So he got caught that way. And now he's backpedaled by expressing "regret".

Yeah, right. Since this version was published unedited, I guarantee you the paper was the one that changed 'Arabs' to 'Arab States' in the version from last April.

Medicine is another biggie.

Besides what has already been mentioned...
Islam created a large buffer zone between Christian Europe (though not Russia) and the Mongol hordes.
Islam worked as a transmitter of ancient Greek and Indian thought not only through time but also across geographic locales.

A great book on the sciences that were preserved by or initiated under Islam is "Science in Medieval Islam" by Howard R. Turner.

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Arab cuisine - Lebanese mainly, but increasingly Egyptian and other north African - is being belatedly discovered in the west.

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Indeed. I am at this moment happily digesting a wondrous meal from a Lebanese restaurant up the street. So my stomach and taste buds, at the very least, are profoundly indebted to "the Arabs".

The Abassid dynasty did nasty things in the 8th century, so therefore we had to invade the region, set up brutal puppet regimes and steal their oil? Sounds pretty weak to me.

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It is not only in Spain that Arab architecture has left a European mark. The pointed arch, so eagerly adopted by medieval builders and known today as gothic, was an idea copied from the east, and brought to the west by the early crusaders. And while those religiously crazed bigots were burning and slaughtering in the holy land, Arab poets, mathematicians, astronomers, philosophers and scientists were advancing human civilisation to unprecedented peaks of sophistication

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Yeah, Arabic society was a fucking uptopia before the evil bigoted white man came and destroyed it. It's all those white men are good for, isn't it, Derek Brown?

Anyone who has ever taken any history classes knows that eastern civilization made a huge contribution to modern civilization. While Europe was in it's dakr ages, Islam was in a period of great progress and enlightenment. B ut of course, that is relative. Depsite the progress in science and art at home, their armies still conquered and plundered like any medival civilization. No matter how much we want to blame those awful europeans for the crusades in their entirety, the fact is that the forces of the east were closing in and conquering lands farhter and farther west. The cursaders may have had some religeous backing, but it was also an effort to fight back against foreign armies. I'm not saying that the crusades were right, but they were certainly not the grave inhmanity that the author of this article is desrcibing.

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the mathematical concept of zero was discovered by Arabs

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For sure, the Arab world has more than its share of despotic rulers and religious bigots. But to lump everyone together under Mr Kilroy-Silk's puerile labels is not only false, but plain daft.

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Then what is your lumping Europeans under those same labels, if not complete and utter "daft"ness?

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It is perhaps time we poured our collective bile over a more deserving target. Cheap, mindless, voyeuristic, shallow, nasty, lobotomised daytime telly, to take a random example.

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True, the Ottomans were not Arabs, nor were the Berbers, nor most of the inhabitants of Andalusia, nor the Palestinians, etc etc

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Alright, Catus. We know you're well-read and educated. We know that you know that the world consists of people like the Ottomans, the Turks, the Abbassids, the Umayyads, the Berbers, the Andalusians...

Edited to add:..the Hittites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Tocharians, the Phoenicians, the Minoans, the Britons, the Gaels, the Gauls, the Picts, the Beothucks, the Cronoans..

Edited to add:...the Goths, the Visigoths, the Swabians, the Allemani, the Etruscans, the Vandals, the Sluts, the Geeks, the Jocks...the..

[ 18 January 2004: Message edited by: Hinterland ]

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No matter how much we want to blame those awful europeans for the crusades in their entirety, the fact is that the forces of the east were closing in and conquering lands farhter and farther west.

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This had been happening since the Medes and Persians, so Islam didn't invent it.

The Crusaders had to go through The Byzantines, Rum and Armenia to get to the "Holy Land," so it wasn't as if anyone there was threatening to attack Europe.

The Crusaders were definitely not motivated by a sense that they were under attack from the Saracens. The prime motivation was the desire for feudal vassal lands by younger sons of the nobility who weren't eligible for such land is Europe.

They were convinced to go to the Orient by those who wanted them to take their martial ways elsewhere and leave Europeans in relative peace.

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I'm not saying that the crusades were right, but they were certainly not the grave inhmanity that the author of this article is desrcibing.

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Yeah, who could consider the mass slaughter of just about the entire Muslim and Jewish populations of Jerusalem a "grave inhumanity"?

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The Crusaders spent at least that night and the next day killing Muslims, including all of those in the al-Aqsa Mosque, where Tancred's banner should have protected them. Not even women and children were spared. The city's Jews sought refuge in their synagogue, only to be burned alive within it by the Crusaders. Raymond of Aquilers reported that he saw "piles of heads, hands and feet" on a walk through the holy city. Men trotted across the bodies and body fragments as if they were a carpet for their convenience. The Europeans also destroyed the monuments to Orthodox Christian saints and the tomb of Abraham. ...

The Crusaders cut open the stomachs of the dead because someone said that the Muslims sometimes swallowed their gold to hide it. Later, when the corpses were burned, Crusaders kept watch for the melted gold that they expected to see flowing onto the ground. ...

the Crusaders recorded that "in Solomon's Portico and in his Temple our men rode in the blood of the Saracens [Muslims] up to the knees of their horses."

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How nice. The Crusaders were the al-Qaeda of the 11th century.

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Beluga, actually it was you who tried to justify current atrocities committed by "Arabs" by referring to the Western Treatment, so do not try to turn the tables.

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I guess it's not surprising that you can't quote the exact sentence in which I "justified current atrocities", considering that it doesn't exist outside the folds and crevices of your cerebellum. Don't project your perceptual problems onto me, please.

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Originally posted by Catus:
It is exceedingly hard to discern what the Arabs have done for us. Most of the Sciences and poetry were passed along not by Arabs but by Persians, Levantine Jews, and other ethnicities/nationalities. A better question would be what has Islam done for us ( assuming "us" indicates Westerners).

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Well, since the calculus I do requires a knowledge of algebra to make it work, I think it's very clear what my science and specifically my chemistry background owes its debt to, and it's the same burnoused brown people you like to tinkle all over.

Lemme put to you very baldly, buddy boy.

See that monitor? If it's a CRT, the electron gun's behavior is mathematically worked out using basic principles of, wait for it... algebra derived from a working knowledge of the physical principles behind the motion of charged particles.

But we must recall that the Arab tribes did boil out of the Arabian desert not with a tray of cheeses and a hearty handshake but with swords swinging and blood-(not to mention booty-)lust in their eyes.

They were not invited by the Sassanids. The Byzantine Empire did not ask for the Muslims to take the Levant nor Egypt from them.

Indeed, the Crusades were bloody, but so was the Muslim expansion, often at the expense of Christians.

Let us also not forget the jizya, a tax on those who were not Muslim and thus did not have to take part in zakat that worked as a form coercement to the religion. let us also not forget that a Christian caught attempting to convert a Muslim was to be killed. Or that Christian men were not allowed to marry Muslim women but Christian women were allowed to marry Muslim men and the children were required to be raised Muslim.

Also, how badly are the Arabs trated today? Sa'udia Arabia has excellent relations with the West, as do most nations on the Arabian Penninsula (excepting Yemen). Its people are not mistreated as a rule in the West (at least not in Canada and the USA) as evidenced by the huge amounts of arabs educated here, the growth of Middle Eastern Studies programs in Univerisities even prior to 9-11, the desire by the TSA not to racially profile even when we know the ethnicity or religion of those terrorists most likely and able to do the US harm.

Even after 9-11 the ethnically motivated attacks on Muslims was quite rare. In my hometown the police and church groups stood vigils outside the local prayer hall (it is not a mosque) to ensure that no violence was done to them. Each year our school put ona "Discover Islam Week" and despite someof the inflammatory rhetoric sometimes used, it was well attended and well recieved.

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Indeed, the Crusades were bloody, but so was the Muslim expansion, often at the expense of Christians.

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Is there anyone who disputes this? None that I can see. Then what are we fighting about?

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Also, how badly are the Arabs trated today? Sa'udia Arabia has excellent relations with the West, as do most nations on the Arabian Penninsula (excepting Yemen).

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LOL! The West's "excellent relations" with the Saudi regime and its fellow absolute monarchies are the problem, dude. Do you think the average citizen living under those gruesome, tyrannical regimes is grateful that their tormentors are on good terms with Washington and London? Ye gods. (The Soviet Union had "excellent relations" with the countries of Eastern Europe, too. Do you think the average Pole or Hungarian was appreciative?)

Those regimes were cobbled together by us, by Western imperialists, for our own ends. They have no legitimacy with the local population whatsoever. Bin Laden, in his periodic frothing rants, sometimes refers to the "80-year occupation" of the Arab world -- from his perspective, the West has been occupying the region since WWI, thru subordinate, servile puppet regimes. And that perspective is widely shared throughout the Middle East, not without reason. Vile sack of shit that he is, bin Laden knows his audience.

The British imperialist Lord Curzon spelled this out clearly: he advocated an...

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Arab facade ruled and administered under British guidance and controlled by a native Mohammedan and, as far as possible, by an Arab staff... There should be no actual incorporation of the conquered territory in the dominions of the conqueror, but the absorption may be veiled by such constitutional fictions as a protectorate, a sphere of influence, a buffer state and so on.

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After WWII, the US took over the "facade". It remains to this day.