March 17, 2004
The turn of fortune of Islam
Today's Thomas Sowell:
The idea that what goes around comes around applies not only to individuals but to nations and whole civilizations. It was just a few centuries ago -- not long, as history is measured -- that China had the highest standard of living in the world and the Dutch were the world's largest exporters, while North Africans were enslaving a million Europeans.
Nowhere have whole peoples seen their situation reversed more visibly or more painfully than the peoples of the Islamic world. In medieval times, Europe lagged far behind the Islamic world in science, mathematics, scholarship, and military power. Even such ancient European thinkers as Plato and Aristotle became known to Europeans of the Middle Ages only after their writings, which had been translated into Arabic, were translated back into European languages.
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Now the Arabs are humiliated.
Today that is all reversed. The number of books per person in Europe is more than ten times that in Africa and the Middle East. The number of books translated into Arabic over the past thousand years is about the same as the number translated into Spanish in one year.
There are only 18 computers per thousand persons in the Arab world, compared to 78 per thousand persons worldwide. Fewer than 400 industrial patents were issued to people in the Arab countries during the last two decades of the 20th century, while 15,000 industrial patents were issued to South Koreans alone...
Those in the Islamic world have for centuries been taught to regard themselves as far superior to the "infidels" of the West, while everything they see with their own eyes now tells them otherwise. Worse yet, what the whole world sees with their own eyes tells them that the Middle East has made few contributions to human advancement in our times.
Even Middle Eastern oil was largely discovered and processed by people from the West. After oil, the Middle East's most prominent export has been terrorism.
Looking at Arab humiliation in a different way, I'll turn to something written by
Jay D. Hominick:
Today the vanguard of this triumphal march of history is in the United States and Israel. Few have considered in sufficient depth and nuance this simple poignant truth, that our alliance with Israel is not a regional phenomenon, it is powering the very engine of modern history. One instance of this is the fact that in recent decades Israel has become virtually the equal of the United States in advancing the thresholds of medical and agricultural technology.
Yes, Israel, tiny Israel.... the bastion of western civilization placed right in the heart of the Arab world. A nation of Jews, a symbolic dagger thrust in the heart of the once great and vast Arabian empire, is far outpacing the Arabs in scientific and artistic achievement. Again back to SowellAgainst this background, we may want to consider the question asked by hand-wringers in the West:
Why do they hate us? Maybe it is because the alternative to hating us is to hate themselves.It’s also the reason they will never make peace with Israel. Until they decide to face their own failures and humiliation, or until they are forced to face reality, there is no chance for peace.
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i know
a history buff pal of mine
points this out all the time
but then she attributes the demise
of many a great people
to the point when they become
blood thirsty
anti semites
take the Spanish Inquisition as example
when was the last time
you heard Spain
referred to as major world power?
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Excellent post.