> Frontpage Interview's guest today is Peter BetBasoo, co-founder and director
> of the Assyrian International News Agency (www.aina.org). He was born in
> Baghdad in 1963 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1974. He obtained a B.S. in
> Geology at the University of Illinois Chicago (1980-1985) and a minor inPhilosophy. In 2002, he worked in the State Department's Future of Iraq
> Project, in the Water, Agriculture and Environment group. In 2007, he
> authored the report, Incipient Genocide: The Ethnic Cleansing of the
> Assyrians of Iraq.
>
> FP: Peter BetBasoo, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
>
> BetBasoo: Thank you very much, Jamie, I am honored to be here.
>
> FP: Tell us your thoughts on Muslim claims of accomplishments, revisionism
> and the expropriation of cultures and ideas.
>
> BetBasoo: Let me preface my remarks by saying that I do not claim that
> Muslims have made no accomplishments. Individual Muslims have been
> successful in the full range of the human scientific and artistic endeavor.
> But a closer examination of these successes reveals that they came about
> because these individuals stepped outside of the Muslim realm. For example,
> today Muslim scientists and scholars are trained in the West. I claim that
> Islam is not conducive to the pursuit of rational inquiry, and when Islam
> asserts itself, it borrows, co-opts and ultimately, when time has passed and
> memory forgotten, claims that these borrowed and co-opted things were
> originated by Muslims, not by the native cultures that preceded the Muslims.
>
> If something cannot be so expropriated, it is often destroyed. The most
> recent example was the Taliban's destruction of the 2500 year-old Buddhist
> statues in Afghanistan . In Iran , the UNESCO world heritage sites,
> Pasargadae and Persepolis , are threatened by the construction of the Sivand
> dam, and the Mullahs simply don't care, though they claim the water line
> will be below these cities, which date back to 560 B.C..
>
> In Iraq , history text books teach that the Sumerians, Assyrians,
> Babylonians were in fact Arabs -- never mind that these civilizationsexisted
> a good 5600 years before Arabs/Muslims came into Mesopotamia .
>
> In the Middle East it is nearly impossible to separate Islam from Arabs,
> they are two sides of the same coin. Hence, if you are an Arab, you must
> surely be a Muslim, and your accomplishments as well. If you are not a
> Muslim, then you need to be.
>
> In India , over 3500 Hindu temples have been occupied and converted to
> Mosques, the most famous being the Taj Mahal. In Kosovo, under the auspices
> of the UN "peace" keeping force, over 600 Serbian churches and monasteries
> have been occupied or destroyed by the Muslim Kosovars. Kosovo is the most
> important religious center for the Serbians.
>
> FP: So how about Muslim claims of accomplishment that aren't real?
>
> BetBasoo: Muslims claim many, many accomplishments we know they had nothing
> to do with. Arabic numerals? From India . The concept of zero? From
> Babylonia . Parabolic arches? From Assyria . The much ballyhooed claim of
> translating the Greek corpus of knowledge into Arabic? It was the Christian
> Assyrians, who first translated to Syriac, then to Arabic. The first
> University? Not Al-Azhar in Cairo (988 A.D.), but the School of Nisibis of
> the Church of the East (350 A.D.), which had three departments: Theology,PhilosophyandMedicine. Al-Azhar only teaches Theology.
>
> Speaking ofmedicine, Muslims will claim thatmedicineduring the Golden Age
> of Islam, the Abbasid period, was the most advanced in the world. That is
> correct. But what they don't say is that the medical practitioners were
> exclusively Christians. The most famous medical family, the Bakhtishu
> family, Assyrians of the Church of the East, produced seven generations of
> doctors, who were the official physicians to the Caliphs of Baghdad for
> nearly 200 years.
>
> There are many more examples, but I think these are enough to make the
> point.
>
> FP: Why, in your view, does Islam fail in producing scholars and thinkers?
>
> BetBasoo: It is a bold assertion to say that Islam fails in producing
> thinkers. Yet one is lead to this conclusion by a historical examination of
> Islamic civilizations. The putative "Golden Age of Islam", the Abbasid
> period, has been shown to be not the product of Muslims, but of their
> Christian subjects. In his book How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs,
> O'Leary's lists 22 scholars and translators during the Golden Age of Islam;
> 20 were Christians, 1 was a Persian, and 1 was a Muslim. This covers about a
> 250 year period. This "Golden Age", incidentally, came to an end after the
> Caliphs had forcefully converted enough Christians to Muslims (through the
> Jizya) that the Christian numbers fell below the critical threshold needed
> for sustaining the intellectual enterprise.
>
> Given that this intellectual enterprise during the Abbasid period was the
> product of Christians, we ask the question: has there ever been an Islamic
> golden age? There was none during the rule of the Mamluks, who overthrew the
> Abbasids. Can we say the Ottomans, who followed the Mamluks, ever had a
> golden age?
>
> In his book Religion of Peace, Robert Spencer has offered a penetrating and
> incisive analysis of why Islam fails to produce thinkers. His explanation is
> theological and theoretical. I will summarize it now and then give my own
> complimentary explanation, which is practical.
>
> According to Robert Spencer, the Muslim god, Allah, is capricious. He is not
> subject to any laws and can, in fact, change laws arbitrarily without
> restraint. Quoting the Pope, Spencer says:
>
> "for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound
> up with any of our categories, even that of rationality."
>
> Spencer continues:
>
> "the Pope was not so much saying that in the Islamic view Allah would
> command his people to do evil, but that he might change the content of the
> concepts of good and evil. In other words, Allah would always enjoin
> "justice and kindness," but what constitutes "justice and kindness," just as
> what constitutes "innocent blood," might change."
>
> And
>
> "He [Allah] was thus not bound to govern the universe according to
> consistent and observable laws. 'He cannot be questioned concerning what He
> does'" (Qur'an 21:23 ).
>
> And
>
> "Accordingly, there was no point to observing the workings of the physical
> world; there was no reason to expect that any pattern to its workings would
> be consistent, or even discernable. If Allah could not be counted on to be
> consistent, why waste time observing the order of things? It could change
> tomorrow. Stanley Jaki, a Catholic priest and physicist, explains that it
> was al-Ghazali, the philosopher that the authors of the Open Letter
> recommend to the Pope, who 'denounced natural laws, the very objective of
> science, as a blasphemous constraint upon the free will of Allah.' He adds
> that 'Muslim mystics decried the notion of scientific law (as formulated by
> Aristotle) as blasphemous and irrational, depriving as it does the Creator
> of his freedom.' Social scientist Rodney Stark adds that 'it would seem that
> Islam has a conception of God appropriate to underwrite the rise of science.
> Not so. Allah is not presented as a lawful creator but is conceived of as an
> extremely active God who intrudes in the world as he deems it appropriate.
> This prompted the formation of a major theological bloc within Islam that
> condemns all efforts to formulate natural laws as blasphemy in that they
> deny Allah's freedom to act.'"
>
> Thus there is no incentive for Muslims to pursue rational inquiry, since any
> results obtained can be invalidated by Allah at his whim.
>
> FP: And Christianity?
>
> BetBasoo: In contrast, Christianity derives from the Bible the notion that
> God works and is subject to natural and predictable laws, which a rational
> inquiry into would be a fruitful undertaking. This notion is the fundamental
> basis of the scientific method, which is a Christian invention.
>
> That is the theological/theoretical explanation of Islam's failure to
> produce thinkers. There is a practical one as well. Allow me to illustrate
> it by contrast.
>
> There are two aspects of Christianity that every Christian must contend
> with. The first is the Trinity, the second is the literary style of the
> Bible.
>
> In the Trinity there is a Mystery that must be understood. Just exactly who
> is the Father? Who is the Son? What is the Holy Spirit? How do these relate?
> How does the Holy Spirit interact with the corporeal? Where does it reside?
> In the heart? the liver? the brain? Does it exist separate from the human
> nature in the body (hence the Diophysites -- Roman Catholics, Protestants,
> Assyrian Church of the East) or is it inseparably fused and intertwined with
> the human nature in the body (hence the Monophysites -- the Eastern Orthodox
> Churches)?
>
> The New Testament is written in parables. Seldom is the point of the story
> expressed directly. The reader is asked to read a parable and figure out
> what it means. Reading the New Testament requires analysis, it engages the
> critical thought processes of interpretation and deduction.
>
> The effort at understanding the Mystery of the Trinity and of unraveling the
> meaning of parables exercises the mind and engages the Christian not only on
> a spiritual level, but an intellectual level as well. To wit, it teaches a
> Christian to think.
>
> In contrast, the Koran is written in a prescriptive style. There are no
> parables. The Muslim is summarily told what to do, most of the time without
> explanation. The Muslim needs to read just enough to get the prescription.
> It's like the directions on your drug prescription: take two pills every
> eight hours. Period. No further explanation.
>
> Thus on a practical level, the act of exercising these religions produces
> two different thought processes. Christianity asks the believer to think and
> analyze, to interpret and deduce. Islam asks the believer to obey blindly
> and without question. Indeed, the Koran says "...follow not that of which
> you have not the knowledge" (Children of Israel, 17.36).
>
> FP: Peter BetBasoo, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.
>
> BetBasoo: Thank you for having me.http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=4D818187-782D-4AA...