On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 13:47:18 -0400, Argyle argyle@nospam wrote:

On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 09:58:46 -0700, "Mr Wizzard" wrote:


"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
. ..
On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 08:27:11 -0700, "Mr Wizzard"
wrote:

Coupla Q's:

What have muslims done to :
contrubute to the medical industry?
contribute to the Spaces Sciences ?
contribute to Environmental conservation?
contribute to agrricultural research ?
contribure to Internalional Food aid ?
contribute to Computer Science research ?
comtribute to religious tollerance ?
(i.e., can *I*, a white Amarican take
a vacation and visit Mecca?)

Hate to tell you this, but Moslems (or Muslims - take your pick) along
with the Hindus, invented the concept of zero. There is some dispute
about who invented it first, but it would appear that it may have been
a case of simultaneous invention, but some evidence indicates that the
Hindus came to it much later than the Pan-Arabian ethnic grouping.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 is called the Arab/Hindu (or Hindu/Arabic - all
depends on who you talk to) number system and without it, you wouldn't
have any of the above.

Curiously enough, it first appeared in the 1,000 BC in Babylon or as
we know it Iraq,by Babylonian mathematicians and/or astronomers. The
first "zero" was actually a blank so it would look something like 1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1_ 11 12, etc. It went from a blank to " at some point
(it's been a while - I'm doing this from memory). Eventually, sometime
around the 1st Century BC, a proper zero was developed, but went
through several iterations until it settled down to what we now know.

Just one small correction. The Islam religion started with Mohammad in the
7th century. Thus the above assertions do not match the time line.

Correction noted/point taken - Arabs and Moslems appeared
in/around/about 630 AD and Islam is actually an offshoot of Assyrian
Christianity. Islam was a unifying force in what was essentially a
military campaign of conquest.

My point, perhaps poorly made, was that in terms of ethnic heritage,
the Arabs, now mostly Muslim, did indeed contribute to the rise of
Western Civilization.

Later,

Tom