Re: OT: needed: witty facts re: positive aspects of Islamic culture

on 4/8/08 5:49 PM, MorphemeAddict@WMCONNECT.COM at
MorphemeAddict@WMCONNECT.COM wrote:

> In a message dated 4/8/2008 14:38:23 PM Central Daylight Time,
> zhang@BOHEME-MAGAZINE.NET writes:
>
>
>> I am writing a blog post to counter all the blatantly Islamophobic
>> "conventional wisdom" and needed lil witty bonbons like Kurt Vonnegut's
>> - "Do you think Arabs are dumb? They gave us our numbers. Try doing long
>> division with Roman numerals."
>>
>
> The Arabs had a high level of mathematics, medicine, law, et al., but then
> came Islam, which washed it all away.
> Islam has done only harm to the world.
>
> stevo   </HTML>
This exactly the stereotyping of Islam that evades the fact that Islam -
like any huge religion (i.e. Christianity) - has much more complexity than
what the average "folk wisdom" portrays.

Are you even aware that there is more to Islam than merely burqas, extremist
Sunnis and Shi'ites, and jihadists?

This not so much a issue of religion or politics, but of mono-culturalism
(such as so many in this post 9/11 era) and being poly-/pan- and even
trans-cultural.

I ask myself what would soldier-scholars such as Sir Richard Francis Burton
or T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) think and do?

What would Sun-Tzu think and do? Sure as hell he wouldn't endorse a
"Crusade."

[b] FURTHER ONLINE READING[/b]

"Why the West can't infiltrate al-Qaida" by Craig Whitlock of the
[i]Washington Post[/i] March 20, 2008


--
Hanuan Zhang

"Most of the pain of change comes from our resistance to it." - Author
Unknown