Religion wank
On the Amazon review board for Ayaan Hirsi Ali's autobiography, Prince of Carthage has this to say:

Bashing Islam is the Best Selling Plat du Jour

It never stops amazing me how in the greatest country on earth where we're leading the world in the fields of academia, technology, economy, innovation, arts, etc. some mediocre (and that's an overstatement) books and authors manage to become instant bestsellers... the formula is obviously clear... Bash Islam and Muslims, these evil people... medicore writers like hannity, o'reilly, coulter and countless more figured out the best way to make a quick buck... attack a religion and a civilization that has given so much to the world.. one that achieved the unprecedented fate of 900 years of world domination... helping to advance maths, science, arts, philosophy, medicine, etc. a religion that from the time it was revealed set itself apart from previous ones by giving women many rights that were at the time unheard of in the rest of the world (women were still treated like sub-humans in the Christian world)... a religion with a prophet who worked for his wife, a leading noble businesswoman in Mecca... it goes without saying that Muslims have mismanaged their fall from grace... some did blame women... but should this be seen as illustrative of a culture where women were religious scholars, poets, writers, etc... or should we listen to Ayaan Hirsi Ali... [...] That she felt stranger at home is ok, it happens... many teenagers go through that process... sometimes, they are right, sometimes they are wrong... but for her to jump on this Muslim bashing train is unethical... more and more Muslims will be unfairly profiled, mistreated and abused...

Ad hominem remarks, accusations of closemindedness and McCarthyism, "Your religion sucks!" arguments, and Very Special Logic ensues.

Other highlights include:

James H. Hill: Yes,Islam has given us alot. It has given us honor killing, stoning and forced marriage of women, church burning, rioting in response to a few cartoons, indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians all over then world, gross intolerance of other religions.

A. Hajric: And christianity gives us inquisitions, crusades, Pope tyranny, drugs, crime, violence, women abuse, beatings, illegitimate children, colonization, gangs, prostitution, AIDS, sexual abuse, transgenders, alcoholism, slavery and adultery. Peace!

and

All the fuss over female circumcision shows just how random the whole debate is. Of course it is a horrible practice, but the world is full of horrors and injustices that require urgent attention, so why are we so keen to single out this particular, pretty farfetched one, that seems limited mainly to one tribal culture in one African country? How about the routine genital mutilation of jewish boys?

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Re: I really should practice sitting on my hands better!
dracothelizard
2007-05-04 10:58 pm UTC (link)

"One and a half thousand years of Islamic 'civilisation' has done shockingly little to advance maths, physics, arts, philosophy, medicine - as anyone possessed of the least bit of acquaintance with the history of these disciplines will be only too aware."

My inner medievalist is howling with laughter so she won't have to weep at the stupidity. I bet this person thinks people in medieval times thought the Earth was flat.

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	Re: I really should practice sitting on my hands better! seiberwing 2007-05-05 02:31 am UTC (link)
	Er...they didn't? feels like a plebe (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: I really should practice sitting on my hands better! eljuno 2007-05-05 03:32 am UTC (link)
	If I remember right, in general people knew that the world was round. Some people had serious trouble believing that people might live on the other side of the world, however. It's been about 3/4 years since I took my last Science of the Middle Ages course, however... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: I really should practice sitting on my hands better!

seiberwing
2007-05-05 03:38 am UTC (link)

In early Classical Antiquity, the Earth was generally believed to be flat. Greek philosophers from that time period were prone to form conclusions similar to those of Anaximander, who believed the Earth to be a short cylinder with a flat, circular top.[1] It is conjectured that the first person to have advocated a spherical shape of the Earth was Pythagoras (6th century BC), but this idea is not supported by the fact that most presocratic Pythagoreans considered the world to be flat.[2] Eratosthenes, however, had already determined that the earth was a sphere and calculated its rough circumference by the third century B.C. [3]

By the time of Pliny the Elder in the 1st century, the Earth's spherical shape was generally acknowledged among the learned in the western world. Ptolemy derived his maps from a curved globe and developed the system of latitude, longitude, and climes. His writings remained the basis of European astronomy throughout the Middle Ages, although Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ca. 3rd to 7th centuries) saw occasional arguments in favor of a flat Earth.

The modern misconception that people of the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat first entered the popular imagination in the nineteenth century, thanks largely to the publication of Washington Irving's fantasy The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1828.

Huh. Did not know that.

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	Re: I really should practice sitting on my hands better! dragonfangirl 2007-05-05 05:20 am UTC (link)
	Er...they didn't? Well, consider the implications of the Copernican system in the 13th century: he was providing an alternative to the universally accepted idea that the Earth was at the center of the universe and all heavenly bodies revolve in circles around it... which presupposes the earth itself being a globe. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	winter 2007-05-05 05:42 am UTC (link)
	Um, I think you'll find that old Nick C. published his work in 1543. Which kind of isn't the 13th century. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	dragonfangirl 2007-05-05 11:30 am UTC (link)
	...you know, I always mix up whether the centuries are supposed to go forward or backwards to the 00s, but this is the first time it's thrown me off by three hundred years. smacks forrehead (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Re: I really should practice sitting on my hands better! dracothelizard 2007-05-05 10:26 am UTC (link)
	No. No, they didn't. They had figured that bit out by then, at least the higher classes had, anyway. They hadn't quite realised that the Earth revolved around the Sun rather than the other way around, but still. All them maps that're geographically incorrect and put Jerusalem at the center of everything? They were symbolical. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: I really should practice sitting on my hands better! seiberwing 2007-05-05 03:49 pm UTC (link)
	Cartoons and pop culture has lied to me once more. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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