Cafe of Broken Dreams by John scientific terrorist in action

False Claims about great progress of Islamic Cartography

There has been said many claims about high developed cartography due to Islam in the Middle East, that is why I gathered here few maps dating across the whole history so you can see at your own when the important achievements happened and you can realize that the Islamic cartography was not so great how Muslims often say.

450 B.C. – Modern Reconstruction of Herodotus World Map

for more different reconstructions go here

900 B.C. – 160 A.D. – Maps of the Greek World

1154 A.D. – Tabula Rogeriana, probably one of the most famous map of the Islamic World drawn by Al-Idrisi (note the interesting point that the map was painted for the Christian king Roger II of Sicily

The map is inverted (original is painted with South oriented down)

13th century – a copy of Ptolemy’s map from 13th century, the map was widely used by overseas explorers, probably also by Christopher Colombus

1596 A.D. – the Christian Knight world map, one of the first map covering the whole Earth

16th century – 21st century – Merkator projection, satellite maps, GPS, weather maps, Globe models, …..

Conclusion: Islamic Empire did some minor development, but by and large it just followed high standard from the Ancient World (the list of Ancient Maps), which were almost completely conquered by Islam. The most important steps were achieved during the Renaissance (see the list of Renaissance maps) and later in 20th century with digitalization.

Myths about Tolerant Islamic Spain (al-Andalus)

Spain was a Jihadist country par-excellence (mass public execution for blasphemy, pogroms of Jews, intolerant laws, expulsion of Christians, … ).

In 851 took place a mass execution of 48 Christian monks who refused to accept Mohammed or publicly announced their Christian faith.

In 1066 took place the first big pogrom against Jews in Spain, more than 4 000 people – kids, women were killed in one day (That is more than the state of Israel has killed between 1998 – 2008 in combat operations). Yes Antisemitism was practiced with Islam. In Islamic Spain was common that the Jewish population had to wear clothes which clearly separated them from a Muslim population - well knowns marking practice from Nazi Germany.

The Caliph Hisham I of Córdoba started in 792 an offensive Jihad against France, plundering Bordeaux and killing thousands.

The Caliph Al-Hakam I after a revolt of native Christian population in Cordoba expelled more than 20 000 families out of their native home.

Thanks to Ibn Rushd, a famous master of Islamic law, who lived in Islamic Spain we know this was according to Islamic law completely legal.

Scholars agree that all polytheists should be fought. This is founded on [K 8:39]: "Fight them until there is no persecution and the religion is entirely Allah's." ...

The Moslems are agreed that the aim of warfare against the People of the Book, with the exception of those belonging to the Quraysh-tribe and Arab Christians, is twofold: either conversion to Islam, or payment of poll-tax (djizyah).

Damage inflicted upon the enemy may consist in damage to his property, injury to his person or violation of his personal liberty, i.e., that he is made a slave and is appropriated. This may be done, according to the Consensus (idjma) to all polytheists: men, women, young and old, important and unimportant. ^[1]

Maimonides who lived in Islamic Spain (also in Morocco and Egypt) wrote about the common life with Muslims.

Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase and hate us as much as they did, although we were dishonored by them beyond human endurance, and had to put up with their fabrications. Similarly our sages instructed us to bear the prevarications and preposterousness of Ishmael in silence. We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation. All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment which well nigh curses us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition. ^[2]

Darío Fernández-Morera, an Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and of Comparative Literature at Northwestern University has written about myth of tolerant Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain).

By any objective standards, then, and in spite of its undeniable artistic, literary, and scientific accomplishments, and of modern wishful “let-us-all-get-along” thinking that tries to gloss over evidence to the contrary, Islamic Spain was not a model of multicultural harmony. Andalusia was beset by religious, political, and racial conflicts controlled in the best of times only by the application of tyrannical force. Its achievements are inseparable from its turmoil. ^[3]

Bernard Lewis, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, probably one of the most known western orientalist has written about Islamic Spain.

“The Golden Age of equal rights was a myth and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam.” ^[4]

An interesting point is also that Spain entered into its richest and the most prosperous epoch just after the final defeat of Muslims in Spain and liberation their own country. For more than 500 years Spanish villages has celebrated this moment in a festival called “Moros y Cristianos” by burning of effigies of the prophet Muhammad – the so-called “la Mahoma” – are mocked, thrown out of windows, and burned.

After another Islamic attack in Spain in the 2004 Madrid train bombings which killed 192 people, the village of Bocairent decided to discontinue the century old tradition. Bocairent did not want to risk becoming the target of suicide bombers. – that is for tolerance.

1. ↑Jihad in mediaeval and modern Islam – The Chapter on Jihad from Averroes’ Legal Handbook al-Bidayah, translated by prof.dr.mr. Ruud Peters, a chariman of Arabic studies on the University of Amsterdam
2. ↑ B.Z. Dinur, “Maimonides’ Epistle to Yemen, Israel in the Diaspora B, Jerusalem, 1968, p. 365
3. ↑ The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise - Darío Fernández-Morera
4. ↑ Bernard Lewis, “The Pro-Islamic Jews,” Judaism (Fall 1968), 401.

Is Islam the Bloodiest Ideology Ever?

Many Muslims will response that even the Western World had many bad ideologies or simply wrong decision makers, but that the core of Islam is peace. I personally doubt about it as Islam in its first 150 years were just conquering, killing more than 250 millions of people.

For the first time I have seen the estimate of Islamic death toll in an interview with Bill Warner, the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam. I have put the numbers into the context of other well know brutal world atrocities.

Sources:

Africans
Thomas Sowell estimates that eleven million slaves were shipped across the Atlantic and fourteen million were sent to the Islamic nations of North Africa and the Middle East. ^[1] David Livingstone estimated that for every slave who reached the plantation, five others died by being killed in the raid or died on the forced march from illness and privation. ^[2] So, for 25 million slaves delivered to the market, we have the collateral death of about 120 million people. Muslims ran all the wholesale slave trade in Africa. Death toll: 120 million Africans

Christians
The number of Christians martyred by Islam is nine million.^[3] A rough estimate by Raphael Moore in History of Asia Minor is that another fifty million died in wars by jihad. So to account for the one million African Christians killed in the 20th century we have: 60 million Christians

Hindus
Koenard Elst in Negationism in India ^[4] gives an estimate of eighty million Hindus killed in the total jihad against India. The country of India today is only half the size of ancient India, due to jihad. Death toll: 80 million Hindus

Buddhists
Jihad killed the Buddhists in Turkey, Afghanistan, along the Silk Route, and in India. The total is roughly ten million. ^[5] Death toll: 10 million Buddhists

Jews
The jihad in Arabia was 100 percent effective but the numbers were in the thousands, not millions. After that the Jews submitted and became the dhimmis (servants and second class citizens) of Islam and did not have geographic political power.

This gives a rough estimate of 270 million killed by jihad.

1. ↑ Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture, BasicBooks, 1994, p. 188.
2. ↑ Woman’s Presbyterian Board of Missions, David Livingstone, p. 62, 1888.
3. ↑ David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, World Christian Trends AD 30-AD 2200, William Carey Library, 2001, p. 230, table 4-10.
4. ↑ Koenard Elst, Negationism in India, Voice of India, New Delhi, 2002, pg. 34.
5. ↑ Barrett and Johnson, table 4
6. World War 2 - List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm
7. World War 1 -Twentieth Century Atlas. Retrieved 2008-12-21.
8. Communism - Foundation for the investigation of communist crimes
9. Crusades – Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and Madness of Crowds

How the Islamic Golden Age Destroyed Ancient Civilizations

Muslims has stolen the word Renaissance in order to use it in their propaganda of Islamic science, but in a deeper look what we see is that the Islamic Golden Age stopped the 4000 years long scientific dominance of the Middle East and Far East.

Big version of the map is available here

Differences between the Islamic Golden Age and the Renaissance:

1. Renaissance arose on Continent which had small history of science (except Greek/Roman) / Islamic Golden Age arose on conquered land of world leading scientists (see the picture above)
2. Renaissance led to Industrial age, one of the most important achievement of the Modern World / Islamic Golden Age led to total devastation of the Middle East (low life expectancy – 22 years in Palestine in 1900, high infant mortality –Egypt still has one of the highest rate in the world)
3. Renaissance was created by connection of Judeo/Christian values with Greek philosophy / Islamic Golden Age refused Greek philosophers