Islamology The Basic Design for a School of Thought and Action

by: Dr. Ali Shariati

I present a geometrical figure of a school of thought and an ide- ology which every Islamologist and aware Muslim should have of Islam, not only as explanation of their religious belief but as a logo of a school of thought and ideology. Gaston Bachelard, one of the greatest thinkers of ourage, com- parable to Descartes and Plato, who, unfortunately died a few years ago being quite unknown, believed that when an idea can be conceptualized in a geometric form, it has found its proper language in which to express and explain itself. That is, when an idea finds geometrical expression, this idea has found thebest language of its expression.

Any idea which can be conceptualized and then expressed through a geometric form, is itself proof of its being both valid and sound. The most exact scientific concepts in the world are mathematical ones. If we are able to express our philosophical or ideological ideas in mathematical or geometrical language, we have both found the best language to express our concepts as well as the best proof of the fact that intellectual ideas are logical as opposed to
philosophies and religions which have to engage in discussion, argumentation, sophistry, debates and comparisons to prove their logic.There, one will have chosen the weakest language of expression from the view of reasoning and logic. If, instead, one could make use of mathematics as the language of expression for an intellectual, philosophical or religious school or even literary or artistic school, it is then that a school of thought will have succeeded in finding expression through logical reason- ing, proving itself to be both logical and scientific.

I wanted to add just one point. A school shows whether or not it is a natural form, whether or not its curve is normal or abnormal, whether or not its form is heterogeneous or homogeneous through the geometric form in which it is expressed. That is, one can understand the natural qualities of a school from its geometric expression....

Scholars and Scholars
There is a great difference between knowledge which has been understood and knowledge which has just been learned. You may know people who are very knowledgeable about a famous person, book or school but not understand the person, book or school. What is the difference between these two? If I succeed in expressing the difference between these two, I will, then, have succeeded in explaining the difference between a real Islamic scholar and a person who has simply learned about Islam but does not understand it.

There are some Islamic scholars who understand Islam and there are some Islamic scholars - many, as a matter of fact - who have only learned about Islam. On the other hand, there are some who understand Islam well but are not considered to be Islamic scholars.

The same difference exists in literature, in the case of some professors who know, for instance, how many manuscripts of the poems of Hafiz exist in the world, where each one is, what the
weight or dimension of the volumes are, how many poems or which different ones are included in each edition and who know the names and attributes of all those who were praised by Hafiz,
what effect they had upon him, what their position was in relation to him, etc. They know how many Persian or Arabic words exist in Hafiz's poems or they know all of the allusions and historical references made by Hafiz, but they in no way understand Hafiz.

The Top 20: How Islamic inventors changed the world
The Independent

From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we take for granted in daily life. Paul Vallely nominates 20 of the most influential- and identifies the men of genius behind them.

1. The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after eating a certain berry. He boiled the berries to make the first coffee. Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray on special occasions. By the late 15th century it had arrived in Mecca and Turkey from where it made its way to Venice in 1645. It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in the City of London. The Arabic qahwa became the Turkish kahve then the Italian caff頡nd then English coffee.

2. The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled us to see. The first person to realise that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab word qamara for a dark or private room). He is also credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.

3. A form of chess was played in ancient India but the game was developed into the form we know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward to Europe - where it was introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th century - and eastward as far as Japan. The word rook comes from the Persian rukh, which means chariot.

4. A thousand years before the Wright brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to construct a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. He hoped to glide like a bird. He didn't. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought to be the first parachute, and leaving him with only minor injuries. In 875, aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles' feathers he tried again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft for ten minutes but crashed on landing - concluding, correctly, that it was because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing. Baghdad international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.

5. Washing and bathing are religious requirements for Muslims, which is perhaps why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today. The ancient Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it more as a pomade. But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and aromatics such as thyme oil. One of the Crusaders' most striking characteristics, to Arab nostrils, was that they did not wash. Shampoo was introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed's Indian Vapour Baths on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV.

6. Distillation, the means of separating liquids through differences in their boiling points, was invented around the year 800 by Islam's foremost scientist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy into chemistry, inventing many of the basic processes and apparatus still in use today - liquefaction, crystallisation, distillation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation and filtration. As well as discovering sulphuric and nitric acid, he invented the alembic still, giving the world intense rosewater and other perfumes and alcoholic spirits (although drinking them is haram, or forbidden, in Islam). Ibn Hayyan emphasised systematic experimentation and was the founder of modern chemistry.

7. The crank-shaft is a device which translates rotary into linear motion and is central to much of the machinery in the modern world, not least the internal combustion engine. One of the most important mechanical inventions in the history of humankind, it was created by an ingenious Muslim engineer called al-Jazari to raise water for irrigation. His 1206 Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices shows he also invented or refined the use of valves and pistons, devised some of the first mechanical clocks driven by water and weights, and was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions was the combination lock.

8. Quilting is a method of sewing or tying two layers of cloth with a layer of insulating material in between. It is not clear whether it was invented in the Muslim world or whether it was imported there from India or China. But it certainly came to the West via the Crusaders. They saw it used by Saracen warriors, who wore straw-filled quilted canvas shirts instead of armour. As well as a form of protection, it proved an effective guard against the chafing of the Crusaders' metal armour and was an effective form of insulation - so much so that it became a cottage industry back home in colder climates such as Britain and Holland.

9. The pointed arch so characteristic of Europe's Gothic cathedrals was an invention borrowed from Islamic architecture. It was much stronger than the rounded arch used by the Romans and Normans, thus allowing the building of bigger, higher, more complex and grander buildings. Other borrowings from Muslim genius included ribbed vaulting, rose windows and dome-building techniques. Europe's castles were also adapted to copy the Islamic world's - with arrow slits, battlements, a barbican and parapets. Square towers and keeps gave way to more easily defended round ones. Henry V's castle architect was a Muslim.

10. Many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi. His scalpels, bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery and many of the 200 instruments he devised are recognisable to a modern surgeon. It was he who discovered that catgut used for internal stitches dissolves away naturally (a discovery he made when his monkey ate his lute strings) and that it can be also used to make medicine capsules. In the 13th century, another Muslim medic named Ibn Nafis described the circulation of the blood, 300 years before William Harvey discovered it. Muslims doctors also invented anaesthetics of opium and alcohol mixes and developed hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes in a technique still used today.

11. The windmill was invented in 634 for a Persian caliph and was used to grind corn and draw up water for irrigation. In the vast deserts of Arabia, when the seasonal streams ran dry, the only source of power was the wind which blew steadily from one direction for months. Mills had six or 12 sails covered in fabric or palm leaves. It was 500 years before the first windmill was seen in Europe.

12. The technique of inoculation was not invented by Jenner and Pasteur but was devised in the Muslim world and brought to Europe from Turkey by the wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul in 1724. Children in Turkey were vaccinated with cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50 years before the West discovered it.

13. The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of Egypt in 953 after he demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink in a reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a combination of gravity and capillary action.

14. The system of numbering in use all round the world is probably Indian in origin but the style of the numerals is Arabic and first appears in print in the work of the Muslim mathematicians al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi around 825. Algebra was named after al-Khwarizmi's book, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, much of whose contents are still in use. The work of Muslim maths scholars was imported into Europe 300 years later by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci. Algorithms and much of the theory of trigonometry came from the Muslim world. And Al-Kindi's discovery of frequency analysis rendered all the codes of the ancient world soluble and created the basis of modern cryptology.

15. Ali ibn Nafi, known by his nickname of Ziryab (Blackbird) came from Iraq to Cordoba in the 9th century and brought with him the concept of the three-course meal - soup, followed by fish or meat, then fruit and nuts. He also introduced crystal glasses (which had been invented after experiments with rock crystal by Abbas ibn Firnas - see No 4).

16. Carpets were regarded as part of Paradise by medieval Muslims, thanks to their advanced weaving techniques, new tinctures from Islamic chemistry and highly developed sense of pattern and arabesque which were the basis of Islam's non-representational art. In contrast, Europe's floors were distinctly earthly, not to say dirty, until Arabian and Persian carpets were introduced. In England, as Erasmus recorded, floors were "covered in rushes, occasionally renewed, but so imperfectly that the bottom layer is left undisturbed, sometimes for 20 years, harbouring expectoration, vomiting, the leakage of dogs and men, ale droppings, scraps of fish, and other abominations not fit to be mentioned". Carpets, unsurprisingly, caught on quickly.

17. The modern cheque comes from the Arabic saqq, a written vow to pay for goods when they were delivered, to avoid money having to be transported across dangerous terrain. In the 9th century, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad.

18. By the 9th century, many Muslim scholars took it for granted that the Earth was a sphere. The proof, said astronomer Ibn Hazm, "is that the Sun is always vertical to a particular spot on Earth". It was 500 years before that realisation dawned on Galileo. The calculations of Muslim astronomers were so accurate that in the 9th century they reckoned the Earth's circumference to be 40,253.4km - less than 200km out. The scholar al-Idrisi took a globe depicting the world to the court of King Roger of Sicily in 1139.

19. Though the Chinese invented saltpetre gunpowder, and used it in their fireworks, it was the Arabs who worked out that it could be purified using potassium nitrate for military use. Muslim incendiary devices terrified the Crusaders. By the 15th century they had invented both a rocket, which they called a "self-moving and combusting egg", and a torpedo - a self-propelled pear-shaped bomb with a spear at the front which impaled itself in enemy ships and then blew up.

20. Medieval Europe had kitchen and herb gardens, but it was the Arabs who developed the idea of the garden as a place of beauty and meditation. The first royal pleasure gardens in Europe were opened in 11th-century Muslim Spain. Flowers which originated in Muslim gardens include the carnation and the tulip.

"1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World" is a new exhibition which began a nationwide tour this week. It is currently at the Science Museum in Manchester. For more information, go to www.1001inventions.com.

English enriched by Centuries of borrowed Arabic words

By: Mohamed Elmasry

Media Monitors Network

For 1000 years, Arabic was the primary international language of commerce, scholarship and politics, much as English is in today's world. In fact, over the centuries English adopted many words that were either borrowed directly from Arabic, or were absorbed indirectly through other languages, especially Spanish.

Even today, Arabic still accounts for the greatest number of Eastern elements in English. The lists of examples that follow are only a brief sampling of the many more words available; perhaps some will surprise you!

No computer, nuclear plant or microchip design could have been possible without the words and concepts we know as algorithm, algebra, and zero - all of which come from Arabic.
The names of many musical instruments -- like lute and guitar - as well as a number of technical performance terms and styles, are also from Arabic roots.

Many names of familiar animals, plants, spices, herbs and drinks began as Arabic nouns: saffron, henna, camphor, cotton, apricot, lemon, lime, orange, tamarind, lilac, sherry, mango, coffee, artichoke, spinach, jasmine, ginger, tulip, lotus, shrub, giraffe, gazelle, cobra, zebra, cheetah.

If you have ever taken a chemistry course, the word chemistry itself originates with Arabic, as well as nitro, alkali, alcohol, calibre, antimony, arsenic.

In your household and daily life, you might easily run into Arabic words that are so common we never give them a second thought: shampoo, sofa, cable, atlas, magazine, pie, pajama, bungalow, mattress, sack, khaki, candy, caramel, jar, sherbet, sugar, syrup, cinnamon, ribs, silk, cheque, chatty, sandal.

And, as you might expect, Arabic is very present in slightly more exotic or emphatic English words and proper names: tycoon, carat, chess, checkmate, Sahara, almanac, rum, musk, sesame, tariff, cashmere, mummy, coral, sapphire, jubilee, jargon, thug, Satan, fake, jungle, alchemy, zenith, safari, talc, tartar, zircon, chiffon, amber, Bedouin, Ariel.

In military vocabulary, frequently-used terms like hazard, admiral, arsenal and assassin all owe their use to Arabic.

But reference books devoted to tracing the English words borrowed from Arabic are rare. Most were written some time ago and do not include contemporary scholarship or changes in our language. The most recent is more than three decades old -- Arabic Contributions to the English Vocabulary, by James Peters and Habeeb Salloum (1973). Two other useful, but dated, titles are: A History of Foreign Words in English, by Mary S. Serjeantson (1935) and Arabic Words in English, by Walt Taylor (1933).

Words are much like organic living creatures whose character and meanings evolve over time and circumstance. Those Arabic words that made it into English must have had a fascinating history, much of which has been lost over the centuries. It makes one wonder; Who used the original Arabic words and what were they like? How did these words first come to be spoken by non-Arabs? How many variations did they go through before appearing in English dictionaries? Why are some much easier to trace back to their Arabic roots than others? Linguists have answered some of these questions but there is still much more to be known. Here is a project worthy of far greater attention. Any takers?

For more information on Islamic Heritage please visit: www.islamichistorymonth.com

In Europe A War Is Declared on
Islam and the Qur'aan

BY: HARUNYAHYA

Following the Council of Europe¢s recent decision regarding the prohibition on the teaching of the fact of Creation in schools, a second issue to take its place on the agenda was the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling on 9 October that reli­gious classes in Turkish schools were a violation of the right to education. Under this ruling, various changes need to be made to the way religion is taught in Turkish schools and, according to the ECHR, religious classes should even be prevented in some way.

In fact, the changes referred to here have no other aim than to entirely do away with religious education, to turn young people away from belief in Allah (God) and to instill a materialist mindset in them. The deci­sion to ban the teaching of Creationism in schools under the Council of Europe decision taken in early October has the same objective. The fact that the report in question maintains that only the theory of evolution should be permitted on the curriculum clearly reveals the concern that students who learn about the fact of Creation will not grow up to be mate­rialists. This is why Creationism has been portrayed as a threat for Europe and the above decision was taken. The same state of affairs applies to the religious class-es currently provided in Turkey. Uneasy at students learning about Islam and turning away from the idea of materialism, Europe has this time encouraged the ending of religious instruction in schools under a vari­ety of pretexts. Europe¢s endeavors are obvious; it has declared war on belief in Allah and Islam.

There is no doubt that the reason for all this is the rev-elation to the entire world that Darwinism, and its sup-porter materialism, are both deceptions. Darwinist and materialist circles have panicked in the face of Harun Yahya¢s Atlas of Creation, which demonstrates that life forms today are exactly the same as their ancestors that lived in the past. They have realized that they will no longer be able to propagate that deception in the way they have for the last 150 years. The world has now come to see that Darwin¢s theory of evolution is a ter­rible lie. Materialist philosophy, which encourages irre­ligion, is now in its death throes and in the 21st centu­ry mankind will be freed from such deceptions, Allah willing, and return to the true purpose behind its cre­ation. Terrified and astonished by this realization, Darwinist-materialist circles are now attempting to take precautionary measures against this extraordi­nary rise. But what is done is done, and all the world now knows about the Darwinist deception. School stu-dents are now waging their own campaigns against Darwinism and refusing to learn about this fraud.

What Darwinist-materialist circles want is to form an irreligious society, with no traces of belief in Allah. The fact is, however, that this irreligious society will fur­ther encourage moral degeneration, increase the war, slaughter and rebellion that accompany irreligion, and inflict disaster on all mankind. What needs to be done is to encourage people, especially the young, to adopt religious moral values rather than turning them away from religion and encouraging materialist philosophy.

The reason for the panic being experienced by European Darwinist circles is crystal clear: They have realized that Creation is the sole fact, of which the whole world is now aware. They imagine that they will be able to put an end to this progress by banning religious classes and removing Creationism from the curriculum. They are convinced they will emerge vic­torious from this war they have declared against belief in Allah. (Surely Allah is beyond that.) They want to believe that Darwinism will be embraced and accept-ed, even though they are well aware that this will never happen. A false religion or a lie manufactured in opposition to belief in Allah has no way of survival. Almighty Allah reveals as much in His verses:

Rather We hurl the truth against falsehood and it cuts right through it and it vanishes clean away! Woe without end for you for what you portray! (Surat al-Anbiya¢, 18)

He sends down water from the sky and river-beds fill up and flow according to their size, and the floodwater carries with it an increasing layer of scum; a similar kind of scum comes from what you heat up in the fire, when you desire to make jewelry or other things. That is how Allah depicts the true and the false. As for the scum, it is quickly swept away. But as for that which is of use to people, it remains behind in the ground. That is a metaphor which Allah has made. (Surat ar-Ra¢d, 17)

With the definitive collapse of Darwinism, the influ­ence of Darwinists is much weaker than it once was. The rise of Islamic moral values is a promise made by Allah and will, by His leave, become a reality. The por­tents of this can be seen all across the world. His true religion has, by Allah¢s will, overcome. Darwinists are no longer able to mislead people. Europe¢s hostility towards Islam will change nothing. By Allah¢s leave, as with every heretical idea that has ever opposed Islamic moral values, this latest counter-attack, too, will merely result in a further strengthening of the Islamic faith.

Imagine a world today - and over the past sixty years - if the West and Japan had succeeded in fragmenting China, splintering the unity of this great and ancient civilization, and persisted in rubbing China's face in the dirt?Audio

Islam Now, China Then: Any Parallels

By: Shahid AlamIviews

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history that we make today."Henry Ford, 1916
On some days, a glance at the leading stories in the Western media strongly suggests that Muslims everywhere, of all stripes, have gone berserk. It appears that Muslims have lost their minds.
In any week, we are confronted with reports of Islamic suicide attacks against Western targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Western countries themselves; terrorists foiled before they could act; terrorist attacks gone awry; terrorists indicted; terrorists convicted; terrorists tortured; terrorist suspects kidnapped by CIA or warnings of new terrorist attacks against Western targets.
Unprovoked, without cause - we are repeatedly told - Muslims everywhere, even those living in the West, are lashing out against the civilized West. Many in the Western world - especially in the US - are beginning to believe that the entire Islamic world is on the warpath against Civilization itself.
Expert commentators in Western media want us to believe that the Muslims have lost their minds. They tell us that Muslims are inherently, innately, perverse; that never before has violence been used in this way, against innocent civilians. It is always 'innocent' civilians.
Other peoples too have endured colonization, slavery, expulsions, extermination at the hands of Western powers: but none have responded with violence on this scale against the West. Certainly not with violence against civilians. Never have Aborigines, Africans, indigenous Americans, Hindus, Jews, or the Chinese targeted civilians. They never attacked Westerners indiscriminately. They never targeted 'innocent Western civilians.'
Is this 'insanity' slowly raising its ugly head across the Islamic world really unique? Is this 'insanity' a uniquely Islamic phenomenon? Is this a uniquely contemporary phenomenon? Is this 'insanity' unprovoked?
We cannot of course expect any history from the corporate US media on this Islamic 'insanity'. In order to take the moral high ground, to claim innocence, the rich and powerful - the oppressor classes - prefer not to talk about history, or invent the history that serves their interest.
What is surprising, however, is that few writers even on the left bring much history to their analysis of unfolding events. Not being a historian - of Islam, China or Britain - I can only thank serendipity for the little bit of history that I will invoke to provide some background to the 'malaise' unfolding in the Islamic world. A little history to connect Islam today to China in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Implausibly - perhaps for some - the history I invoke comes from Friedrich Engels - yes, he of the Communist Manifesto, friend of Karl Marx, revolutionary - writing in May 1857 when the British were waging war against China, known to history as the Second Opium War.
More implausibly, this history comes from an article published in a leading US newspaper: The New York Daily Tribune (available in Marx and Engels Internet Archive). Yes, in some remote past, a leading US newspaper routinely published commentaries by the likes of Marx and Engels. Today, the publishers of the New York Times, the Washington Post or LA Times would become apoplectic just thinking about it.
During the First Opium War of 1840-1842, when the British waged war to defend their 'right' to smuggle opium into China - Friedrich Engels, writes - "the people were quiet; they left the Emperor's soldiers to fight the invaders, and submitted after defeat with Eastern fatalism to the power of the enemy." Yes, in those times, even enlightened Westerners spoke habitually of oriental fatalism, fanaticism, sloth, backwardness, and - not to forget their favorite - despotism.
However, something strange had overtaken the Chinese some fifteen years later. During the Second opium War, writes Friedrich Engels, "the mass of people take an active, nay fanatical part in the struggle against the foreigners. They poison the bread of the European community at Hong Kong by wholesale, and with the coolest premeditation...They go with hidden arms on board trading steamers, and, when on the journey, massacre the crew and European passengers and seize the boat. They kill and kidnap every foreigner within their reach."
Had the Chinese decided to trade one oriental disease for another: fatalism for fanaticism? Ah, these Orientals! Why can't they just stick to their fatalism? If only the Orientals could stick to their fatalism, all our conquests would have been such cakewalks!
It was no ordinary fanaticism either. Outside the borders of their country, the Chinese were mounting suicide attacks against Westerners. "The very coolies," writes Friedrich Engels," emigrating to foreign countries rise in mutiny, and as if by concert, on board every emigrant ship, and fight for its possession, and, rather than surrender, go down to the bottom with it, or perish in its flames. Even out of China, the Chinese colonists...conspire and suddenly rise in nightly insurrection..."
Why do the Chinese hate us?
No doubt the Europeans then were asking this question. And, like the democracy-mongers in the United States today, unwilling to examine the root causes, the history of their own atrocities, unwilling to acknowledge how they "throw hot shell on a defenseless city and add rape to murder," the Europeans then too were outraged. European statesmen and newspapermen fulminated endlessly about Chinese barbarity, calling their attacks "cowardly, barbarous, atrocious..." The Europeans too called for more wars, endless wars, till China could be subdued, totally.
Friedrich Engels was not deceived by the moralizing of the British press. Yes, the Chinese are still 'barbarians,' but the source of this "universal outbreak of all Chinese against all foreigners" was "the piratical policy of the British government." Piratical policy? No, never! We are on a civilizing mission; la mission civilizatrice Europeans. It was not a message that the West has been ready to heed: then or now.
Why had the Chinese chosen this "uncivilized" form of warfare? What had gone wrong? Was this rage born of envy; was it integral to the Chinese ethos; was this rage aimed only at destroying the West? Westerners claim that "their kidnappings, surprises, midnight massacres" are cowardly; but, Friedrich Engels answers, the "civilization mongers should not forget that according to their own showing they [the Chinese] could not stand against European means of destruction with their ordinary means of warfare." In other words, this was an asymmetric warfare. If the weaker party in a combat possesses cunning, it will probe and fight the enemy's weaknesses: not its strengths.
Then as now, this asymmetric warfare caused consternation in the West. How can the Europeans win when the enemy neutralizes the West's enormous advantage in technology, when the enemy refuses to offer itself as a fixed target, when it deploys merely its human assets, its daring, cunning, its readiness to sacrifice bodies?
"What is an army to do," asks Engels, "against a people resorting to such means of warfare? Where, how far, is it to penetrate into the enemy's country, how to maintain itself there?" The West again confronts that question in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The West has 'penetrated into the enemy's country,' but is having considerable trouble maintaining itself there. Increasingly, Western statesmen are asking: Can they maintain this presence without inviting more attacks?
Friedrich Engels asked the British to give up "moralizing on the horrible atrocities of the Chinese." Instead, he advises them to recognize that "this is a war pro aris et focis ["for altars and hearth"], a popular war for the maintenance of Chinese nationality, with all its overbearing prejudice, stupidity, learned ignorance and pedantic barbarism if you like, but yet a popular war." If we can ignore the stench of Western prejudice in this instance, there is a message here that the West might heed. Is it possible that the Muslims too are waging a "popular war," a war for the dignity, sovereignty of Islamic peoples?
In 1857, the Chinese war against Westerners also was confined to Southern China. However, "it would be a very dangerous war for the English if the fanaticism extends to the people of the interior." The British might destroy Canton, attack the coastal areas, but could they carry their attacks into the interior? Even if the British threw their entire might into the war, it "would not suffice to conquer and hold the two provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. What, then, can they do further?"
The United States and Israel now hold Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. How strong, how firm is their hold? on the one hand, they appear to be in a much stronger position than the British in China. They have the 'rulers' - the 'Mubaraks, Musharrafs and Malikis - in their back pockets. But how long can these 'rulers' stand against their people?
What if the insurgency that now appears like a distant cloud on the horizon no larger than a man's fist is really the precursor of a popular war? What if the "extremists," "militants," "terrorists," are the advance guard of a popular war to restore sovereignty to Islamic peoples? Can the US and Israel win this war against close to a quarter of the world's population? Will this be a war worth fighting: worth winning?
Shouldn't these great powers heed the words of Friedrich Engels? Shouldn't they heed history itself. After nearly a century of hard struggle, the Chinese gained their sovereignty in 1948, driving out every imperialist power from its shores? Today, China is the world's most powerful engine of capitalist development. It threatens no neighbor. Its secret service is not busy destabilizing any country in the world. At least not yet.
Imagine a world today - and over the past sixty years - if the West and Japan had succeeded in fragmenting China, splintering the unity of this great and ancient civilization, and persisted in rubbing China's face in the dirt? How many millions of troops would the West have to deploy to defends its client states in what is now China - the Chinese equivalents of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan and Iraq? If Vietnam bled the United States, imagine the consequences of a quagmire in China?
Would the United States prefer this turbulent but splintered China held down at massive costs in blood and treasure, with military bases, client states, wars, and unending terrorist attacks on American interests everywhere in the world - to the China that it has today, united, prosperous, at peace; a competitor, but also one of its largest trading partners?
At what cost, and for how long, will the United States, Europe and Israel continue to support the splintering, occupation and exploitation of the Islamic heartland they had imposed during World War I? At what cost - to themselves and the peoples of the Islamic world? There are times when it is smarter to retrench than to hold on to past gains.
That time is now: and that time may be running out.
Another turn of the screw - another attack by the United States or Israel - and this window may close irrevocably. If wars, civil conflicts or revolutions sweep across the Islamic world - unlike the Chinese revolution, most likely this turbulence will not be confined to one segment of Asia. In one way or another, this violence will draw the whole world into its vortex. One cannot even begin to imagine all the ramifications, all the human costs of such a conflagration.
The most vital question before the world today is: Can the United States, Israel or both be prevented from starting an apocalypse?

M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University. He is author of Challenging the New Orientalism (IPI Publications: 2007). Visit his website at http://aslama.org He may be reached at alqalam02760@yahoo.com.© M. Shahid Alam

History dispels the lies about Islam

By: Mohamed ElmasryIviews

A well known technique in any propaganda war is the spreading of "disinformation" about your enemy. Disinformation is the new postmodern word for lies. If you repeat the same lies over and over again, listeners' critical thinking skills are numbed; and in the absence of any opposing argument, the lies eventually cannot be differentiated from truth. Islam has had many enemies over the centuries and still has. One of the most persistent lies repeated by its detractors is that Muslims spread their faith by the sword. Yet of all mainstream religions, none is more precisely documented as to its origin, revelation, message and teachings. Since its emergence through the Prophet Muhammad and his transmission of its holy book, the history of Islam has been well recorded. From the Prophet's time until today, the Quran has offered guidance and discipline for everyday life. As Islam spread, the lives and teachings of its messengers have also been documented. As with Judaism and Christianity, the most influential and revered figures are those from the time when the faith was newly revealed; in Islam, these were Muslims who lived in the age of Prophet Muhammad and who embodied the teachings of the Quran as examples to their fellow human beings. Many of their thoughts and deeds were recorded for the benefit of future generations. To return to the questions of whether the Quran encourages Muslims to spread their faith by force, or whether the Prophet himself set a violent example for Muslims to follow, one has only to consult the source. The Quran is crystal clear in stating, "There is no compulsion in religion." (Quran 2:256) The commandment is absolute; there are no exceptions. Coercion, compulsion, force -- whatever one chooses to call it -- is forbidden. No other holy book lays down such a clear directive to its adherents.Believers in the world's largest Muslim country of today, Indonesia, have never in history encountered foreign Muslim soldiers on their soil. The same is true for today's Muslims in Malaysia, China, sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Turkey. All of these countries or regions were introduced to Islam through other Muslims, not by Muslim armies. Even in Egypt where the earliest Muslims were mostly Arab soldiers, Islam was diffused slowly throughout the country over more than 400 years. The Egyptians loved Islam because the values it embraced, such as justice, equality, modernity and freedom.And in Egypt, as well as in Persia, Greater Syria, India, North Africa and Spain, converts freely accepted Islam because it offered comparatively more than other religions of the day. During those early centuries, people who felt oppressed or restricted by the rigidity of Christian and Jewish traditions, or excluded from the caste system of Hinduism, were attracted by the Islam's de-emphasis on hierarchy. They loved the Islamic teachings that God is One and the Lord of All, that humans can talk to God directly, and that there is no Original Sin Ð every human being is wholly accountable for his/her deeds.So while it is true that Islam spread in some places with the speed of a bullet, no literal bullets have been involved. The whole concept of "convert or die" is utterly foreign and reprehensible to authentic Islamic beliefs and conduct. And the Quran itself further reinforces the sanctity of all human lives in saying that to kill another person is as evil as killing the entire human race. Muslims do not blame any religion for the atrocities committed by those claiming to be its adherents. Thus, Muslims do not blame Judaism itself for injustices committed by Jews against Palestinians. Nor do they blame Christianity per se for the crimes committed by Church-sanctioned medieval Crusades; for atrocities committed during the conquest of Spain by Christian armies and the subsequent persecution and expulsion of Muslims; nor for the horrors of the Inquisition, the St. BartholomewÕs Day Massacre, or any number of similar tragedies. All three faiths, rooted in Abrahamic tradition, teach similar values of non-violence, justice and equality. Those who take up the "cause" of any faith through violent means are in effect blasphemers of it. The earliest Muslims in Arabia were persecuted and subjected to torture. They fled for their lives from Mecca to Medina, but their pagan enemies followed, determined to annihilate them. Then and only then, did Muslims take up arms in self-defense. This was no a religious war, however, but rather a forced political conflict in which the rich and powerful of 6th-century AD Arabia perceived their status being challenged. The MuslimsÕ aim was not to convert their pagan countrymen, but to defend themselves; similarly, the anti-Muslim pagans were not interested in suppressing Islam itself, but in subjugating its believers through political power. When the Prophet Muhammad and his followers returned peacefully to Mecca in triumph, he granted pardon to the same people who had persecuted and waged war against him and his fellow Muslims. This humane and generous behavior reflected the teaching of many Quranic verses which stress the importance of courtesy, politeness and civility, even where there has been severe conflict: "And the true servants of the God of Mercy are those who walk upon the earth humbly; and when the ignorant address them, reply ÔPeaceÕ; and they pass the night praying to their Lord, prostrating and standing." (Quran 25:63 - 64)

Dr. Mohamed Elmasry is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Waterloo and national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress.

Free Speech or Double Standards?

By: Enver MasudIviews

Yes to free speech, no to double standards, but we expect more from our leaders than the bare minimum that the law demands.On March 6, 2001 the European Court of Justice ruled that "the European Union can lawfully suppress political criticism of its institutions and of leading figures, sweeping aside English Common Law and 50 years of European precedents on civil liberties."A challenge in 1990 to the publication of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" on the grounds that it contained "a blasphemous libel concerning Almighty God (Allah) the Supreme Deity common to all the major religions of the world" was rejected because Britain's blasphemy law was restricted to "scurrilous vilification of the Christian religion."A Paris court on February 27, 1998, fined French philosopher Roger Garaudy $40,000 for statements made in his 1996 book "The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics." The European Court of Human Rights declared inadmissible his appeal lodged in the case of Garaudy v. France.Ernst Zundel, Germar Rudolf and David Irving are serving time in jail in Europe for their views about the holocaust. Why doesn't the press support Zundel's, Rudolf's, Irving's, or Garaudy's right to free speech.Would a U.S. president invite Zundel, Rudolf, Irving, or Garaudy to dinner at the White House as then President Clinton did with Salman Rushdie?" I think not.We understand that changes to the Patriot Act sought by President Bush would make illegal at certain gatherings signs that have not been previously approved.Yes, Muslim demonstrations may not be effective, but they are understandable. Muslims are fed up with the double standards, the constant attacks on Islam, and their virtual exclusion from mainstream debate.Civil society requires more than merely observing the law. Language acceptable in a novel, is not acceptable in the communications from society's leaders - be it a newspaper, corporation or state.

Enver Masud is founder of The Wisdom Fund, and the recipient of the 2002 Gold Award from the Human Rights Foundation for his book The War on Islam.