Assalamulykum

I would like to share this article with you all.
This coming from a non-Muslim is rare indeed
something positive atlas!
May Allah(swt) guide him to the straight path.


The beauty of Islam





Several readers of last week’s column asked why I called Islam “incredibly beautiful.” Based on decades of study, world travel and long friendships with Muslims, I answer with three hints.•Our indebtedness to Muslim culture is extraordinary. Try doing your finances using Roman instead of Arabic numerals, and you’ll get the idea.
Have you had your coffee? The attempt 400 years ago to prohibit Christians from drinking coffee because it was a Muslim drink obviously has failed.
Thomas Aquinas, for centuries the pre-eminent Christian theologian, was influenced by Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes). Renaissance art, music and poetry, out of which today’s world developed, were stimulated by encounters with Muslim thinkers.
Who can see the Alhambra or the Taj Mahal or the great mosques throughout the world without awe? One image often used to identify Kansas City is Giralda Tower on the Country Club Plaza, a smaller version of what was once the minaret of a mosque in Seville.
•The five “pillars” of Islam present a spiritual path rousing admiration, if not imitation.
The first pillar is the profession of faith, that there is but one God, and Muhammad is his messenger. This simple statement serves to center and unify every aspect of how one lives one’s life.
Second, prayer five times daily is a renewal of one’s commitment to submit to God’s will.
Third, giving to the needy is a religious obligation.
Fourth, in the words of Bill Graves, then Kansas governor, Muslims fast during the month of Ramadan “to remind themselves that others hunger and to relieve the hunger of others, to practice discipline through self-denial, to nurture family relationships and to strengthen commitment to God” and to recall the first revelations of the Qur’an.
I have repeatedly observed these four pillars, and from them I have taken inspiration.
The fifth pillar is the pilgrimage to Mecca. While this is not possible for me since I am not a Muslim, I have witnessed how this ritual has deepened the faith of Muslim friends.
•Speaking of Kansas City Muslim friends — they may be business people, doctors, professors, chaplains, public officials, scientists or soldiers. They may fight fires, teach martial arts, report the news or manage a library.
They are honest and generous, working to make America and the world better. They never seek to convert me. Their faith is beautiful.


http://tinyurl.com/6rhevd



thanks


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Aw mashAllah, a bit of news that actually makes me smile (as opposed to making me want to rip my hair out, that is).

Aarbic numerlas were infact invented by Indians long before Islam.
But I agree with the author, Islam is a very nice religion.

The numbers used in the current arabic language were invented by indians, yes. They're now known as eastern arabic numerals.
Arabic numerals, however, the original ones, were 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. They were originally used in North Africa by arabs, and then the west caught on and started using them too. Check out wiki about them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals

They were invened by Indians but it was arabs that brought them to Europe, hence the name.
wow, I didn't know Arabs used to call them hindu numerals.

No, the ones invented by indians are the ones arabs use today.

The ones used in the english language today are the ones that were invented by arabs.

"The Arabic numerals are the ten numerals (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9), which—along with the system by which a sequence (e.g. "406") was read as a number—were used by North African Arabs and transmitted to Europe in the Middle Ages, from whence they spread with the European conquest. Today they are the most common symbolic representation of number in the world." from wikipedia, the first line

they were not invented by Arabs. Perhaps Arabs adjusted the symbols, the numeral system was invented by indians though.

Ahh yes, I'm mistaken, you're right. My apologies.

"It should be noted that the Arabic numerals were neither invented by nor used by the Arabs. They were developed in India by the Hindus around 600 A.D. Interestingly, these numbers were written "backwards", thus one hundred twenty three was written 321. Around 750 A.D. this system of decimal arithmetic was brought to Persia when several important Hindu works were translated into Arabic. The noted Arab mathematician al-Khwârizmî (Muhammad b. Musa al-Khwârizmî ca. 875) wrote a textbook on the subject which now exists only in a number of Latin versions. In these a point is used for zero.
In ca. 952 Abu'l-Hasan-al-Uqlidisi wrote the Book of the Parts of Indian Arithmetic which contains an explanation and application of decimal fractions. In the transmission of Arabic numerals to Europe the method of writing numbers became reversed to the present method in the process."
http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/archive/numerals.html

Assalamulykum

yes the Arabs got it from India

Here is interesting story how zero was invented

How Was Zero Invented?

In A.D. 810, Baghdad was the capital of the Arab world. The grand palace in Baghdad was called "The House of Wisdom" and drew Arab mathematicians and scientists to it. The most famous of these was Muhammad ibn Musa known as AI-Khwarizmi. the mathemati*cian. In the spring of that year, while the desert wind whispered outside and juicy dates rip*ened on the palm trees. a great debate raged inside the Caliph's (ruler's) chambers.
Three men took part in the debate: the Caliph, himself. Al-Khwarizmi. and the palace mathematician. Ahmand ibn Aziz. They argued about sifr, "the empty place," what we call zero. Years before. Al-Khwarizmi had helped convince the court that the Hindu number system was superior and should be adopted. Now he had come to court to convince the Ca*liph to change one central element of that system—the role of sifr.
Al-Khwarizmi reasoned that s lir had to be an actual number. Aziz countered that zero had always been just a placeholder, not a real number, and couldn't be changed now. The Caliph decided that if Al-Khwarizmi could show that sift acted like a number and could per*form all of the functions that numbers perforad then--and only then—he would decree that sifr was a number.
That meant that Al-Khwarizmi had to show that sifr t zero) could add and subtract. multiply and divide, be used as an algebraic exponent. and—like all numbers—be either odd or even.
Addition and subtraction was easy to show. 7 plus 0 equals 7. If you can do the addi*tion. then zero must be a number. Numbers can only he added to other numbers.
Multiplication and division were harder for Al- Khwarizmi to explain. He used piles of coins to demonstrate. To multiply one pile by four, he had to lay down four piles of coins. To multiply by two, he had to lay down only two piles. To multiply by zero. he had to lay down exactly no piles. Any number times zero is zero.
Al-Khwarizmi used the same piles of coins to demonstrate division by zero and using zero as an exponent (raising sonic number to the power of zero). At the end of two clays of questioning by the Caliph and by Aziz, Al-Khwarizmi had won. He had convinced the Ca*liph. who declared that sifr was a true number. The basic number system we still use and de*pend upon was complete.

http://tinyurl.com/44zz7p


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that's not how zero was invented, that's how AI-Khwarizmi convinced teh Caliph it is a number. Zero was inveneted long before.

Interesting story. To bad it doesn't say how exactly he demonstrated division by zero. Considering what a genius this guy was, it must have been real smart.

am i alone in finding it rather sad that when some columnist in some kansas paper says something positive about islam - it makes news?

Assalamualykum

guess you skipped over the word placeholder, anyway this is off topic but still interesting.

Al-Jazari and the First Programmable Humanoid Robot


Before Da Vinci there was Al-Jazari - the Engineering genius of the Islamic world in the Middle Ages. He designed and built a number of automatas including the first programmable humanoid robot
constructed in 1206

The previous claim for the world’s oldest programmable automata is for a machine built by Leonardo da Vinci in 1478.

http://tinyurl.com/2drtnf

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