What happened Khaled ? Yes indeed the Moslem / Arab east was very open to earlier western thought and without that the west would in fact have lost a lot of it.
What happened is that the meme or creed of religious faith took a stranglehold on otherwise open-minded people. Mustn't confuse the human-brains with the informational-memes. Of course being open is one way for an "empire" to flourish, but oppression can be just as effective - it didn't "have to be" as you put it. The words heretic and blasphemer belie the presumption of faith, rather than any sense of open mind. Ian On 1/3/08, Khaled Alkotob <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Ron > > Many thanks for the post. > > Which begs the following question. > > Looking back at the Arab/Muslim empire, from about 700 A.D. until 1400 or > so, and looking at the advances they achieved in science, math, medicine > philosophy and so on, one has to wonder the following: "What sort of > acceptance code did they have toward others in order for them to > succeed?" > > > For example, the height of Pre-Renaissance philosophy was in Spain. Both > Muslim and Jewish philosophers, studying Plato and Socrates ( who the > Arabs translated from Greek) wrote volumes on the subject and asked > million of questions. Those philosophers would be considered heretics > today ( 600 years later) by both fundamentalists Jews and Muslims. Hey > even here in the US now, talking about such things as the existence of > God is considered not Kosher. > > > To recap my question. There has to have been some open minded ness toward > others ( religion and race) in order for an empire to flourish like that. > > Where has that open minded ness gone? > > Unlike the Romans, or colonial Europe, the "outposts" of the Arab empire > did flourish as well, if not better than the central capital. > Alhambra and Granada, were not places that you pillaged for raw > resources. > > So what happened? > > > > On Thu, 3 Jan 2008 09:34:16 -0500 "Ron Kulp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > writes: > > http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=nul > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
