Category: Uncategorized

So for those of you who haven’t heard of him, I stumbled across the website of Harun Yahya, a prominent Turkish author who has attracted the attention of Muslim intellectuals. His real name is actually Adnan Oktar (if anyone plans to look him up a bit) and he is an advocate for Islamic creationism – ie. the belief that the universe was created by Allah (swt) as explained in the Qur’an. He currently runs two organizations: (1) Foundation to Protect National Values which focuses on moral issues and (2) Bilim Araştırma Vakfı Science Research Foundation which promotes Islamic creationism.  The latter he was actually sentenced to 3 years in prison (in Turkey) for organizing. According to reports he had created the organization for personal gain. I decided to look him up on wikipedia and found some disturbing and odd information about him (BUT WE ALL KNOW THAT ANYONE CAN POST INFO ON WIKIPEDIA :p). According to his wiki page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Oktar) he is a paranoid schizophrenic (a diagnosis which has been concluded 7 times between 1983-93) and his organizations are cult-like as he does have a group of followers and he published a book called “The Holocaust Lie” in which he basically says that “what is presented as Holocaust is the death of some Jews due to the typhus plague during the war and the famine towards the end of the war caused by the defeat of the Germans.” So yeah…dunno about this guy. Anyways, I didn’t want to waste my research and not do a blog post but perhaps you can go take a look at his website (http://www.harunyahya.com/index.php). Like I previously mentioned, he is an advocate of Islamic creationism so his website totally refutes Darwin’s theory of evolution amongst many other things.

Hilary

I just randomly found this GREAT video which concludes that ‘the dark ages’ should be named and spread as  the “golden ages.”

The short movie talks about a group of students who are on a school fieldtrip to some museum. The teacher assigns groups of students a part of history to research the  impact of each era on the modern world. These eras are the ancient Greeks, the Romans and the dark ages. So,  a group of three students, assigned the dark ages era, go to some room and talk to a historian. This person remains uninterested until one of the students says ‘ it does not matter anyway because probably the Romans and Greeks invited everything.’ The statement gets the historian’s attention as he invites  the students to meet some Islamic scientists. IT IS VERY COOL.

watch it please.

Rima

Hello classmates,

First of all I am going to define art. According to www.dictionary.com, art is defined as “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.” Nowadays, its very hard for anyone to imagine his or her life without art. Well in the Islamic Era, art flourished and was treated as any other field. It embraced art forms such as architecture, decoration, ceramic art, faience mosaics, lustre-ware, relief sculpture, wood and ivory carving, friezes, drawing, painting, calligraphy, book-gilding, manuscript illumination, lacquer-painted bookbinding, textile design, metalworking, and  gemstone carving. Islamic art was influenced by Arabic, Turkish, Persian and other  non-Islamic cultures.

As the other fields, Islamic artists were influenced by their religion. Because they wanted to come closer to God and God’s knowledge, writing the Quran’s script and decorating mosques were essentials to this matter.

In the renaissance, roman and Greek artists succeeded in using art, in particular drawing, painting, and sculpture, to depict stories of the  bible. Some of the paintings were extremely significant to religion. Art became a field in which nobles, and effluents proved this social status through patronage of  religious paintings. However, art in Islam has its limitation. Visual depictions are prohibited in Islam. Although the Quran does not explicitly forbid images of figures, some hadith prohibited Muslims form creating visual depictions of figures. The reason for that is any sort of visual depiction encourages idolatry; where the images or sculptures would be more important than what they represent.

Rima

Hi all,

Okay! I think some of you would disagree already by reading the title. Although this might be the case, I definitely enjoyed it. It seems to me that the only reason  we went there was to see Ibn Sina’s name mentioned only once and in-between the lines. De Vinci’s work is great, but I think Ibn Sina should been accredited more. In my opinion there should have been at least a small paragraph about him and his influence. As a class, It would have been very cool-for lack of a better word-  to write a letter to the Exhibition  explaining to them our views and backing them with academic evidence. Although we might not get anywhere, I am sure it is worth trying. (We could make it part of our project! and Yasmin will hate me for ever!)

Anyway what have you guys learned form our visit? what sort of questions popped in your heads as you all viewed the rest of the gallery? Did anyone thing where does art fit in Islam? how does Islam view and define art? I am going to challenge myself and answer those questions in my next post!

Rima

Hello class,

Couple of weeks ago, Dr. Sajoo came and shared with us interesting thoughts about ethics and Islamic ethics. Ironically, I think  the most important lesson I learned this day was the importance of arriving to class on time. I loved his ability to come up with examples on the spot that fit exactly in the context of his speech! Although, he did not say much about us being late, he made it clear to us that it was unprofessional.

I have never taken any courses about ethics. So, I found what he presented very interesting. He distinguished between law and ethics. He also, differentiated between Islamic ethics and medical ethics. He referred to  ethics as a principle which addresses  questions about morality and highlights concepts of bad and good. On the other hand, he referred to Law as the set of rules to achieve a ‘moral society.’  This summer, I am going to take a course about Medical Ethics. In Islam, Medical ethics should be contained within the various aspects of Islamic ethics. In this course, I would like to see how both work together/against each other.

Rima

I found this video called “Islamic Countries Contributions to Humanity” and what really pulled me in (other than the name obviously) is that it’s made for PBS and that’s the same channel that has Arthur and a bunch of other awesome kids shows 😀 Anyways, on to the actual video.

I really liked how the video highlighted that unlike in Christianity, science and religion aren’t contradictory in Islam which is something that really isn’t known by the average person – as we discussed in class numerous times, ALL religions are always thought to be ‘versus’ or ‘against’ science just because Christianity has often been. Throughout the video there are constant comparisons between the highly advanced technological and social state of the Muslim countries and the ignorant, filthy state of European countries (excluding Spain of course).  It’s a really great video that is suitable for almost any audience (i.e. it doesn’t require background knowledge about Islam and science). One thing I learned from the video was why Muslims created the scientific method – the reason was that they wanted to know why Greek scholars had errors in their research – was it lack of equipment? Improper method? The answer they discovered was affirmative to the latter so they developed the scientific method. Another thing I learned was how the construction of the Gothic cathedrals of Northern Europe was highly influenced by the architecture of the Great Mosque of Cordoba.

The video’s only about ten minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIsaiyRtPHI

This is an article I came across whilst researching for my project on Islamic contributions to optics. I personally find it an extraordinarily well written article that manages to really sum up the objectives of this course. The author, Ibrahim B. Syed, manages to cover nine different areas in which Islamic medicine was, as he so aptly puts it, ‘1000 years ahead of its times’. These areas range everything from the licensing of physicians in medical education to the origin of oral anesthetics. One of the many pieces of information that really blew my mind was that when impoverished patients were discharged from the hospital, they were provided with five gold pieces to support them during their period of recovery. Yes, you read that right. Instead of being hounded to pay hospital fees, destitute patients were given money.

Anyways, enjoy – it’s super easy to read and it’s only eight pages long.

http://www.ishim.net/ishimj/2/01.pdf

So I said I would try to post the article that I had in my presentation because I found it interesting and somewhat relevant to our class. Taken from my human geography class it focuses more on the social and economic aspect of the world; Although this article does not concentrate on Science and Islam, this article sheds some light as to why the Muslim Golden Ages are forgotten and not given credit. The author, Janet Lippman Abu-Lughod, points out that “most western scholars began their histories in about 1400 A.D., just when both east and west were at their lows…. and when the organizational systems that had existed prior to this time had broken down.” By selecting to start history here a similar plot was written in which the West “rose” apparently out of nowhere. So what would happen to the narrative if one started a little earlier? The century between 1250 – 1350 A.D. clearly seemed to constitute a crucial turning point in world history. Before that “the strongest centres and circuits were located in the Middle East and Asia.” Especially the Middle east which linked the east and the west (Europe at this time) with its proximity to the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. It’s true that much of Europe entered the period of the “dark ages” after the fall of the Roman Empire, but it wasn’t true for southern Europe, even parts of Italy prospered due to its proximity to the Mediterranean. Not to mention that the Iberian Peninsula was under Muslim rule and its economy was linked the Muslim world. The 9th century was a highpoint for the Middle East (under Abbasid rule) and in China (under the Tang Dynasty). I think it’s clear that the conception of the dark ages is wrong and there was a great Civilisation that existed outside European boundaries.
So why did the 13th century world system not simply persist and continue to grow? Why did the west rise when it did? Bank and System failures and recessions hit the economy hard. Not to mention Plagues, the well known Black Death and Bubonic plague broke out in the 1320s in a Mongol-patrolled area near the Himalayas. The plague moved to China, central Asia, Black Sea, Mediterranean and so on. As a result major centres of trade had experienced heavy die-offs and of course Political change started to occur. I guess you can say the dark ages hit us late. Although this explains a bit of reasons why the Islamic Civilisation collapsed I think that it’s played up a bit and probably the political change that occurred had more of an effect and also the invention, modernisation, capitalism, and colonialism that occurred by the European had more of an effect. I think that the Muslim world did not want to advance with the European methods and as a result Europe and the West started dominating.
Any thoughts on the reasons behind the decline?

So I was watching an interview about a Muslim scholar and I remembered the other day talking about well known Arabic scholars with some friends. I know that our class focuses on the science aspect of the Islamic Civilisation, but I think it is also very important to note and remember the importance of the literature during that time. Today Muslims around the world for the most part are seen as close minded people, who aren’t well read especially when it comes to philosophy. The Disney Aladdin and Pixar’s Sinbad would not exist without the existence of “One thousand and One nights.” This collection was compiled during the Islamic Golden Age and is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales. The work as we have it was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators and scholars across the Middle East and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian folklore and literature. We should not forget the literature of the golden ages; it inspired many Arabic and Muslim writers such as the noble prize winner Naguib Mahfouz in his book “Arabian Nights and Days.” In my opinion Muslim literature has not declined, there are many great writers and scholars today such as Tariq Ramadan, Naguib Mahfouz, Edward said, Burhan Galioun, Fahmi Huwaidi, Samir Amin and the list goes on. The problem isn’t that there is a decline in scholars and writers but a close minded mentality of today’s middle-eastern governments that ban these amazing writers.

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