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Nobel Laureate Wiped From Pakistan's Textbooks As Heretic
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Alexander Abad-Santos writes that in any other country, the late Dr. Abdus Salam would be a national hero: he's the Nobel laureate in physics who laid the groundwork for the biggest physics discovery in the past 30 years--the Higgs boson. But that isn't the case in Pakistan, where Salam has been wiped from textbooks and history for not being fundamentalist enough. 'He belonged to the Ahmadi sect, which has been persecuted by the government and targeted by Taliban militants who view its members as heretics,' says Sebastian Abbot. 'His grand unification theory of strong, weak and electromagnetic fields opened the gateway for the discovery of bosons and laid down the basis for this quantum electrodynamics project,' writes Anam Khalid Alvi for Pakistan's Express Tribune. But Pakistan can't celebrate his achievements, since Ahmadis like Salam are and were prevented from 'posing as Muslims,' and can be punished with prison and even death. By contrast, fellow Pakistani physicist A.Q. Khan, who played a key role in developing the country's nuclear bomb and later confessed to spreading nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, is considered a national hero. Khan is a Muslim."
Remember, it's all fine, carry on. They keep saying it's a religion of peace and all that. Don't forget that they scrubbed "muslim" off his grave. And other muslims in the region are expected to go out of their way to persecute them.
Om, nomnomnom...
It's coming soon to the U.S. Don't think they want this sort of thing to happen to Texas schoolbooks.
Rather a shame the way people can't respect one faith from another.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I've always thought the Ahmadis (there's actually two Ahmadi sects) are appealing to Western converts. They talk a lot about pluralism, etc, and seem to mean it. Alas, they aren't quite as progressive as I'd like on LGBT rights. A lot of their commitment to pluralism probably comes from being persecuted in traditionally Muslim countries.
By contrast, fellow Pakistani physicist A.Q. Khan, who played a key role in developing the country's nuclear bomb and later confessed to spreading nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, is considered a national hero
Khaaan!!!
Spotted.
What kind of backwards country would modify their curriculum to fit religious ideals?
http://www.aolnews.com/2010/03/12/texas-removes-thomas-jefferson-from-teaching-standard/
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Yes, Dr. Abdus Salam would be a national hero here in the U.S alongside others such as Katy Perry and Tom Cruise. Quick! Name five current physicists without opening another browser tab!
A group of idiots deprives themselves of an opportunity to feel some extra national pride in what can only be described as "shitting into one's own shoes", if I were to literally translate a proverb from my native tongue. Serves them right. I wouldn't want to be in their textbooks either, I'd feel dirty.
Ezekiel 23:20
"Religious" governments are ALWAYS a bad idea.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
It was electroweak unification. Important enough.
(So far, all attempts at grand unification have failed, including Einstein's.)
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Are you saying ALL Muslims follow the Taliban? Would any of you have a problem with saying ALL Atheists are baby killers?
People can handle accidental, isolated deaths. Yes, someone dies, but there is no malicious force that caused it.
People can handle mass-death less easily, even when it's accidental (or not intentional). But things like the sinking of the Titantic, air disasters, bus accidents, and similar still disproportionately capture attention.
People cannot accept someone else who is out to kill them intentionally because of hatred or a belief system. Yes, foreign policy, resources, economics, geopolitics, and myriad other nuances are involved here, but it really is that simple at its core.
The reason there ever was a "war on terror" isn't to "funnel money to corporate buddies" — it's because, to be blunt, we don't put up with that shit, even if our response is imperfect — not to mention that Europe and the West has enjoyed US defense-by-proxy for over a half-century. The fact that war is an economic driver is incidental (even if it can be argued to be important in its own way). But make no mistake: when US policy makers of any political stripe make the decision to go to war, the thinking isn't, "Hey, this can line the pockets of my corporate buddies!! Lulz!"
But I know that you and many other readers here are cynical (and ignorant) enough to actually twist a story about Pakistan and Islam into, yet again in true topsy-turvy bizarro-world style, how the US is evil. (Same thing happened with the recent Syria Wikileaks story.) It might be amusing if it weren't so predictable, pathetic, and shameful.
this is what scares me about ebooks and digital media without physical medium in general. it becomes too easy for the 'powers that be' (PTB) to edit and revise important documents and information...and too easy for them to accuse original, true e-copies as being false works of fanatics and heretics.
Pakistan is lost cause, stop this debacle.
It is nothing but ignorance to conflate Radical Islam with Evangelical Christianity.
Yeah, we get that it fits your "All Religion Is Evil / All Religion is Anti-Science" prejudiced screed, but it's just not a valid comparison. All you're doing is trying to rile people up and/or get them to march to the drumbeats of your own bigotry, like so many Evangelical Atheists enjoy doing.
Comparing the Extremism the Fundamentalist Islamists get away with around the world to whatever drama the Fundamentalist Christians try to perpetrate is -- really -- just ridiculous. To do so means you either have an agenda, or lack education. Which is it with you?
Personally I am an atheist, but it seems that low-levels of religious belief seem to do most people little harm and some good and at least in smaller communities seem to provide a certain amount of greater good & charity which might otherwise go missing.
It would be nice if the people involved could just enjoy getting together for the sake of getting together and do charitable works because helping people is usually the right thing to do without shame-based moralizing and all the hocus pocus, but human experience seems to suggest a more Hobbesian outcome without some kind of organizational direction.
The fundies on both sides are wrong.
Both are in fact so wrong that I have a hard time telling Christian Fundies, from Islamic Fundies.
Taliban, KKK, name doesn't matter, walks like a duck quacks like a duck.
Look up Alan Turing and what he was prosecuted for by the SECULAR government.
Look up how the Catholic church has treated scientists throughout its history.
Look up the Protestants in the USofA right now to see how they are trying to hide parts of history that they don't like.
This is more about a party in power trying to re-write history LIKE MOST PARTIES IN POWER DO than it is about evil Muslims being all evil and Muslim.
Anything they can do to unwind the clock several hundreds of years is great for the rest of us. Hopefully they'll outlaw literacy soon and get to breeding out of all sense of control or reason.
The Muzzies are coming, The Muzzies are coming
Every one keep calm
They're violent and they're evil
and they mean to do us harm.
Khan is a Muslim.
Yes, and so was Dr. Abdus Salam.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Christians used to be this bad and they're getting worse again. They are becoming increasingly insulated from other ways of thinking and increasingly bigoted. This is in the US, of course, but I have no hope that it won't spread elsewhere
So yeah, Christianity is a lot better now, and Islam is still the worst, but the trend isn't good.
Play Command HQ online
The U.S. should invade Pakistan and never leave until they get their textbooks right.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
So bombing is different if the victims are abortion doctors?
The only difference is degree.
Both of these are groups that oppress women and support the use of violence to spread their own flavor of crazy.
Science and religion have never been very good friends. Even the Vatican which has its own scientists has trouble with science on occasion. The thing that strikes me as truly evil about the situation is that the fundamentalists especially are causing their own problem. The more they do this kind of thing the more young people interested in science simply become atheist or switch religion from the one they are brought up with. From the outside the rest of the world starts quoting this as yet another reason that this religion or that religion is evil in some way. The Muslim religion is just fine its the extreme fundamentalists that can be problematic. Most people just want to get up in the morning and take care of their family. That's it, all there is to it.
The other problem is that unlike current Christianity, Judaism and Islam incorporate governing of people into the religion and its practices. This makes it very difficult for a Muslim country to extricate the religion from the government. Its ingrained in everything they do in quite a few middle eastern countries. Not only that, but truthfully, I'd just as soon they keep it that way. Its part of what makes the middle east interesting to me. I just wish there was a way to get a handle on the extremists without seeming like the big bully on the block like we (the US) often do. I'm all about preserving culture while making the world a safer place for people to travel and experience that culture.
By the by, I realize that Pakistan is not the middle east, but a large population of fundamentalist Muslims live there and they make the news quite a bit, but the middle east is the ancestral home of the religion.
too easy for them to accuse original, true e-copies as being false works
There's always digital notary services to timestamp something, crypto signed documents to prove who signed it, etc.
VERY unpopular (intentionally?) but hardly technologically impossible or an inherent issue with the media. If everyone used pencils with erasers, and refused to use indelible ink, that doesn't mean paper technology is at fault.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
**NEWSFLASH**
A country that is subjugated by religious fundamentalism commits all manner of evil acts and promotes despicable bigotry and hatred.
More news at 11 !!
There are endless apologists who make endless garbage legion reasons on accepting Islam.
Its like every other religion, blah blah blah.
Its not like every other religion. The banning of Kite flying, the banning of music, the mass mutilation of women ('Its an African thing, not Islamic!, until you examine Egypt, and then examine cases into the middle east, and then discover the harsh realities), the war on education, the hatred of everyone but their own religion, and even then sometimes only their own sect.
Islamophobia is a bullshit term created at the UN. And it and the twisted fucked up human rights garbage at the UN is defined by 50+ Islamic states that work as a block to denounce everyone and anyone else. Their attempts to create global laws on blashemy and to create a shield against action against their 7th century backward, rape legalising fucked up, child molesting, retarded religion is only a pin drop ina fucking huge ocean of the shit they are trying every single day.
I have an Islamic Human Rights Organisation Shop in my Highstreet. The only fucking thing islamists can show me or anyone is how they abuse human rights on a scale no one else on the planet has done in a long time, and they do so in fucking spades. And they are fronting PR and propaganda that smoke screens and covers up an ever more despicable and intolerant religion and its activities around a globe in a modern age where that PR and propaganda by itself would make Goebbels happy.
Khan, who played a key role in developing the country's nuclear bomb and later confessed to spreading nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, is considered a national hero.
KAHNNNNNNNNNNNN!
http://www.fi.edu/learn/sci-tech/lightning-rod/lightning-rod.php?cts=benfranklin-weather-electricity ...in addition to wanting to prove that lightning was electricity, Franklin began to think about protecting people, buildings, and other structures from lightning. This grew into his idea for the lightning rod. Franklin described an iron rod about 8 or 10 feet long that was sharpened to a point at the end. He wrote, "the electrical fire would, I think, be drawn out of a cloud silently, before it could come near enough to strike..."
Wiped to finish difference and racism because everyone is noble.
Let em stay in the dark ages if that's where they want to be. The rest of the world has moved on, and so has the good doctor.
Comparing the Extremism the Fundamentalist Islamists get away with around the world to whatever drama the Fundamentalist Christians try to perpetrate is -- really -- just ridiculous.
Not really - Just a matter of degree, limited solely by how much power each group has over their respective countries... AIDS sucks more than the flu, but you don't really want to catch either of them.
But hey, I hear ya - It makes perfect sense to devote the full resources of the US government to hashing out whether or not whores... er... "young women"... should have the right to autonomy over their own bodies when it comes to reproductive health. Certainly, no fine upstanding Fundies would suggest beating people to death just because their god whispers sweet, sweet nothings to them in the dark...
Religion is a disease, which any sane person would seek to cure ASAP.
I would argue that on top of the sectarian issues in this particular case, there is a major lack scientific achievement in that region of the world. Dr. Abdus Salam is one of only two Nobel laureates from a Muslim country. Islamic Universities have a shockingly low output (only 300 out of the 1800 universities in the region have even _one_ faculty member who has ever published anything. Compare that to Western Universities where typically every faculty member will have publications.)
Part of the problem might be the rote learning paradigm that dominates in the middle east. Free inquiry and critical thinking are probably discouraged in a region dominated by so many authoritarian regimes. However, I would argue that one of the main reasons science has failed to flourish in Arab-Islamic countries is the legacy of one man: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali.
Al-Ghazali helped codify and unify several competing schools of Islamic thought, binding them around the central premise of rejecting outside influences to concentrate on spiritualism and devotion to God. While European philosophy focused on understanding the material world, al-Ghazali focused instead on the supernatural. After the Crusades destroyed the Islamic world's scientific Golden Age, al-Ghazadi's anti-scientific philosophy held sway and kept the region from experiencing the kind of Renaissance that moved Europe out of the dark ages.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
Yeah, if you piss off the Muslims, they just kill you. The Scientologists are much worse. They'll sue you and ruin you financially!
[Note: I am not an apologist for Scientology. I'm being ironic. Scientology is a goofball religion just like all the rest of them.]
Republic means the country is devided into states who have representatives involved in goverment. Large countries(empires) need some form of additional structure. Republic is on of the ways to structure an empire. Democracy is about how decisisons are made. Those representatives are selected by voters and they decide policy between each other by voting. Plus the president is selected by voters. Federalism means that the states each have their own goverments and those goverements have power. In each state those goverements are selected by voters. In some of the states policy is decided directly by voting. So the USA is a Democracy. The USA is a Republic. It is a Federation. It isn't Wigg, Communist, Socialist, or Green though.
It's really kind of easy to see who really has the agenda here with the ad hominem attack.
I got here through a series of tubes
If you read up on the relation between the Ahmadi sect and mainstream Islam, you'll find a surprising number of similarities to the LDS Church and its relation to mainstream Christianity. Both groups consider their founders to be prophets helping to support and restore the religion, but do not set up their prophets as above, or superior to the primary source of revelation (Jesus for Christianity and Muhammad for Islam). Mormons consider themselves Christians, and the Ahmadi consider themselves Muslims. And in both cases, many in the mainstream religion completely reject the sect's membership in the faith, seeing their more modern prophets as a blasphemy and persecute the sects quite significantly. In the case of the US, you have to go back to when the country was significantly more Christian in its governance to find persecution of Mormons on the scale that Ahmadi Muslims face in Pakistan.
(I imagine that the main difference in reactions for American readers is that the now-banned practice of polygamy was probably the main trigger for Mormon persecution in the US, which still offends modern American sensibilities. The argument over Ahmadiyya seems to be about the whether Ahmad's status conflicts with Muhammad's status as the final prophet, which most Americans don't care about at all.)
... but those killed by lightning are also killed by religion! After all, isn't it Zeus (or was it Mercury) that throws the bolts down to earth when he's angry?
It was quite interesting. As an atheist, while his family wasn't comfortable with the idea of him opening a tech store with someone not of their faith, I was more welcome than someone convinced of another faith. When bored, we'd often discuss his faith, and his history with it. He had come to Canada as a refugee around age 14, and eventually acquired citizenship (He deserved it--he busted his balls when it came to work and spoke better English than many born Canadians I know). The primary focus of their faith is to teach that (basically) Jihad is wrong, and that the Muslim faith is one of complete peace. A good friend of his was a long standing member of their mosque and would affirm this, as would anyone else I questioned of their faith. None of them would ever be pushy and, frankly, were a hell of a lot more fun to be around than Christians.
I, of course, never converted, but I did gain some insight into the problems of the Muslim religion and exactly why countries like Pakistan are screwed up.
I'm pissed off! i can't bear these damn "muslim" dictatator and terrorist any more all they do is screwing islam's reputation all over the world!
Not really - Just a matter of degree, limited solely by how much power each group has over their respective countries... AIDS sucks more than the flu, but you don't really want to catch either of them. But hey, I hear ya - It makes perfect sense to devote the full resources of the US government to hashing out whether or not whores... er... "young women"... should have the right to autonomy over their own bodies when it comes to reproductive health. Certainly, no fine upstanding Fundies would suggest beating people to death just because their god whispers sweet, sweet nothings to them in the dark... Religion is a disease, which any sane person would seek to cure ASAP.
Wish I could have given you a nudge with this... thank for posting.
The ones who did the deed aren't well educated people. Educated people don't entertain such discourse. .. these happen to be the less gifted people acting the only way they know.
They simply ignore the ignorants and carry on. We know who he is and what he did .
Too bad , he, like so many , does not get credit now for his work at home.
Ignorants that know nothing of his work and for whom the science don't make sense for they can't understand it.
There's gifted and not so gifted
Education is the key.
" Never argue with an idiot , they bring you down to their level and beat you with experience. "
in WWII, which saw the worst mass genocide in human history.
I think it is partially just people who are very self centered. They need everything to be about their lives. So when there is a story about things happening in other nations, they have to try to find a way to spin it around to be about the US, so it is about them. There is a story about something, good or bad, in another nation and they have to start up with how it is or is not like that in the US and so on and so forth. They continually steer the discussion back to themselves.
The other part is for some people, many of whom hang out on Slashdot, it is trendy to hate the US and to feel like they are "oppressed". So everything needs to become about how bad the US is. Another country does something bad? Try to find a way to say the US does the same thing. Another country does something good? Whine about how the US does not do that. Everything is turned in to how the US is bad because that is what they wish it to be.
All in all it equals a situation where any story about another country has people making posts to try and show the Us in a bad light, rather than discussing the story.
The most important difference between say, christians and muslims is one of those groups still reads it to the letter today. Christianity started getting over that after the crusades. Islam is still living in what, the 600's or so?
Most religions started with tenants built around conquering other religious groups. Back then it was simply a matter of survival. Most religions either did it or were conquered and destroyed as a result. What we have left now are the "winners", but a few of them are still fighting, with Islam containing the most public, radical, and fundamental batch of nuts of the bunch. And they aren't the least bit concerned about behaving like 600AD barbarians to do it. And the rest of the world tends to frown on that now. These "fundamentalist clerics" have a lot in common with vile little dictators that are using religion as a means of creating power and influence. I can't help but wonder what percentage of them is a real religious leader and what percentage are just taking advantage of their religion and their influence.
And most of these religions' holy books flat out say that the world belongs to them and everyone else can either join or it's ok to kill them. That wasn't meant for the modern world. I have zero respect for that attitude now. Anyone that agrees with a book that says it's their god-given right to force me to do something or kill me for not doing it deserves that Hellfire comin' down their cave.
Unfortunately it gives the rest of the more modern/moderate/reasonable followers a really bad rep. I think right now the fastest way to get discriminated against in the US would be to make your Islamic religion known. Moreso than race etc. A lot of that is the govt P.R. engine at work, but you can't place all the blame on them. You're just going to get a lot of bad bias when you're associated with nuts that like to blow up large groups of uninvolved innocents, particularly from the part of that pool of innocents that would prefer to keep breathing. The moderates need to do something about their fundamentalist relations. Either smack some sense into them or split. The extremists are the one to blame for the bias, not the extremists' targets. All I hear are the moderates complaining about the public grouping them together. They are a group. They are a part of the group, and they either need to do something, affect change within the group, or leave it. "Guilt-by-association" is impossible to dodge. So far of all the religious conversations I've had with followers of Islam, every one of them still thinks the bad light that shines on them is 100% the fault of the world, they don't see the root of the problem, and aren't in any hurry to do anything about it.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
would admit to having feelings!
Everyone who's commented here.
Except you.
...but then again, you probably do "give a shit", or else you wouldn't have taken the time to post your comment in a vain attempt to persuade others to not "give a shit."
Meanwhile a delegation of American Christian Fundamentalists are said to be going on a fact finding mission to Pakistan to see how they did it.So that they can repeat the process in the United States only for Darwin and his book The Origin OF Species.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Comparing the Extremism the Fundamentalist Islamists get away with around the world to whatever drama the Fundamentalist Christians try to perpetrate is -- really -- just ridiculous
So, let's not learn anything from the past then? And by the past I mean of course the Crusades and the Dark Ages. Fundamentalist anything is detrimental to the growth of a peaceful, progressive society.
Having been raised Christian, I would like to agree that my inherited religion is the nobler one, but I feel it is necessary to point out that a) there is a lot of equally ludicrous effort in the United States [q.v. young-earth creationism, Sarah Palin who does the speaking-in-tongues bit, anti-evolution activities, etc.] and b) supposedly Christian nations have perpetrated warfare and genocide on other people at the behest of their holiest teachings [q.v. Deuteronomy chapters 7 and 20, The Crusades, and the invasion of Iraq]. Conflating the two is not ridiculous at all. On the contrary. As an exercise in introspection, it should trigger some soul searching in terms of teaching and foreign policy.
Mod parent up.
I think I've heard of this! The terrorists have finally found a way to weaponize Michael Jackson's disease!
I, for one, am investing in HEPA filters!
Germany = Catholic, Russia = Orthodox.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
AIDS vs the flu: I think you gave a great example of how "just a matter of degrees" can be a significant difference indeed.
Alexander Abad-Santos writes that in any other country, the late Dr. Abdus Salam would be a national hero: he's the Nobel laureate in physics who laid the groundwork for the biggest physics discovery in the past 30 years--the Higgs boson.
Seriously? ANY OTHER country? There are American Nobel laureates every year, and they are not typically considered national heroes. I bet 98% of Americans can't name a single US Nobel laureate from the last ten years (without the aid of reference materials). I can't.
-- QED
It is the same problem pakistan has.
Just wait until a US political leader announces that he or she is an atheist, then watch how quickly that person gets erased from political life.
But those crazy religious people over there in Oogaboogastan are totally worse than our crazy religious people. Totally.
Whenever I'm in a discussion with someone about how the world should be and they make the classic mistake of assuming that humans are fundamentally good and that it's government/law/corporations which drag us down, I look to religion first for my counter-examples. Here's another real winner and more evidence in favour of the fact that many human beings are just a potent mix of "coward", "stupid" and "evil".
What is the source of this story? I'm a Pakistani and I'm proud of Dr. Adbus Salam. Pakistan Government has recognized him with following awards:
Sitara-e-Pakistan for contribution to science in Pakistan (1959)
Pride of Performance Medal and Award (1959)
Nishan-e-Imtiaz for outstanding performance in Scientific projects in Pakistan (1979)
The only difference is degree.
Incorrect, Hater.
The guys (or is it guy? seriously, this has happened... how many times in your lifetime?) who blow up abortion clinics are nutjobs who, if they weren't exploding an abortion clinic "for Christ" would be blowing up a Stop-N-Shop for Thor or setting fire to a Civil War statue because it's Tuesday. And at those few-and-far-between times when it DOES happen, the leaders of every Christian denomination typically condemn it, distancing themselves and their sects as far as possible from the psycho. Look it up.
Islamist Extremists blow up buildings, torture women, and stone gays not *despite* their leaders' teachings, but *because* of them. These are not crazies who took a verse or two from a holy book and twisted its meaning, these are jihadists participating in a campaign of institutionalized violence. And when they do, as the body count grows, the silence from the kinder, gentler Muslim community is almost as deafening as the rants from the Wahabi mullahs.
Christianity and Islam went through a despicable and barbarous period of religious violence in the Middle Ages. Christianity grew out of it. The world is still waiting on Islam. To equate in any qualitative or quantitative way the violence from the "extremist" wings of these religions in the modern era is to admit to bigotry or ignorance.
Germany = statist ersatz-religion, Russia = statist ersatz-religion
But in fact, the WW2 is mostly remarkable for the death rate (i.e. deaths per unit time). By raw body count, the most bloodthirsty regime in history was China under Mao.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Quantum electrodynamics came first, you can hardly unify QED, QCD and the weak force, before QED been inverted. Actually Dr Adbus Salam with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon_Glashow , unified QED with the weak force. Grand unification hasn't been done correctly, although alams model with Jogesh Pati, SU(4) by SU(2)_left by SU(2)_right by U(1), is still very well regarded as a potential grand unification model.
These Pakistanis and Indians are a step above flinging poop at each other.
Haven't you heard that America is controlled by the Religious Right?
And that the vast majority of Muslims are good peaceful people?
By that logic America is more in the grip of extremists than any Muslim country. So there's some problem somewhere...
Set aside the religious fundamentalist aspect of the thing, and what you see is totalitarianism in action. Indoctrination is so deep that the people fully sanction their own oppression. It's a nationalistic form of Stockholm Syndrome. Every powerful regime uses religious and nationalistic pretenses to make heretics, infidels, and apostates out of the most rational, individualistic, and liberal people in the society. Under the hypnosis of a culture that promotes alienation and fear, the mob gleefully hunts down and tears apart all independent-minded individuals.
Westerners forget that for much of the world it is nearly impossible to cultivate a modern, rational, humanist intellect.
-- thinkyhead software and media
This is why science in the Muslim world stagnated after only a brief period of enlightenment.
It succumbed to the pointless, rigid, intolerant totalitarianism of fundamentalist religion.
Where this is relaxed, wonderful things happen, such as Dr. Abdus Salam's work.
But then the sticky mire of the mullahs overwhelms it, stifling it, sucking it under and suffocating it.
Um. Actually, Germany = Lutheran, for the most part.
Pirate Party UK
I had always though that Stalin had a lock on the most murdered... however there are a lot of different ways to account for those killed including direct genocide and policies directly resulting in the deaths of millions. Stalin rates in from 6-60 million depending on how you measure and Mao rates at a truly whopping 49-78 million. That is some busy little yellow guy (I can say that, I was born in Taipei :-)
Obama gives to a world a new wars and stuxnet and flame. ;-)
Assange gives to a world new democracy.
What is the US verdict? Obama has got Nobel Price of Peace
What a joke...
"being in a shit-hole place with shit education where everyone has been miserably poor for centuries" - and what CAUSED all of those things, idiot? The PEOPLE who live there - and the fact that they are MUSLIMS helped! You idiot!
"any muslim you meet in the states is almost certainly a non-violent person"
Nice try, nobody's buying it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnJBW49afzg
Is that good enough for you? Maybe those people "aren't real muslims", probably... Did I mention that you were an IDIOT?
Muslims are the scum of the Earth, you obviously know little about them. Where have you been?
Slashdot is for 'tech' stuff. We shouldn't rubbish religions, even if we agree they are rubbish. Why do some communities evolve some religions? What happens when incompatible beliefs clash? Why do new religions keep starting, just as the old ones get sensible? Might fundamentalist religions have value in post-meltdown communities? If all these were (defective) operating systems, we might make more sense of things.
So No true scotsman is how you choose to respond? Pretty telling, when you can't even come up with a better line than that.
In the middles ages islam was new, and actually far ahead of being civilized of european christianity. Where do you think we got 0?
Why are we supporting Pakistan with foreign aid when it is clear the country, as a whole, is diametrically opposed to what we in the West stand for? Would it make more sense to change sides and support India? India is the largest democratic republic in population. India also has faced terrorism from foreign terrorists. India also believes technology and learning is the key for future survival of itself. India and America seem to be somewhat compatible politically for now.
So remind me again why Pakistan is a "strategic ally" for the US and not India?
Its really fascinating to see how so many people (supposedly "fact" oriented" and "have logical minds" ) have published firey opinions and made very interesting judgments about things which they neither know about nor have actually read.
I would have hoped that at least on slashdot there were some logical minds and independant thinkers that get facts and think for themselves before writing and are not just echos for what the media wants them to think.
Did any of you actually bother to read what you critisized. If you can accept an amazon review from me on a book that I never read, then then allow yourselves to make such "reviews" of things you did not even read once.
My comment: Read yourself, read the thing and not about it and be factual. Do not let others or the media intimidate you or socially force you into the way they want you to be.
Wow I was totally wrong. Republic means so much less than I thought it did. Why anyone say the united states is a republic and not a democracy is wierd. By their very nature most democracies would be republics.
Have they really?
Perhaps they just tend to make a different sort of mistake in the media these days, or maybe they're better at covering it up.
I suppose it's a lucky thing that other religious groups aren't causing problems.
Thankfully, they're tackling the problem at the source by ensuring people get a proper education around such issues, all around the world.
Welcome to Texas...
Sadly there are those that would rewrite history and text books to their own ends.
We seem to to be at war with critical thinking AND thinking with a memory many levels.
It is not new I recall Nixon running for pores and my Dad remarked remember what he
and the McCarthy bunch did. "Are you now or have you ever been a communist....". None
of his history was visited by the medics. And we know that turned out!
Consider the astonishment to a jury . Only consider what is in evidence. Same for patients ....
Education is both learning history AND critical thinking.
Well, somebody had to say it...
http://www.acetonestudio.com
To "clock" Stalin at 60 million, you have to do various kinds of tricks like counting "demographic losses" from Holodomor (i.e. not counting just the people who died directly, but also their unborn children that would have been born otherwise).
http://sueliz1.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/catholic-church-no-longer-swears-by-truth-of-the-bible/
Casteism
This may help:
The estimates of the deaths caused by communism are staggering indeed: 65 million in China, 20 million in the former Soviet Union, two million each in Cambodia and North Korea, 1.7 in Africa, one million each in Vietnam and Eastern Europe and 150,000 in Latin America. -- Human Events review of The Black Book of Communism
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
They are becoming increasingly insulated from other ways of thinking and increasingly bigoted
Pot, meet kettle.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
How do you figure? It doesn't take a bigot to recognize a bigot.
Play Command HQ online