They Aren't Barbarians!!!

While the Middle East has taken front stage in the world, some people lament that the major contribution to the world by those in the Middle East is the fact they happened to be sitting on oil. They didn't know how to use oil or get it out of the ground, but it is underneath where they are sitting. Without the oil, there would be no money for bombs and terror networks. They would be as unimportant to world politics as Madagascar.

In order to convince the world that they aren't barbarians... an opinion which has been brought on by continued acts of depravity and terrorism, beheading of civilians, the subjugation of women, the stoning of gays, etc... some outlets try to convince us that the Muslim world is enlightened. The British government created a factually and logically incorrect exhibit called 1001 Muslim inventions.

Now Reuters wants us to believe that some mosaic pattern in a mosque is a mathematical breakthrough. What is a breakthrough? The American Heritage dictionary defines it as "A major achievement or success that permits further progress, as in technology." So what further progress was achieved by this mosaic? What was the benefit of breakthrough?

Let's give an example of a real breakthrough: Michael Faraday found that electric run through a wire, will create a rotating magnetic field around it. This breakthrough led to the electric motor, which we use in countless places.

Medieval Muslims made stunning math breakthroughMagnificently sophisticated geometric patterns in medieval Islamic architecture indicate their designers achieved a mathematical breakthrough 500 years earlier than Western scholars, scientists said on Thursday.

By the 15th century, decorative tile patterns on these masterpieces of Islamic architecture reached such complexity that a small number boasted what seem to be "quasicrystalline" designs, Harvard University's Peter Lu and Princeton University's Paul Steinhardt wrote in the journal Science.

Only in the 1970s did British mathematician and cosmologist Roger Penrose become the first to describe these geometric designs in the West. Quasicrystalline patterns comprise a set of interlocking units whose pattern never repeats, even when extended infinitely in all directions, and possess a special form of symmetry.

"Oh, it's absolutely stunning," Lu said in an interview. "They made tilings that reflect mathematics that were so sophisticated that we didn't figure it out until the last 20 or 30 years."

While Europe was mired in the Dark Ages, Islamic culture flourished beginning in the 7th century, with achievements over numerous centuries in mathematics, medicine, engineering, ceramics, art, textiles, architecture and other areas.