Yes, the author puts his foot in his mouth again (well, not really – he was witty and brilliant and on the nose, as he often is) in front of a packed house in the banquet room of Los Angeles’ Four Seasons. I was sitting there, listening to him do it (opine), scribbling down some other things he said, including, re: Islam, “It wasn’t always like this – this religion of permanent outrage. This isn’t the religion I grew up with…” and “I am tired of hearing how Islamic [thinkers] invented algebra. That was a long time ago. A lot of things happened since.”
The event where Rushdie was letting his thinning hair down was the annual banquet of the American Jewish Congress. This year it was SRO because its LA leadership – Gary Ratner and Allyson Taylor – had the progressive (in the real sense) foresight to center the dinner (”Profiles in Courage -Voices of Muslim Reformers in the Modern World” ) on honoring Muslim moderates.
And some pretty incredible and courageous reformers they were: Besides, Rushdie… Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Tashbih Sayyed and Salim Mansur. These people have more guts than just about anybody in the world right now -and are more necessary. Sultan, a psychologist, may have had the most poignant line: “Get to know your enemy. He might turn out to be your best friend.”
Also in attendance, the parents of Daniel Pearl. I asked Judea Pearl what he knew about rumors that the murderers of his son have been released in Pakistan. He told me that our government has told him nothing. He knows no more than you or I. Go figure.
Because I am busy, I can’t go further with my description of this moving event, but I will come back later in the day and amplify (with links). Look for many of the above to appear on Pajamas Media in coming days – also Cyrus Nowrasteh, the screenwriter of The Path to 9-11, who was at the dinner as well.
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13 Comments
1. jedrury:Cyrus Nowrasteh – has an impressive column in the Journal this morning
Sep 18, 2006 - 8:54 am 2. David Thomson:ì…and “I am tired of hearing how Islamic [thinkers] invented algebra. That was a long time ago. A lot of things happened since.”
Itís time to ask: what have you done recently? The Islamic world often reminds one of the proverbial pro baseball player who brags about his game winning home run ten years—and has performed poorly since then. The heck with the question concerning the successes of Muslim culture a 1,000 years ago. What about the last 400-500? The West has been kicking butt while the followers of Mohammed have accomplished next to nothing. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk realized, whether he liked it or not, that Turkey had to become westernized. This is also what my German ancestors had to do. Everyone on this planet must ultimately bow down to the greatness of the West. Do I define the West as a bunch of white guys residing in a certain geographical area who run around telling everybody what to do? No, I agree with Matthew Arnoldís understanding that itís merely the exaltation of ìthe best which has been thought and said in the world.”
Sep 18, 2006 - 9:02 am 3. Sandy P:I thought the Hindus invented Algebra and they co-opted it.
Sep 18, 2006 - 9:16 am 4. Sandy P:The West gave the world the Magna Carta almost 800 years ago, there was an article which neither read nor bookmarked about how the “Dark Ages” weren’t really dark, a lot of good stuff came out of them.
Sep 18, 2006 - 9:18 am 5. richardM:From:
http://badhairblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/brief-debunking-of-list-of-top-20.html
Item #14, numbering: The system of numbering in use all round the world is probably Indian in origin but the style of the numerals is Arabic and first appears in print in the work of the Muslim mathematicians al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi around 825. Algebra was named after al-Khwarizmi’s book, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, much of whose contents are still in use.
In The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades) Robert Spencer explains (again, p. 93):
in fact, the principles upon which al-Khawarizmi worked were discovered centuries before he was born — including the zero, which is often attributed to Muslims. Even what we know today as “Arabic numerals” did not originate in Arabia, but in pre-Islamic India — and they are not used in the Arabic language today.
Sep 18, 2006 - 10:20 am 6. Roger:ATTENTION:
As I mentioned YESTERDAY, please DO NOT use long URLs in your comments as they tend to ruin the reading experience for everyone by distorting browsers. I had to delte one from the post above. Use tiny URLs. Thank you.
Sep 18, 2006 - 10:43 am 7. rjschwarz:As far as I’m concerned bragging about inventing Algebra is simply an attempt to proke hostility between civilizations.
Sep 18, 2006 - 11:05 am 8. advocate:Enjoying this site, very interesting remarks.
Please see this, pass on to as many as possible. Sharing the link is the smallest possible thing I can do, but I hope people see it.
Sep 18, 2006 - 11:25 am 9. Terrye:Thank you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwy-7KvRsUs
Hopefully there will be more such people. I think there are more of them than we know, but fear and shame keep them quiet.
Sep 18, 2006 - 12:02 pm 10. Lem:There is hope!
http://tinyurl.com/s3ccg
Sep 18, 2006 - 1:23 pm 11. ricpic:“I find myself in the wierd position of sympathizing with the Pope.”
It never fails that when a charter member of the bien pensant cognescenti like Rushdie publicly expresses agreement with, or sympathy for, a hopelessly beyond the pale figure like the Pope, he has to let his fellow cognescenti know that, nudge-nudge wink-wink, this in no way changes the in-ness of “us” and the outness of “them.” Oofah!
Sep 18, 2006 - 2:46 pm 12. Neo:The Pope has opened a second front with radical Islam.
This time it is an intellectual front confronting the conflict between religion and violence. A religion of peace can’t be advocating violence as a path to God. Likewise, advocating violence as a path to belief, doesn’t create belief, only fear. Without true belief, there is no religion. So there is a conflict within Islam.
Besides, if Allah had wanted us all to be Muslims, it would have been so. To believe otherwise, is to question Allah.
Now, of course, every imam from here to Mecca is going to feel threaten. Damn, their trump card of “death and paradise” is under attack in a battle of words and ideas.
A hundred years ago, the elites of America would have taken up the challenge to engage as well. Unfortunately, the elites are now so elite that most have put God and church outside their doors, so don’t expect a real intellectual discussion from that direction. It might spoil their weekend.
Sep 18, 2006 - 7:22 pm 13. Webloggin:Looking forward to reading more. Nonie Darwish is one of the creators of the documentary Obsession the Movie.
Good stuff, very eye opening.
Sep 20, 2006 - 5:32 am