In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, President Barack Obama claimed: “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar University — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing.”
Obama is not much of a “student of history” if he believes this. Almost every advance he attributes to the Muslims was due to someone else.
The non-Muslim Chinese invented the magnetic compass and printing (Gutenberg invented not printing, but movable type). The non-Muslim Hindu Indians invented algebra and the decimal numbering system. The non-Muslim European Christians invented the university.
I can’t address advances in medicine, but I have studied the history of astronomy and physics. The Muslims contributed nothing.
Islam walked into the vacuum of exhausted Byzantium and simply took over some of the most advanced and wealthy places on Earth…and then negligently allowed it to decay over the centuries until what had been at the forefront in the 8th century was hopelessly behind as early as the 13th. The grandeur of Islam was a fading flower planted by others and merely exploited by Moslem rulers. Obama’s grasp of history wouldn’t matter, except that he’s President of the United States and he’s repeating to the world the leftist and Islamist lies about the development of civilization. There is no need to insult Islam, but there is no need to play a “self esteem” game and try to puff them up, either. Truth is what is needed in this world, not lies; even well meaning lies.
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