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

>Hanuman Zhang <zhang@...> wrote:
>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."
Intending no disrespect to Mr. Vonnegut, a great writer, I hope I am
not being pedantic to remark that our numerals are Indian
in origin.  The Arabs only passed them on to us.  The Wikipedia article
on "Arabic Numerals" states that, in Arabic, the numerals are
called "Hindu numerals."

And surely Hanuman Zhang means "bon mots" and not "bonbons."  I don't
see any indication that his statement is intended as humorous.

Charlie

Replies