“There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world.”
And so began a mythical, deceptive tale by Carly Fiorina, when she spoke in praise of Islam within a mere two weeks of their bombing the World Trade Center. The concern is not that she was attempting to deceive others, but that she, a person who aspires to the presidency of the United States, was herself deceived regarding the true nature of Islam, and that she has never retracted her statements.
“[Islam’s] armies were made up of many nationalities . . . [Islam] was able to create a continental super-state . . . within its dominion lived hundreds of millions of people, of different creeds and ethnic origins,” and “the reach of this civilization’s commerce. . .”*
As a religious leader, Mohammed converted few followers. As political and military leader, he was far more successful – torturing and beheading 700 stalwart Medinan Jews, raping and enslaving women, and conscripting the survivors for jihad (holy war). Thus he dominated different creeds and ethnic origins, replenishing his army with many nationalities, and increasing his wealth with booty.
“Within its dominion” is Fiorina’s euphemism for “living under domination.” All non-Muslims, slaves and women were treated with contempt, unequal under law but economically necessary. Although specific enmity was directed against Jews and Christians, the severe “jizya” tax was imposed on “infidels” as humiliation and punishment for rejecting Mohammed. This tax and many other discriminatory laws extended through the centuries to Nestorians, Syrians, and Romans of newly conquered empires, and further to animists, Buddhists, Hindus, Mongols, Greeks, and Armenians (the Armenian Genocide), who suffered torture and death.
Jews held trades and occupations that Muslims judged inferior – including “this civilization’s commerce,” diplomacy, banking, brokerage, espionage, working in gold and silver, and cleaning cesspools. The inevitable deterioration of relations between Muslims and the outside world meant more restrictions and social segregation for non-Muslims (dhimmis), but the subservient and useful survived.
“. . . its military protection allowed a degree of peace and prosperity that had never been known.”
“Peace,” as the absence of discord, existed, depending on the beneficence of the ruling caliphate and internal/external changes, but from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries onward, tolerance decreased; intellectual, social and commercial life depreciated, and ever-increasing restrictions and deprivation for dhimmis were imposed.
“And this civilization was driven more than anything, by invention. Its architects designed buildings that defied gravity.”
The inventions and contributions were made by victims of the Muslim jihadists who invaded the “infidel” world over 1400 years, enslaving, slaughtering, and plundering. Islam is antithetical to creativity, but based on envious resentment of the accomplishments of others. Their greatest achievement was their ability to expropriate every creative, innovative groundbreaking device of Islam’s victims and to fraudulently claim each as their own.
Fiorina’s reference to “buildings that defied gravity,” as in “air-borne,” surely defies logic, but she doubtless refers to the arches, which were already in use in prehistoric times by ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and Greeks. With the help of concrete made from lime and volcanic sand, Roman arches could support huge weight, and were soon adopted by Byzantine and Romanesque architects, evolving into the groundbreaking inventions of the Gothic arch and flying buttress in northern (Christian) Europe. Meanwhile, the Muslims also adopted the Syrian styles, followed with Greek, Byzantine and Persian, and later Chinese and Indian, architecture, to develop pointed, scalloped and horseshoe arches for mosques and palaces. Even the vaulted and hemispherical (domed) ceilings were invented by the non-Muslim Romans.
“Its mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption.”
The first positional numerical system was developed in 2nd millennium BCE Babylon, over 800 years before Islam; the first true “zero” was developed by mathematicians in the Indian Subcontinent. Persian and Arab mathematicians are believed to have adopted the Hindu-Arabic numerical system in India. The work of Italian scholar, Fibonacci, was crucial in bringing them to Europe and the world. Francois Viete, French lawyer, mathematician and privy councilor to Henry III and Henry IV, provided the step from “new algebra” to modern algebra.
Only an Islamist steeplechaser could leap from working with numbers to creating computers and encryptions centuries later. English polymath Charles Babbage, mathematician, philosopher, inventor, and mechanical engineer, conceived the first programmable computer (1830). Alan Turing laid the groundwork for computational science; Korad Zuse is credited as “the first freely programmable computer.”
The earliest form of cryptography is on stone in Egypt (190 BCE), long before Islam. Ciphers were used by the Spartan military and in the 2000-year-old Kamasutra of India. It wasn’t until the 9th century that Arab mathematicians and polymath Al-Kindi worked with cryptography.
“Its doctors examined the human body and found new cures for diseases.”
Arabs had no scientific traditions; their scientists were largely Jews who were forcibly converted as a result of Islam’s rampaging throughout the Near East, Egypt, and Libya. As a typical example, Jews and Berbers, who lived together harmoniously in North Africa, were overcome by 60,000 Islamic troops in 694, and the descendants of those who survived the massacre became “Arabic” philosophers and scientists.
A great physician, Egyptian Jew, Isaac Israel of Kairouan, immigrated to West Africa. His surviving works on logic, Aristotelian physics, and pharmacology became the standard for medical history, and it was from him that the greatest of “Arab” scientists, Avicenna (980-1037), drew inspiration. Known as the Aristotle of the East, Avicenna wrote in Arabic and became a vizier in Persia, but he was born near Bokhara, then heavily populated by Jews, and was probably of Jewish origin. Even so, physicians who attended lords and kings of Islam and Christendom were largely Jews.
“Its astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration.”
Jewish savants were largely responsible for the invention and development of instruments and astronomical tables that facilitated world-girdling sea voyages. The Jerusalem Talmud (tractate Avodah Zarah, Ch.3, fol.,42c) strongly implies the spherical nature of the earth. The astrolabe, used by Islamic astronomers as a guide to the sky and to tell time by the position of heavenly bodies, was introduced into the Arab-speaking world by a “remarkable Jewish genius, Mashala of Mosul, the phoenix of his age.” Astronomical tables, compiled by the Jew, Joseph ben Wallar at Toledo (1396), and in Aragon by Judaic specialists, including Emanuel ben Jacob (aka Bonfils de Tarascon), were used with the astrolabe.
The Jews were among the most notable cartographers, the most advanced being a Jew forcibly converted to Christianity. Christopher Columbus’s cartographers and other companions may have been conversos. The most reputable astronomer of the day, Abraham Zacuto (1452-1515), instructed Columbus on using the perfected astrolabe, also used by Vasco de Gama and Amerigo Vespucci.
In all these areas, Fiorina makes the absurd leap from recognizing Muslims as merely a people who used a product to being an innovative people who “paved the way” for the future. She made a similar leap of dissonance when she made corrupt trade agreements with Iran in violation of US trade sanctions, resulting in 30,000 workers laid off at Hewlett-Packard, and jobs shipped to China. We could remark in passing that, at the same time, her salary and perks also leaped – they more than tripled.
“When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive and passed it on to others.”
How much creativity, ingenuity and innovation might we have had from those 400 million people slaughtered by jihadists over 1400 years? What greatness is Islam passing on to civilization now, beyond a high illiteracy rate, great intolerance and aggression? Their history is one of perpetual massacre, encouraged in their Qur’an and taught from early childhood. Their culture is one of unrest, riots and wars; and women’s fears of female genital mutilation, forced marriages, rape, and death for male honor. Their homes are microcosms of the greater tyrannical regimes.
Had Muslims the knowledge to be kept alive, how might it have been done? Of the 1.4 billion Muslims, 800 million are illiterate (60 percent cannot read). In Christendom, the adult literacy rate stands at 78 percent. Of the ten most literate countries, not one is Islamic. Muslims are the world’s poorest, weakest and illiterate. The combined annual GDP of 75 Muslim countries is under $2 trillion; America’s is worth $10.4 trillion. Muslims are 22 percent of the world population, yet produce less than five percent of global GDP, and diminishing all the time.
Over the past 105 years, 1.3 billion Muslims produced eight Nobel Laureates (only two won for physics and chemistry); compare this with a mere 14 million Jews (0.23% of the world population) who produced 170 Nobel Laureates.
Islam’s militaristic, supersessionist ideology that began 1400 years ago has remained unchanged. We know of no event that sparked the glory they claim, and no catastrophic event that might have forced a decline. Carly Fiorina is severely misinformed about the civilization that embraces our death and destruction and she confuses politically-correct theories for hard facts – no point from which to hold the highest-ranking position in the United States of America.
Alex Tabarrok 
