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Who really imitates Jesus?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Suppose that someone observed Jesus two-thousand years ago, and he left this planet, or went to sleep for two-thousand years and returned today to look for the followers of Jesus, who would he find? Who would he recognise? Christians?
* The Bible says very clearly that Jesus used to fast. Do Christians fast in the same manner? Muslims fast; it is obligatory one month every year.
* The Bible says that Jesus prayed by touching his forehead to the ground. Do Christians pray in this manner? Muslims do. It is characteristic of their prayer and no one one earth is probably ignorant of the fact.
* According to Jesus, he told his disciples to greet one another with the expression, "Peace be with you." Do the Christians do that? Muslims do, universally, whether they speak Arabic or not. The greeting for one another is Assalamu'alaikum (peace be with you).
* The brother of Jesus in the Book of James, stated that no man should suggest what he is about to do or highlight his plans for the next few days in any way without adding the phrase "If God wills." Do not say "I will go here and there, do this and do that.." without adding the phrase "if God wills." Do Christians do that? Muslims do, whether they speak Arabic or not. If they so much as suggest they are going downtown to pick up some groceries, they will add, Insha-Allah, which in Arabic means, "If God wills."
* I'm sure he'd recognise Palestinian women in Islamic dress more than people in skirts. Indeed in many films of Jesus the women are dressed Islamically.
There are other points as well. Muslims follow all the Prophets.
The Prophet of Islam has said:
"I am the nearest to Jesus, the son of Mary in this world and in the next. The prophets are brothers, sons of one father, their mothers are different, but their religion is one. There have been no prophets between us (Jesus and Muhammad)".
Sons of one Father i.e. the same Source (same God).
Different Mothers i.e different Laws for different places and times.
"Do not over-praise me as the Christians over-praised Jesus the son of Mary. I am His slave, so say: 'God's slave and messenger'."
* The Bible says very clearly that Jesus used to fast. Do Christians fast in the same manner? Muslims fast; it is obligatory one month every year.
* The Bible says that Jesus prayed by touching his forehead to the ground. Do Christians pray in this manner? Muslims do. It is characteristic of their prayer and no one one earth is probably ignorant of the fact.
* According to Jesus, he told his disciples to greet one another with the expression, "Peace be with you." Do the Christians do that? Muslims do, universally, whether they speak Arabic or not. The greeting for one another is Assalamu'alaikum (peace be with you).
* The brother of Jesus in the Book of James, stated that no man should suggest what he is about to do or highlight his plans for the next few days in any way without adding the phrase "If God wills." Do not say "I will go here and there, do this and do that.." without adding the phrase "if God wills." Do Christians do that? Muslims do, whether they speak Arabic or not. If they so much as suggest they are going downtown to pick up some groceries, they will add, Insha-Allah, which in Arabic means, "If God wills."
* I'm sure he'd recognise Palestinian women in Islamic dress more than people in skirts. Indeed in many films of Jesus the women are dressed Islamically.
There are other points as well. Muslims follow all the Prophets.
The Prophet of Islam has said:
"I am the nearest to Jesus, the son of Mary in this world and in the next. The prophets are brothers, sons of one father, their mothers are different, but their religion is one. There have been no prophets between us (Jesus and Muhammad)".
Sons of one Father i.e. the same Source (same God).
Different Mothers i.e different Laws for different places and times.
"Do not over-praise me as the Christians over-praised Jesus the son of Mary. I am His slave, so say: 'God's slave and messenger'."
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Comments
Jesus made films? And noone told me?
EXACTLY :rolleyes:
the west have sacked god and jesus in favour of father xmas, mcdonalds and a very clever but extremely dodgy science.
you are talking to godless people, simple as that. the bible clearly states that one shouldn't be called father in a religous sense. look at the catholics. fathers all over the place and even a human called "most holy father". the bible says that we shouldn't bow in front of images...the catholics insist on kneeling to the virgin mary, who according to the bible went on to have about 6 more kids by sexual intercourse. they have cupboards full of plaster saints who they pray to. thier clergy seperate themselves from thier flock by living in palaces !AND by wearing silly clothes.
"you are all brothers" was jesus words. not if your a catholic or a protestant or any other part of chrisendom.
jesus said the religous leaders were the sons of satan, hypocrites, snakes...thats why they nailed him to a lump of wood.
if he came back today he would notice that religion hadn't changed at all. AND...they would have him shot as soon as possible for exposing them for what they are...vipers !
But supposing he did come back and he was indeed the son of an inmortal god and that the collection of tales known as the bible was indeed true, he would not be terribly pleased with the very people who claim to follow his doctrine. As a matter of fact the great majority of people who portray themselves as christians would probably be sent straight to hell for all eternity.
One of the very basic principles of christianity is rejection of greed and a willingness to help others, financially or by other means. If Jesus came back here he would most likely join the Communist Party or other left wing group for they are the closest organisations to the christian principle of helping your brother and not amassing fortunes at the expense of others. Another thing he would likely do is send anyone who advocates free market capitalism, tax cuts and stricter control of immigrants straight to hell, as they would be against the most basic pillars of christianity. That includes most of the traditional church-goers and the entire readership of the Daily Mail (supposedly the bearers of christian morals- lol). Not to mention world leaders who claim to be more christian than the almighty himself but can't get enough wars and destruction.
You know, in a way I wish Jesus was for real and that he came back to earth. I might be damned to eternal fire, but I'd love to see all the self-righteous people's faces as they're sent to hell while good hearted atheists, liberals and left wingers, single parents and homosexuals go to heaven.
http://www.morocco.com/forums/showthread.php3?threadid=5731
The Muslim sees mainstream Christianity as a religion about Jesus instead of the religion of Jesus. The first post in this link might be of interest about Jesus' claim to divinity.
The Qur'an asks for Jews and Christians to produce their proof -- the Bible for their claims. Did Jesus explicitly say "I am God"? (or even God says "I am Jesus"?)
"The Bible record of sayings credited to Jesus is quite meager. After allowance for duplication in the four gospel accounts, these sayings could be printed in two columns of a newspaper. None of this handful of texts is an explicit claim of deity. All quotations are implicit, that is, they require interpretation. We are told what Jesus said and then told what he meant. So our methodology takes an obvious form."
http://www.geocities.com/alummah2000/ReplyToChristianity.html
thou shalt serve one god...oh yeh ! do you know what a bishops headgear is all about ? they wear these hats in honour to "the fish god...dagon ! the sheaperds crook is not and never has been a crook. it's another ancient babylonian thing. it's the priests magic wand. the catholic church could...if the bible has any truth to it, quite rightly be classed as an antichrist.
(James 4:13 KJV) Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:
14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
taking that 'ought to' a bit far I think.
What do you consider to be 'mainstream Christians' catholic? CofE? The practices and teachings of different christian groups are so varied what exactly is 'mainstream'??
who where Unitarians would be the "true Christians" according to Islam and literally Muslims. Today theologically Christadelphians and Jehovah Witnesses are closer to the Muslim belief. Mainstream would be Trinitarians primarily.
catholic priest blessing english tanks, "god is on our side son".
own up those of you who are falling for this hypocrisy ! this madness. millions of christians slaughtering millions of thier brother christians !surely these "men of god", would have been more godly in thier conduct if they had told those young men that,
under no circumstances could god condone the killing of each other ?i know nothing about islam but...i'll put my money on it that they have been behaving just as murderously to each other as have the christians. well ?
during a battle between rival Muslim groups in western China's remote
Ningxia province last May, and said police confiscated an enormous cache of
weapons, state-run media reported.
A local court sentenced four Muslims, including a national official, to
between 15 years and life in prison effective Feb. 19, and sentenced 18 more
to lesser terms, the Xinhua news agency said.
One government official said the Guyuan Prefectural Intermediate People's
Court in Ningxia refrained from passing death sentences because Beijing,
fearful of further minority unrest, has demanded that capital punishment be
approved by the central government.
Xinhua said police confiscated 5,442 guns and 7,362 bullets, plus 21
homemade cannons with 118 homemade shells, and blamed the four leaders for
organizing their purchase or manufacture.
Earlier reports said the fighting in Ningxia's Xiji county that killed 49
and injured 30 last May came during a power struggle between rival factions of
a 100,000 member strong official Muslim sect called Zheherenye."
imitating Jesus?
20% of the world population are 'nonreligious' or atheist, not hard to understand why many choose not to be taken in by the preaching of hypocrites.
Religion causes war, even those religous ones preaching 'you shall not kill, do to others as you would have done to you' will fight and kill, then use religion to justify their actions.
There is no 'true' religion, noone is imitating Christ in todays world, but it eases the conscience to believe that you are, fools.
However, the inspired utterance says definately that in later periods of time they will fall away from the faith, paying attention to misleading inspired utterances and teachings of demons, by the hypocrisy of men who speak lies,
marked in their conscience as with a branding iron; forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be partaken of with thanks by those who have faith.
Are all Muslims like this? Shall we say the same about Christians in Northern Ireland? This is a very naive argument. Don't judge the religion on a select group of people but on the source.
the scource may well be wonderful and aweinspiring but we can ONLY judge by the actions and results.
if the irish did away with christianity they would realise that they have far more in common with each other than any differences they now percieve. who would the protestant throw his petrol bomb at ? a guy just like himself who wants to work and look after his family and pop down the pub for a fight on a saturday night !
lol
but in Matthew 7 is it not written that you will know the false prophets by their fruits?
Exactly, Why did Jesus give the test? He gave it to distinguish false from true prophets. If no prophet was to come why give the test?
I don't really want to get into this - Muhammad in the Bible. It's too big a topic to talk about here and boring for most.
Read John 1:19-25. The Jews at the time of John were waiting for 3 people not 2. There's a problem
"Art thou the Christ?" - We both agree Jesus is the Christ
"Art thou Elias?" - We agree John was Elias or in the spirit of Elias (Lk 1:17)
"Art thou that Prophet?"
http://wings.buffalo.edu/sa/muslim/library/jesus-say/ch6.1.html
That Prophet? Read the above link for more.
Fruits? Without the zero, which the Arabs gave to the Western World you would have no Mathematics, Algebra, Computers, Software, No thesite.org!
Fruits? Alcohol banning. America failed this century when She tried. When the verse was revealed to the Prophet in Madinah, wine-barrels were emptied never to be refilled. 1000 million people as a whole don't drink. Nations have been transformed. The Arabs at the time of the Prophet were uncouth uncivilised people and when the message was revealed look at the change.
Prince Charles said:
http://www.the-heart.net/princecharlesislam.htm
The mediaeval Islamic world, from Central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society and system of belief, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history. For example, we have underestimated the importance of 800 years of Islamic society and culture in Spain between the 8th and 15th centuries. The contribution of Muslim Spain to the preservation of classical learning during the Dark Ages, and to the first flowerings of the Renaissance, has long been recognised. But Islamic Spain was much more than a mere larder where Hellenistic knowledge was kept for later consumption by the emerging modern Western world. Not only did Muslim Spain gather and preserve the intellectual content of ancient Greek and Roman civilisation, it also interpreted and expanded upon that civilisation, and made a vital contribution of its own in so many fields of human endeavour - in science, astronomy, mathematics, algebra (itself an Arabic word), law, history, medicine, pharmacology, optics, agriculture, architecture, theology, music. Averroes and Avenzoor, like their counterparts Avicenna and Rhazes in the East, contributed to the study and practice of medicine in ways from which Europe benefited for centuries afterwards.
Islam nurtured and preserved the quest for learning. In the words of the tradition, 'the ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr'. Cordoba in the 10th century was by far the most civilised city of Europe. We know of lending libraries in Spain at the time King Alfred was making terrible blunders with the culinary arts in this country. It is said that the 400,000 volumes in its ruler's library amounted to more books than all the libraries of the rest of Europe put together. That was made possible because the Muslim world acquired from China the skill of making paper more than four hundred years before the rest of non-Muslim Europe. Many of the traits on which modern Europe prides itself came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open borders, the techniques of academic research, of anthropology, etiquette, fashion, alternative medicine, hospitals, all came from this great city of cities. Mediaeval Islam was a religion of remarkable tolerance for its time, allowing Jews and Christians the right to practise their inherited beliefs, and setting an example which was not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the West. The surprise, ladies and gentlemen, is the extent to which Islam has been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the Balkans, and the extent to which it has contributed so much towards the civilisation which we all too often think of, wrongly, as entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and present, in all fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart.
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THE CHANGE IS TRULY AMAZING !the arab lands are full of love and laughter and joy. they have banished war and hatred. the men treat women and children the kindest way ever devised by man. money has been banished along with poverty. the deserts have turned into lands over flowing with milk and honey.
what you smoking ?
if there is an all wise creator looking down on us do you think he sits back with pride and joy on seeing that his most marvelous creature is soaked in the blood of his fellow man. that thier hearts are filled with hatred and bitterness . that some of them long to kill and be killed ? an all wise creator would have difficulty i think, taking the side of those who are destroyers.
if there is an all wise creator do you think he would be happier if the people who wanted to serve him did it in the privacy of thier own hearts and minds ? if religion was wiped from the face of the earth what do you think we would loose apart from the bigotry, hatred, and sensless slaughter in the name of god ?
i'm sure god would be a lot happier with his creation..."ahhh at last they are begining to become wise". i seem to remember a passage in the bible which mocked people who prayed publicly as having worthless prayers. the advice was go to your private room and pray.
get rid of organised religion...in what way would this be detrimental to the earths and it's peoples wellbeing ?
Jesus was referring to ostentatious prayer of the Scribes and Pharisees. Christians as well as Muslims do pray publicly as well as privately. Vain repetitions and repetitions are not alike; one is a sign of little faith in the outcome, the other is aimed at driving the meaning of the words into the soul. Note he was leading up to the Lord's Prayer - is that repetitious? Similarly Islamic prayer is not repetitious - one can recite different prayers and chapters. Interestingly, the posture for supplication is identical to King Solomon's (a prophet in Islam):
And it was so, that when Solomon had made an end of praying all this prayer and supplication unto the LORD, he arose from before the altar of the LORD, from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread up to heaven. I Kings 8:54
Muslims kneel and point their palms upwards in supplication.
Be very careful where you tread when you make pronouncements about mathematics or the history of same. You claim that the Arabs 'invented' zero?
(It is, of course, from the name of al-Khwarizmi that we obtain the term 'algorithm.')
The Arabs did not 'create' zero, although I can vouch for the fact that algebra (in the modern sense of the word) requires an additive identity, zero.
Indeed, the Arabs had some good mathematicians. But so did the Indians, the Chinese, and the Europeans. 19th-Century mathematics is almost entirely the province of the French and Germans, with contributions from the Italians, Russians and British, and the occasional exceptional Norwegian (Sophus Lie and Niels Abel).
No computers without the Arabs? But you forget the contribution of England's own Alan Turing. No internet without the Arabs? But you forget the work of the founders of information and communication theory, such as Nyquist and Shannon. You forget the work of Bell Labs, who laid much of the technological and theoretical foundation for modern communications because they had to do so in the service of America in World War II.
England's Sir Isaac Newton said it best: "If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." If you dare presume that the Arabs 'founded' the modern intellectual world, or try to ransom us with such claims, you forget both their true place and yours.
Kindly be corrected and bear in mind that there is almost nothing in this world that is the sole intellectual property of one person, or even one cultural group, that has come without any outside influence.
So? So do the Japanese in their formal bows.
I'm sorry?! You write that, yet it was the expansion of Islam that destroyed much of the collected knowledge of Europe! The Alexandrian library was once the greatest repository of written knowledge in the Western world. When Muslim forces took Alexandria the commander of those forces was asked by his subordinates, "What shall we do with the books in the library?" His reply: "Those that disagree with the Koran are blasphemous, and so should be burned; those that are in accordance with the Koran are superfluous, and so should be burned also." Thanks to the callous deeds of Muslims on that day, we will never have a complete set of all the volumes of Euclid's Elements; we will never know precisely what the ancients knew; so much was immolated it is a wonder that anything survived at all.
Count your crimes against learning at the same time as your contributions to it, if you please.
Burning books is not supported by Islam nor most other religions or ideologies.
Religion is not the cause of the world's problems. If each individual carefully followed his religion or set of beliefs carefully in spirit and in letter, most of the world's political/cultural etc. problems would not happen. But, people continually act contrarily. People distort ideas to suit them so that they may oppress other people. In some cases, religion is distorted to be the tool for oppression. It would be illogical to blame the hammer for pounding the nail -- the blame is with the person holding the hammer. Similarly religion is not the cause of oppression, it is people misusing religion.
Muslims have as much right as a Christian or Jew or atheist to honor the good achievements of members in faith past and present. Similarly, any careful, honest examination of the Islamic faith would reveal that it is a fantastic, complete faith that when faithfully adhered to would bring about development of self and society to high levels and would honor each human with his or her rights. Today, Muslims are often demonized to the point that people only want to point out negatives about them. The Muslim world has problems that true implementation of the Islamic faith would probably solve. The Christian world has problems that true implementation of the Christian faith would probably solve. It is a foolish exercise to try to categorize entire peoples or entire faiths and say they caused x or supported y, etc. There are Muslim groups and individuals who are in error and give a bad name, as there are Christians, as there are Hindus as there are atheists.
Let each person choose his path after investigation and follow it sincerely; and allow others to do the same.
I agree that if people followed the letter of religion exactly then the world would be a wonderful place. Unfortunately, it's never going to happen because people simply aren't like that. You could impose the limitations by force, but this act itself would contradict the religious beliefs it is taken to protect. Thus although ideologically religion is a wonderful idea, in reality it causes great conflicts and leads to oppression and abuse of power by the clergy.
It's rather like arguing that communism would be wonderful if everyone adhered to it exactly. But noone adheres to it when it is attempted and thus it fails disasterously. To keep religion which causes conflict in the hope that one day everyone will start living by it and we'll all be happy and have world peace is a stupid idea. At the moment, and probably for ever, religion causes far more problems than it solves.
If we throw away religion, throw away the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, then what makes the world any better? People would still do what they do, or even worse. It would not solve anything to not have them.
At least and ideology provides an ideal to aspire to, and it undoubtedly makes some people be better than they would otherwise because they buy in to an ideology and use it to make themselves better people.
If you do not want it for yourself, fine. But don't knock it for others - it sometimes works! And besides, if they believe in God and are wrong, no loss to them, but if someone does not believe in God and is wrong, he indeed might be of the losers in the end.
May we all find the Truth and accept it. May we better ourselves and better the world as a result.
I didn't say we should abandon it because people aren't following it properly. I said we should abandon it because it causes conflict and suffering on an unimaginable scale. If the Constitution was causing such similar suffering then I would support the abandoning of it just as I support the abandoning of religion.
Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine, Al-Qaeda - three excellent examples of where religion is either the root cause of a problem or is used to justify it.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't have ideals - I don't understand why we need to encapsulate them in religion however. Ever heard of socialism? It's an ideology and one I buy into on the whole. I also think that if more people bought into it the world would be a better place. But this doesn't mean it's my religion, and I'm not about to start murdering people that don't buy into it.
If other people want to practice religions then fine - I believe in freedom of worship. It's when people start trying to impose their religion on others, often by force, that my serious objection arises. If they believe in God and it leads them to fly a plane into a skyscraper, then it is less to them, and it is less to the thousands of people they kill.
And, lastly, permit me to ask how you reconcile a loving God with a God that "makes losers" of people that do not believe in him?
Alright maybe I wasn't clear but I said "gave" not "invented" zero. Also saying software/etc came from the Arabs was an exaggeration.
Japanese doing the same in formal bows? -- the point was in Judeo-Christian-Islamic / Semitic tradition who follows these things.
But the zero was definitely important:
Surely, the most critical development in science in the last two thousand
years was the development of "zero" as a placeholder. Without this
breakthrough in arithmetic, it is impossible to imagine how a general
quantitative science could develop as it has. Not only would calculations
be cumbersome and avoided, but devices such as the computer on which I
typed this manuscript would have no basis for development. Zero is half
of the concept of computer memory and information representation which
consists of nothing but ones and zeros!
The use of zero as a placeholder appears to have originated in India. The
early Muslim scholars who used it referred to the system as "Indian
numerals", as we today call them "Arabic numerals." The Muslims developed
this idea by introducing invaluable extensions and applications to the
concept. For example, Abu al-Hasan bin Ibrahim al-Uqlidisi of Damascus
(flourished about 950) introduced the idea of decimal fractions (Sabra
1978), and Jamshid Gayath ad-Din al-Kashi of Persia (fl. 1420) applied
them generally (Kennedy 1970). He calculated the value of pi to 16
decimal places by an iterative scheme of his own invention. By such
techniques, the mathematicians of the Middle East were able to produce
numerical tables of trigonometric and other functions with a reliability
and precision unprecedented in their time. (Kennedy 1970).
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (died c. 863) of Baghdad, the author of the
first Arabic handbook on what are now called Arabic numerals, provided the
world with the tool that made all the physical sciences subject to
quantitative analysis. Our word "algorithm" is an anglicization of
al-Khwarizmi's name. The word "algebra" comes from the Arabic word al-jabr
which appears in the title of his book on the subject, Hisab al-Jabr
wa-l-Muqabala, which can be translated "Calculus of Transposition and
Simplification" (Rashid 1981). This book contains "the earliest known
treatment of the quadratic equation in one unknown which is at once
exhaustive, reasonably rigorous (for its time), and numerical in
inception" (Kennedy 1970). Later Umar Khayyam sought to give cubic
equations a similarly exhaustive treatment. Although the subject of
algebra existed before the Islamic era, these and other significant steps
in solving such 'polynomial equations' were made in the Islamic era.
As with many other sciences, Islamic medicine started with the absorption
of the Greek legacy into Islamic methodology.
Almost all the healing arts in Islam were indebted more to the
indefatigable efforts of Hunayn bin Ishaq al-`Ibadi (809-873) and his team
of translators than to any other ninth century author or educator.
Together with his students and associates, Hunayn made the most important
medical writings of the Greeks available in Arabic ... and established a
solid foundation for the development of Arabic medicine by devising a
distinctive methodology, which was followed, modified, and perfected
during the following century. (Hamarneh 1978)
Subsequently, Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi (Latin: Rhazes, 865-925)
produced a classic treatise on medical care, a comprehensive medical
encyclopedia that "provided considerable insights into the methods,
applications, and scope of internal, clinical and psychiatric medicine....
Recognizing the relationship between psyche and soma, he attempted to
treat diseases of both mind and body."(Hamarneh 1978).
More breakthroughs followed: Ibn Butlan's (died 1068) groundbreaking work
on preventive health care, Ibn al-Jazzar's (d. c. 984) work on prenatal
care, and Ibn Zuhr's (d. 1162) work on medical experimentation and bedside
observation (Hamarneh 1978).
Relying on both observations and rational analysis, Abu `Ali al-Husain ibn
Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037) was able to determine the existence of the
circulation of the blood, later articulated by Ibn an-Nafis (d. 1288),
and to describe it and relate it to such observable phenomena as the pulse
and heartbeat (Crombie 1990).
Pioneering in the use of local anesthetics and antiseptics, Muslim
physicians achieved such skill and advances that they were able to perform
cataract surgery on one-eyed patients with confidence. It was in the
Islamic civilization that the first hospitals were established and the
quarantine introduced to combat the spread of contagious disease (Lane
1943).
The contrast between Islamic and medieval European attitudes towards
medical science is illustrated in the reports of Usamah Ibn Mundqidh, a
twelfth-century Muslim world traveler from Syria, that in medieval Europe
patients were often treated by priests without any knowledge of medical
science. Even European physicians seemed more influenced by
theologically-tinged superstition than by clinical research. Usamah
learned the following story from an Arab Christian physician who had
offered to treat a woman afflicted with imbecility. The physician
prescribed a change of diet, but a European physician protested his
methods. The European diagnosed the problem as a demon in the woman's
head and ordered her hair be shaved off. She returned to her normal diet
(of garlic and mustard), and her condition worsened.
"The physician then said, "The devil has penetrated her head." He
therefore took a razor, made a deep cruciform incision on it, peeled off
the skin at the middle of the incision until the bone of the skull was
exposed and rubbed it with salt. The woman ... expired instantly." (Ibn
Munqidh 12th c.)
Despite his low opinion of European medicine in general, it is significant
that Usamah did adopt those popular remedies he found there which he
judged to be safe and effective....
We have mentioned the use of antiseptics in Islam. Hygiene was generally
very important in Islam. In medieval Europe, bathing was not a common
practice. At the dawn of the modern era, European doctors resisted the
suggestion that they should wash between patients. For the Muslim,
bathing and washing were articles of faith. Lane (1943) remarks that
cleanliness was the one issue about which Muhammad could be called a
fanatic, insisting that the five-times daily prayers were invalid if the
Muslim were not physically clean when he did them. When the Europeans
encountered the Islamic world in the Crusades, they found a people who
seemed to be constantly bathing even to the extreme of washing their hands
between courses of a meal. When the Inquisition took hold of Spain, one
of the signs used to spot insincere converts to Christianity was excessive
washing. (in addition, Muslims *wash* every time they visit the toilet)
The Muslim society practiced scientific farming that produced an abundance
of agricultural goods which Europe, where most of the land lay fallow much
of the time, could not match. Out of the Muslim world came many new
products and technologies and architectural breakthroughs as well:
Americans owe directly to the Saracens our southwestern and California
architecture, our cotton industry, our asphalt paving, and a long list of
such things as beds, table and bed linens, small occasional tables,
strawberries, ice-cream. Americans speak Arabic when they say mattress,
sofa, cotton, talcum, sugar, sherbet, naphtha, gypsum, benzine" (Lane
1943).
A major development for our subject was the invention of the modern
university (see Chapter 3). The first European universities evolved from
institutions called studia generale founded in the twelfth century, while
the still flourishing al-Azhar University of Cairo has been in existence
since 988 A.D. The first great studium, Salerno, evolved out of a
ninth-century school of medicine under Constantine the African (born c.
1020 in Carthage, now Tunisia; d. 1087 in Italy).
No less important was the Muslim's use of paper. Paper had been invented
in China by Ts'ai Lun in or about 105. Hart (1978) ranked Ts'ai Lun as
the seventh most influential person in history because of the importance
of paperabove Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press. For over
600 years the Chinese kept the technique for the manufacture of paper a
secret. Soon after the Muslims had acquired the secret from workmen
captured during the conquest of Samarkand in 753, and they put the
technique to widespread use. They realized the value that paper would
have in fulfilling their obligation to disseminate knowledge. In the
Prophet's time the verses of the Qur'an were written on scraps of bark and
the skins of animals. Now copies of the Qur'an and other texts could be
spread throughout the world. Only four decades after they had acquired
the knowledge of paper manufacture, the first paper factory was set up
in Baghdad, and by 1000 the entire Islamic world was enjoying bound books,
wrapping paper and paper napkins. (Mokyr 1990).
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Excerpts are from Chapter 5 of Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad's _Signs in the
Heavens: A Muslim Astronomer's Perspective on Religion and Science
(Beltsville: Writers Inc. Intl.).