References for Brightwork Islam Articles Part 2 - Brightwork Research & Analysis

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Executive Summary

These are the references that were used for our Islam articles.

Learn why so few entities in the IT space include references in their work.

Introduction

This is the reference list for the Islam articles, as well as interesting quotes from these references at Brightwork Research & Analysis. This is part two of the references. Part one can be found at this link.

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Reference #47: Article Titled:

The Enormous Conflict Between Islam and Scientific Objectivity

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*https://www.amazon.com/What-Went-Wrong-Western-Response/dp/0195144201/

https://ourworldindata.org/tertiary-education

https://www.thebereancall.org/content/how-muslims-did-not-invent-algebra

*https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/30/science/how-islam-won-and-lost-the-lead-in-science.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista

Christian kings moved their own people to locations abandoned by Muslims in order to have a population capable of defending the borders. The main repopulation areas were the Douro Basin (the northern plateau), the high Ebro valley (La Rioja) and central Catalonia. The repopulation of the Douro Basin took place in two distinct phases. North of the river, between the 9th and 10th centuries, the “pressure” (or presura) system was employed. South of the Douro, in the 10th and 11th centuries, the presura led to the “charters” (forais or fueros). Fueros were used even south of the Central Range.

Attacking Muslims on the Sea

On the conclusion of Iberian victory over the Moors, the Iberian powers, Spain and Portugal didn’t stop their warring against the Muslims solely in their homelands—they extended the conflict against Islam overseas. The Spanish under the Habsburg dynasty soon became the champions of Roman Catholicism in Europe and the Mediterranean against the encroaching threat of the Ottoman Empire. In a similar vein, the Portuguese also extended the Reconquista, this time against Muslim states overseas. The conquest of Ceuta marked the beginning of Portuguese expansion into Muslim Africa. Soon, the Portuguese also went into conflict with the Ottoman Caliphate in the Mediterranean,[47] Indian Ocean[48] and Southeast Asia as the Portuguese conquered the Ottomans’ allies: the Sultanate of Adal in East Africa, the Sultanate of Delhi in South Asia and the Sultanate of Malacca in Southeast Asia.[49] Meanwhile, the Spanish also went to war against the Sultanate of Brunei in Southeast Asia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Seville

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granada_War

The war was a joint project between Isabella’s Crown of Castile and Ferdinand’s Crown of Aragon. The bulk of the troops and funds for the war came from Castile, and Granada was annexed into Castile’s territory. The Crown of Aragon was less important: apart from the presence of King Ferdinand himself, Aragon provided naval collaboration, guns, and some financial loans. Aristocrats were offered the allure of new lands, while Ferdinand and Isabella centralized and consolidated their power.

The aftermath of war brought to an end coexistence between religions in the Iberian peninsula: Jews were forced to convert to Christianity or be exiled in 1492, and by 1501, all of Granada’s Muslims were obliged to convert to Christianity, become slaves, or be exiled; by 1526 this prohibition spread to the rest of Spain. “New Christians” (conversos) came to be accused of crypto-Islam and crypto-Judaism.[2] Spain would go on to model its national aspirations as the guardian of Christianity and Catholicism.

Christians Rejoice

The surrender of Granada was seen as a great blow to Islam and a triumph of Christianity. Other Christian states offered their sincere congratulations to Ferdinand and Isabella, while Islamic writers reacted with despair. In Castile and Aragon, celebrations and bullfights were held. People rejoiced in the streets.[31] For Christendom, the wresting of Granada from Islamic rule was seen as a counterbalance to the loss of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Turks forty years prior.

The Terms of Surrender

The treaty’s terms for Granada’s surrender were quite generous to the Muslims, considering how little they had left to bargain with.[33] They were similar to the terms offered to towns which surrendered earlier, when the outcome of the war was in doubt. For three years, Muslims could emigrate and return freely. They were allowed to keep weapons, though not firearms, a provision that however was to be annulled a month later. No one would be forced to change religion, not even former Christians who had converted to Islam.

Reference #48: Article Titled:

How Facebook Enforces Pakistani Blasphemy Laws

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*https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/29/which-countries-still-outlaw-apostasy-and-blasphemy/

*https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2012/12/10/laws-against-blasphemy-apostasy-and-defamation-of-religion-are-widespread/

*https://www.pewforum.org/2012/11/21/laws-penalizing-blasphemy-apostasy-and-defamation-of-religion-are-widespread/

Reference #49a & #49b: Article Titled:

How Accurate is the Standard Presentation of the Islamic Golden Age?

Why Muslim Scientific Discovery Slow To a Trickle After Roughly 950 AD?

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy

*https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-trouble-with-the-new-islamic-science

al-Khwarizmi was most likely the greatest thinker and easily made the most contributions as part of the Golden Age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi

Few details of al-Khwārizmī’s life are known with certainty. He was born into a Persian family[6] and Ibn al-Nadim gives his birthplace as Khwarezm in Central Asia.[24]
Al-Khwarizmi’s popularizing treatise on algebra (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, c. 813–833 CE[8]:171) presented the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations. One of his principal achievements in algebra was his demonstration of how to solve quadratic equations by completing the square, for which he provided geometric justifications.[7]:14 Because he was the first to treat algebra as an independent discipline and introduced the methods of “reduction” and “balancing” (the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation, that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equation),[9] he has been described as the father[4][10][11] or founder[12][13] of algebra. The term algebra itself comes from the title of his book (the word al-jabr meaning “completion” or “rejoining”).[14]
In the 12th century, Latin translations of his textbook on arithmetic (Algorithmo de Numero Indorum) which codified the various Indian numerals, introduced the decimal positional number system to the Western world.[17] The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, translated into Latin by Robert of Chester in 1145, was used until the sixteenth century as the principal mathematical text-book of European universities.

His Contributions to Astronomy

Al-Khwārizmī’s Zīj al-Sindhind[27] (Arabic: زيج السند هند‎, “astronomical tables of Siddhanta”[47]) is a work consisting of approximately 37 chapters on calendrical and astronomical calculations and 116 tables with calendrical, astronomical and astrological data, as well as a table of sine values. This is the first of many Arabic Zijes based on the Indian astronomical methods known as the sindhind.[48] The work contains tables for the movements of the sun, the moon and the five planets known at the time. This work marked the turning point in Islamic astronomy. Hitherto, Muslim astronomers had adopted a primarily research approach to the field, translating works of others and learning already discovered knowledge.

The original Arabic version (written c. 820) is lost, but a version by the Spanish astronomer Maslamah Ibn Ahmad al-Majriti (c. 1000) has survived in a Latin translation, presumably by Adelard of Bath (January 26, 1126).[49] The four surviving manuscripts of the Latin translation are kept at the Bibliothèque publique (Chartres), the Bibliothèque Mazarine (Paris), the Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid) and the Bodleian Library (Oxford).

Trigonometry

Al-Khwārizmī’s Zīj al-Sindhind also contained tables for the trigonometric functions of sines and cosine.^[48] A related treatise on spherical trigonometry is also attributed to him.^[35]

Al-Khwārizmī produced accurate sine and cosine tables, and the first table of tangents.^[50]^[51]

Geography

Al-Khwārizmī’s third major work is his Kitāb Ṣūrat al-Arḍ (Arabic: كتاب صورة الأرض‎, “Book of the Description of the Earth”),[52] also known as his Geography, which was finished in 833. It is a major reworking of Ptolemy’s 2nd-century Geography, consisting of a list of 2402 coordinates of cities and other geographical features following a general introduction.[53]
There is only one surviving copy of Kitāb Ṣūrat al-Arḍ, which is kept at the Strasbourg University Library. A Latin translation is kept at the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid.[citation needed] The book opens with the list of latitudes and longitudes, in order of “weather zones”, that is to say in blocks of latitudes and, in each weather zone, by order of longitude. As Paul Gallez[dubious – discuss] points out, this excellent system allows the deduction of many latitudes and longitudes where the only extant document is in such a bad condition as to make it practically illegible.

Al-Khwārizmī corrected Ptolemy’s gross overestimate for the length of the Mediterranean Sea[55] from the Canary Islands to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean; Ptolemy overestimated it at 63 degrees of longitude, while al-Khwārizmī almost correctly estimated it at nearly 50 degrees of longitude. He “also depicted the Atlantic and Indian Oceans as open bodies of water, not land-locked seas as Ptolemy had done.

Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science

Reference #50: Article Titled:

A Quick Guide to Sharia Law

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https://myemail.constantcontact.com/U-S–Constitution-versus-Sharia.html?soid=1108762609255&aid=svUbMBZaGa0

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/special-report-punishment-was-death-stoning-crime-having-mobile-phone-8846585.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Qatar#

*https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JBRUKZS/

Reference #51: Article Titled:

Western Liberals Can’t Seem to Understand that ISIS Was Following Islamic Directives

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Reference #52: Article Titled:

The Best Argument for the 2nd Amendment: Sharia Prevents All Non-Muslims from Keeping or Bearing Arms

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https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/second_amendment#

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Militia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms#:~:text=Under%20Sharia%20law%2C%20there%20is,Purposes%20of%20Shari’ah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

Reference #53: Article Titled:

How Muslim Society Rejected Greek Rationalism Roughly 200 Years After Learning it from the Persian Empire

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasanian_Empire

*https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JBRUKZS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab%E2%80%93Byzantine_wars

During the first centuries, the Byzantines were usually on the defensive, and avoided open field battles, preferring to retreat to their fortified strongholds. Only after 740 did they begin to launch their raids in an attempt to combat the Arabs and take the lands they had lost, but still the Abbasid Empire was able to retaliate with often massive and destructive invasions of Asia Minor. With the decline and fragmentation of the Abbasid state after 861 and the concurrent strengthening of the Byzantine Empire under the Macedonian dynasty, the tide gradually turned. Over a period of fifty years from ca. 920 to 976, the Byzantines finally broke through the Muslim defences and restored their control over northern Syria and Greater Armenia.

The Arabs also took to the sea, and from the 650s on, the entire Mediterranean Sea became a battleground, with raids and counter-raids being launched against islands and the coastal settlements. Arab raids reached a peak in the 9th and early 10th centuries, after the conquests of Crete, Malta and Sicily, with their fleets reaching the coasts of France and Dalmatia and even the suburbs of Constantinople.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_Persia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid_Revolution

Although converts to Islam made up roughly 10% of the native population – most of the people living under Umayyad rule were not Muslim – this percent was significant due to the very small number of Arabs.[13] Gradually, the non-Arab Muslims outnumbered the Arab Muslims, causing alarm among the Arab nobility.[32] Socially, this posed a problem as the Umayyads viewed Islam as the property of the aristocratic Arab families.[38][39] There was a rather large financial problem posed to the Umayyad system as well. If the new converts to Islam from non-Arab peoples stopped paying the jizya tax stipulated by the Qur’an for non-Muslims, the empire would go bankrupt. This lack of civil and political rights eventually led the non-Arab Muslims to support the Abbasids, despite the latter also being Arab.[40]
Even as the Arab governors adopted the more sophisticated Iranian methods of governmental administration, non-Arabs were still prevented from holding such positions.[8] Non-Arabs were not even allowed to wear Arabian style clothing,[41] so strong were the feelings of Arab racial superiority cultivated by the Umayyads. Much of the discontent this caused led to the Shu’ubiyya movement, an assertion of non-Arab racial and cultural equality with Arabs. The movement gained support among Egyptians, Arameans and Berber people,[42] though this movement was most pronounced among Iranian people.[citation needed]

Kill All the Literate Persians?

The early Muslim conquest of Persia was coupled with an anti-Iranian Arabization policy which led to much discontent.[43] The controversial Umayyad governor Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf was upset at the usage of Persian as the court language in the eastern Islamic empire, and ordered all written and spoken Persian to be suppressed in both government and even among the general public, by force if necessary.[44][45] Contemporary historians record that al-Hajjaj contributed to the death of the Khwarezmian language, closely related to Persian. Once the Umayyads expanded into Khwarezm, a stronghold of east Iranian civilization, al-Hajjaj ordered the execution of anyone who could read or write the language, to the point that only the illiterate remained.

Out of Control Treatment of Non-Muslims

Support for the Abbasid Revolution was an early example of people of different faiths aligning with a common cause. This was due in large part to policies of the Umayyads which were regarded as particularly oppressive to anyone following a faith other than Islam. In 741, the Umayyads decreed that non-Muslims could not serve in government posts.[47] The Abbasids were aware of this discontent, and made efforts to balance both its Muslim character as well as its partially non-Muslim constituency.

Persecution of Zoroastrians was part of state policy during the Umayyad era. Al-Hajjaj allegedly killed all Zoroastrian clergy upon the conquest of east Iranian lands, burning all Zoroastrian literature and destroying most religious buildings.

C.W. Previté-Orton argues that the reasons for the decline of the Umayyads was the rapid expansion of Islam. During the Umayyad period, mass conversions brought Iranians, Berbers, Copts, and Assyrians to Islam. These “clients,” as the Arabs referred to them, were often better educated and more civilised than their Arab masters.

How The Abbasids Won

Support for the Abbasid Revolution was an early example of people of different faiths aligning with a common cause. This was due in large part to policies of the Umayyads which were regarded as particularly oppressive to anyone following a faith other than Islam. In 741, the Umayyads decreed that non-Muslims could not serve in government posts.[47] The Abbasids were aware of this discontent, and made efforts to balance both its Muslim character as well as its partially non-Muslim constituency.

The Aftermath

The victors desecrated the tombs of the Umayyads in Syria, sparing only that of Umar II, and most of the remaining members of the Umayyad family were tracked down and killed.[11][34] When Abbasids declared amnesty for members of the Umayyad family, eighty gathered in Jaffa to receive pardons and all were massacred.[69]

The Influence of the Abbasidian Caliphate on the Golden Age

With social restrictions removed, Islam changed from an Arab ethnic empire to a universal world religion.[35] This led to a great cultural and scientific exchange known as the Islamic Golden Age, with most achievements taking place under the Abbasids.

New ideas in all areas of society were accepted regardless of their geographic origin, and the emergence of societal institutions that were Islamic rather than Arab began.

The Empire Becomes Increasingly Persian and Less Arab

With the eastward movement of the capital from Damascus to Baghdad, the Abbasid Empire eventually took on a distinctly Persian character, as opposed to the Arab character of the Umayyads.

Reference #54: Article Titled:

How Did the Uadday Caliphate Defeat the Persian Sassanid Empire?

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Muhammad#

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquest_of_Persia

Reference #55: Article Titled:

Why Did Muslims Lose Their Minds Over The Admission That The Koran is Not Perfectly Preserved Since the 7th Century

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https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/games/arabic.aspx

The fallback is to then claim that the Quran can only be understood in Arabic.

This popular, yet transparent effort to cloak Islam from intellectual critique isn’t well thought out. In the first place, the Quran was translated from Arabic by Arabic speakers: devout Muslims whose linguistic expertise far exceeds that of the armchair apologist pretending to know better. If anything, these translators err by subjectively toning down the literalism. The idea that they would deliberately mangle an interpretation to cast Islam in an unflattering light is highly unlikely.

While every language has its nuances, how is it that Arabic is the only one that supposedly has words and phrases that are literally untranslatable? More importantly, why in the world would Allah choose to communicate his one true “universal” religion for all people in the only language that cannot be translated for all people? Even the vast majority of Muslims and their imams do not speak Arabic.

No other world religion claims that it can only be understood in one language. Neither is the same level of effort required to explain away primary messages. While the Bible is generally distributed “as is” by various Christian groups, for example, it is rare to find a Quran that does not include voluminous and highly subjective commentary deemed necessary to mitigate politically-incorrect passages.

An additional problem is that apologists want to have it both ways. On the one hand, they declare that (for some strange reason) the “perfect book” can’t be translated and that Allah’s perfect religion thus cannot be understood by most of humanity without a battery of intercessors and interpreters. Then they turn around and blame the reality of Islamic terrorism on this same “necessary” chain of intermediaries by claiming that the Osama bin Ladens of the world have simply gotten bad clerical advice, causing them to “misunderstand” the true meaning of Islam (in the most catastrophic and tragic way imaginable).

Obviously, the reason for this game is that the Information Age is now making the full history and texts of the Islamic religion available to a broader audience – and the contents are highly embarrassing. Pretending that different meanings exist in Arabic is a weak attempt at self-assurance and saving face.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran#

The Quran consists of 114 chapters of varying lengths, each known as a sūrah. Chapters are classified as Meccan or Medinan, depending on whether the verses were revealed before or after the migration of Muhammad to the city of Medina. However, a sūrah classified as Medinan may contain Meccan verses in it and vice versa. Sūrah titles are derived from a name or quality discussed in the text, or from the first letters or words of the sūrah. Chapters are not arranged in chronological order, rather the chapters appear to be arranged roughly in order of decreasing size.

Translating the Quran has always been problematic and difficult. Many argue that the Quranic text cannot be reproduced in another language or form.[139] Furthermore, an Arabic word may have a range of meanings depending on the context, making an accurate translation even more difficult.

The proper recitation of the Quran is the subject of a separate discipline named tajwid which determines in detail how the Quran should be recited, how each individual syllable is to be pronounced, the need to pay attention to the places where there should be a pause, to elisions, where the pronunciation should be long or short, where letters should be sounded together and where they should be kept separate, etc.

Derivative?

Regarding the claim of divine origin, critics refer to preexisting sources, not only taken from the Bible, supposed to be older revelations of God, but also from heretic, apocryphic and talmudic sources, such as The Syriac Infancy Gospel and Gospel of James. Due to rejection of Crucifixion of Jesus in the Quran, some scholars also suspect Manichaean, a dualistic religion believing in two eternal forces, influences on the Quran. Christopher Hitchens states that Islam as whole, both hadith and the Quran, are little more than a poorly structured plagiarisms, using earlier sacred works and traditions depending on what the situation seemed to require.