polite_gandalf wrote on Sep 19
th, 2018 at 2:29pm:
Under the heading "Lying about the Quran"
Quote:Muslims will argue that a reference to a subgroup of pagans (those with a treaty) must imply that all references to pagans in the chapter must refer to those with a treaty (even when it does not make sense), because the it does specifically mention pagans without a treaty. It was never explained why this was necessary in order to refer to pagans in general.
This paragraph is at best flawed, and at worst complete gibberish. When the first words of the entire chapter are to literally say this revelation is directed towards pagans with a treaty, of course it "makes sense" to assume that it implies that all subsequent references to pagans are references to the same pagans - when no other pagans are specified. The one post of mine (of many) that you footnoted for this entire gibberish statement clearly goes to a lot of trouble to explain all the things you claim were not explained.
So, anyway you object to something you think is either logically fallacious or inadequately explained, and you simply dismiss it as "lying".
A very important point is illustrated here, the fundamentally different ways of seeing and thinking as a Muslim and as a Western non-Muslim (Christian or atheist or agnostic).
Islam has its own 1400 year old history of intellectual interpretation of texts and through them, of the world. The West has a about 2500 years of such a history. The intellectual history of the west before Islam is significant and is very different from Islam's way of looking and seeing. in some very important ways Islam consciously broke with that earlier Western way of thinking. The parallel 1400 years the west has had with Islam is a period of ongoing a significantly different, often incompatible ways of looking and seeing.
And so now when the two threads brought face to face in the shared medium of English (with its own ways of looking, seeing, noticing etc), it is an easy mistake to assume that we are all talking a 'common language'. But we aren't. Linguistically we may well be but not epistemologically, ontologically, teleologically etc, etc. (in short we are not speaking from shared and accepted common premises about shared and accepted goals in shared and accepted ways of achieving them). Westerners are constantly checking their assumptions (thank you, Greeks, thank you critical thinking, scientific revolution, Enlightenment, Kant, Hume, etc, etc) while Muslims do not if the assumption is sourced from the Koran.
For example, for Arabs to regard the Koran as the best of all books with the most perfect language they have to be thinking and seeing COMPLETELY outside every Western understanding of what makes a great text. For a Westerner the Koran is an unbelievably confused and tedious and jumbled text with very little rhyme or reason. Yet Muslim Arabs orient their lives by it. Speaking English is not going to overcome that gulf.
How very 'orientalist' of you Frank.
Islamic philosophy that dominated the period of scientific prosperity circa 700-1000 was firmly rooted in 'western' critical thinking. All the great arab polymaths were Aristotelian in their methods and philosophy, and were well versed in all the greatest works of Greek. Not surprising given they were the ones who discovered much of them, translated them and preserved them. As for the Quran, the mutazilite philsophy that asserted that the Quran was 'created', became a significant source of scientific inspiration in the Islamic world. While at its core was essentially a semantic point of contention, it was really a metaphor for a broader case for what we would understand as the Greco/western method of scientific inquiry and critical thinking. Besides which, they also put heavy emphasis on the Quranic command to seek knowledge and use your intellect.
To refute the idea that The Islamic Golden Age was not a key link in the development of western scientific revolution between Classical Greek and the enlightenment - is to ignore the debt western scientists owe to islamic scientists. Like for example Copernicus, who drew heavily from the works of Islamic cosmologists centuries before him. And Ibn Al Haythem who is widely regarded (in Europe) as the father of modern optics. But beyond such specific examples (of which there are many), more importantly it was the discovery, translation and then reworking of the classic Greek works - most of which simply wasn't accessible to the west until after periods of significant contact and interaction - starting with the crusades. Many historians now in fact attribute the beginning of the rennaissance to the crusades.
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