How can people say Islam contributes nothing to science!

Friday, June 18, 2010

Ibn al-Haytham is amazing! According to wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham)... "His contributions to number theory includes his work on perfect numbers. In his Analysis and Synthesis, Ibn al-Haytham was the first to realize that every even perfect number is of the form 2ⁿ⁻¹(2ⁿ − 1) where 2ⁿ − 1 is prime, but he was not able to prove this result successfully (Euler later proved it in the 18th century).^[10]"

And his amazing work on optics which laid the foundation for Western optical science. amazing.

Jihad and shahid cluster of terms

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Further research has uncovered a whole cluster of related words like jihad and shahid (martyr/witness); (Arabic is shahid, Syriac is sahda). These words relate to the whole conception of spiritual battle against the lusts of the flesh/passions as discussed 3 centuries before Islam by Syriac monks eg in "A History of the Monks of Syria" by Theodoret of Cyrrhus cf James 4:1.
This means the argument by David Cook in "Understanding Jihad" that jihad as a spiritual struggle was an 11th century invention meant to downplay Islam's "inherent violence" is wrong!

Syrian influence on early Sufi Muslim spiritual practice?

Saturday, April 10, 2010

So how come some elements of early Sufi Muslim spiritual practice seem quite non-Quranic and seem quite like Syriac Christian practice? (eg celibacy, renunciations, etc). I'm writing a number of papers on this area, including one right now on the idea of spiritual struggle (in Arabic- jihad, and in Syriac several words TBA). The Muslim idea of jihad as spiritual war seems derived from the earlier Syrian monastic tradition.