Re: Are Islam and Democracy Incompatible?

Top Posting because I did not want to
infringe on a magnificent post...

SDR,  My compliments, was a extremely
well developed post and the reprint of
the review included is so on point it's
scary.  But I think it falls on deft ears because
as mentioned the history that we can verify
by the historical record is not the same history
the Muslim world knows because the historical
record is not allowed to be studied in Islam.

I met a Palestinian girl a while back and had a
conversation and she told of how her people
had Always lived in what is now Israel and that
Jews had Never lived there until the Palestinian's
were removed by force after WW2.  Its this kind
of education that hold the Muslim world in
poverty and despair....  Sad and dangerous




"SDR" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Adrian Dharma Wijaya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > i was read all your statement, this is my statement:
> > 1. you are agree with me about christian and jew teaching on they holy
> > book, arn't you?
> > 2. you said, christian and jew don't teach again that racialism teaching
> > of they religion??? don't be kidding!!! what of backgroud of christian
> > and jew threatment to the world especialy to moslem??? revelation from
> > holy ghost, if the holy book doesn't as background of they
> > threatments???
>
> I can see you have no familiarity with history. Perhaps you
> should simply, simply access history textbooks which are available
> through this very internet and get acquainted with the world's
> history. You shall discover, just to cite one instance, that when
> the Spanish conquered the New World the secular/military establishment
> sought/fought very hard to make the natives slaves; and that it was
> through the efforts/struggle of the Catholic Church and its priests
> that this was prevented. [It is also the case that the cause of
> abolition of slavery in America and elsewhere was primarily, and
> sometimes, exclusively carried out by the Christian Churches
> against very powerful commercial/political interests. Please read!]
>
> The distinction between West/Islam is fundamental: There may be
> many Christian criminals but they are not encouraged to their crimes
> by Christian teachings/institutions. This can not be said of Islam.
>
> > 3. moslem teach to do bad threatment to the world??? oh yeah, self
> > defense of moslem as same as with attacking the world, we can see with
> > open eyes about the worlds threatment to moslem now a days???
>
> Here are a few quotes from easily assessable texts in Usenet
> (make sure you include the complete URL in your browser):
>
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3BBFE174.A653EC77%40aol.com&output=gplain
>
> If not the most authoritative, at least the most renowned
> historian of the 20th Century, Will Durant's essay on "The
> Moslem Conquest" (page 459 of the "Our Oriental Heritage"
> volume in his massive "Story of Civilization) should suffice
> to hint at the scale of the human catastrophe that Islam has
> been to Planet Earth. --Other Usenet quotes of interest here:
>
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=8hkg1u%245k7%241%40nnrp1.deja.com&output=gplain
>
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=8v7nb8%24nas%241%40nnrp1.deja.com&output=gplain
>
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=932877830.1804%40www.remarq.com&output=gplain
>
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=933668917.13366%40www.remarq.com&output=gplain
>
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Bharat-2232.990903%40news.mantra.com&output=gplain
>
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=5785c0f4.0110022140.7a478f61%40posting.google.com&output=gplain
>
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=d0197aa3.0110031244.54eb5d50%40posting.google.com&output=gplain
>
>
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=8ljfag%244um%241%40gnamma.connect.com.au&output=gplain
>
> > 4. moslem never have trace now a days from moslem glorious on the
> > past??? if you study the knowledge on the worlds now a days, you can
> > track to the past and you can find who are develop that knowledge!!!
>
> Sir, Islam was born among the most barbarous/uncivilized nomads
> on this planet. Do you really believe such brutes would have
> produced ANY civilized bahavior?!?!?! What Muslims did was to
> conquer (and destroy for the most part) many ancient civilizations
> in Egypt/Africa, modern Irag and Persia, and especially in India
> from which civilizations they "salvaged" a grain of the mountain
> of knowledge they plundered. If you look carefully at the "Islamic
> scholars" of the golden age most of them were either slaves or
> "new converts" (convert or die), and very few of them were Arabs.
>
> In any case, to remedy my "unbalanced" approach, and to help
> satisfy your thirst for a more comprehensive historical view,
> here's the reprint of a letter sent to Carly Fiorina, CEO of
> Hewlett Packard Corporation, in response to a speech given by
> her on September 26, 2001 which you can find at this url:
>
> www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/speeches/fiorina/minnesota01.htm
>
>              What Arab Civilization?
>
> November 7, 2001
> Carly Fiorina
> Hewlett-Packard
> 3000 Hanover Street
> Palo Alto, CA 94304-1185
>
> Dear Madame Fiorina:
>
> It is with great interest that I read your
> speech delivered on September 26, 2001, titled
> "Technology, Business and Our way of Life:
> What's Next" [sic]. I was particularly
> interested in the story you told at the end of
> your speech, about the Arab/Muslim civilization.
>
> As an Assyrian, a non-Arab, Christian native of
> the Middle East, whose ancestors reach back to
> 5000 B.C., I wish to clarify some points you
> made in this little story, and to alert you to
> the dangers of unwittingly being drawn into the
> Arabist/Islamist ideology, which seeks to
> assimilate all cultures and religions into the
> Arab/Islamic fold.
>
> I know you are a very busy woman, but please
> find ten minutes to read what follows, as it is
> a perspective that you will not likely get from
> anywhere else. I will answer some of the
> specific points you made in your speech, then
> conclude with a brief perspective on this
> Arabist/Islamist ideology.
>
> Arabs and Muslims appeared on the world scene in
> 630 A.D., when the armies of Muhammad began
> their conquest of the Middle East. We should be
> very clear that this was a military conquest,
> not a missionary enterprise, and through the use
> of force, authorized by a declaration of a Jihad
> against infidels, Arabs/Muslims were able to
> forcibly convert and assimilate non-Arabs and
> non-Mulsims into their fold. Very few indigenous
> communities of the Middle East survived this --
> primarily Assyrians, Jews, Armenians and Coptics
> (of Egypt).
>
> Having conquered the Middle East, Arabs placed
> these communities under a Dhimmi (see the book
> Dhimmi, by Bat Ye'Or) system of governance,
> where the communities were allowed to rule
> themselves as religious minorities (Christians,
> Jews and Zoroastrian). These communities had to
> pay a tax (called a Jizzya in Arabic) that was,
> in effect, a penalty for being non-Muslim, and
> that was typically 80% in times of tolerance and
> up to 150% in times of oppression. This tax
> forced many of these communities to convert to
> Islam, as it was designed to do.
>
> You state, "its architects designed buildings
> that defied gravity." I am not sure what you are
> referring to, but if you are referring to domes
> and arches, the fundamental architectural
> breakthrough of using a parabolic shape instead
> of a spherical shape for these structures was
> made by the Assyrians more than 1300 years
> earlier, as evidenced by their archaeological
> record.
>
> You state, "its mathematicians created the
> algebra and algorithms that would enable the
> building of computers, and the creation of
> encryption." The fundamental basis of modern
> mathematics had been laid down not hundreds but
> thousands of years before by Assyrians and
> Babylonians, who already knew of the concept of
> zero, of the Pythagorean Theorem, and of many,
> many other developments expropriated by
> Arabs/Muslims (see History of Babylonian
> Mathematics, Neugebauer).
>
> You state, "its doctors examined the human body,
> and found new cures for disease." The
> overwhelming majority of these doctors (99%)
> were Assyrians. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth
> centuries Assyrians began a systematic
> translation of the Greek body of knowledge into
> Assyrian. At first they concentrated on the
> religious works but then quickly moved to
> science, philosophy and medicine. Socrates,
> Plato, Aristotle, Galen, and many others were
> translated into Assyrian, and from Assyrian into
> Arabic. It is these Arabic translations which
> the Moors brought with them into Spain, and
> which the Spaniards translated into Latin and
> spread throughout Europe, thus igniting the
> European Renaissance.
>
> By the sixth century A.D., Assyrians had begun
> exporting back to Byzantia their own works on
> science, philosophy and medicine. In the field
> of medicine, the Bakhteesho Assyrian family
> produced nine generations of physicians, and
> founded the great medical school at Gundeshapur
> (Iran). Also in the area of medicine, (the
> Assyrian) Hunayn ibn-Ishaq's textbook on
> ophthalmology, written in 950 A.D., remained the
> authoritative source on the subject until 1800
> A.D.
>
> In the area of philosophy, the Assyrian
> philosopher Job of Edessa developed a physical
> theory of the universe, in the Assyrian
> language, that rivaled Aristotle's theory, and
> that sought to replace matter with forces (a
> theory that anticipated some ideas in quantum
> mechanics, such as the spontaneous creation and
> destruction of matter that occurs in the quantum
> vacuum).
>
> One of the greatest Assyrian achievements of the
> fourth century was the founding of the first
> university in the world, the School of Nisibis,
> which had three departments, theology,
> philosophy and medicine, and which became a
> magnet and center of intellectual development in
> the Middle East. The statutes of the School of
> Nisibis, which have been preserved, later became
> the model upon which the first Italian
> university was based (see The Statutes of the
> School of Nisibis, by Arthur Voobus).
>
> When Arabs and Islam swept through the Middle
> East in 630 A.D., they encountered 600 years of
> Assyrian Christian civilization, with a rich
> heritage, a highly developed culture, and
> advanced learning institutions. It is this
> civilization that became the foundation of the
> Arab civilization.
>
> You state, "Its astronomers looked into the
> heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for
> space travel and exploration." This is a bit
> melodramatic. In fact, the astronomers you refer
> to were not Arabs but Chaldeans and Babylonians
> (of present day south-Iraq), who for millennia
> were known as astronomers and astrologers, and
> who were forcibly Arabized and Islamized -- so
> rapidly that by 750 A.D. they had disappeared
> completely.
>
> You state, "its writers created thousands of
> stories. Stories of courage, romance and magic.
> Its poets wrote of love, when others before them
> were too steeped in fear to think of such
> things." There is very little literature in the
> Arabic language that comes from this period you
> are referring to (the Koran is the only
> significant piece of literature), whereas the
> literary output of the Assyrians and Jews was
> vast. The third largest corpus of Christian
> writing, after Latin and Greek, is by the
> Assyrians in the Assyrian language (also called
> Syriac); see:
>
> http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14408a.htm
>
> You state, "when other nations were afraid of
> ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and
> kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe
> out knowledge from past civilizations, this
> civilization kept the knowledge alive, and
> passed it on to others." This is a very
> important issue you raise, and it goes to the
> heart of the matter of what Arab/Islamic
> civilization represents. I reviewed a book
>
> http://www.aina.org/aol/peter/greek.htm
>
> titled How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs, in
> which the author lists the significant
> translators and interpreters of Greek science.
> Of the 22 scholars listed, 20 were Assyrians, 1
> was Persian and 1 an Arab. I state at the end of
> my review: "The salient conclusion which can be
> drawn from O'Leary's book is that Assyrians
> played a significant role in the shaping of the
> Islamic world via the Greek corpus of knowledge.
> If this is so, one must then ask the question,
> what happened to the Christian communities which
> made them lose this great intellectual
> enterprise which they had established. One can
> ask this same question of the Arabs. Sadly,
> O'Leary's book does not answer this question,
> and we must look elsewhere for the answer." I
> did not answer this question I posed in the
> review because it was not the place to answer
> it, but the answer is very clear, the Christian
> Assyrian community was drained of its population
> through forced conversion to Islam (by the
> Jizzya), and once the community had dwindled
> below a critical threshold, it ceased producing
> the scholars that were the intellectual driving
> force of the Islamic civilization, and that is
> when the so called "Golden Age of Islam" came to
> an end (about 850 A.D.).
>
> Islam the religion itself was significantly
> molded by Assyrians and Jews (see Nestorian
> Influence on Islam and Hagarism: the Making of
> the Islamic World).
>
> Arab/Islamic civilization is not a progressive
> force, it is a regressive force; it does not
> give impetus, it retards. The great civilization
> you describe was not an Arab/Muslim
> accomplishment, it was an Assyrian
> accomplishment that Arabs expropriated and
> subsequently lost when they drained, through the
> forced conversion of Assyrians to Islam, the
> source of the intellectual vitality that
> propelled it. What other Arab/Muslim
> civilization has risen since? What other
> Arab/Muslim successes can we cite?
>
> You state, "and perhaps we can learn a lesson
> from his [Suleiman] example: It was leadership
> based on meritocracy, not inheritance. It was
> leadership that harnessed the full capabilities
> of a very diverse population that included
> Christianity, Islamic, and Jewish traditions."
>
> In fact, the Ottomans were extremely oppressive
> to non-Muslims. For example, young Christian
> boys were forcefully taken from their families,
> usually at the age of 8-10, and inducted into
> the Janissaries, (yeniceri in Turkish) where
> they were Islamized and made to fight for the
> Ottoman state. What literary, artistic or
> scientific achievements of the Ottomans can we
> point to? We can, on the other hand, point to
> the genocide of 750,000 Assyrians, 1.5 million
> Armenians and 400,000 Greeks in World War One by
> the Kemalist "Young Turk" government. This is
> the true face of Islam.
>
> Arabs/Muslims are engaged in an explicit
> campaign of destruction and expropriation of
> cultures and communities, identities and ideas.
> Wherever Arab/Muslim civilization encounters a
> non-Arab/Muslim one, it attempts to destroy it
> (as the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan were
> destroyed, as Persepolis was destroyed by the
> Ayotollah Khomenie). This is a pattern that has
> been recurring since the advent of Islam, 1400
> years ago, and is amply substantiated by the
> historical record. If the "foreign" culture
> cannot be destroyed, then it is expropriated,
> and revisionist historians claim that it is and
> was Arab, as is the case of most of the Arab
> "accomplishments" you cited in your speech. For
> example, Arab history texts in the Middle East
> teach that Assyrians were Arabs, a fact that no
> reputable scholar would assert, and that no
> living Assyrian would accept. Assyrians first
> settled Nineveh, one of the major Assyrian
> cities, in 5000 B.C., which is 5630 years before
> Arabs came into that area. Even the word 'Arab'
> is an Assyrian word, meaning "Westerner" (the
> first written reference to Arabs was by the
> Assyrian King Sennacherib, 800 B.C., in which he
> tells of conquering the "ma'rabayeh" --
> Westerners. See The Might That Was Assyria, by
> H. W. F. Saggs).
>
> Even in America this Arabization policy
>
> http://aina.org/releases/2001/arabization.htm
>
> continues. On October 27th a coalition of seven
> Assyrian and Maronite organizations sent an
> official letter
>
> http://www.aina.org/releases/2001/caamletter.htm
>
> to the Arab American Institute asking it to stop
> identifying Assyrians and Maronites as Arabs,
> which it had been deliberately doing.
>
> There are minorities and nations struggling for
> survival in the Arab/Muslim ocean of the Middle
> East and Africa (Assyrians, Armenians, Coptics,
> Jews, southern Sudanese, Ethiopians,
> Nigerians...), and we must be very sensitive not
> to unwittingly and inadvertently support Islamic
> fascism and Arab Imperialism, with their
> attempts to wipe out all other cultures,
> religions and civilizations. It is incumbent
> upon each one of us to do our homework and
> research when making statements and speeches
> about these sensitive matters.
>
> I hope you found this information enlightening.
> For more information, refer to the web links
> below. You may contact me at
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] for further questions.
>
> Thank you for your consideration.
>
> Peter BetBasoo
>
> Web resources:
>
> Brief History of Assyrians:
> http://www.aina.org/aol/peter/brief.htm
>
> Assyrian International News Agency:
> http://www.aina.org/
>
> Assyrian American National Federation:
> http://www.aanf.org/
>
> Assyrian Academic Society:
> http://www.aas.net/
>
> Zinda Magazine:
> http://www.zindamagazine.com/
>
> Beth Suryoyo:
> http://www.bethsuryoyo.com/
>
> Nineveh Online:
> http://www.nineveh.com/
>
> World Maronite Union:
> http://www.maroniteunion.org/
>
> Maronite Research Council:
> http://plaza.powersurfr.com/maronites
>
> World Lebanese Organization:
> http://www.wlo-usa.org/
>
> Coptic Web:
> http://www.copticmail.com/
>
> thanks: Peter BetBasoo ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
>
> > Yeah, i'm confess, moslem live on decline of life on every sector! It's
> > have complicated reason.
>
> It is NOT complicated but extremely simple: Islam is a MIND-
> CONTROL cult, as if you didn't know, in which it is demanded
> of every Muslim that they fill their heads with GOD instead
> of with science and all aspects of humanity (including music
> which illustrates everything Muslims must NOT think about
> to be pious Muslims). This is why Islam can NOT progress:
> it is AGAINST Islam to progress. The highest ideal of Islam is
> to imitate the life of a ragged warlord who lived over a thousand
> years ago! THIS is why Muslims are stuck in a world a thousand
> years behind everybody else. And why it must ever remain so
> until they free themselves of Islam. Good luck--You'll need it.
>
> S D Rodrian
> http://poems.sdrodrian.com
> http://physics.sdrodrian.com
> http://democracy.sdrodrian.com
>
> > that caused by moslem leave moslem teaching,
> > but christian and jew have progress now a days on their life, because
> > same reason, because christian and jew leave christian and jew their
> > teaching, there are some verses on the bible and torah said to have or
> > learn one knowledge god must sacrifice son of god, how much son of god
> > must be sacrifice with christian and jew from the past until now a days
> > to pay christian and jew sin about learn so many knowledge, remember
> > content of Trente concily Italia (1545 - 1563 AD) that forbide christian
> > to have and learn knowledge and culture.
> >
> > SDR wrote:
> > >
> > > Adrian Dharma Wijaya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > > news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > > > do you deny all that verses i state on this email???
> > >
> > > No! PLEASE re-READ MY REPLY TO YOUR POST (which is included below):
> > > In sum, I said: No matter what evil either religion may say... that
> > > evil is repudiated in the Judeo-Christian civilization. If does not
> > > matter to me whether there are Christian/Jewish terrorists (any
> > > more than whether there are "Muslim terrorists")... the difference
> > > is that Jews and Christians do not teach the principles and hatred
> > > of non-Jews/non-Christians while Muslims DO teach hatred and
> > > distrust of non-Muslims (in the course of their general education).
> > >
> > > > and you deny that
> > > > verses are background of christian and jew threatment to the
worlds???
> > >
> > > Not so: READ a little history and you shall discover that the
> > > Western Powers basically freed their colonies without such colonies
> > > having to win their independence by means of wars (even India,
> > > which was SUPREMELY profitable to England, achieved its independence
> > > primarily by persuasion rather than by war). STUDY the Vietnam War,
> > > which WAS a violent war against the French, and you shall properly
> > > learn that the U.S. fought AGAINST the effort to make that country
> > > a communist colony (the fragmentation of the imagined "communist
> > > monolith" aside). Now, you tell me... which colony of Islam has ever
> > > been freed by its Muslim masters. I know it took the Spanish 500 long
> > > hard years to finally rid themselves of Islamic subjugation.
> > >
> > > It is also the West that finally "freed the Arabs" from Turkish
> > > subjugation (although nobody can really "free" the "damned" Arabs,
> > > who are obviously "damned by Allah" to eternal subjugation, if not
> > > foreign then domestic, if not military then religious). And America,
> > > which after the Second World War "persuaded" Europe to let go
> > > all its colonies: It is this constant efford to leave barbarity behind
> > > which is the hallmark of the Western Tradition. There are much
> > > older Eastern traditions (in China and India) but they stagnated
> > > while the European one thrived and progressed even under the
> > > onslaught of the Eastern/Islamic barbarians' invasions.
> > >
> > > And it is the progression of history to this date that you should
> > > follow to learn the legacy of the Judeo-Christian influence on
> > > the Western Tradition: And that without a doubt, if there is to be
> > > ANY advancement in Islamic civilization... it shall be due to that
> > > same Judeo-Christian tradition--Or Islamic "civilization" shall win
> > > and there shall be no progress whatsoever there (as up to now).
> > >
> > > > You said it was do on the past, never do again on now a days???
so...
> > > > from where christian and jew have reason or background of their
> > > > threatment to the world??? Oh yeah, they have from revelation from
holy
> > > > ghost!!!
> > >
> > > Well, I don't know about ghosts (not being particularly
superstitious).
> > > But one need not bother arguing about meaningless OR meaningful
> > > principles: Simply LOOK at the results YOU CAN SEE: With ALL THE
> > > MILITARY power to do with "the third world" as they wish, how many
> > > such third world nations are colonies of the West at this time. And
> > > if you think this is because it would be "embarrassing" for Great
> > > Military Powers to exercise their power... you are a child. Israel
> > > has the power to subjugate all the Arab nations and make ALL Arabs
> > > their slaves. Surely there must be a reason why Israel doesn't do
> > > it and thereby become fabulously oil-rich, don't you think? [But I
> > > imagine you will say they fear the "glorious" Arab Armies.] And you
> > > don't think many oil companies would not prefer to deal with the
> > > stability of a single set of Israeli laws rather than with the whims
of
> > > so many "unstable" Arab potentates!? [I imagine not.]
> > >
> > > The answer can be summed up in your very attitude, as in the attitude
> > > of Iraqi ordinary people who are attacking American soldiers (soldiers
> > > who have given their lives to give them their freedom), attacking them
> > > for "occupying" their country: These people's attitudes reflect what
> > > they have been taught to expect would be the reason for foreign troops
> > > in their country... just as you can expect from this those Iraqi
ordinary
> > > citizens themselves WOULD DO if they were called to be troops in a
> > > foreign country. They cannot grasp that foreign troops would be there
> > > for any other purpose than to subjugate and exploit them. And that is
> > > the difference between the legacy of the Judeo-Christian traditions of
> > > the American soldiers and the Muslim inheritance of those murderous
> > > ordinary Iraqi ingrates you would certainly NOT wish EVER to see...
> > > "freeing" your country.
> > --