
What’s her sources? Ms. Ouardi went through all the sacred texts (Sunni or Shia). Up to very recently, most of these texts had not even been read, let alone, studied.
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The Mood That “OBAMA LEGACY IS AWFUL” Is Spreading;
I have been hyper critical Of Obama, as soon as he approached the presidency. (I had supported his campaign to the point i got invited to the inaugural, and he is a personal friend.)
Obama, unfortunately, turned into G W Bush’s little bum wiper boy: Obama became president, and applied more Reagonomics, more subsidies for the rich, and more colossal layers of misleading hypocrisy than ever before. (Obama was reluctant in doing so, but the entire leadership of the democratic party as closet right wing Pluto republicans!)
I said that the price to be paid would be Obama’s place in history. Now that mood is spreading too:
Bill Clinton (March 21, 2016):“If you believe we can rise together, if you believe we’ve finally come to the point where we can put the awful legacy of the last eight years behind us and the seven years before that where we were practicing trickle-down economics, then you should vote for her,” the former president said about his wife.
Wow.
That was my old hope about Hillary: that she would turn against her, and her husband’s sponsors. So far, she had nixed this hope. However, this declaration changes everything. It is a serious turn against Obama’s (and Cruz’s) puppet masters (Cornell West, the famous black author, who made 65 speeches for Obama in 2008, but was not invited to the inaugural, called Obama a “black puppet”, March 20, 2016: the rats are leaving the plutocratic ship).
This is all getting very interesting. Moods are everything.
Patrice Ayme’