While Islam is viewed as the savior and nurturer of the Classical Greek Civilization, there is an alternative story to this near-universal widsom of our time. Islam may well have had initiated the death of the Classical Civilization. Find out why???
One of the most enduring problems of history is the decline of Classical Civilization. How is it, scholars have long asked, that the civilization of Greece and Rome, which had endured over a thousand years, gave way to the world of the Medieval; an age which saw, for a while, the decline and apparent disappearance of the rationalist spirit of Greece and Rome? In academic and journalistic literature and in the popular imagination there is no mystery at all: After the Barbarian Invasions of the fifth century, we are told, the peoples of Western Europe reverted to living in thatched, wattle-and-daub huts. Cities were destroyed and abandoned, the art of writing virtually lost, and the mass of the population kept in a state of ignorance by an obscurantist and fanatical Church, which effectively completed the destructive work of the Barbarians. Into this darkened stage, the Arabs arrived in the seventh and eighth centuries like a ray of light. Tolerant and learned, they brought knowledge of the science of antiquity back into Europe and, under their influence, the Westerners began the long journey back to civilization.
That, in a nutshell, is the story told in an enormous number of scholarly treatises and academic textbooks. It is a story implicitly accepted by a large majority of professional historians, both in Europe and North America – among them Bernard Lewis, the doyen of Middle Eastern studies in the English-speaking world; and yet it is a version of the past that is completely and utterly false. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine a narrative further removed from what actually happened. And, shocking as it may seem, historians have known this for several generations. Why this knowledge has never been fully disseminated or integrated into academic thought is a moot point, but the fact that textbooks designed for schoolchildren and students of higher education can still be printed promoting the above version of events should be a cause of deep concern. For the truth is that when the Arabs reached southern Italy and Spain they found not a bunch of primitive savages, but a highly sophisticated Latin civilization, a civilization rich in cities, agriculture, art and literature, and presided over by completely Romanized Gothic kings. How do we know this? Well, the Arabs themselves said so. On their arrival in Spain, Gothic Spain, the Muslim conquerors of 711 were astonished at the size and opulence of its cities. Their annalists recall the appearance at the time of Seville, Cordova, Merida and Toledo; “the four capitals of Spain, founded,” they tell us naively, “by Okteban [Octavian] the Caesar.” Seville, above all, seems to have struck them by its wealth and its illustriousness in various ways. “It was,” writes Ibn Adhari,
among all the capitals of Spain the greatest, the most important, the best built and the richest in ancient monuments. Before its conquest by the Goths it had been the residence of the Roman governor. The Gothic kings chose Toledo for their residence; but Seville remained the seat of the Roman adepts of sacred and profane science, and it was there that lived the nobility of the same origin. (Cited from Lious Bertrand and Sir Charles Petrie, The History of Spain, London, 1945, p. 7)
Not much sign of decline here! Another Arab writer, Merida, mentions Seville’s great bridge as well as “magnificent palaces and churches,” (Bertrand and Petrie, pp.17-18) and we should note that archaeological confirmation of this picture is forthcoming. Several of the magnificent Visigothic churches and palaces still stand, and the discovery near Toledo in 1857 of a collection of richly wrought Visigothic votive crowns encrusted with precious stones brought the descriptions of the Arab conquerors to mind in the most vivid way possible. (See Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain, London, 1992, p. 18)
Documentary and archaeological evidence from throughout the territories of the former Roman Empire has demonstrated, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the Barbarian rulers who occupied Italy and the Western Empire during the fifth century, far from destroying Roman culture and civilization, rapidly became Romanized themselves, and presided over a veritable renaissance of Classical civilization. The arts and the sciences flourished under them, and their enormous wealth was employed in the construction of brilliantly decorated residences and churches. By 500 AD, virtually all of the damage that had been done during the Invasions of the fifth century had been repaired, and cities flourished as they had under the old Imperial administration. Indeed, the “Barbarian” kings of Italy, from the very beginning, actively imitated the Court in Constantinople, and all of them regarded themselves as not only allies, but functionaries and officers of the Empire. The gold coins they issued were stamped with the image of the Byzantine Emperor, and they dwelt in the palatial villas erected by earlier Roman procurators and princes. Some of these were extended, and all were regularly renovated. Yet, having said all that, it is true that by the end of the seventh century, or at the very latest by the start of the eighth, this flowering Classical civilization came, rather suddenly, to an end; and the medieval world we are all familiar with took shape: cities and towns declined and were sometimes abandoned, trade diminished, life became more rural, the arts declined, illiteracy prevailed, and the feudal system, which fragmented the kingdoms of Western Europe, took shape. In the years which followed, the Church became the sole vehicle of learning and administration, and a barter economy largely replaced the monetary system in place shortly before. What coins were issued, were minted in silver, rather than the gold used till the start of the seventh century. The Middle Ages had begun.
Who or what had produced this situation?
As early as the 1920s Belgian medievalist Henri Pirenne located the proverbial smoking gun. But it was not in the hands of the Goths or Vandals, or the Christian Church: it was in the hands of those people whom it had, even then, become fashionable to credit with saving Western Civilization: the Arabs. The evidence, as Pirenne was at pains to show in his posthumously published Mohammed and Charlemagne (1938) was incontrovertible. From the mid-seventh century the Mediterranean had been blockaded by the Arabs. Trade with the great centers of population and culture in the Levant, a trade which had been the mainstay of Western Europe’s prosperity, was terminated. The flow of all the luxury items which Pirenne found in the records of the Spanish Visigoths and the Merovingians of Gaul, came to an abrupt end, as Arab pirates scoured the seas. The flow of gold to the West dried up. Gold coinage disappeared, and the great cities of Italy, Gaul and Spain, especially the ports, which owed their wealth to the Mediterranean trade, became mere ghost towns. Worst of all, perhaps, from the perspective of culture and learning, the importation of papyrus from Egypt ceased. This material, which had been shipped into Western Europe in vast quantities since the time of the Roman Republic, was absolutely essential for a thousand purposes in a literate and mercantile civilization; and the ending of the supply had an immediate and catastrophic effect on levels of literacy. These dropped, almost overnight, to levels perhaps equivalent to those in pre-Roman times.
Pirenne stressed that the arrival of Islam effectively isolated Europe both intellectually and economically. And with this economic paralysis came war: the Muslim conquests were to unleash a torrent of violence against Europe. As a direct result of the Arab advance, by the seventh and eighth centuries, Christendom, the area within which Christianity was the dominant religion, diminished almost to vanishing-point. This catastrophic loss of territory – everything from northern Syria to the Pyrenees – took place in a space of two or three generations. In Western Europe there remained only a nucleus of Christian territory, comprising France, Western Germany, the Upper Danube and Italy (as well as Ireland and parts of Britain); and these regions felt themselves threatened also with imminent extinction: For the surviving Christian territories were besieged and under sustained attack from the north and east, as well as the south. As the Arabs sent army after army to plunder, destroy and occupy, they encouraged and, in some ways directed, further attacks on the core areas of Europe from other directions. Thus even the Viking onslaught, which devastated huge areas of the British Isles, France and northern Germany, was elicited by the Muslim demand for slaves. The latter is a fact not yet widely known, though well-accepted by professional historians: the Vikings, essentially, were piratical slave-traders, and their notorious expeditions across the seas to the west and along the great rivers of Russia to the east were elicited first and foremost by the Muslim demand for white-skinned concubines and eunuchs. Without Islam, there would almost certainly have been no Vikings. As it was, this trading-alliance between the barbarians of the North and the Muslims of Spain and North Africa was to bring Christian Europe to the brink of collapse.
As if all that were not enough, the attempt to control the inroads of Muslims and Vikings opened Europe to the depredations of other predatory peoples, most especially from the steppe lands of central Asia, and one of these in particular, the Magyars, or Hungarians, were to prove a real threat, for a time, to the continued existence of a Christian Germany.
Pirenne’s research was first class and was never effectively refuted by his critics. Nonetheless, his findings have been ignored. Year after year popular and scholarly works on the history of the Mediterranean and of Islam’s interaction with Christianity continue to be published – especially in the English-speaking world – without mentioning Pirenne’s name, far less taking on board his findings. This was the case, for example, with John Julius Norwich’s history of the Mediterranean (The Middle Sea), published in 2006. The same is true of the latest offering of Bernard Lewis, the grand old man of Middle Eastern studies at Princeton, whose 2008 book God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 – 1215, not only ignores Pirenne and his ideas, but comes to conclusions reminiscent of those taught before the appearance of Mohammed and Charlemagne. So for example in the above volume Lewis contrasted the cultural sophistication of the eighth century Islamic invaders of Spain with what he describes as the almost Neolithic culture and economy of the Visigoths and Franks whom they encountered. For Lewis, the “Dark Age” was still brought about by the Germanic Invaders of the fifth century, and the Arab blockade of the Mediterranean in the seventh and eighth centuries had no effect upon Europe. For him, the Arabs were still, evidently, the saviors of Europe from barbarism.
How to explain this? Without doubt, political correctness has played a part. The spirit of the age dictates that non-European civilizations (such as the Islamic) should never be criticized, or even critically examined. Such an attitude, which essentially places ideology above evidence, is most disturbing, and needs to be combated at every opportunity.
There is however another factor: Pirenne, along with almost all historians of his age, assumed that Byzantium, which had not been overrun by the Barbarians, never experienced a Dark Age or a Medieval period. This view was prompted, in part at least, by Byzantine propaganda, which always advertised the Empire as the Second Rome and the inheritor of Rome’s mantle. As recently as 1953, for example, Sidney Painter could write that, “from 716 to 1057 came [for Byzantium] slightly more than three centuries of glory. The Byzantine Empire was the richest state of Europe, the strongest military power, and by far the most cultivated. During these three centuries while Western Europe was a land of partly tamed barbarians, the Byzantine Empire was a highly civilized state where a most felicitous merger of Christianity and Hellenism produced a fascinating culture.” (A History of the Middle Ages, 284-1500). To this day, popular literature tells us how, after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Greek scholars and philosophers, fleeing to the West, helped “kick-start” the Renaissance in Italy. But if Byzantine civilization was not destroyed by the Arabs, why should anyone believe they destroyed classical civilization in the West? This was a point Pirenne did not address: He was perhaps unaware of its importance. Yet developments in Byzantine archaeology since the Second World War have now come dramatically to the support of Pirenne: For it has been shown, much to the surprise of everyone, that from the mid-seventh century onwards, the Eastern Empire suffered its own Dark Age: Byzantium experienced three centuries during which – in complete contrast to the opinion expressed above – almost all her cities were abandoned, populations plummeted and high culture came to an end. So great was the destruction that even bronze coinage, the everyday lubricant of commercial life, disappeared. And when archaeology again appears, in the middle of the tenth century, the civilization it reveals has been radically altered: The old Byzantium of Late Antiquity is gone, and we find an impoverished and semi-literate rump; a Medieval Byzantium strikingly like the Medieval France, Germany and Italy with which it was contemporary. Here we find too a barter or semi-barter economy; a decline in population and literacy; and an intolerant and theocratic state. And the break-off point in Byzantium, as in the West, is the first half of the seventh century – precisely corresponding to the arrival on the scene of the Arabs and of Islam.
The evidence from the East, which has, regrettably, not yet become “common knowledge” even in the world of academia, weighs decisively in favor of Pirenne. The debate is essentially over – though the knowledge of that fact has yet to percolate through to the history faculties of our universities. Classical civilization, just as Pirenne said all those years ago, did not end in the fifth century; it ended in the seventh; and it was terminated by the Arabs.
In my forthcoming book, Holy Warriors: Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization (Felibri, August, 2009) I reiterate Pirenne’s arguments and demonstrate that, in many ways, he did not go far enough. For the impact of Islam upon Europe was far from being merely economic. Whilst Islam’s doctrine of perpetual war against the infidel did turn the Mediterranean into a violent frontier, and did impoverish Europe, Islam now also began to impose its mindset upon the West. Until the closing of the Mediterranean the predominant cultural influence upon Europe was from the East: from Byzantium and from the ancient Hellenistic centers in the Near East, especially Egypt and Syria. With the closing of the Mediterranean, the West was isolated, and the centre of gravity moved, as Pirenne stressed, to the North; to northern Gaul, Germany and Britain. Yet the influence of the East did not come to an end. There was continuity. But now the East meant Islam. And in the centuries after the first Arab conquests, the influence of Islam became profound: It was this influence that would definitively terminate Classical civilization and give birth to the theocracy we now call "Medieval Europe".
The first and most obvious Islamic idea to be adopted by Europeans was that of Holy War. Before the seventh century, Christianity had been largely true to its pacifist roots. Even after becoming the official religion of the Empire, Christians tended to eschew the army as a career and the taking of any human life, even in war, continued to be frowned upon. In the words of Gibbon – no friend of Christianity – by the fifth century; “The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged, and the last remains of the military spirit [of Rome] were buried in the cloister; a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers’ pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes, who could only plead the merits of abstinence and charity.” (Decline and Fall, Chapter 38). This may go part of the way to explain the recruitment into the army of great numbers of Barbarians from the fourth century onwards. Actually, by the late fourth and certainly by the fifth century the words "barbarian" and "soldier" became virtually synonymous.
The Gothic and Vandal kings who supplanted the Roman Emperors in the West were, to begin with, not exactly pacifists. Whilst readily accepting Christianity, the new faith had to find a place alongside the ancient warlike cults of Woden and Thor. Nonetheless, by the end of the sixth century, even the warlike nature of the Teutonic rulers began to dissipate. Gibbon notes that, under the spell of Christianity, the Goths and Vandals soon lost their martial traditions: so much so that by the seventh and eighth centuries the Germanic populations of North Africa and Spain were utterly unable to stem the Islamic advance in those regions.
What a contrast this Christianity appears when we compare it with the muscular and militant faith of the Middle Ages, the faith of the Crusaders, Inquisitors and Conquistadors.
This new Christianity was a direct consequence of the clash with Islam, for it did not appear until after the arrival of Islam. In one respect, the change came quite simply because it had to: Surrounded by aggressors bent on its destruction, aggressors with whom it was impossible to make peace, Christians had to take up arms. This was as true among the Christians of the North, threatened by the Vikings and Hungarians, as it was among the Christians of the South, threatened by the Muslims. But the change was elicited by ideology as well as simple necessity. Europeans began to be profoundly influenced by Muslim ideas – ideas on war, interpretation of Scriptures, heresy, the Jews, etc. This was a purely “Medieval” outlook: indeed, it was the very epitome of what we now mean by “Medieval.”
Historians are familiar with the influence of Islamic philosophy upon the West at this time, and they quote, generally with approval, the study by Europeans of the Persian Muslim Avicenna and the Spanish Muslim Averroes. But not everything that came from Islam was so benevolent. It is widely known, for example, that the Byzantine doctrine of iconoclasm, the destruction of sacred religious images, was directly attributable to the influence of Islam. But many Islamic ideas, some of them the polar opposite of those found in early Christianity, now began to find resonance in the thinking of Europeans at almost every level. How could it have been otherwise, when impoverished Christians viewed with astonishment the wealth, luxury and sophistication of Muslim cities in Spain, Sicily, and further east? That this wealth and luxury was debarred to them by the very Muslim Emirs and Caliphs whose opulence they so much admired, was beside the point. Europeans could only be impressed, and influenced. And influenced they were. From the Muslims they learned "Holy War"; from them they learned too that the Jews were an accursed race and the enemies of God. The consequences of these Islamic notions about the Jews were to be as long-lasting as they were tragic.
Islamic fatalism, founded on the conviction that Allah could not be bound by any kind of natural or scientific laws, was lethal to the rationalism of Greece and Rome, which now began to die. Parallel with this development, there appeared, first in Islamic Spain and then throughout Europe, that obsession with sorcery and witchcraft which was to be one of the hallmarks of the Middle Ages. From Islam too the Europeans breathed the essence of fanaticism. Islamic law decreed death to be the only fit punishment for a heretic or an apostate. No such idea had ever existed among Christians. True there had always been fierce doctrinal and theological disputes among Christians which even, at times, turned violent. But such violence as occurred was mainly verbal and rarely involved physical attack. By the end of the eleventh century, Christian Europe, under the influence of Islam both in Europe and in the Middle East, was beginning to think in a very different way; and within a hundred years the Popes had defined and published their new doctrine of capital punishment for dissenters. Torture too, absolutely normal in Islamic lands, began, for the first time, to be applied judicially in Europe.
John J. O’Neill’s is the author of upcoming book, Holy Warriors: Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization (Felibri, August 2009).
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written by good article,let us hope islam , July 10, 2009
written by karan , July 10, 2009
Indian civilization and culture rivals any in the entire world - its history,culture,religion,trade,science were of the highest order at that period.Prior to the "Invasion of Islam" India was a renowed centre of learning with universities like Taxila,Nalanda,Patliputra and many more - these universites excelled in politics,economics,trade and science specially mathematics.Indian economy was probably a huge percentage of global trade - the wealth was so immense that India was called the "golden bird" of the world.Literature and Art were bloosming in this era.The society was liberal - the Kamasutra is an excellent example of this.The concept of the benfits of meditation and Yoga were developed.Buddhism was spread in India and the concept of "AHIMSA" aka non-violence was prevalent.In all India would have probably looked like today's europe ...Developed,liberal,Rich etc.Many smaller countries but based on similar principles and ideas.
Then Islam came to India - It was a death-blow.In its history Indians had never seen such savagery.Sure there used to invasions,Kings defeating Kings..etc..but the commoners were spared,untouched...but here came a regime of people ..totally consumed and frienzed with Islam.It is well documented how these invaders not only violated the code of war...but relished plundering,raping,looting the common people even after they had won the war.The HINDU-KUSH ..as named ..basically means .the "Slaughter of Hindus"....temples were razed down...looted of their wealth,universites like taxila and nalanda were burned ..down...even the non-violent buddists were not spared.It was brutal but soon the Hindu Kings realised that what they were against was not like the ordinary..but an ideaology which was consumed with hatred.Over the years ...Hindu kingdoms in isolation fought the muslims tooth and nail....the Rajputs,the Marathas,the Sikhs ..were legendary ...they fought and fought to keep such savagery away from their people.....however where muslims and their mullahs reigned supreme ...Jaziya,Dhimmitude,economic and social factors and the literal conversion by sword to the neck ...forced many of the Hindus,Buddists ..to convert to Islam....
For the Hindus,the British moving into India was in many ways a relief,it is well documented how Hindus rose to positions ..while muslims ..consumed in Islam were basically useless when it came to practical affairs and knowledge.When British decided to leave India ..the muslims again came back to doing what was basic to their nature .....ISLAM ..reigned supreme ..to all their decisions and they choose to divide the motherland ...on basis of their religion.Today India has the second largest population of muslims ...about ..200 million plus.Almost all of these muslims are basically ones whose ancestors were hindus or buddhists who were converted by force ...India today is one of the poorest nations in the world .....continuously threatened by Pakistan(an islamic country)...being..brutalised ...today by attacks like mumbai......for us hindus this is how Islam destroyed our civilization ......from a brilliant,vibrant culture ..to a third world country ......thanks ...muhammmed ..
written by Shiva Worshipper , July 11, 2009
You know why people flock to temples, Churches mosques or some God or whatever because our lives are based on relative truth. We got senses which are temporary, we got friends and relatives which are temporary. I got these hands today, after fifty years they might just be ashes in some Hindu cremation land, I got parents and grandparents who may not be with me one day, so is my relation with these hands and parents absolute truth, No! its as temporary like formation of waves in the sea, they appear and disappear.
I think no one will desire to achieve anything in life, if he is thinking all the time that its just with me for some time, No person will feel personal attachment to family and friends, if person is thinking all the time that there existence is just the illusion of physical senses, we are just biological machinery, which stops working one day. A sense of God gives people connection to immortality and they can fully enjoy the relative truth of life which has been created by physical senses. But like any other thing, to gain something we have to give something (No gains without pains). We work hard for food and take it by choice but shit happens and at the end we have to sit behind the computer and clean up the spiritual shit.
Will Mr. John agree with me, if I say definition of absolute truth and righteousness is something which completes the full cycle and does not change.
I tell you a story, which might help you differ right from wrong, there is a place I don’t know where and when ? But many houses over there are completely made out of gold and these people count the dates in reverse, which means date after 11th July will be 10th July. I don’t know what reference they have set for there countdown calendar but at the time when this story takes place, they are counting around 20 thousand years.
There is a Brahmin, who is born under heavy influence of moon, so his character mimics the features of moon, he got a cool bright side and a dark hidden side. He has reached very close in the power hierarchy with the king and thus is widely respected and trusted. One day he watches the dance of a lady dancer who is accompanied by her husband who plays the music. The Brahmin get attracted to the lady and to come close to her, he make friendship with her husband, he seduced the lady while pretending to be friend of her husband and they make physical relations when the husband of the lady is out on business.
One day the husband came to know the relationship between his wife and his friend and he goes to the King to seek justice. Now the Brahmin give his justification that he did not raped or use force with the lady and if two people of mature age have consensual sex than no one got the right to interfere in their private business. The King disagrees and says that, with your rights to express yourself, comes obligation and responsibilities towards the society, if people only think about their rights and not about their responsibilities towards other, then soon society will become a jungle and people will behave like wild animals. You choose the wrong way to attract the lady, by making friendship with her husband, the lady becomes like a sister to you and if you are not punished then people will stop trusting their friends and guest.
Now the problem is how to punish this person, the normal way for society is to assume that person may have done crime by mistake and may reform himself if given opportunity to do so. The king can see that this person can create huge problems and is not ordinary criminal but public pressure says that if your law of justice is universal then you cannot change it, for one criminal. If your justice changes with time, place and person then you are fooling all of us, how can we know that you were right yesterday or you are right today.
Just like Mr. John thinks that one man terrorist could be other man hero and vice-versa, similarly most people in this society believes that one man criminal could be other man visionary and prophet (Just like in the case of Jesus Christ). So under heavy public pressure, this Brahmin together with his lover is sent out of reach of king and his people, so that he could try his best freely, either to reform himself or prove himself right. If the king believes his wisdom and justice is right, then he should not be scared, when that wisdom and justice is tested.
Today the debate has again reached the same stage, courts in India have decriminalised gay and lesbian sex, stating that physical relations between two consenting adults is there private issue. But no religion is ready to give moral legitimacy to physical relationship between two adults, only based on their mutual consent, which means that Justice of the king stays to date, “With your rights to express yourself, comes obligation and responsibilities towards the society”. Although I don’t agree with violent ways of Muslim to solve problems because it can silence genuine grievances as well and leave no space for tolerance and mutual understanding, but on this issue, they also choose to sit with everyone else.
So what do you think about this kind of truth Mr. John? Where all enemies hold same opinion and that is they cannot feel normal when they see two male kissing each other or cannot morally justify if a person sleeps with a friend or relative wife simply because she agreed.
written by Shiva Worshipper , July 11, 2009
Just like Mr. John thinks that one man terrorist could be other man hero and vice-versa, similarly most people in this society believes that one man criminal could be other man visionary and prophet (Just like in the case of Jesus Christ). So under heavy public pressure, this Brahmin together with his lover is sent out of reach of king and his people, so that he could try his best freely, either to reform himself or prove himself right. If the king believes his wisdom and justice is right, then he should not be scared, when that wisdom and justice is tested.
Today the debate has again reached the same stage, courts in India have decriminalised gay and lesbian sex, stating that physical relations between two consenting adults is there private issue. But no religion is ready to give moral legitimacy to physical relationship between two adults, only based on their mutual consent, which means that Justice of the king stays to date, “With your rights to express yourself, comes obligation and responsibilities towards the society”. Although I don’t agree with violent ways of Muslim to solve problems because it can silence genuine grievances as well and leave no space for tolerance and mutual understanding, but on this issue, they also choose to sit with everyone else.
So what do you think about this kind of truth Mr. John? Where all enemies hold same opinion and that is they cannot feel normal when they see two male or female kissing each other or cannot morally justify if a person sleeps with a friend or relative wife simply because she agreed.
written by wagamama , July 11, 2009
* In 364 AD Emperor Jovian orders the burning of the Library of Antioch because the teachings of the books in that library were not in harmony with Biblical poetry.
370 AD Upon the orders of Emperor Valens philosopher Simonides is burned alive and the philosopher Maximus is decapitated. Many philosophical books are burnt in Eastern empire.
372 AD: Emperor Valens orders the extermination of Hellenistic books on wisdom (torch-bearers of classical civilization)
389-390 AD: Emperor Theophilus orders the destruction of temples of the Middle East and Egypt, and “burning of pagan libraries”.
24th Feb 391 AD: Upon Theodosius’ orders temple of the god Serapis was demolished, its famous LIBRARY is BURNT to ashes.
398AD: The 4th Church Council of Carthage prohibits everybody from STUDYING PAGAN BOOKS.
408 AD: Emperor Honorius prohibit ownership of PAGAN SCULPTURE. His Bishops then resort to book burning of pagans.
409 AD: Astrology is punishable by death — new verdict issued.
415 AD: Philosopher Hypatia murdered in the most gruesome manner by Xians.
448 AD: Theodosius II orders all non-Christian books to be BURNED.
529 AD: Justinian outlaws the “Athenian Philosophical Academy” and has its property confiscated.
556 AD: Upon Justinian’s orders destruction of Antioch non-Christians and the BURNING of all PRIVATE LIBRARIES.
ok ok now we are into 6th century when God’s last prophet (a pedophile) was sent down upon earth to complete the mission. Let us now see how Christians and the church behaved WRT preserving civilization in medieval Europe.
1277 AD: Pope John XXI orders the Bishop of Paris to prohibit 219 philosophical and theological theses. (old habits die hard)
1486 AD: Christian monks Henrich Kramer and James Sprenger write a best-seller – Malleus Maleficarum (’The Witches Hammer’). (should win posthumous Booker prize)
1524 AD: Dominican monks in the service of Ferdinand proudly BURN all the books of wisdom of Spain.
1553 AD: John Kelvin, the Protestant Head, puts Michael Servetius, the DISCOVERER of pulmonery blood circulation, to death by burning.
1559 AD: Church issues a list of Forbidden Books.
1600 AD: Giordano Bruno, who suggested that space was boundless and that the sun and its planets were not unique is BURNED AT STAKE.
1633 AD: Galileo is subjected to life imprisonment for stating that earth revolves around sun (Ecclesiastes 1:5- The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises). Basically Galileo revolted against God’s words in Bible
Besides this, book burning (Mayan and Aztec calendars) also took place in South America by the Spanish Christian army.
From the above discussion we see that Christians, upon taking up the reins of Europe, resorted to burning of philosophical books, killing philosophers, scientists, and anyone that came in the way of Church and its teachings — all the way from 4th century AD to renaissance.
written by vbv , July 11, 2009
written by a_comment , July 11, 2009
written by kmgy , July 11, 2009
written by M.A. Khan , July 12, 2009
written by vbv , July 12, 2009
written by vbv , July 12, 2009
This in in continuation to my earlier comments which was in response to your comments.
written by Highlander , July 12, 2009
In comes Wagamama and destroys his argument citing a long list of abuses by the Church beginning from 364 AD.
Very well done Wagamama.
written by a guest , July 12, 2009
I wonder ever we as human beings will see peace or only river of bloods on account of God. I give the reference:-
http://www.hinduholocaust.com
Sincerely i have lost sympathy and respect towards totalitarian faiths christians and islam.
I offer my condolence to all massacred pagan in europe, Rome, Greece, parsis etc., predating christanity and Islam
I wonder is there any solution at all towards peace.
written by Timmy , July 12, 2009
written by j , July 12, 2009
I hope the west wakes up though, It would be a shame to revert back to an izlamic medieval era
written by Gangga , July 13, 2009
If I say Christianity sucks, the real terrorist what will you say. Who massacre the native American, the answer is Christianity. Catholicism responsible for the genocide of Indian in South America, and Christianity responsible for the killing of Indian in North of America. Is this the false of the doctrine or the people who did it ?.
This Islam Watch is full of Crap, you are not making world better place. Yet, you fuel hatred ...
Get a Job loser .... don't donate to this piss of shit
written by wagamama , July 13, 2009
Wagamama: BIG LIE !
oo: Iconoclasm existed in Christianity three centuries before the birth of pedophile's Islam. Islam learnt this great art through Christian past and its scriptures. Its roots are in the Old Testament (Dueteronomy 12: 2-4): •You must demolish completely all the places where the nations whom you are about to dispossess served their gods, on the mountain heights, on the hills, and under every leafy tree. Break down their altars, smash their pillars, burn their sacred poles with fire, and hew down the idols of their gods, and thus blot out their name from their places. You shall not worship the Lord your God in such ways.
Now let us see how Christianity used these verses on the great HEATHEN pagan cultures of Europe.
* After the council of Nicea in 325 AD, upon Constantine’s orders the temple of Asclepius in Aigeai Cilicia and other temples of the goddess Aphrodite in Jerusalem, Aphaca, and Mambre were destroyed in 326 AD.
* In 335 Constantine sacks many pagan temples in Asia Minor and Palestine
*353 An edict of Constantius orders the death penalty for all kind of worship through idols
* In 364 Emperor Jovian orders the burning of the Library of Antioch (because the books in the library do not contain anything that exists in Holy Bible)
* In 375 The temple of Asclepius in Epidaurus, Greece, is closed down by the Church orders
* In 381,throughout the Eastern Empire the pagan temples and libraries are looted or burned down. Theodosius outlaws visits to Hellenic temples. In the same year the temple of Aphrodite is turned into a brothel and the temples of the Sun and Artemis to stables.
* In 384, Theodosius destroys the temples of the pagans in Northern Greece and Minor Asia.
* In 385 to 388 Prefect Maternus Cynegius scour the countryside and sack and destroy hundreds of Hellenic temples, shrines and altars.
* In 393 The Pythian Games, the Aktia Games and the Olympic Games are outlawed as part of the Hellenic “idolatry”. The Christians sack the temples of Olympia. HAIL OLYMPICS HAIL PAGANISM
* In 401 The Christians of Carthage lynches non-Christians and destroy temples and “idols”. In Gaza too, the local bishop “Saint” Porphyrius demolishes the remaining nine still active temples of the city.
* In 406 John Chrysostom of the Catholic Church orders the destruction of the famous temple of Artemis.
* In 429 The temple of goddess Athena on the Acropolis of Athens is sacked
*From 440 to 450 The Christians demolish all the monuments, altars and temples of Athens, Olympia, and other Greek cities.
* In 528 Emperor Justinian orders the execution—by fire, crucifixion, tearing to pieces by wild beasts —of all who practice magic or idolatry and prohibits all teachings of the pagans.
* In 580 the Christian inquisitors attack a secret temple of Zeus in Antioch. The imprisoned pagans are are thrown to the lions or crucified. (God save Xians)
This is just a glimpse of the dark ages in the Christian Europe. A pedophile Prophet was born in the 6th century. He memorized all Biblical verses, added a bit of Arab masala, and formed Quran.
His lunatic follwers continued the grand legacy of the Christians whereby all the KAFFIR (equivalent to Heathen) temples in middle east and Asia were attacked and destroyed.
HAIL GREEK, INDIAN, ROMAN, DRUID, CHINESE, MAYAN, AZTEC, BABYLONIAN, SUMERIAN, AND OTHER PAGAN CULTURES' KNOWLEDGE. You could do it without resorting to worshipping any son of God or the last messenger of God!
Haleluja and Allah ho Akbar
written by kmgy , July 13, 2009
Luke 21:7-9“Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?” He replied: “Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them. When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.”
written by kmgy , July 13, 2009
written by kmgy , July 13, 2009
-Pythagoras’ religious and scientific views were, in his opinion, inseparably interconnected. Religiously, Pythagoras was a believer of metempsychosis. He believed in transmigration, or the reincarnation of the soul again and again into the bodies of humans, animals, or vegetables until it became moral. His ideas of reincarnation were influenced by ancient Greek religion. He was one of the first to propose that the thought processes and the soul were located in the brain and not the heart. He himself claimed to have lived four lives that he could remember in detail, and heard the cry of his dead friend in the bark of a dog.--Mr vbv, Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras was NOT an atheist as you again falsely believed. Mr. vbv study History first.
written by vbv , July 13, 2009
written by Highlander , July 13, 2009
There are shades of grey and the truth lies in between.
written by ZZMike , July 14, 2009
Why are you using ancient power-mad emperors as examples of Christianity's evile deeds? It makes no sense.
As for Honorius, he's best known for his decree prohibiting men from wearing trousers.
So much for that one.
written by Shinto , July 14, 2009
written by Shinto , July 14, 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Deuteronomy
"Deuteronomy presents itself as a series of sermons delivered by Moses to the Israelites in the plains of Moab. "
You do not know the purpose of Deuteronomy. It is like using a Cook book for Pet care. You are one of those people who takes one thing and applies it to everything.
As far as I know Christians do not follow the sermons of Moses. And you assume that Christians follows the Bible the same as Moslems follows the Quran? Religion is dangerous when given to ignorant people. Just as any form of knowledge. (A child with a book on bomb making)
The Quran is prescriptive.. There is more "Philosophy" in Christianity and Judaism than there is in the Islam. Islam is marketed as an "EASY TO FOLLOW" "Straight forward" "Just follow this" religion. Of course you can do that with any Book (Bible is book in latin ya know..) But I don't see a that being written into any of the books that Jews and Christians reads. It is however WRITTEN in the Quran.
written by Shinto , July 14, 2009
I'm still waiting why Christians took a century to fight back with violence against the Islamic caliphate but thats reserved for another debate.
So lets do the math. for 1269 years there where 19 instances of historical cultural destruction. so for every 66 years there where these small bursts of retardation purportedly commanded by "Christianity". Or rather commanded by small minded individuals who thinks they are doing the right thing but in fact doing it the "ROMAN" way.
http://ethnikoi.org/persecutions.html
Its a nice "long list" I supported the last few regarding force conversions (Or in reality forced expulsion of muslims from greece by "Saint" Nikon).
Christianity was ment to save the jews and the gentiles but when the Romans adapted it there way it was brutal, When in Rome... , The real christians died in rome. they where eaten by Lions used as slaves. These very Christians inspired a few Romans but in the end all the atrocities done by Pre-islamic Christians where the sins of the Roman emperor and the romans in general.
So in short Wamamama did nothing special but spewing the usual vitriol with little thought behind it. Civilization is built on the backs of religion, good or bad. As Timmy said Christians have done more to preserve history than destroy it.
written by Shinto , July 14, 2009
written by JohanM , July 22, 2009
When christiandom was flourishing (multiplying by destroying others) in Europe even African societies were doing better then them. It is only after renaissance when so many christian dogmas were challenged and grip of the churches loosen from the adherents of Chritianity then only Europe became Europe which is known today. Believe me Christian world is going ahead not because of the Christianity but because of the people who have left the Christianity and their names merely resemble the Christian names....
written by infidel , July 31, 2009
written by infidel , July 31, 2009
written by infidel , August 01, 2009
written by manish , August 07, 2009
We should learn from past, what ever comes to world and one day it is going to end. It is useless for fighting for unnecessary things. We should cause and effect before doing anything. We should to do according to our experience and realization not because of any book or any person or even god or anything else. Main thing is to get out of misery not to roam around this illusion world. Peace in Mind the most important thing, one who can control it, is greater than the emperor who have won the hundreds of battles.
If god is there, god wants us to think.
i am from india,an ex-muslim,and i know that before advent of islam induan culture was the main influence of the europeans when greece sent
its teachers to learn from india.
i want to re-establish this supremacy of peace,tolerance and love for humanity again.
vande bharat mataram
better to worship mother india than bow to a stone in arab desert or be arab boot licker.