91 Replies to “The Jewel Of Medina”

  3. But look what the Jews have done.
    Nobel prize winners. How can this be?
    * Chemistry (29 prize winners, 19% of world total, 28% of US total)
    * Economics (25 prize winners, 41% of world total, 55% of US total)
    * Literature (13 prize winners, 13% of world total, 27% of US total)
    * Peace (9 prize winners, 9% of world total, 10% of US total)3
    * Physics (47 prize winners, 26% of world total, 38% of US total)
    * Physiology or Medicine (53 prize winners, 28% of world total, 41% of US total)

  4. 109,000 hits for “Islamic literary giants”, though. However, I suspect that 108,999 of those are islamic websites.
    Also, there was something in the news this past week about valuable Islamic manuscripts in Timbuktu being feverishly protected and saved from decay/neglect.
    I’m not defending…just noting some facts.

  5. Eeyore – put that in quotes. Otherwise you generate matches that simply have those one or more of the words somewhere in the text.
    “Islamic literary giants” generates one match – and the actual page reads “pre-islamic literary giants”.

  6. As an aside, I suppose Sherry Jones should blame only herself for wasting the past few months of her life writing a book to bringing Muslims and non-believers together.
    There is a mindset among radical Islam that would rather kill people like Sherry Jones than be subjected to being brought together.

  7. “So three Muslims won the Nobel Prize in Science and literature. Out of 1.2-1.5 billion Muslims.”
    Jew with a population 100 X smaller: a total of 131
    http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2006/03/muslim_inventions_nobel_prizes.html
    It’s not IQ’s that are the problem, it’s the deadening effect of Islam over centuries. It’s regressively anti-science and anti-human. If they didn’t have oil money to buy western stuff, they’d be two centuries behind us in lifestyle.

  8. Tangentially, the number of books translated into arabic is miniscule. 3w.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2004/12/21/translation-and-information-flow/
    Imagine someone as intelligent as you and knowing only how to read and write arabic – in light of how few books are available (and if you live in a a heavily censored area like Iran even fewer) from other languages and culture how warped would your perspective on the world be?
    I may have posited this on SDA before, but I think if George Soros or Bill Gates really wanted to change the economic and personal liberty plight of the most people for the lowest cost start translating as many books as possible into Arabic – from pulp fiction to proust.

  9. Hmmmm. I did a test just to help provide some balance. Oh well…. Just reporting what I found.
    No results found for “Islamic literary contributions”.
    No results found for “muslim literary contributions”.
    Results 1 – 10 of 10 for “muslim cultural contributions”
    Results 1 – 10 of about 100 for “Islamic cultural contributions”
    No results found for “Islamic technology contributions”
    No results found for “muslim technology contributions”
    Results 1 – 7 of 7 for “muslim scientific contributions”
    Results 1 – 10 of about 138 for “Islamic scientific contributions”
    No results found for “muslim mathematical contributions”
    Results 1 – 4 of 4 for “Islamic mathematical contributions”
    No results found for “muslim medical contributions”
    Results 1 – 1 of 1 for “Islamic medical contributions”

  10. Kathy, check your “muslim” winners of the real Nobel prizes.
    Physics:
    Elias James Corey – American born and raised.
    Ahmed Zewail – Cairo, went to American University of Cairo
    Medicine:
    Peter Brian Medawar – Arab Christian
    Ferid Mourad – Arab Christian

  11. It is Google’s problem that it does not come up with any “Muslim
    literary giants”. Al-Ghazali, Omar Khayyam (read in English
    translation down to the present day), and, indeed, the Prophet
    come immediately to mind; indeed, both Arabic and Farsi are
    said to have rich and extensive literatures, mostly untranslated.
    The above does not in any way constitute an endoresement for
    contemporary Islamism, which because of its Salafist roots
    would probably reject and suppress most Muslim literature.

  12. Biff:
    “‘Christian Literary Giants’ – 200,000 hits”
    Yah…unless you actually put those three words in quotes like the Muslim one…then you only get two hits. I guess that means that there are only a couple of literary giants out there in christaindumb.
    Penny:
    “It’s not IQ’s that are the problem, it’s the deadening effect of Islam over centuries.”
    Yu huh…religion in general has a deadening effect on the mind. Lots of great examples in the media about how religious organizations keep holding us back in North America. Just because Islam has been quite a bit more pernicious in recent history so far as intellectual development goes doesn’t mean it’s all that different.
    If north americans lived in Christian theocratic states, we would be just as backward as any other theocratic state.

  13. WTF, there’s also “gay literary giants”???
    Oh, come on… what the hell does writing ability have to do with whether one prefers hotdogs or tacos? I think some folks are making too much hay out of their “identity” as “gay”, as if playing with same-sex folks’ gonads makes one who one is…
    Oh, just a little observation, that’s all… hope Richard Warman doesn’t file a complaint against the “Canadian Sentinel” on the gayfolks’ behalf, but bring it on, Richie, baby; I’d love to see ya in (a real, not a kangaroo) court, baby! 😉 LOL

  14. What do you need an education for if you’re ultimate objective is to pray, serve god as a slave, destroy infidels.
    Ok … education helps prepare you to destroy infidels.
    Problem is after your done with all that stuff you still have an ideology that puts ZERO emphasis on anything constructive.
    AND BTW without oil money the entire ME would be desert and the Arabs would be at each other’s throats over camels and goats.

  15. No results found for “conservative literary giants”.
    No results found for “saskatchewan literary giants”.
    One result for “ontario literary giants” – “Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro and Michael Ondaatje…”
    This is a silly game.

  16. Of course, there’s also a “straight literary giants” result to go with the partial-screen listing of the few results for “gay literary giants”. But then again, most literary giants are straight, of course, so I guess we don’t need to go around bragging about it…

  17. The reason there are so many Jewish Nobel Prize winners is that pigs and monkeys are both pretty smart.
    While I agree that a Christian theocracy would be pretty hard to take, at least there is a way out of it in Christianity. No such luck for Islam, apparently since it is a political as well as religious system of beliefs. Jesus said “Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar’s” The two are not equivalent, as is shown by the Taliban’s conversion of a soccer stadium in Kahbul into a site for public hand chopping and executions.
    A lot of people talk about the sophistication and accomplishments of early Muslim culture, but actually they discovered a huge deposit of silver in Afghanistan and used the money to buy everything from Chinese silks to British slaves. The silver coins are often found in the tombs of Viking slave raiders with the inscription “There is no God but Allah” When the silver ran out, they had to wait for Oil to get rich again.

  18. The topic here is the islamophobic West (i.e. the publishing company in this case), is it not?
    (Islamophobe = ‘irrational fear of’ Islam)
    Why are some in the West so scared of muslims? Why aren’t these type of types of events condemned by everyone? Where is the uproar?

  19. Sory, Kate. I originally thought this was a thread about a google search. It’s actually a thread about dhimminishing choices for customers of Random House. Mea culpa.

  20. Hey Johan, why do islamists have Christianphobia.
    last i heard they put apostate’s to death lest they dilute the ranks.
    i’m not scared of muslims, i just think that they have a agenda financed by saudi oil money and backed by the MainStream Media, no less.
    Doesn’t help you get all those worthless tools trying their blasphemy cases for them for free.

  22. Sure, John Lewis, Omar Khayyam must coumt as a great farsi poet, but he wouldn’t do too well under the current theocracy.
    “A jug of wine, a book of verse and thou…
    Read it (The Rubayat[sp?]). Good stuff.

  23. I nominate Gord Tulk’s comment above for “Thoughtful and Intriguing Comment of the Day”.
    Just imagine it! Start with some great Western historical works. Add the works of some of the great Enlightment philosophers. Add the works of some of the great Jewish and Christian theologians.
    Most importantly, make all these books available as free downloads on the Internet. They ought to be available on as many different web sites and servers as possible, to make censorship as difficult as possible for the Islamist state censors attempting to prevent their acquisition by interested Muslims.
    What an enormous and world-changing agent of change in the Muslim world this could be!

  24. My bad, Kate. Of course you’re correct. But then again, Zach Bell’s correct, too, about only being 2 hits for “Christian literary giants”.
    Regardless, I recognize the point you’re making and believe it to be valid…that the Islamic world does NOT seemingly encourage or support great literature (heck, they don’t even seem to encourage LITERACY)…or science or medicine or much of anything else.
    Ya ya, someone can search through the library archives and find SOME great islamic literature from a couple millenia ago (all but invisible in comparison to the huge mounds of great literature produced by every other group in the world) BUT…
    “…what have you done for me lately”?

  26. Not to be fascist here, but how are these things decided. I mean Ayn Rand had secular Jewish parents, but she was not religious at all.

  27. Not to be fascist here, but how are these things decided. I mean Ayn Rand had secular Jewish parents, but she was not religious at all.

  28. Oh yeah, don’t forget that “Muslim” literary giant Omar Khayyam. You got part of it right.
    Allah, perchance, the secret word might spell;
    If Allah be, He keeps His secret well;
     What He hath hidden, who shall hope to find?
    Shall God His secret to a maggot tell?
    …
    The Koran! well, come put me to the test-
    Lovely old book in hideous error drest-
     Believe me, I can quote the Koran too,
    The unbeliever (say what???)knows his Koran best.
     
    And do you think that unto such as you,
    A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew, (Anathema! I smell an Islamophobe!)
     God gave the secret, and denied it me?-
    Well, well, what matters it! believe that too.

  29. thanks for the complement dave in pa:
    I come from the Milton freidman school of thought that information/knowledge is the most empowering, liberating and wealth generating thing in the world – if I could only get bill gates’ ear for ten minutes…

  30. penny, without the west extracting and buying the oil that thewest found i think the lifestyle would be tents and camels.

  31. I actually had Dr. Spellberg for a class at UT. I thought she was a great professor, and an extremely intelligent woman. We didn’t agree on everything, but she was extremely fair and open to different perspectives. The fact that she trashed this book probably indicates that it was just that – trashy. When you submit your book to someone and ask for criticism, you should expect criticism – especially when you ask a history professor, an expert in the field. I read historical romance ebooks all the time, but I would never, ever ask one of my history professors for a review of them. Random House pulling this book has, I believe, less to do with Professor Spellberg’s critique and more to do with fear of a backlash. As a business, they are well within their rights to do so. And the fact that this book has generated so much buzz before even becoming available is great for Sherry Jones – someone will snap this book up immediately, and everyone will want a copy. It’s a win-win.

  32. No results found for “mcmillan blogosphere giant”
    Just because Google can’t find it – doesn’t mean it does not exist.

  33. While this is a pretty sad commentary, I would like to express my fondness for the poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273).
    While Rumi did make the pilgrimage to Mecca, he’s definitely not an orthodox Muslim, so I suppose that just emphasizes your point.
    I’ve also noticed that Sufis, the spiritual descendants of Rumi, are facing governmental and vigilante persecution in Iran. I grasp that Sufis are considered a heretical sect by both Sunni and Shia Muslims.

  34. .
    “I have come to understand that Multiculturalism means that no one>/b> in the country can be comfortable anymore.”
    .
    For evidence, just read blogs. It’s all there.
    .

  35. And check it out, everybody: the Jews were slaves for way longer than some people, and their ancestors never got reparations (i.e. welfare checks).
    Yet for some reason the Jewish “legacy of slavery” doesn’t seem to include gangsta rap, teen pregnancy or high incareration rates. Weird.
    As for Muslims: first cousin marriage is not a recipe for future Nobel Prize wins…

  36. Although funny, it’s a pretty useless google search.
    “White literary giants” turns up 3 results.
    “Canadian literary giants” turns up 28 results.
    “European literary giants” turns up 8 results.
    “American literary giants” turns up 208 results.
    “Asian literary giants” turns up 1 result.
    So what can we infer from these numbers? That the phrase “literary giant” is a Western phrase!

  37. Dr. Andrew Bostom, Romanticized Pedophilia and Polygamy
    Having just read the Prologue… to Sherry Jones “The Jewel of Medina,” one hopes (against hope) that perhaps the whole “fatwa” imbroglio has been manufactured by Random House to jettison this idiotic “novel.”
    There are so many layers of irony and tragedy to this story, epitomized most of all by the feckless Ms. Jones who not only romanticizes pedophilia… and polygamy, but seems utterly unaware that she is doing so having adopted in her own warped fashion—albeit, not “deferentially” enough—an apologetic narrative for Islam’s foundational (and living) debasement of women…

  38. Asra Q. Nomani, You Still Can’t Write About Muhammad
    This saga upsets me as a Muslim — and as a writer who believes that fiction can bring Islamic history to life in a uniquely captivating and humanizing way…
    All this saddens me. Literature moves civilizations forward, and Islam is no exception. There is in fact a tradition of historical fiction in Islam, including such works as “The Adventures of Amir Hamza,” an epic on the life of Muhammad’s uncle. Last year a 948-page English translation was published, ironically, by Random House. And, for all those who believe the life of the prophet Muhammad can’t include stories of lust, anger and doubt, we need only read the Quran (18:110) where, it’s said, God instructed Muhammad to tell others: “I am only a mortal like you.”

  40. “The fact that she trashed this book probably indicates that it was just that – trashy.”
    You missed the point. It sounded trashy to me, but her opinion wasn’t on literary merit, it was basically a statment about about it not being acceptable in a free and secular society. Since when did university profs get so sensitive about religous traditions? Nice try.

  41. This is even dumb for Kate McMillan.
    What’s wrong, toots? Upset that your persecution campaigns against various and sundry beige people aren’t resulting in the civil unrest you had hoped for?
    Get a job, you parasite.

  45. No results found for “mcmillan blogosphere giant”
    Just because Google can’t find it – doesn’t mean it does not exist.
    Posted by: rimcTX at August 8, 2008 2:40 PM
    rim — got one hit! Maybe this is the start of something eh!

  48. Thanks, Tenebris.
    Dave in PA.: Have you heard of the “Great Books of thwe Western World”?

  49. “Why are some in the West so scared of muslims? ”
    Scared of ’em? No. Sick of some of them? Yes. Here is a letter sent by Barbary Pirates to the Continental Congress at about the time of the inception of our republic more than two centuries ago:

    The Americans asked Adja why his government was hostile to American ships, even though there had been no provocation. The ambassador’s response was reported to the Continental Congress:
    It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy’s ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once

    Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Pirates
    Our response then was similar to our response now. We created the Unitied States Marines, who are called leathernecks on account of the leather collars they wore to keep their heads from being chopped of by these evil vermin.
    Once the fighting stopped for a while in 1815, the US stopped paying tribute, while the Europeans continued to shell over the Dane Geld to the pirate scum. So we have never feared the Muslims, but there sure has been plenty of reason to distrust and plenty of provocation to fight.

  50. Canadian literary giants??
    Ha!
    Name six!
    (and no pygmies such as Munro, Lawrence and the rest of the lib PC gang of smug, sanctimonious, hypocritical, pointless, boring, irrelevant, tedious, irritating, unoriginal crap.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation