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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Shafik Habal who wrote (120030)7/11/2000 4:20:42 AM
From: Shafik Habal  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1577125
 
OT (for Bill's edification)...American Muslim History: A Chronological Observation [1178-1800 AD]

American Muslim History: A Chronological Observation [1178-1800 AD]

Source: iio.org

Unquestionably, Muslims have made an impact on the evolution of American society. Historically Muslims have made major contributions, e.g., humanities, the sciences, and art. They explored North America 300 years
before the so-called "discovery" of the New World by Christopher Columbus.
They used the Mississippi River as their access route to and from the continent's interior Here are a few glimpses of Muslim life in American history:

1178 A Chinese document known as the Sung Document records the voyage of Muslim sailors to a land known as Mu-Lan-Pi (America). Mention of this document is contained in the publication, The Khotan Amirs, 1933.

1310 Abu Bakari (Abu Bakar), a Muslim king of the Malian Empire, spearheads a series of sea voyages to the New World.

1312 African Muslims (Mandinga) arrive in the Gulf of Mexico for exploration of the American interior using the Mississippi River as their access route. These Muslim explorers were from Mali and other parts of
West Africa.

1513 Piri Reis completes his first world map, including the Americas, after researching maps from all over the world. The practicality and artistry of his map surpassed any from his time or before.

1530 African slaves arrive in America. During the slave trade, more than 10 million Africans were uprooted from their homes and brought to American shores. Many of these slaves were from the Fulas, Fula Jallon, Fula Toro,
and Massina as well as other areas of West Africa. These areas were governed from their capital, "Timbuctu." These slaves were sent to Mexico, Cuba, and South America. More than 30 percent of these 10 million slaves were Muslim. They became the backbone of the American economy.

1539 Estevanico of Azamor, a Muslim from Morocco, lands in Florida with the ill-fated expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez in 1527. Estevanico remained in America to become the first of three Americans to cross this continent. At least two states owe their beginnings to this Muslim, Arizona and New Mexico.

Additionally Bill, if you claim Islam suppressed the advancement of science, you are clearly uninformed. I can cite you examples from centuries ago (Muslims were the first to diagram the circulatory system of animals and humans), or modern-day examples (guess who designed the Sears Tower or heck, check the names of the team of engineers designing many of today's chips at AMD or Intel). To bash any religion, whatever your motive, is far removed from the topic of the thread.

Information Resources:

1.African Presence in Early America by Ivan Van Sertima, 1987

2.Deeper Roots by Abdullah Hakim Quick, 1990

3.Arab America Today (A Demographic Profile of Arab Americans) by John Zogby, 1990

4.A Survey of North American Muslims by El Tigani A. Abugideiri, June 1977

5.A Century of Islam in America by Yvonne Y Haddad, 1986

6.Ethnic Distribution of American Muslims and Selected Socio-Economic Characteristics by Arif Ghaytir, 1984

7.The Demography of Islamic Nations by John Weeks, 1988

8.Islam In the United States: Review of Sources by Dr. Sulayman S. Nyang, 1988

9.Demographic Consequences of Minority Consciousness.- An Analysis by Salaha M. Abedin, 1980

10.World Population Data Sheet Population Reference
Bureau, Inc. Washington, D.C. 1990, Statistical Abstract of the United States, U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census, 1990

11.Muslim Peoples (A World Ethnographlc Survey) Edited by Richard V Weeks, 1984, Vol. 11

12.Muslim Peoples, A World Ethnographic Survey by Richard V Weeks, 1978

13.The 1991 Almanac 44th Edition, by Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991

14.The Islamic Struggle in America by Hijrah Magazine, Oct./Nov. 1985

15.African Muslims in Antebellum American by Allen Austin, 1984

16.The Arab World Published by The Arab-American Press 1945



To: Shafik Habal who wrote (120030)7/11/2000 6:39:13 AM
From: Bill Jackson  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1577125
 
Shafik, You totally misread my comments. Read back and see what I said. I said that arab science was at the lead when europe was in the dark ages and as islam spread it did indeed provide for a flowering of arabic science. What happened then? arab science went into a decline that has lasted to this day.
Look at all the great work done from 650 onwards. Look at the decline after 1000 until the present day, and it continues.
I can see that islam was a great unifying force among the arabs and other social groups and as it spread it provided a milieu in which scientists and their patrons were able to thrive.
What happened then to choke off science in the areas influenced by islam?? I speculated that it was religious pressures that decried science as treading too closely on the religous orders toes by making discoveries that were contradictory to what was written. The same happened with christianity.
Islam is a far more closely supervised religion than christianity is and that was true from the beginnings to the present. Christianity was more supervised in the middle ages with church twice a week or so, but it was never so closely and publicly supervised as islam. In islam it is immediately known if you do not appear at the 5 times daily prayers and a person is dispatched to find out why?
Social pressure is focussed on outgroups and they are not welcome, and in time are forced to move. At the beginning islams was able to accept others as part of the growth and absorption phase, but as time went by the religion became more and more closed off from other religions, to the point of warring with them for religious reasons alone. these religious wars continue here and there to this day.
Christianity too tried to shut down the scientists, but they slowly gained an ascendency and now religion has been beaten back to the point where less than 5% worship these days. (it varies from under 1-2% in many places in Europe, to local higher % in other areas in Europe and the USA)

So I ask you whay did science decline as the militant religious groups gained control of islam and shut down science in islamic areas? Even now the highest dream of many families is to have their male children become part of the religiour order and thus the smartest are streamed into these areas? As for the female children...drudge labor is their lot.
There is variance in assorted islamic countries viv-a-vis the treatment of women. Some are enlightened and they can actually show their faces. Some like lebanon are very free and women wear dresses and bikinis. In others they must be totally robed and can never appear in any place with a man other than their husband who can dress anyway he pleases. How do you explain this degree of repression which seems to be spreading as militant fundamentalists seems to be gradually growing the ares of very close supervision?

Perhaps now you see that I was never decrying the arab contribution to science at all, but lamenting that it had gone away?

Bill