Author: M. Alkhatib

Ok I promise you this is the last one.

I think it is important for us to keep one of our blog posts dedicated to explain how this class has increased our awareness about the subject. For me, I think that I started with 25% of the knowledge I have now. This knowledge was not only gained from class sessions, but also from inspiration and searching on my own, wether I was preparing for class or not :). This class gave me the chance to know great people and helped me ignite the sense of invention inside me by knowing that I have to follow the footsteps of my predecessors who excelled in every subject of science and arts.

My apologies to anyone whom I may have offended (or scared :s).

Mohamad

This is some fact I wanted to share with you guys. In the last Geneva 37th Inventor’s Fair, the top 11 inventors were Saudis’! They weren’t only males, there was a good number of females…interesting. So where is the level of science at in the Muslim World?

Most of you know how in the Islamic world the West is perceived as the lands of invention and civilization, but if one would take the time and do some good research, he/she can easily find a good number of muslim inventors all around the world. So not only we were the inventors of the past, but we are also the inventors of the present and the future (I hope). This article in the Saudi Gazette is a good example on how great is our potential. If 11 Saudis won the top prizes in the 37th Geneva Inventor’s Fair, think about how many prizes Muslims can bag if there were participants from all around the Muslim World. You could also think about Muslims around you in UBC. Almost all of them go into Engineering or Science. Although we know a lot of them were pressured by their families to do so (haha), they still graduate and become high quality Muslim labour. From a macroeconomic perspective, good education means increasing the standard of living over the long run. Are we in an “Islamic Renaissance”?

Mohamad

This guy clearly needs to take our class.

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/islamandscience/index.html

This gives you a good chance to read about how Islamic science is perceived in modern day. It also has a PodCast link to it. The article talks about how the taking over of an “Islamist” rule is going to affect the scientists of the Islamic World. He basically says it’s already bad so let’s just try and see what happens knowing that “previous experience with Islamic rule was not very flourishing”. WAIT! Did this guy just ignore all Muslim scientists of the past? Did he just ignore Bait AlHikma? This periodical clearly hates Muslims :s

P.S.: the guy is Muslim himself! :s :s

Hi again,

ok so this is cool,

in the 12th grade Saudi Chemistry book I found the method Jaber Bin Hayyan was following in all his experiments and they are as follows:

1- Decide the purpose of the experiment and strictly follow the rules of the procedures.

2- AVOID WHAT’S IMPOSSIBLE AND WITH NO DIRECT BENEFIT.

3- Choose the right time for the experiment. (I couldn’t figure what he meant by this :s)

4- Be patient, don’t get frustrated, keep trying and be secretive about what you are doing! (any ideas why?)

5- Don’t be fooled by appearance as you may be misguided.

@ #2 This is cool because I remember how we were talking about turning different metals into Gold and how it is absurd to even think about it. This guy wrote about “stuff” that are impossible to do.

Finally, he discovered the first glowing dye and used it to decorate his books instead of Gold. In addition, he discovered how to produce a certain type of paper that does NOT burn when put on flame! Consequently, Imam Ja’far Al-Sadiq asked him to write his book “Al-DDaym” on this paper. This guy basically did, what people would have though at his time, magic.

Mohamad

Hi all,

Good job on achieving our objective in finding the mysterious painting referring to Ibn Sina (Reem broke the Da Vinci code), but have we asked ourselves how many of these should have been credited to Ibn Sina? I’m not saying Mr. Leonardo didn’t do his job, but let’s just think about how he drew all these paintings in great detail. My Wiki assignment was about the European Renaissance and how it was greatly influenced by Muslim work. Do you think this is also applicable to Da Vinci’s work? Did any of you find anything about other Islamic influence to his work? I read about his life span in the museum and he lived right through the Renaissance…Any thoughts?

Mohamad

I have constructed a new page about the Islamic Contributions to the European Renaissance. There was nothing before my addition so nothing has been changed it is simply a new addition. The pages that could have been a suitable place to insert this paper were locked by Wikipedia – i.e. editing wasn’t allowed for Copernicus and Renaissance so this is why I had to make a new page.

Note: After submitting my paper I got a message from Wikipedia saying my content would be deleted, is this normal? I just wanted to permalink it on here so it is known that I have completed my assignment. I will send Raheem/Aalia the completed paper as a word doc. by email if necessary.

Mohamad

I still think an instructional tour (to a school) to teach our own community about the contributions of Muslims to the Sciences they are studying is a good idea so I give myself a vote. Either that or informative posters to be posted on the walls of these schools.

Mohamad Abdelwahab