Science and Religion in Islam: The Link.

682)The Neutrino Is A Particle That Appears To Be Closer To The Interface Between Matter And Spirit Than Any Other Known Particle In Nature. Can It Travel Faster Than The Speed Of Light, Defying Einsteinian Physics? Quotes From Noble Quran And Blogpost Four Hundred.

2011-11-01T17:47:00.006-04:00

Quran, Chapter70 verse 4: The angels and the spirit ascend to Him in a day, the measure of which is fifty thousand years.

Quran, Chapter 32, verses 5-6: He rules all affairs from the heavens to the earth. Then they all go back up to him in one day, whose measure is a thousand years by your reckoning...

"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)

"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)

"The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims. Exchanges of knowledge between institutions and nations and the widening of man's intellectual horizons are essentially Islamic concepts. The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry. I can not illustrate this interdependence of spiritual inspiration and learning better than by recounting a dialogue between Ibn Sina, the philosopher, and Abu Said Abu -Khyar, the Sufi mystic. Ibn Sina remarked, "Whatever I know, he sees". To which Abu Said replied," Whatever I see, he knows"."(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)

"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)

"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)

"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"Every particle of the Creation has a share of the Command of God, because every creature shares a part of the Command of God through which it has come to be there and by virtue of which it remains in being and the light of the Command ofGod shines in it. Understand this!"(Abu Yakub Al Sijistani, 10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971, Kashf al-Mahjub("Unveiling of the Hidden"))

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Charles Krauthammer's article in the National Post spoke of a possible incredible breakthrough in Physics, the discovery of a minute particle in nature, the almost massless neutrino, that travels faster than the speed of light. If true this observation by the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) would upend Einsteinian Physics upon which all Physics of the past 100 years is based:

Charles Krauthammer, National Post
Monday, Oct. 10, 2011

“We don’t allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,” says the bartender.
A neutrino walks into a bar.
— Joke circulating on the Internet

The world as we know it is on the brink of disintegration, on the verge of dissolution. No, I’m not talking about the collapse of the Euro, of international finance, of the Western economies, of the democratic future, of the unipolar moment, of the American dream, of French banks, of Greece as a going concern, of Europe as an idea, of Pax Americana.

I am talking about something far more important. Which is why it made only the back pages of your newspaper, if it made it at all. Scientists at CERN (the European high-energy physics consortium) have announced the discovery of a particle that can travel faster than light.

Neutrinos fired 454 miles from a supercollider outside Geneva to an underground laboratory in Gran Sasso, Italy, took less time (60 nanoseconds less) than light to get there. Or so the physicists think. Or so they measured. Or so they have concluded after repeatedly checking for every possible artifact and experimental error.

The implications of such a discovery are so mind boggling, however, that these same scientists immediately requested that other labs around the world try to replicate the experiment. Something must have been wrong to account for a result that, if we know anything about the universe, is impossible.
And that’s the problem. It has to be impossible because, if not, everything we know about the universe is wrong.

The fundamental axiom of Einstein’s theory of relativity is the absolute prohibition on speed faster than light. Einstein’s predictions about how time slows and mass increases as one approaches the speed of light have been verified by a mountain of experimental evidence. As velocity increases, mass approaches infinity and time slows to zero, making it progressively and, ultimately, infinitely difficult to achieve light speed. Which is why nothing does. And nothing ever has.

Until two weeks ago last Thursday.

That’s when the results were announced. To oversimplify grossly: If the Gran Sasso scientists had a plate to record the arrival of the neutrinos and a super-powerful telescope to peer (through the Alps!) directly into the lab in Geneva from which they were being fired, the Gran Sasso guys would have “heard” the neutrinos clanging against the plate before they observed the Geneva guys squeeze the trigger on the neutrino gun.

Sixty nanoseconds before, to be precise. Wrap your mind around that one.

It’s as if someone told you that yesterday at drive time Topeka was released from Earth’s gravity. These things don’t happen. Natural laws don’t just expire between shifts at McDonald’s.

Not that there aren’t already mysteries in physics. Neutrinos themselves are ghostly particles that travel through nearly everything unimpeded. (Thousands are traversing your body as you read this.) But that is simplicity itself compared to quantum mechanics, whose random arbitrariness so offended Einstein that he famously objected that God does not play dice with the universe.

Aphorisms don’t trump reality, however. They are but a frail, poignant protest against a nature that disdains the most cherished human notions of order and elegance, truth and beauty.

But if quantum mechanics was a challenge to human sensibilities, this pesky Swiss-Italian neutrino is their undoing. It means that Einstein’s relativity — a theory of uncommon beauty upon which all of physics has been built for 100 years — is wrong. Not just inaccurate. Not just flawed. But deeply, fundamentally, indescribably wrong.

It means that the “standard model” of subatomic particles that stands at the centre of all modern physics is wrong.
Nor does it stop there. This will not just overthrow physics. Astronomy and cosmology measure time and distance in the universe on the assumption of light speed as the cosmic limit. Their foundations will shake as well.

It cannot be. Yet, this is not a couple of guys in a garage peddling cold fusion. This is no crank wheeling a perpetual-motion machine into the patent office. These are the best researchers in the world using the finest measuring instruments, having subjected their data to the highest levels of scrutiny, including six months of cross-checking by 160 scientists from 11 countries.
But there must be some error. Because otherwise everything changes. We shall need a new physics. A new cosmology. New understandings of past and future, of cause and effect. Then shortly and surely, new theologies.

Why? Because you can’t have neutrinos getting kicked out of taverns they have not yet entered.

Washington Post Writer’s Group

Subsequent articles indicate that there may have been errors in the interpretation of the results of the original CERN experiment:
http://m.smh.com.au/world/science/take-two-on-light-speed-rethink-20111029-1mp93.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/30/cern_re_running_neutrino_test/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/10/31/science-neutrinos-faster-than-light-cern.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/science/the-elusive-neutrino-2-letters.html

Stay tuned, the final chapter in this fascinating story about one component of the structure of truth(as the Shia Ismaili Muslims see it anyway) has yet to unfold.

Related Articles:

The 19 Grand Ideas Of Science: What Is The Universe Made Up Of And How Does It Operate? Quotes Of Aga Khan IV And Others.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/11/501-19-grand-ideas-of-science-what-is.html

No. 5, 'Ayats'(Signs) in the Universe series: Speeding angels; the relativity of time; everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/289no-5-ayatssigns-in-universe-series.html

The Large Hadron Collider Collection Of Posts On Easy Nash's Blog: A 10 Billion Euro Gizmo That Could Unlock The Secrets Of Genesis.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/03/598the-large-hadron-collider-collection.html

Easy Nash

http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006) The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

681)The Resumption Of Blogging after A 9-Month Layoff Gives me An Opportunity To Continue A Much-Cherished Retirement Project I Began In March 2006

2011-10-31T04:07:00.003-04:00

As I resume blogging after a 9-month layoff I am pleasantly surprised at the staying power of my Blog on the link between Science and Religion in Islam. In the NetworkedBlogs application on Facebook I have amassed about 1030 followers. This is not counting the numerous followers who follow me through search engines like Google, Yahoo and others. When I decided to take a break from blogging on February 6th 2011 there were around 600 followers on this NetworkedBlogs application. 430 new followers chose to follow the Blog even though there have been no new blogposts since then:

http://www.networkedblogs.com/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link

My Blog continues to be Number 8 among the Top 50 Religion Blogs on the NetworkedBlogs application on Facebook, which showcases over half a million Blogs written by Bloggers from all 4 corners of the planet:

http://www.networkedblogs.com/topic/religion

As always I am deeply grateful to all those tens of thousands of followers from 6 continents who follow and gain some inspiration from my Blog on the link between Science and Religion in Islam. I hope future blogposts continue to sustain your interest and attract even more followers to this site. I began writing my Blog in March 2006 as a retirement project:

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/12/533a-blog-begun-as-retirement-project.html

and this is a collection of posts describing the ethos of the Blog:

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/463a-collection-of-posts-describing.html

My last Blogpost on February 6th 2011 included a very large number of links to individual posts on the Blog through links to collections of posts on a particular topic; it was the ultimate summary of my 680-post Blog:

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2011/02/680a-680-post-blog-summarizedthe-story.html

Easy Nash

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

680)A 680-Post Blog Summarized:The Story Of My Blog Told Through Collections Of Posts To Date: Winter, Spring And Summer Reading For Anyone Interested

2011-02-06T21:19:00.005-05:00

In the beginning there was nothing and then, ex nihilo, there was Blogpost 1. Now there is Blogpost 680. I was not exactly sure where I was going with my Blog when I started out in March 2006 but every Blog should have a reason to exist, a scaffolding within which it can be constructed and also the ability to diversify into other areas when the occasion calls for it:

A Blog Begun As A Retirement Project "To Prevent My Brain From Turning Into Mush":No 13 On The Top 50 Science Blogs among 125,000 NetworkedBlogs.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/12/533a-blog-begun-as-retirement-project.html

A Collection Of Posts Describing The Ethos Of My Blog On The Link Between Science And Religion In Islam; Quotes Of Aga Khans And Others.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/463a-collection-of-posts-describing.html

I am lucky to be living in the present era because we all have online access to information and knowledge of the highest scholarly standard and I take full advantage of this wisdom to advance the case of my Blog on the link between Science and Religion in Islam:

Blogpost Five Hundred IS Blogpost Four Hundred, The High-Octane Fuel That Powers My Blog On The Link Between Science And Religion In Islam
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html

A collection of speeches by Aga Khans IV and III, source of some of my doctrinal material on science, religion, creation, knowledge and intellect
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/05/365a-collection-of-speeches-by-aga.html

A Collection of Posts on my Blog from the Institute of Ismaili Studies, Aga Khan Development Network and Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/467a-collection-of-posts-on-my-blog.html

A Collection Of Posts Describing The Philosophical, Theological, Doctrinal, Historical, Scientific And Esoteric Underpinnings Of My Blog.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/02/568a-collection-of-posts-describing.html

My Favourite Cosmologist-Philosopher-Theologian-Poets: Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani, Nasir Khusraw And Ikhwan Al-Safa; A Collection Of Posts On My Blog.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/11/428my-favourite-cosmologist-philosopher.html

Along the way two of many topics that have consumed my interest are the golden ages of Astronomy and Particle Physics we currently find ourselves in. I find it mentally orgasmic to study, on the one hand, one discipline dealing with the largest and most distant objects in the universe(galaxies: recently very clear telescopic pictures show us a galaxy 10 billion light years away in the early universe; that would be a 1 with 23 zeroes in front of it, kilometers away from us, an unimagineable distance). The burgeoning array of very powerful ground- and space-based telescopes have made all of this possible. On the other hand we have the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva smashing together protons at close to the speed of light, releasing the most miniscule subatomic particles that existed by themselves only a fraction of a second after the Big Bang 14 billion years ago:

A Collection of Posts on Astronomy; Quotes of Noble Quran, Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan III, Nasir Khusraw, Abu Yakub Al Sijistani and Aristotle
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/456a-collection-of-posts-on-astronomy.html

The Large Hadron Collider Collection Of Posts On Easy Nash's Blog: A 10 Billion Euro Gizmo That Could Unlock The Secrets Of Genesis.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/03/598the-large-hadron-collider-collection.html

I also highlight on my Blog the seminal contributions of a few scientists, both Muslim and non-Muslim, whose work I find mesmerizing as they set about answering the fundamental questions: "What is the Universe made up of and how does it operate?":

A Collection of Posts on this Blog about Great Scientists; Quote of Aga Khan IV(update)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/437a-collection-of-blogposts-on-great.html

The Ikhwan Al-Safa(Brethern Of Purity), The Original Encyclopedists: Balancing Revelation And Reason; A Collection Of Posts; Quotes Of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/05/483the-ikhwan-al-safabrethern-of-purity.html

Ibn Al-Haytham(AlHazen), Father Of Modern Optics, Mathematician, Astronomer, Physicist, Philosopher: A Collection Of Posts; Quote Of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/10/418alykhan-velshi-on-ismaili-mail.html

A Collection of Posts on Charles Darwin,a Scientist Way Ahead of His Time; Dynamic vs Static Creation; Quotes of Noble Quran, Aga Khans IV and III
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/02/450a-collection-of-posts-on-charles.html

Different aspects of the relationship between Science and Religion also caught my interest along with earlier well-established knowledge societies in the Muslim world:

The Peter McKnight Collection Of Posts On Science And Religion; Read Them Along With Blogpost Four Hundred; Quotes of Aga Khans IV and III
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/441the-peter-mcknight-collection-of.html

Knowledge Society: A Collection of Posts on the Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain; Quotes of Aga Khan IV.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/438knowledge-society-collection-of.html

Many scientific developments, in addition to Astronomy and Particle Physics, have found their way onto my Blog and all of these have opened up for us a mind-boggling window into the marvels of God's creation:

A collection of posts about life: tiniest matter, supernovae, living cells, water, proteins, blood, photosynthesis, etc;Quotes of Aga Khans+others.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/01/435a-collection-of-posts-about-life.html

A Collection of Posts on Symmetry in Nature, as a Product of the Human Mind, Geometry and Harmonious Mathematical Reasoning; Quotes of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/454a-collection-of-posts-on-symmetry-in.html

Ayats(Signs) In The Universe Series:A Collection of Seven+ Posts;Quotes of Noble Quran, Prophet Muhammad, Aga Khans, Nasir Khusraw + Al Sijistani
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/460ayatssigns-in-universe-seriesa.html

A Collection Of Posts On The Much-Visited And Wildly Popular ISMAILI MAIL Website Entitled 'BBC: Science And Islam-The Power Of Doubt'.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/12/536-collection-of-posts-on-much-visited.html

In the end, however, this is a Blog about the relationship between Science and Religion in Islam and there is no shortage of information in the Shia Nizari Ismaili Muslim literature about the fundamental Islamic concept of Monoreality, around which my Blog revolves. My three favourite Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-theologian-poets, Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani and Nasir Khusraw, both hailing from eastern Persia about a thousand years ago, and the Ikhwan Al-Safa(Brethern of Purity), hailing from Basra around twelve hundred years ago, use the elaborate languages of Philosophy, Theology, Poetry, Allegory and Mysticism to masterfully describe this intimate relationship:

'Ismaili Philosophy' From The Internet Encyclopedia Of Philosophy, By Professor Azim Nanji; Quotes Of Aga Khans IV And Others
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/03/578ismaili-philosophy-from-internet.html

A Collection Of Posts Describing The Philosophical, Theological, Doctrinal, Historical, Scientific And Esoteric Underpinnings Of My Blog.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/02/568a-collection-of-posts-describing.html

My Favourite Cosmologist-Philosopher-Theologian-Poets: Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani, Nasir Khusraw And Ikhwan Al-Safa; A Collection Of Posts On My Blog.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/11/428my-favourite-cosmologist-philosopher.html

No self-respecting Blog that I write could ever be complete without the mention of my and my extended family's origins, both remote and recent, as well as their life stories. The truism 'you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family, you're stuck with them, whoever they are, wherever they are, whether you have ever met them or not and whether you like them or not' is a more all-encompassing description than talking scientifically about the sharing of genes and bloodlines:

A Collection Of Posts On My Blog About All Things KESHAVJEE; Quotes from Blogpost Four Hundred.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/11/505a-collection-of-posts-on-my-blog.html

My political leanings are also revealed through various posts mixed in with the main topic of my Blog; some of these posts are a magnet for large numbers of readers from six continents to my Blog(a good number of prospective Canadians actually study Canada's magnificent new Citizenship Guide directly from my Blog) and are also designed to push the hot buttons of an obnoxious coreligionist or two:

The Canadian Conservative Government Featured On Easy Nash's Blog: Rt Hon Stephen Harper, Hon Jason Kenney Et Al; A Collection Of Posts
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/03/592the-canadian-conservative-government.html

A Collection Of Posts On My Blog Relating To The Stephen Harper Government's Magnificent New Citizenship Guide; Quotes Of Minister Kenney Et Al
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/03/576a-collection-of-posts-on-my-blog.html

Having Purged Myself Of The Putrefaction Of Liberalism + Socialism Here Is A Collection Of Posts Coursing Nourishing Conservatism Through My Veins
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/06/489having-purged-myself-of-putrefaction.html

Professor Salim Mansur, Provocative, Fearless, Definitely No Shrinking Violet And Not A Jamal Public Pinko Either; A Collection Of Posts.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/03/595professor-salim-mansur-provocative.html

A Collection Of Posts By Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, World-Renowned Physics Professor And Disciple Of 1979 Physics Nobel Laureate Abdus Salaam
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/461a-collection-of-posts-on-pervez.html

A Collection Of Posts Honouring Courageous Sisters in Religion:Irshad Manji,Yasmin Alibhai-Brown,the Redoubtable Moghul,Sheema Khan and Sheela B.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/462a-collection-of-posts-honouring-our.html

Whenever I take a break from Blogging, or develop a mental block, I try to leave a personal selection of posts for the benefit of my readership while I am away and my current post, Blogpost 599, will be one such example:

Summer, Fall and Winter Reading For Those Who Are Interested: My Choice Of The Top 50 Posts In My 500-post Blog
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/499summer-fall-and-winter-reading-for.html

Summer Reading For Those Who Are Interested; My Choice Of My Top Collections Of Posts On My 491-Post Blog
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/07/491summer-reading-for-those-who-are.html

Fall And Winter Reading For Those Who Are Interested: My Choice Of The Top 50 Posts On My 427-Post Blog.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/11/427fall-and-winter-reading-for-those.html

A Post About Collections of Posts And A Collection Of Posts About Collections Of Posts.........; Quote of Anonymous.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/465a-post-about-collections-of-posts.html

A Collection Of Posts About My Choice Of My Favourite Posts, Off-Topic Posts and Sundry Things; Quote Of Anonymous
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/464a-collection-of-posts-about-my.html

The above compilation of collections of posts contains a very large number of, but not all, the 680 posts that make up my Blog on the link between Science and Religion in Islam. In order to find the orphan posts that do not fit into any particular collection you will need to read the entire Blog from start to finish and pick them out yourself.

In conclusion my Blog description sums it all up to my satisfaction:

"This blog contains my thoughts on the above, reflecting the tradition of Shia Nizari Ismaili Islam: The material universe is part of the structure of truth, the ultimate nature of which it is the goal of religion to reach(monoreality). Among other things this blog asks two questions, what is the universe made up of and how does it operate? The answer to these questions finds its way onto a continuum of knowledge ranging from rationally-acquired knowledge to transcendental knowledge of the divine.

The signature post of my blog, Blogpost Four Hundred, quotes of Aga Khan IV and others, forms a solid doctrinal underpinning to my blog:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Quote of the Blog:"The Quran itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation"(Aga Khan IV, Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007).

This is what drives my blog: The Prophet Mohammed said that the first(and only) thing that was originated, through the Divine Command or Will, by the Absolutely Transcendent God, was Intellect(Aql). Intellect(from which all else emanates) provides 'tayyid' or inspiration to Natiq(Speaking Prophet, of whom there were six great ones) and Soul; Natiq composes('talif') a scripture made up of words and sentences from this inspiration, and Soul composes('tarkib') a universe made up of matter from this inspiration. This is what forms the basis of the link between science and religion. The compositions of Natiq and Soul are equivalent(both called 'ayats' or 'signs') and each contains Intellect wrapped within it. The Asas(Founder) interprets('tawil') the compositions of the Natiq and Soul, unincorporating them to uncover Intellect in its pure glory.

My blog is constructed and conceived within a scaffolding of the Al Sijistani-Khusraw cosmological doctrine(identifying the four wellsprings of knowledge: Intellect, Soul, Natiq and Asas), allowing for the discoveries of modern, empirical science to fit neatly into its overall structure. Abu Yakub Al Sijistani and Nasir Khusraw were Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-theologian-poets who lived during the period of the 14th to 18th Fatimid Ismaili Imam-Caliphs in Egypt around a thousand years ago."

Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html
In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

679)Shi‘i Interpretations of Islam by Nasir al-Din Tusi: Three Treatises on Islamic Theology and Eschatology; from the Institute of Ismaili Studies.

2011-01-31T10:41:00.004-05:00

"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)

"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)

"Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly"(Aga Khan IV, Toronto, Canada, 8th June 2005)

"Quran Symposium:....a reflection of how Islam's revelation, with its challenge to man's innate gift of quest and reason, became a powerful impetus for a new flowering of human civilisation.This programme is also an opportunity for achieving insights into how the discourse of the Qur'an-e-Sharif, rich in parable and allegory, metaphor and symbol, has been an inexhaustible well-spring of inspiration, lending itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations.In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, Institute of Ismaili Studies, October 2003, London, U.K.)

"In sum the process of creation can be said to take place at several levels. Ibda represents the initial level - one transcends history, the other creates it. The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy. Though they require linguistic and rational categories for definition, they represent elements of a whole, and a true understanding of God must also take account of His creation. Such a synthesis is crucial to how the human intellect eventually relates to creation and how it ultimately becomes the instrument for penetrating through history the mystery of the unknowable God implied in the formulation of tawhid."(Azim Nanji, Director, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, U.K., 1998)

"The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)

"The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims. Exchanges of knowledge between institutions and nations and the widening of man's intellectual horizons are essentially Islamic concepts. The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry. I can not illustrate this interdependence of spiritual inspiration and learning better than by recounting a dialogue between Ibn Sina, the philosopher, and Abu Said Abu -Khyar, the Sufi mystic. Ibn Sina remarked, "Whatever I know, he sees". To which Abu Said replied," Whatever I see, he knows"."(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)

"The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine Will"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"Thus there was an absolute need for the Divine Word's revelation, to Mohammed himself, a man like the others, of God's person and of his relations to the Universe which he had created. Once man has thus comprehended the essence of existence, there remains for him the duty, since he knows the absolute value of his own soul, of making for himself a direct path which will constantly lead his individual soul to and bind it with the universal Soul of which the Universe is, as much of it as we perceive with our limited visions, one of the infinite manifestations. Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul. Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"According to a famous hadith of the Prophet Muhammad: The first(and only) thing created by God was the Intellect ('aql)(circa 632CE)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

"In the first four chapters, he establishes the intellectual groundwork by exploring the basic issues of human origin and destination, existence and non-existence, perfection and deficiency, the relationship between the corporeal and spiritual worlds, the hidden and the manifest, the nature of time and space, etc."

Shi‘i Interpretations of Islam: Three Treatises on Islamic Theology and Eschatology

Dr Sayyad Jalal Badakhchani I. B. Tauris Publishers
in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London 2010ISBN (Hardback): Hardback ISBN: 9781848855946

Synopsis
The celebrated 13th-century Persian scholar Nasir al-Din Tusi (1201-1274) was one of the most prominent Muslim scholars and scientists of the medieval era. Tusi dedicated himself from an early age to the search for knowledge and truth. In the course of his long and distinguished career, first under the patronage of the Ismailis at their fortresses in Persia and later in service of the conquering Mongols, he produced over 150 works on a variety of subjects from theology and philosophy to mathematics and astronomy.

In this publication, Dr Jalal Badakhchani brings together critical editions and English translations of three shorter Ismaili works of Tusi, namely Solidarity and Dissociation (Tawalla wa tabarra), Desideratum of the Faithful (Matlub al-mu’minin) and Origin and Destination(Aghaz wa anjam). In these treatises, Tusi provides concise philosophical interpretations of key motifs in Ismaili thought, with special reference to the existential condition of human beings, their primordial origin and nature, their earthly existence and their destiny in the Hereafter.

The Tawalla wa tabarra is grounded in the integral notion of solidarity and dissociation, based on a tradition attributed to Prophet Muhammad: “ Religion is love and hatred for the sake of God”. Tusi takes solidarity with the Imams and dissociation from anything alien to them as an indispensable condition for the seekers of truth. In the manner that Tusi describes it, this principle corresponds to the Shi‘i principle of walaya, the first pillar of Shi‘i Ismaili Islam as articulated by the Fatimid chief da‘i al-Qadi al-Numan in the opening chapter of his Da‘a’im al-Islam. Essentially, walaya requires recognition of the Imams descended from ‘Ali b.Abi Talib, and the demonstration of absolute devotion and obedience to them. Tusi’s object in this treatise in not merely to reaffirm an established theological principle of Shi‘a Islam, but also to delineate the internal, psychological and spiritual process by which solidarity may be cultivated and attained by the individual.

The second treatise, Matlub al-mu’minin, is a development on the main themes introduced in the Tawalla, reminding the reader of the essentials of faith, such as recognition of the Imam, the conditions of faithfulness, solidarity and dissociation, the degrees of certitude, etc. But in contrast to the brevity of Tawalla, it is a longer text with four chapters, and Tusi’s perspective is focused much more on the idea of origin and destination (mabda’wa ma‘ad) or, in his words: ‘Where has man come from, why has he come, and where is he heading to?’ Also, the Matlub goes much farther in its final chapter with a discussion of the seven pillars of Shi‘i Ismaili Islam. In common with his Fatimid predecessors, Tusi provides both the exoteric and esoteric meanings of religious rituals such as prayer, fasting, pilgrimage. He is careful in declaring that the observance of shari‘a practices is obligatory for all Ismailis, but it must be performed in both their exoteric and esoteric aspects.

The third and longest of the treatises collected in this volume, the Aghaz wa anjam, is notable for Tusi’s philosophical exegesis of the Qur’anic doctrine of Qiyama (Resurrection). In his Preamble to the discourse, Tusi admits to the difficulty of writing about the Hereafter, especially because his intention is to record an account ‘not as rendered by scholars,’ but by ‘men of insight’.
In the first four chapters, he establishes the intellectual groundwork by exploring the basic issues of human origin and destination, existence and non-existence, perfection and deficiency, the relationship between the corporeal and spiritual worlds, the hidden and the manifest, the nature of time and space, etc. In the chapters that follow, he ranges across a broad spectrum of eschatological themes from the soundings of the Trumpet and the in-gathering for Resurrection, to the reading of the Scroll of Deeds, Heaven and Hell, angels and satans, the rivers of Paradise, the Tree of Bliss and its counterpart the Infernal Tree.

Tusi concludes the Aghaz with the core message that appears in all of his Ismaili works; that the people of this world who have attained absolute certainty and unity of purpose with the Divine are already resurrected and liberated in spirit. Apparently for Tusi, the essence of this message is encapsulated in the famous Prophetic tradition which he quotes in the Aghaz,Tawalla and Matlub: “This world is forbidden to the people of the Hereafter, and the Hereafter is forbidden to the people of this world and both of them are highly forbidden to the people of God”. Throughout his discourse, Tusi maintains a highly subtle, dialectical balance between the exoteric and esoteric readings of the Qur’an, between fidelity to the letter of the text and its inner, spiritual meaning.

While Tusi’s hermeneutics is consistent with Qur’anic teachings, it draws conclusions which are in certain respects quite distinctive from those of the Sunni and the Twelver Shi‘i authors.

http://iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=112225&l=en

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

678)Khairi Abaza Of The FDD Teaches Us The Difference Between The Terms ISLAMIC and ISLAMIST: Failure To Understand The Difference Leads To Armageddon

2011-01-30T12:42:00.011-05:00

There are 1400 million Muslims in the world today. This article by Khairi Abaza et al, which appeared in Newsweek, differentiates between the 1300 million Muslims who follow ISLAM and are therefore ISLAMIC and the 100 million Muslims who are ISLAMIST. The difference between the two terms is critically important to understand:

"If Western intellectuals do not get rid of this confusion now, we are headed down a dangerous path. Common people in the West will start to bundle all Muslims with Islamists, picking a potentially losing battle with one quarter of humanity. This clash of civilizations is what Al Qaeda wanted to trigger with the attacks on September 11. The West and its intellectuals should be smarter than Al Qaeda."

Is It ISLAMIC or ISLAMIST?
Written by Khairi Abaza, Soner Cagaptay

Friday, 22 October 2010

Now that even the tolerant, liberal Swedes have elected an anti-Islam party to their Parliament, it's pretty clear that such controversies are mounting because both the left and the right are confused over the politics of Islam. The left is wrongly defending Islamism-an extremist and at times violent ideology-which it confuses with the common person's Islam, while the right is often wrongly attacking the Muslim faith, which it confuses with Islamism. Western thinkers must begin to recognize the difference between Islamism and Islam, or we are headed toward an ideologically defined battle with one quarter of humanity.

At least a few on the left are defending Islamism because they think that they are defending Islam. Recently, a European policymaker told us that she had become sympathetic to Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) because "in the post-September 11 world, I wanted to defend Islam." Well, the AKP, and other Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world, do not represent Islam. These Islamist parties, even when not using violence, stand for an ideology that is illiberal to its core-for instance, its refusal to recognize gender equality. In the same way that communism once claimed to speak for the working class, Islamism claims to represent Muslims. By defending radical Islamist movements, the left is helping only to give Muslims a bad name. The left ought to side not with so-called moderate Islamist parties, but rather with liberal Muslim movements, such as the Republican People's Party in Turkey and the pro-democracy movement in Egypt, which support gender equality.

The right, on the other hand, often targets Islam while thinking that it is attacking Islamism. Banning the building of minarets, as Switzerland did, is exactly the wrong thing to do. The problem is not a mosque; the problem is a mosque used to promote violence, jihadism, and illiberal Islamism. The crimes of Al Qaeda, Hizbullah, and other groups are rooted in jihadist Islamism, which advocates violence to impose extremist dogma on Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In response, right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders and other nativist politicians in Europe have suggested a ban on Islam itself by criminalizing the Islamic holy book, the Quran. Wilders should take note that not even Stalin was able to ban religion. It's hard to believe that a politician in liberal Europe can suggest outlawing a faith, but that is what the confusion over Islam has come to. What is more shocking is that Wilders's anti-Islam party emerged as the third-largest political force in the latest Dutch elections. The group has proposed responding to acts of Islamist terror by taxing Muslim women's headscarves. What a shame for the right, which is supposed to stand for religious freedom and should stand for freedom of Islam, even while targeting jihadist Islamist groups.

The confusion over Islam has real consequences. When was the last time you read a piece by a leftist intellectual criticizing how the AKP is trampling media freedoms in Turkey? Or the Muslim Brotherhood's refusal to recognize equal rights for women and Christians in Egypt? By defending Islamism, liberals are strengthening one of the biggest threats facing Muslims and Western liberalism alike. Meanwhile, by targeting the Muslim faith, the right is alienating potential allies in the Muslim community: conservative Muslims who want to practice their faith and despise Al Qaeda's vision. As they try to promote religious values in the secularized and quite often atheistic or agnostic West, right-wing politicians will find natural allies in conservative Muslims.

If Western intellectuals do not get rid of this confusion now, we are headed down a dangerous path. Common people in the West will start to bundle all Muslims with Islamists, picking a potentially losing battle with one quarter of humanity. This clash of civilizations is what Al Qaeda wanted to trigger with the attacks on September 11. The West and its intellectuals should be smarter than Al Qaeda.

Abaza is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

http://www.defenddemocracy.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11791476&Itemid=0

Easy Nash

If there are 23,000 ISLAMIST JIHADIST websites, blogsites and twittersites out there in cyberspace there is no reason why we should not create 100,000 NON-JIHADIST ISLAMIC websites, blogsites and twittersites(Easy Nash)

677)Eastern Persian And Central Asian Ismaili Dai Nasir Khusraw's Concept Of Intellect And Theory Of Intellectual Education; Quotes From Blogpost 400.

2011-01-29T16:37:00.003-05:00

"In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

"O brother! You asked: What is the [meaning of] `alam [world] and what is that entity to which this name applies? How should we describe the world in its entirety? And how many worlds are there? Explain so that we may recognize. Know, O brother, that the name `alam is derived from [the word] `ilm(knowledge), because the traces of knowledge are evident in [all] parts of the physical world. Thus, we say that the very constitution (nihad) of the world is based on a profound wisdom"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet, from his book "Knowledge and Liberation")

Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la'allakum ta-'aqiloona: "Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect"(Holy Quran 2:242)

"Here is a relevant verse from the Noble Qur'an, cited by Nasir-i Khusraw, hujjat-i Khurasan in his Khawaan al-Ikhwaan : "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then lets you reach your age of full strength, then lets you become old - though some of you die before - and then lets you reach the appointed term; and that haply you may find the intellect (la'allakum ta'qilun)."(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

"Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave"(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)

"Seek knowledge, even in China"(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)

"One hour of contemplation on the works of the Creator is better than a thousand hours of prayer"(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)

"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)

"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)

"Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason"(Aga Khan IV, Spiegel Magazine interview, Germany, Oct 9th 2006)

"Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly"(Aga Khan IV, Toronto, Canada, 8th June 2005)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Pir Nasir Khusraw's Concept Of Intellect And Theory Of Intellectual Education, Parts 1 and 2
January 2011

The relationship between intellect (‘aql) and faith has always been of fundamental importance to Muslims and has been widely discussed amongst Muslim philosophers and intellectuals.

Etymologically the word ‘aql in Arabic is derived from the trilateral verb ‘-q-l which means to hobble with the ‘iqal (cord used for hobbling the feet of a camel), to arrest, to pay blood money, to restrain, to reason, to comprehend etc. In Islamic philosophy ‘aql is generally understood to be an immaterial substance, active in itself, through which are comprehended the realities of things. In this first part of the essay, we will attempt to see the concept of intellect from the point of the Fatimid philosopher Nasir-i Khusraw (also referred henceforth as Hakim Nasir). The next part will focus on his theory of Intellectual Education.

Part 1:
http://simerg.com/literary-readings/pir-nasir-khusraws-concept-of-intellect-and-theory-of-intellectual-education/

Editor’s note: In Part I of this essay above, Parvin Peerwani provided a brief background of the life of Nasir Khusraw and explained his definition of ‘aql and the general categories of knowledge such as the distinction between marifah and ‘ilm. The modes of knowledge and the relationship of the human soul with the Universal Intellect was described. Based on Hakim Nasir’s teachings, she concluded her article by stating that it was “through the Imam of the Time whereby the human soul becomes recipient to the divine knowledge and the eternal bliss, and thus takes the steps to perfection.”

The following is the second and final installment of her essay. The link to Part I is provided at the end of this article.

Part 2:
http://simerg.com/literary-readings/pir-nasir-khusraws-theory-of-intellectual-education/

Related:
A Collection of Posts on Nasir Khusraw; Quotes of Aga Khan IV and Nasir Khusraw
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/455a-collection-of-posts-on-nasir.html

My Favourite Cosmologist-Philosopher-Theologian-Poets: Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani, Nasir Khusraw And Ikhwan Al-Safa; A Collection Of Posts On My Blog.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/11/428my-favourite-cosmologist-philosopher.html

Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

676)The Orbiting Hubble Space Telescope Reveals The Oldest And Furthest Known Galaxy In The Universe; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred.

2011-01-29T16:18:00.003-05:00

675)University Of Oxford Exhibition Explores Early Islamic Science; Quotes from Blogpost Four Hundred.

2011-01-20T19:04:00.003-05:00

"The second great historical lesson to be learnt is that the Muslim world has always been wide open to every aspect of human existence. The sciences, society, art, the oceans, the environment and the cosmos have all contributed to the great moments in the history of Muslim civilisations. The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)

"The tapestry of Islamic history is studded with jewels of civilization; these jewels poured forththeir light and beauty; great statesmen, great philosophers, great doctors, great astronomers; but these individuals, these precious stones were worked into a tapestry, whose dominant theme was Islam, and this theme remained dominant regardless of the swallowing up of foreign lands, foreign cultures, foreign languages and foreign people"(Aga Khan IV, 30 Jan 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)

It is no exaggeration to say that the original Christian universities of Latin West, at Paris, Bologna and Oxford, indeed the whole European renaissance, received a vital influx of new knowledge from Islam -- an influx from which the later western colleges and universities, including those of North Africa, were to benefit in turn"(Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan)

"Above all, following the guidance of the Holy Quran, there was freedom of enquiry and research. The result was a magnificent flowering of artistic and intellectual activity throughout the ummah" (Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

"The Muslim world, once a remarkable bastion of scientific and humanist knowledge, a rich and self-confident cradle of culture and art, has never forgotten its past"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)

"That quest for a better life, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must lead inevitably to the Knowledge Society which is developing in our time. The great and central question facing the Ummah of today is how it will relate to the Knowledge Society of tomorrow.The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time."(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 2nd December 2006, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan)

"First, the globalisation of the knowledge of the cultures of the Umma is critical. We have to make known the cultural inheritance of the Muslims to the non-Muslim as well as the Muslim parts of the world because we will never succeed in building the respect and recognition that the Umma deserves unless we present the Umma as a remarkable carrier of civilisation.The misconceptions about Islam and Muslims in the West exist because we are, even today, absent from the global civilisation. We should encourage the Western education system to bring in knowledge of the civilisation of Islam into the secondary education system.I am thrilled with the initiative that Dubai and other states in the Gulf are taking by creating museums. Retracing our historical legacies and bringing them back in the modern world is extremely important."(Aga Khan IV, Interview with Gulf News, Dubai, UAE, April 2008)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Exhibition explores early Islamic science
13th Dec 2010

Oxford University, UK

Picture:
Detail of a Persian astrolabe by Muhammed al-Yazdi made in 1647, from the Museum of the History of Science's collection

A new exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science explores the world of early Islamic scientific instrument makers as they sought a delicate balance between function and beauty.
‘Al-Mizan: Sciences and the Arts in the Islamic World’ marks the 25th anniversary of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and is open until 20 March 2011. 'Al-Mizan' is the Arabic word for 'balance'.

For hundreds of years Arabic was the primary language of science and mathematics. Islamic scholars made incredible advancements and scientific discoveries, and built the foundations of modern science. These intellectual achievements of scholars in the Islamic world were matched by the emergence of a highly distinctive visual and artistic culture.

Al-Mizan explores the connections between the sciences and arts in Muslim societies. Highlights include ornate Medieval manuscripts, decorative metalwork and ceramics on loan from the British Museum, the Bodleian Library and the Ashmolean Museum, along with rarely-shown objects from the Khalili Collection. Objects from the Museum of the History of Science’s own unique collection of Islamic scientific instruments are only on display.

(Rather than projecting backwards our modern idea of science to discover past achievements, we've looked at science as culture in its contemporary context: Dr Stephen Johnston)

Dr Stephen Johnston, curator of the exhibition, said: “A recent flurry of exhibitions and television series about Islam and science has emphasised the Islamic contribution to the story of modern science and technology. With that perspective now so well-established, we wanted to take a different view. Rather than projecting backwards our modern idea of science to discover past achievements, we've looked at science as culture in its contemporary context.

“By highlighting the artistry and decorative beauty of our Islamic scientific instruments we recover the medieval connections between science and the arts, and show that they were not the essentially different endeavours that they are so often now assumed to be.”

Dr Farhan Nizami, Director of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, said: “We welcome the opportunity, as part of our 25th anniversary celebrations, to collaborate with the Museum of the History of Science, which has done so much to preserve and promote the Islamic heritage in Oxford and beyond. We hope this exhibition will contribute to a wider appreciation of the beauties of Islamic art and encourage scholarship in this field.”

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2010/101312.html

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

674)Dr Nader El-Bizri Of The Institute Of Ismaili Studies Summarizes 'Concepts Of Time' Among Philosophers Spanning The Sweep Of History; Blogpost 400

2011-01-20T18:23:00.005-05:00

"The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine Will"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

"In sum the process of creation can be said to take place at several levels. Ibda represents the initial level - one transcends history, the other creates it. The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy. Though they require linguistic and rational categories for definition, they represent elements of a whole, and a true understanding of God must also take account of His creation. Such a synthesis is crucial to how the human intellect eventually relates to creation and how it ultimately becomes the instrument for penetrating through history the mystery of the unknowable God implied in the formulation of tawhid."(Azim Nanji, Director, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, U.K., 1998)

"Thus there was an absolute need for the Divine Word's revelation, to Mohammed himself, a man like the others, of God's person and of his relations to the Universe which he had created. Once man has thus comprehended the essence of existence, there remains for him the duty, since he knows the absolute value of his own soul, of making for himself a direct path which will constantly lead his individual soul to and bind it with the universal Soul of which the Universe is, as much of it as we perceive with our limited visions, one of the infinite manifestations. Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul. Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Concepts of Time
Dr Nader El-Bizri

This is an edited version of an article that was originally published in Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopaedia, Vol. 2, pp. 810-812, ed.Josef W. Meri, Routledge (New York-London, 2006).
Download PDF version of the article

Classical concepts of time confronted philosophers with perplexing paradoxes. Some wondered whether time altogether was nonexistent, whereas others doubted the reality of its divisibility into parts by arguing that the past ceased to be, the future does not yet exist, and the present as a moment/now that is without magnitude (i.e., like a mathematical point is not part of time). In addition, it was unclear whether time progressed smoothly or proceeded by way of discontinuous and divisible leaps.

Although inquiries about the nature of time were integrated within physical theories of motion, their broad cosmological and metaphysical bearings had an impact on speculations about creation and causation. In Plato’s Timaeus (37d; 38a) time (kronos) was pictured as a moving image (eikona) that imitated (mimoumenon) eternity (aiona) by circling around according to number (arithmos) and came into existence with the generation of the heavens. In the earliest systemic investigation of the essence and existence of time, which was contained in Aristotle’s Physics (219b3-4; 220a25-b20; 222b20-23), kronos was defined as the number (metron) of a continuous (sunekhes) motion (kinesis) with respect to the anterior (proteron) and the posterior (husteron). Rejecting the claim that time was the movement of the whole (holos), Aristotle argued that the circular, uniform, and continuous motion of the celestial sphere (sphaira) acts as the measure (metron) of time (Physics, 223b21). His theory subsequently received numerous responses by Neoplatonist and Hellenist exegetes; these are grouped in a monumental edition titled Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca. Damascius argued that time was a simultaneous whole, Plotinus grasped it as the changing life of the soul (Enneads, 3. 7. 11-13), and Simplicius defended the thesis of the eternity of the world against doubts raised by the grammarian Philoponus, who adopted a Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. As for the author of the Confessions, Augustine of Hippo, he noted that tempus (time) was created when the world came to be while affirming that the existential reality of time is grounded in the present (praesens), which in itself is what tends not to be (tendit non esse), given that only eternity was stable (semper stans).

On the basis of a belief in the linear directionality of time, from Genesis to Judgment, Augustine argued that the present of things past was preserved in memory, the presence of present things was confirmed by visual perception, and the presence of things future was secured through expectation. Accordingly, the reality of time depended on an anima who remembers, perceives, and expects events; this is similar to Aristotle’s claim in the Physics (218b29-219a1-6, 223a25) that kronos required psukhe to compute its numbering (arithmein). Ishaq ibn Hunayn’s translation of Aristotle’s Physics (al-Tabi‘a) secured the transmission of the Aristotelian conception of kronos into Arabic, which subsequently inspired variegated philosophical interpretations of time among Muslims. Al-Kindi held that al-zaman (time) had a beginning and an end and that it measured motion according to number (Tempus ergo est numerus numerans motum), whereas al-Farabi and Ikhwan al-Safa’ affirmed that time resulted from the movement of the created celestial sphere (al-falak). Abu Bakr al-Razi claimed that the dahr (perpetuity) was absolute (mutlaq), while taking al-zaman (time) to be a flowing substance (jawhar yajri) that is bound (mahsur) as well as being associated with the motion of al-falak (the celestial sphere). In Kitab al-Hudud, Ibn Sina defined al-zaman (time) as that which resembles the created being (yudahi al-masn) and acts as the measure of motion (miqdar al-haraka) in terms of the anterior and the posterior (mutaqaddim wa muta’akhkhir). He also noted that al-dahr (supra-temporal duration) resembled the Creator (yudahi al-san‘i) insofar that it was stable throughout the entirety of time. In the Isharat wa’l-Tanbihat, he linked time to physical inquiries about motion; in ‘Uyun al-Hikma, he construed it as a quantity (kamiyyat) of motion that measures change (yuqaddir) and whose perpetuity (dahr al-haraka) generated temporality. Time also played a notable role in Kitab al-Manazir (Optics; II. 3, II. 7, III. 7) by the polymath Ibn al-Haytham, who argued that the propagation of light rays was subject to time and consequently inferred that the velocity of light (al-daw’) was finite despite being immense in magnitude. Moreover, he held that acts of visual discernment and comparative measure (al-tamyyiz wa’l-qiyas) were subject to the passage of time even if not felt by the beholder, and he cautioned that if the temporal duration of contemplative or immediate visual perception fell outside of a moderate range, it resulted in optical errors. In addition he listed al-zaman as one of the known entities (ma‘lumat), while taking duration (mudda) to be its essence (mahiyya) and the scale (miqyas) of its magnitude (miqdar) and quantity (kamiyya) that become knowable in reference to the motion of the celestial sphere (al-falak).

Opposing the views of the peripatetic Muslim philosophers, the exponents of kalam (dialectical theology) articulated alternative conceptions of time that rested on physical theories inspired by Greek atomism. Time was grasped by the mutakallimun (dialectical theologians) as being a virtual (mawhum) phenomenon of changing appearances and renewed atomic events (mutajaddidat), whereby a discrete moment (waqt) replaced the concept of a continuous zaman. Motivated by this theory - although resisting its thrust - al-Nazzam believed in the divisibility of particles ad infinitum, which entailed that a spatial distance with infinitely divisible parts requires an infinite time to be crossed unless its traversal proceeded by way of leaps (tafarat); this echoes the Stoic views regarding the Greek notion of halma (leap). When doubting the doctrine of the eternity of the world in Tahafut al-Falasifa, al-Ghazali attempted to show that duration (mudda) and time (zaman) were both created, and he argued that the connection between what is habitually taken to be a cause and an effect was not necessary, given that observation only shows that they were concomitant. Consequently, he proclaimed that the ordering relation of an antecedent cause with a consequent effect does not necessarily rest on an irreversible directionality in time.

In defense of causation, Ibn Rushd argued in Tahafut al-Tahafut that the refutation of the causal principle entailed an outright rejection of reason while asserting that the eternal (al-qadim) was timeless and that the world was subject to the workings of a continuous zaman. Affirming the truth of Genesis, Maimonides asserted in Dalalat al-Ha’irin the belief that time was created, given that the celestial sphere and the motion on which it depended were both generated. Although speculations about time continued with scholars of the calibre of Nasir al-din Tusi, Fakhr al-din al-Razi, Mir Damad, Mulla Sadra, Abu’l-Barakat al-Baghdadi, al-Iji, and al-Jurjani, the elucidation of its uncanny reality remained inconclusive.

Primary Sources
Aristotle. Physics, ed. W. David Ross. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Augustine. Confessions, ed. James O'Donnell. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Ghazali. Tahafut al-Falasifa, transl. Michael Marmura. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1997.
Ibn al-Haytham. Kitab al-Manazir, ed. Abdelhamid I. Sabra. Kuwait: National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, 1983.
_ _ T he Optics of Ibn al-Haytham, transl. A. I. Sabra. London: Warburg Institute, 1989.
Ibn Rushd. Tahafut al-Tahafut, ed. Muhammad ‘Abid al-Jabiri. Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wihda al-‘Arabiyya, 1998.
Ibn Sina. Kitab al-Hudud. ed. A. M. Goichon. Cairo: Institut Francais d’Archeologie Orientale du Caire, 1963.
_ _ al-Isharat wa’l-Tanbihat, 3 vols., ed. Sulayman Dunya. Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif bi-Misr, 1957-1960.
Ikhwan al-Safa’. Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’ wa Khullan al Wafa’, vol. II, ed. Butrus Bustani. Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1957.
Maimonides. Dalalat al-Ha’irin, The Guide for the Perplexed, transl. M. Friedlander. New York: Dover, 1956.
Philoponus. Corollaries on Place and Void; Simplicius. Against Philoponus on the Eternity of the World, transl. David Furley and Christian Wildberg. London: Duckworth, 1991.
Plato. Timaeus, transl. R. G. Bury. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Simplicius. Corollaries on Place and Time, transl. J. O. Urmson. London: Duckworth, 1992.

Further Reading
Dhanani, Alnoor. The Physical Theory of Kalam. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
Mallet, D. “Zaman”, In Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. XI. Leiden: Brill, 2001.
Massignon, Louis. “Le Temps dans la Pensee Islamique”. In Opera Minora, vol. II, ed. Y. Moubarak. Beirut: Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1963.
Rashed, Roshdi. Les Mathematiques Infinitesimales du IX au XI siecle, vol. IV. London: al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2002.
Sorabji, Richard. Time, Creation and the Continuum. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Walzer, Richard. Greek into Arabic: Essays in Islamic Philosophy. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1962.

http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=112195

Related from my Blog:
2 intellectual giants speak to each other accross a millenium on "time": can it be slowed, sped up, reversed, transcended?Ask Einstein and Khusraw
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/05/3592-intellectual-giants-speak-to-each.html
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/two-intellectual-giants-speak-to-each-other-accross-a-millenium-on-time/

Abu Yakub al-Sijistani: Cosmologist, Theologian, Philosopher par excellence.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/284abu-yakub-al-sijistani-cosmologist.html

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

673)In Memoriam: Oleg Grabar (1929-2011); Quotes from Blogpost Four Hundred.

2011-01-20T17:12:00.003-05:00

"Quran Symposium.....a reflection of how Islam's revelation, with its challenge to man's innate gift of quest and reason, became a powerful impetus for a new flowering of human civilisation.This programme is also an opportunity for achieving insights into how the discourse of the Qur'an-e-Sharif, rich in parable and allegory, metaphor and symbol, has been an inexhaustible well-spring of inspiration, lending itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations.In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, Institute of Ismaili Studies, October 2003, London, U.K., where Professor Oleg Grabar presented the opening lecture)

"I should emphasise, as well, that the Museum building itself will be an important work of art — designed by the great Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. Many of you know his superb building in Ottawa that has been the home for the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat since 2008. That Delegation building was inspired by the evanescent mysteries of rock crystal. The new Toronto Museum will take as its theme the concept of light — suffusing the building from a central courtyard, through patterned glass screens. From the outside, it will glow by day and by night, lit by the sun and the moon. This use of light speaks to us of the Divine Light of the Creator, reflected in the glow of individual human inspiration and vibrant, transparent community. As the poet Rumi has written: “The light that lights the eye is also the light of the heart… but the light that lights the heart is the Light of God.”"(Aga Khan IV, Foundation Ceremony of the Ismaili Center, Aga Khan Museum and their Park, Toronto, Canada, May 28 2010)

"It now includes three elements: a new Ismaili Centre — the sixth such representational building in the world; a new Aga Khan Museum; and a beautiful, welcoming Park, which will link these two new buildings. Together, these three projects will symbolise the harmonious integration of the spiritual, the artistic and the natural worlds — in keeping with the holistic ideal which is an intimate part of Islamic tradition. At the same time they will also express a profound commitment to inter-cultural engagement, and international cooperation."(Aga Khan IV, Foundation Ceremony of the Ismaili Center, Aga Khan Museum and their Park, Toronto, Canada, May 28 2010)

As our plans began to take shape, we came to realise that the Museum’s focus on the arts of Islam will make it a unique institution in North America, contributing to a better understanding of Islamic civilisations — and especially of the plurality within Islam and of Islam’s relationship to other traditions. It will be a place for sharing a story, through art and artefacts, of highly diverse achievements — going back over 1 400 years. It will honour the central place within Islam of the search for knowledge and beauty. And it will illuminate the inspiration which Muslim artists have drawn from faith, and from a diverse array of epics, from human stories of separation and loss, of love and joy — themes which we know reverberate eloquently across the diverse cultures of humanity."(Aga Khan IV, Foundation Ceremony of the Ismaili Center, Aga Khan Museum and their Park, Toronto, Canada, May 28 2010)

"Like the Museum, the Ismaili Centre will also be part of a supportive global network — a group of Centres that now includes Vancouver, London, Lisbon, Dubai and Dushanbe — and with new Centres planned in Houston, Los Angeles and Paris. The focal point of the Toronto Centre will be a circular prayer hall, dedicated to spiritual reflection, while other spaces will provide for deeper engagement with the broader community among whom Ismailis live. The Centre has been designed by Charles Correa, the award-winning architect based in Mumbai. The building will feature a crystalline frosted glass dome — standing like a great beacon on top of a building that is itself at the highest point of the site — and illuminating the Prayer Hall and its Qibla wall. What about the Park? The Park will comprise some 75 000 square metres — and what an impressive site it will be! It was designed by Vladimir Djurovic, a Lebanon- based artist, who was selected for this role following an international competition. His design draws upon the concept of the traditional Islamic garden, and especially the gardens of the Alhambra, which flourished during the great era of Spanish history when Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together in creative harmony."(Aga Khan IV, Foundation Ceremony of the Ismaili Center, Aga Khan Museum and their Park, Toronto, Canada, May 28 2010)

“Even more exciting are the proposed contents of the Museum, a rich repository of art and artefacts tracing the evolution of Muslim culture through the ages. It will be a grand destination for Muslim visitors from across Canada and around the world, and it will introduce Canadians from other faith and cultural backgrounds to the compelling history of Islam, one of the world’s great religions and the inspiration for countless major advancements in art, science, music and philosophy."(Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Foundation Ceremony of the Aga Khan Museum, Ismaili Center and their Park, Toronto, Canada, May 28 2010)

"Part of what makes this site so captivating, is that it links the natural environment with the built environment, the Divine Creation, on the one hand with human creativity on the other. Here endless seascapes humble us in the face of the eternal and unknowable – while a splendid cityscape expresses the confident accomplishments of particular historic moments......"(Aga Khan IV, Forodhani Park, Stone Town, Zanzibar, July 30th 2009)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

In Memoriam: Oleg Grabar (1929-2011)
January 2011

Prof Oleg Grabar, one of the most prominent Islamic art historians and scholars of our time passed away in Princeton on 8th January 2011 at the age of 81. His spirit of critical inquiry and tireless efforts in challenging pre-conceived perspectives in Western thought about art and architecture in the Muslim world will be much missed by many at the Institute and beyond.
Over the course of six decades, his innovative and prolific output and teaching have touched the lives of many, besides being the motive force behind a surge in the number of historians specialising in Islamic art, particularly in the United States. Prof. Azim Nanji, former director of the IIS and currently Senior Associate Director of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University, reiterates this: "In addition to his writings, many of which are classics in the field, his most lasting legacy was the training and development of a generation of scholars. Each of them, as archaeologists, architects, museum directors and creators of new academic programmes in Muslim Arts, built on his teaching and scholarship to make the field what it is today.”

Throughout his lifetime, he was part of myriad archaeological expeditions and research trips, across the Islamic world in Africa, the Middle East and Muslim Asia, continually documenting and devising new methods to illuminate aspects of art, history and culture of Muslim peoples. According to Prof. Nanji it is because of Grabar that, “the Arts and Architecture of the Muslim World are now part of the larger study of human civilisations and a lens that allows us to see Muslim cultures beyond a narrowly defined, theological and textually-centred field of study.”
Prof. Grabar was the first Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture when that chair was established at Harvard in 1980. In 1990, he retired from Harvard to assume a position of Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In November 2010, he received the Chairman’s Award by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, “in acknowledgement of the valuable contributions he has made to the study of the Islamic world’s architectural evolution, from the early Islamic period up to the present. Through his teaching, writings, and lectures, Oleg Grabar has greatly widened and enriched our understanding of the Islamic world’s architectural production, emphasising its geographic and chronological diversity, as well as positioning it within the wider political, social, cultural and economic contexts”.

His involvement dates back to 1990, when he participated in the Islam in the Contemporary World Conference held at St Catherine’s College, Oxford and delivered a lecture on the arts in Islam. In 2003, Oleg Grabar delivered the opening lecture at the international colloquium, Word of God, Art of Man: The Qur’an and its Creative Expressions that was held to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the IIS. In his memorable lecture, he raised several theoretical questions using examples from Muslim history to examine how revelations, more generally, and the Qur'an specifically, have interfaced with the arts in providing a visual expression to the Sacred Word. More recently, in March 2009, Prof. Grabar delivered a lecture at the IIS/British Museum co-sponsored conference, People of the Prophet’s House: Art, Architecture and Shi‘ism in the Islamic World. In his paper entitled: “Can we identify Shi‘i Features in Art and Architecture?” he put forth that there is a distinction between labelling an object as Shi‘i purely because of certain inscriptions and attributing Shi‘i provenance to forms and subjects, stating that we must consider the receiver rather than the creator of an object in order to understand it.

Prof. Grabar is survived by his wife of 59 years, Dr. Terry Grabar, a retired professor of English, his son Nicolas, daughter-in-law Jennifer Sage and grandchildren Henry, Margaret and Olivia. The IIS extends its condolences to his family and pays tribute to this outstanding scholar who dedicated much of his life to the study of art and architecture of Muslim societies. He will be remembered for many years to come by his many colleagues, friends and students at the Institute of Ismaili Studies.

Image courtesy of Cliff Moore

Related Pages on the IIS Website
Academic Article: Fatimid Art, Precursor or Culmination

http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=112205

Related from my Blog:
A Collection of Posts on Symmetry in Nature, as a Product of the Human Mind, Geometry and Harmonious Mathematical Reasoning; Quotes of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/454a-collection-of-posts-on-symmetry-in.html

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

672)The Miracle Of Ribosome(The Cell's Protein Factory) Assembly Evolution; Quotes from Blogpost Four Hundred.

2010-12-30T02:19:00.002-05:00

"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)

"Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)

"In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la'allakum ta-'aqiloona: "Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect"(Holy Quran 2:242)

"One hour of contemplation on the works of the Creator is better than a thousand hours of prayer"(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Cornelius Hunter
Friday December 24th 2010

The Miracle of Ribosome Assembly Evolution

New research is uncovering the details of how the cell’s protein factory—the ribosome—is constructed. The ribosome translates messenger RNA molecules—edited copies of DNA protein-coding genes—into a string of amino acids, according to the genetic code. The ribosome has two major components (one smaller and one larger), each made up of both RNA and protein molecules, and is constructed via a complex sequence of events.

The RNA components of the ribosome are copies of DNA genes. These ribosomal RNA molecules—known as rRNAs—are initially in a raw copy of DNA which eventually is edited. For instance, one of these copies of DNA may contain many rRNAs, separated by spacer segments. The spacer segments need to be removed, leaving the individual rRNAs ready for assembly.

One of the findings of the new research is that in the early stages of assembly, one of the DNA copies folds up such that a spacer segment binds to one of the rRNAs. In particular, the spacer binds to the special segment of the rRNA that reads the messenger RNA molecules, in the final, assembled ribosome. When the spacer is removed, the rRNA switches to its correct shape, for function in the ribosome. One implication of this finding is that ribosome construction can be regulated by this switch. Remove the spacer and ribosome construction proceeds. Leave the spacer, and ribosome construction halts. As the researchers concluded:

"our data show that the intrinsic ability of RNA to form stable structural switches is exploited to order and regulate RNA-dependent biological processes."

RNA tends to fold up into a variety of shapes. In this case, as lead researcher Katrin Karbstein suggests, RNA folding properties are part of the design:

"Perhaps, nature has found a way to exploit RNA’s Achilles’ heel—its propensity to form alternative structures … Nature might be using this to stall important biological processes and allow for quality control and regulation."

But of course this mechanism brings yet more complexity:

"What is interesting is that as the organism becomes more complex, the number of cleavages needed increases. This may make the process more accurate and that may be an evolutionary advantage, but even in bacteria this cutting is not done in a simple way. We still don’t know exactly why that is."

Karbstein suggests that the strictly ordered cutting and pasting steps in ribosome assembly are introduced to produce singularly perfect intermediates. As she explains:

"Ribosomes make mistakes rarely, on the order of one in 10,000 amino acid changes. A lot of this accuracy depends on conversations between different parts of the ribosomes, so if the structure of the RNA isn’t correct, these conversations can’t happen. And that means more mistakes, and that’s not good because it can lead to any number of disease states."

Ribosomes don’t just happen. They are not easily assembled and the evolution of this choreography calls for several just-so heroics. Yes, this fine-tuned set of mechanisms makes for fantastic regulation of the cellular protein making factory, but it means that evolution must have gone through a stage where life didn’t work. For the spacer segment that binds to the rRNA is a show-stopper. It would be selected against instantly.

The only way to resolve this problem is to have the spacer removal mechanism already in place, before the spacer sequence itself evolved. As usual, evolutionists would need to rely on the needed mechanism just happening to serve some other useful purpose, and when the spacer sequence happened to arise for no reason, the removal mechanism found new work for itself. In other words, mutations arose that caused the DNA copy to fold, rendering ribosome synthesis—and life itself—impossible. But as luck would have it, there just happened to be the right molecular machine lying around that removed the problematic segment at just the right time and place. Not only was the fatal flaw obviated, but a brilliant new means of regulation invented. Amazing. Over time, further mutations happened to refine its actions and today we have the fine-tuned ribosome assembly process.

There you have it—evolution’s just-add-water version of science. For the umpteenth time evolution becomes a charade. Behind the scenes, in deep-time where no one can see it working, evolution once again performs miracle after miracle.

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/12/miracle-of-ribosome-assembly-evolution.html

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

671)The Bacterial Flagellum – Truly An Engineering Marvel!; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred.

2010-12-30T02:02:00.002-05:00

"Every particle of the Creation has a share of the Command of God, because every creature shares a part of the Command of God through which it has come to be there and by virtue of which it remains in being and the light of the Command ofGod shines in it. Understand this!"(Abu Yakub Al Sijistani, 10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971, Kashf al-Mahjub("Unveiling of the Hidden"))

Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la'allakum ta-'aqiloona: "Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect"(Holy Quran 2:242)

"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)

"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)

"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)

"Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason"(Aga Khan IV, Spiegel Magazine interview, Germany, Oct 9th 2006)

"In sum the process of creation can be said to take place at several levels. Ibda represents the initial level - one transcends history, the other creates it. The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy. Though they require linguistic and rational categories for definition, they represent elements of a whole, and a true understanding of God must also take account of His creation. Such a synthesis is crucial to how the human intellect eventually relates to creation and how it ultimately becomes the instrument for penetrating through history the mystery of the unknowable God implied in the formulation of tawhid."(Azim Nanji, Director, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, U.K., 1998)

"Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)

"The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)

"The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims. Exchanges of knowledge between institutions and nations and the widening of man's intellectual horizons are essentially Islamic concepts. The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry. I can not illustrate this interdependence of spiritual inspiration and learning better than by recounting a dialogue between Ibn Sina, the philosopher, and Abu Said Abu -Khyar, the Sufi mystic. Ibn Sina remarked, "Whatever I know, he sees". To which Abu Said replied," Whatever I see, he knows"."(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)

"In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)

"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)

"The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)

"Nature is the great daily book of God whose secrets must be found and used for the well-being of humanity"(Aga Khan III, Radio Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan, February 19th 1950)

"In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

"O brother! You asked: What is the [meaning of] `alam [world] and what is that entity to which this name applies? How should we describe the world in its entirety? And how many worlds are there? Explain so that we may recognize. Know, O brother, that the name `alam is derived from [the word] `ilm(knowledge), because the traces of knowledge are evident in [all] parts of the physical world. Thus, we say that the very constitution (nihad) of the world is based on a profound wisdom"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet, from his book "Knowledge and Liberation")

“The physician considers [the bones] so that he may know a way of healing by setting them, but those with insight consider them so that through them they may draw conclusions about the majesty of Him who created and shaped [the bones]. What a difference between the two who consider!”(Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, Muslim Theologian-Philosopher-Mystic, d1111CE)

"Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it"(Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani,10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971CE, from the book, 'Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary', by Paul Walker)

"One hour of contemplation on the works of the Creator is better than a thousand hours of prayer"(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)

"All human beings, by their nature, desire to know."(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, circa 322BC)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

24 December 2010

The Bacterial Flagellum – Truly An Engineering Marvel!

Jonathan M

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by microbiologist Phillip Aldridge, of the University of Newcastle. The topic of his lecture was “The Regulation of Flagellar Assembly”. Being an ID proponent, I had a natural interest in what Aldridge was going to say, and I had been looking forward to the event for some time. I was already familiar to a degree with several of the key mechanisms and regulation of flagellar biosynthesis. Nonetheless, the lecture succeeded in re-kindling my passion for biology, and inspired me to do some in-depth research on my own with regards the workings of this engineering marvel.

I must confess that I was blown away. If one thought that the functional-specificity of arrangement with respect to the flagellum’s key components may well provide adequate grounds for a design inference, the mechanisms of flagellar construction take this intuition to a whole new level. So mesmerized I was by the motor’s intrinsic beauty and elegance, that I decided to provide a sketch overview of this amazing process for the benefit of readers of this blog. Of course, there are variations in the flagellum’s overall construct from species to species. The archetypical flagellum, however, is probably that of the closely related species, Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, and Salmonella typhimurium. It is this that I want to primarily focus on.

An overview of the flagellum’s construct

As with a typical man-made motor, the unit which provides rotary motion (which is embedded in the inner cell membrane) revolves within a stationary component (stator). The rotor is a tube-like structure which extends from within the cell, through the membrane, to the outside, where the flagellar filament (which serves as a propeller) is attached via a flexible joint.

The flagellum consists of a basal body (which is embedded in the cell wall) and two axial structures, the book and filament. The basal body is made up of the MS ring, rod, and L- and P- rings. Parts of the axial structure are exported from the cell by the type III secretion system (T3SS). The T3SS is composed of several proteins from the MS ring and a peripheral hexameric ATPase FliI that drives the export process.

The motor is anchored in the cytoplasmic membrane and cell wall. The motor consists of a central rod that passes through a series of rings. In gram-negative bacteria, an outer ring (the L ring) is anchored in the lipopolysaccharide layer. Another ring (the P ring) is anchored in the peptidoglycan layer of the cell wall. A third set of rings (the MS and C rings) are respectively found within the cytoplasmic membrane and the cytoplasm. Gram positive bacteria, by contrast, do not have an outer membrane, and thus only possess the inner pair of rings. A series of proteins, called Mot proteins, surround the inner ring and are anchored in the cytoplasmic membrane. The structures of the L, P, C and MS rings, in combination with the central rod, are collectively referred to as the “basal body”. In addition, a class of proteins called the Fli proteins function as a ‘switch’ for the reversal of motor rotation, which is plugged into an elegant signal transduction mechanism for receiving feedback from the environment — I will discuss this further in due course.

The flagellar filament (propeller) is constructed from subunits of the polypeptide flagellin. There is a wider region at the base of the filament (the ‘hook region’), which connects the filament to the motor component of the base. These subunits are arranged in a tight helical structure to produce a stiff hollow rod. Each subunit contributes to a small propeller blade to the outside of the structure.

The driving force behind the flagellum’s rotary motion comes from a proton motive force, to which I shall return in due course.

Chemotaxis and Signal Transduction

Chemotaxis refers to the means by which bacteria direct their movements in response to environmental chemical signals. This mechanism allows the bacteria to locate food by swimming towards the highest concentration of food molecules (such as glucose). The default direction of flagellar rotation is anticlockwise. This directionality of rotation can be reversed by virtue of a classic two-component signal transduction circuit (discussed below). When the direction of rotation is switched to clockwise, the flagellar bundle breaks apart, and the bacterium physically “tumbles” in place. The overall movement of a bacteria can be described in terms of a series of alternating swimming and ‘tumbling’ phases. When the bacterial cell ‘tumbles’, it re-orientates itself. By repeatedly evaluating its course, the bacterium is able to find favourable locations with the highest concentration of attractant (possibly a food source).

A two-component signal transduction circuit essentially involves a histidine protein kinase that catalyses the transfer of phosphoryl groups from ATP to one of its own histidine residues, and a response regulator that catalyses the transfer of phosphoryl groups from the histidine kinase to its own aspartate residue. In the chemotaxis system, the histidine kinase, CheA, associates with chemoreceptors (a distinct class of transmembrane receptor proteins) which interact with chemicals in the surrounding environment. The switch in flagellar direction is induced by CheY, which interacts with a flagellar switching protein, FliM, inducing the change from counter-clockwise to clockwise rotation.

The chemoreceptors which form a part of the chemotaxis system are Tsr, Tar, Tap, Trg, and Aer. In combination with CheA and CheW, they act to form receptor-signalling complexes that function to integrate sensory information to regulate CheA autophosphorylation, hence controlling its activity. This, in turn, controls the phosphorylation of the response regulator (CheY). Ordinarily, CheY is reversibly bound to CheA. When it becomes phosphorylated, however, it dissociates with CheA and quickly diffuses to the flagellar motors. The CheY then acts as an allosteric regulator to promote the clockwise rotation of the flagellar bundle, which results in the ‘tumbling’ motion. An attractant stimulus interacts with the chemoreceptors, inhibiting the activity of the CheA kinase. This results in a decrease in phosphorylated CheY. Thus, the propensity of the bacterium to re-orient itself by “tumbling” is decreased.

When CheB is activated by CheA, it acts as a methylesterase, and removes methyl groups from glutamate residues on the cytosolic side of the receptor. It acts antagonistically with CheR, which adds methyl residues to the same glutamate residues. If the attractant’s concentration is high, the level of CheA phosphorylation (and, hence, CheY and CheB phosphorylation) stays relatively low. The bacterium thus swims relatively smoothly. Because the phosphorylated CheB is not available to demethylate, the level of methylation of the chemoreceptors increases.

Methylation, however, inhibits the chemoreceptors from responding to the attractant. Thus, the level of phosphorylated CheA and CheB increases and the bacterial cell tumbles, regardless of whether the level of the attractant is high. The availability of CheB-P now means that the chemoreceptors can be demethylated, and the receptors become available again to respond to attractants. In the case of repellants, the system works in exactly the opposite way — whereby more methylated chemoreceptors respond most and the lesser methylated chemoreceptors respond least!

A diagrammatic illustration of this system is to be found in the figure below:

Proton Motive Force

A proton motive force drives the rotation of the bacterial flagella. Electrochemical energy is converted into torque via an interaction between the stator and the rotor. Torque is then transmitted from the C-ring by the MS ring to the rod and then to the hook region. From there it is transferred to the propeller (filament). When the filament rotates, the torque is converted into thrust, allowing the bacterial cell to move.

The rotary engine is located at the flagellum’s anchor point on the inner membrane. A flow of protons across the membrane, resulting from a concentration gradient, drives the motor. Protons are transferred across the membrane by the rotor, and the rotor is turned in the process. The speed at which the motor turns can be increased or decreased as a direct result of changes in the strength of the proton motive force.

But it only gets better. An interesting 2008 study by Blair et al. demonstrated that an operon required for the biosynthesis of the biofilm matrix in Bacillus subtilis also encodes a molecular clutch, called EpsE. When associated with a flagellar basal body, EpsE disables the biological motor by disengaging the drive train from the power source! Those hungry for further reading are invited to read Howard Berg’s 1995 paper on Torque generation in the bacterial flagellar rotory motor.

Flagellar Assembly

The processes of flagellar assembly, and its regulation, is my personal unparalleled favourite area of study in the discipline of microbiology. For an informative documentary on the assembly of this nanomachine, I highly recommend viewing this video.

The self-assembly of the bacterial flagellum requires the co-ordinated expression of more than 60 gene products (which encode for both structural and regulatory proteins). Bacteria are intriguingly able to detect the stage of progress with respect to flagellar assembly, and subsequently use this information in the co-ordination of gene expression.

The mechanisms of flagellar assembly are so complex and so sophisticated that justice can hardly be done to them here. Interested readers who desire a fuller discussion of these mechanisms are advised to read a 2002 paper, authored by Phillip Aldrige and Kelly T Hughes, appearing in Current Opinion in Microbiology. In addition, a technical book, Pili and Flagella: Current Research and Future Trends features a detailed discussion of this topic. The book is typically priced at £150/$310, but a significant portion of the book may be accessed via Google Books. The book discusses studies of flagellar mutants that fail to complete their flagella. In so doing, they discern which proteins are absolutely indispensible to flagellar assembly, and which are not — something any ID proponent should be interested in.

Flagellar assembly begins in the cytoplasmic membrane, progresses through the periplasmic space, and finally extends outside the cell. As previously alluded to, the flagellar apparatus consists of two main parts: the secretion system and the axial structure. The main components of the axial structure are FlgG for the rod, FlgE for the hook, and FliC for the filament. All of these assemble with the help of a cap protein (FlgJ, FlgD and FliD respectively). Of those, only FliD remains at the filament’s tip — the other two are not present in the finished product. Other components of the axial structure (FlgB, FlgC and FlgF) connect the rod and MS ring complex. The hook and the filament are connected by FlgK and FlgL

The MS ring complex is the structural foundation of the apparatus. When the C ring and C rod attach to the M ring (at its cytoplasmic surface), the complex begins to secrete flagellar proteins.
With the assistance of a cap protein (FlgJ), the rod structure is constructed through the peptidoglycan layer. But its growth is terminated when it reaches the outer membrane (which represents a physical barrier such that it cannot pass through unaided). But not to worry! The outer ring complex cuts a hole in the membrane. The hook then begins to grow beneath the FlgD scaffold until it reaches approximately 55nm in length. When the hook reaches this critical length, the substrates which are being secreted switches from the rod-hook mode to flagellin mode. FlgD is then replaced by HAPs (hook associated proteins) and the filament continues to grow — note that this can only take place in the presence of FliD (the cap protein), otherwise the flagellin monomers are lost.

The Regulation of Flagellar Assembly

The energy costs of assembling flagella make these nanomachines expensive systems to run. This entails the necessitude for systems and mechanisms to regulate the co-ordination of assembly. The flagellar system of Salmonella (the paradigm organism for this system) possesses three classes of flagellar promoters which are organised into a transcriptional hierarchy. The Class I promoter drives the expression of the enteric master regulator, FlhD4C2. In association with the sigma factor, σ70, this master regulator turns on the Class II promoters which are responsible for the gene expression of the hook-basal-body subunits and its regulators, including σ28, and its anti-sigma factor, FlgM. σ28 is required for the activation of the Class III promoters. This class of promoters is responsible for the expression of flagellin monomers, the chemotaxis system and the motorforce generators. Interaction with its anti-sigma factor (FlgM), thus keeping it away from the RNA polymerase holoenzyme complex, inhibits the activation of σ28 prior to the completion of the Hook Basal Body. When the Hook Basal Body is finished, the FlgM is secreted through the flagellar structure via the Type III Secretion Apparatus substrate specificity switch. This means that the Class III promoters can now be activated by their sigma factor (σ28) because its anti-sigma factor (which represses its action) has been removed. This allows the flagellum to be completed.

This brief overview of flagellar assembly has barely scratched the surface of this intricate process. Nothing will please me more than if, after having read this description, at least a few readers reach for the relevant literature to find out more.

The Bacterial Flagellum — A Paradigm for Design?

In writing the above descriptions, I hoped to treat the educated layperson to a flavour of the magnificence of this rotary motor. As previously stated, nothing will bring me more satisfaction than having provided someone with the inspiration to pursue further information. The question does arise, however, as to whether this system bears the hallmarks of design — or is it, as so many biologists maintain, merely the product of blind, purposeless and impersonal natural processes of chance and necessity? To me, the answer is very clear. This system certainly appears to be designed technology. It certainly appears to bear the hallmarks of design logic. And it does seem that the burden of proof must, at this present time, lie with he who rejects this proposition — that is, he who ascribes this system to blind natural processes. The handwaving gestures of Kenneth Miller, who asserts that the Darwinian explanation for this system is more appropriate in light of the presence of the Type III Secretion System, can no longer be considered a satisfactory rebuttal to the design postulate. Such gestures may, at first glance, appear convincing to the uninitiated, unfamiliar with the complexities of these systems. But when one examines the molecular structure and orchestration of these systems, one loses satisfaction with the vague discussions of protein sequence homologies. Kathryn Applegate and Ard Loius seem to be under the impression that this assembly process parallels the processes of Darwinian evolution — I will allow readers to judge for themselves on that one.

As has been pointed out by Stephen Meyer and Scott Minnich, there is an even more fundamental challenge to the standard Darwinian line with regards this system. Firstly, the phylogenetic evidence is strongly suggestive that the T3SS is an evolutionary biproduct of the flagellar system, rather than the other way round (see, for instance, here). Secondly, if flagellum biosynthesis were to be expressed simultaneously with the Yop T3SS, flagellin monomers would likely be exported out the needle-like structure as well as the flagellar basal body, potentially limiting the efficiency of both systems. Meyer and Minnich argue in their paper that the potential for cross-recognition between Type III exported proteins in the same cell explains why the segregation of these systems by specific environmental cues is necessary. Expression of a flagellum under host conditions would result in a loss of polarised secretion of Yop proteins into the cells of the host. Flagellin is also a potent cytokine inducer – display of flagellin to the macrophages by direction injection via the Ysc secretin would strongly countermand the Yersinia’s anti-inflammatory strategy.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-bacterial-flagellum-truly-an-engineering-marvel/

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

670)Mark Tapson Offers Ten Good Suggestions On How To Make Islam Respectable; Quotes Of Easy Nash, Jason Kenney and Orestes Brownson.

2010-12-30T01:29:00.003-05:00

Sunday, December 26, 2010

How to Make Islam Respectable
Mark Tapson

Regardless of whether one subscribes to the notion of a clash of civilizations, I think we can all agree that relations between “the Islamic world” and “the West,” however one defines those labels, are, well, strained. President Obama was elected at least partly because, with childhood roots in Muslim Indonesia and an Arabic middle name no one was allowed to mention until after the election, the Left believed him to be the perfect candidate to heal that rift – when he wasn’t healing the racial divide, America’s reputation abroad, and the planet.

So right out of the gate, Obama made his first order of business an appearance on al-Arabiya TV, in which he made seven references to “respecting” the Muslim world, his flashing neon semaphore to them that he was no imperialist exploiter like his predecessor (Daniel Pipes notes here how common a motif the word “respect” was for Obama, ironically so for a man who commands none either at home or abroad). Then it was on to a self-important speech from Cairo, in which Obama flattered the Islamic world so effusively that one wondered if he was angling to ask it to the prom. And of course, who can forget his show of contemptible dhimmitude – I mean deep respect – to the Saudi King?

His efforts haven't exactly mellowed the clash of civilizations into a Kumbiya campfire circle. And yet Obama was at least theoretically on the right track. Because a recent poll by the new Abu Dhabi Gallup Centre reports that a large majority of Muslims say that the best way for the West to improve relations with them is to “respect Islam.” But the West has made every effort at “Muslim outreach” and bent over backwards to make social and cultural concessions to its Muslim citizens. President Bush himself expressed a distasteful degree of deference toward Islam, and Obama far surpassed even that; so how much more respect will it take to make the Muslim world feel sufficiently respected?

The issue needs to be reframed. Since even our most gushing genuflection seems to have accomplished nothing except to incite further expectations of respect, it’s time for the West to take charge of this dialogue on our terms. We in the West – apart from Obama and his sycophants – are accustomed to the understanding that respect cannot simply be expected, much less demanded; it has to be earned. So now the question becomes, what must that majority of Muslims who want respect for their religion do to earn it? How can they make their religion, well, more respectable?

What follows are ten suggestions (a few of which mirror Robert Spencer’s five ways to end Islamophobia) for those Muslims cited in the Gallup poll to take to heart – those who, like Rodney Dangerfield, lament that they can’t get no respect.

10) STOP WAGING VIOLENT JIHAD

Let’s get the most obvious one out of the way first. If Muslims are tired of having the words
“Muslim” and “terrorist” linked (on those rare occasions when our leaders and media actually do link them), a painfully obvious solution leaps to mind: stop committing acts of terrorism in the name of Allah and Mohammed.

Ending atrocities against innocents and non-combatants (as we define them, not as the Islamists define them), and striving to actually live up to Islam's Religion of Peace™ label, would be a nice good-faith gesture to lay the groundwork for better relations with the West. It's certainly the most urgent step to take, and the most necessary - without it, none of my subsequent suggestions will matter.

For Muslims who already are not plotting or committing acts of terrorism, confront your co-religionists who are and nip them in the bud. After all, as it’s often pointed out, they constitute a TME - Tiny Minority of Extremists ™ - that should easily be overwhelmed by the moderates' superior numbers. At the very least, report the TME to the authorities – which brings us to suggestion number nine…

9)COOPERATE TO THE FULLEST WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT TO ROOT OUT THE TERRORISTS IN YOUR MIDST:

A New York Times article last week noted that Rep. Peter T. King of New York, who will become the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, complained about a lack of cooperation in terror investigations:

When I meet with law enforcement, they are constantly telling me how little cooperation they get from Muslim leaders.

He cited the case of Najibullah Zazi, arrested last year for plotting to bomb the New York subway system. Ahmad Wais Afzali, a Queens imam had tipped off Zazi that he was the target of a terror investigation.

Salam al-Marayati, the executive director of MPAC, the Muslim Public Affairs Council*, “expressed deep concern” that [King] basically wants to treat the Muslim-American community as a suspect community.

I’m sorry to break this news to Mr. Marayati, but the Muslim-American community is suspect – not because of bigotry or Islamophobia, but because the terrorists and radicals in its midst have made it so, and resisting cooperation with law enforcement naturally lends even more weight to that suspicion. It doesn't help when Muslim community leaders cry “civil rights violations” while claiming that people like King are undermining the relationship that Muslim leaders had sought to build with law enforcement officials around the country.

Relationship? Law enforcement officials nationwide are complaining that there isn't one. Short of infiltration, which Muslim leaders also oppose, law enforcement has no way of knowing what radical activities may or may not be going on inside the mosques. And that brings us to our next recommendation...

*Check out the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s devastating piece about MPAC’s unfitness to serve as a liaison with law enforcement.

8) DE-RADICALIZE YOUR MOSQUES:

Estimates are that upwards of 80% of all mosques in the United States are controlled by the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam promoted by the Saudis’ bottomless funding. Preaching Jew-hatred, the supremacy of sharia, and the downfall of democracy isn’t likely to win us over. I'm just sayin'.

Now former Iranian Revolutionary Guard Reza Khalili reports that Iran is using mosques and Islamic cultural centers in Europe and the U.S. as centers of terrorist recruitment and planning:
They recruit, they train, they sell the ideology of martyrdom, and many, many are guided and connected to terrorist groups.

Robert Spencer comments that there is no surprise in this, except for those Westerners who buy the politically correct line that mosques are benign houses of worship that are never used for any nefarious purposes. In reality, mosques have been used to preach hatred; to spread exhortations to terrorist activity; to house a bomb factory; to store weapons; to disseminate messages from bin Laden; to demand (in the United States) that non-Muslims conform to Islamic dietary restrictions; to fire on American troops; to fire upon Indian troops; or to train jihadists.

If Muslims don't want their mosques infiltrated or investigated by non-Muslim law enforcement, then it's up to them to clean house and rid themselves of the elements - including the imams themselves - who might be fomenting and plotting subversion, hatred, and terror.

7) START RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN:

One of the West's bigger bones to pick with the Muslim world is the latter's (mis)treatment of women, which rockstar scholar Reza Aslan angrily insists isn’t an issue:

If you’re somehow arguing that Islam has a different conception of women in society than Europe does, it’s just wrong.

Women such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and my friends Brigitte Gabriel and Nonie Darwish beg to differ.* Here is how Nonie’s must-read book Cruel and Usual Punishment begins:

For the first thirty years of my life, I lived as a virtual slave. I was a bird in a cage; a second-class citizen who had to watch what I said even to my close friends. Under Islamic law I had to live in a gender-segregated environment and always be aware that the legal and social penalty for “sin” could end my life. This is what it is to live as a woman under Sharia law.

Last week it was reported that each year an estimated 600,000 lashes are dealt to women in the sharia wonderland known as the Sudan, for such shockingly heinous crimes against humanity as wearing pants. Women in sharia-controlled Saudi Arabia must conceal their seductive charms in black Hefty bags and veil their faces in public, of course; but now even that’s not enough for the Saudi “Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.” A Commission spokesman announced that

The Commission members have orders to tell any women in public to cover up her face if they find that her eyes are seditious.

Ah, seditious eyes – potentially more threatening than seditious bare ankles, although the Commission doesn’t explain what constitutes “seditious.” No word either on how the Commission feels about “Bette Davis Eyes.”

* Not that Aslan will listen. In 2009 I attended an event at which Aslan was speaking, and Nonie Darwish rose in the audience to challenge him about the condition of women under sharia. After conceding one small point, he said, “Everything else you said is wrong” – and turned away from her, ending their discussion.

6) START RECIPROCATING RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE:

There is no more religiously tolerant country in history than the contemporary United States, although you’d never know this from the constant wailing refrain of “Islamophobia!” from Islamists and their leftist sympathizers. The notion of a tsunami of Muslim-hatred washing over the nation is a shameful PC myth, as a November “hate crimes” report reveals. Muslim-Americans enjoy as much, if not more, religious freedom here as anyone else.

By stark contrast, no Bibles, churches, temples or synagogues are allowed on the Arabian peninsula, the home of Islam. Non-Muslims are not even allowed in Mecca. Under Islamic rule elsewhere, no new non-Muslim houses of worship are allowed to be built, and existing ones may not be repaired.

Then there is the violent persecution of non-Muslims. My friend Mark Durie, the brilliant scholar of Islam, notes in his The Third Choice that

The human rights situation of Christians in many Muslim countries has been getting steadily worse over the past half-century. This deterioration has been directly linked to the worldwide Islamic revival and reinstatement of sharia law.

A report last month at the Hudson New York think tank states that

Christians in Arab countries are no longer being persecuted; they are now being slaughtered and driven out of their homes and lands.

And then, of course, there’s the Koran-mandated Jew-hatred and Muhammad’s command of death for those who leave Islam.

Muslims want us to respect Islam? End the persecution of non-Muslims, reciprocate religious tolerance, and abolish the death penalty for “apostasy.” Then we’ll talk.

5) UPDATE YOUR PENAL CODE FROM "MEDIEVAL"

While our own legal system has a far-from-perfect record of dispensing justice, and punishment can be harsh (that’s why it’s called “punishment”), sharia is the very definition of draconian. This “cruel and usual punishment,” as Ms. Darwish calls it, includes lashings for drinking alcohol, amputations for thievery, beheadings for more serious crimes, being hanged or thrown from a roof for homosexuality, and – the real gem in sharia’s crown – the stoning of adulterers.

This last method of execution requires that the stones used be neither too small to do serious damage nor large enough to cause a quick death. So it’s clear that the ordeal is intended to be as excruciating and prolonged as possible.

Say what you will about our own electric chairs and firing squads, which we’ve largely abandoned in our search for the most humane method of execution (itself reserved for only the most heinous of crimes); sharia’s punishments are characterized by barbarism. News flash: barbarity doesn’t generate respect.

4) LET THE WHOLE CARTOON THING GO:

Speaking of barbarity…

This would seem to be a no-brainer, but apparently it bears explaining: "taking offense" is not license for frenzied rioting, murder and mayhem. The most notable example is the worldwide rage over a set of cartoons published years ago in a Danish newspaper, which no one outside of that tiny country would have seen if not for the cartoons' shrewd distribution by Islamists themselves eager to unite the ummah, the worldwide Muslim community, against the blasphemous West. That murderous outrage is ongoing: Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard was recently set upon in his home by a Muslim attacker seeking vengeance.

Similar, more recent examples include the threats to kill the South Park creators for their tame, satirical, animated take on that same hypersensitive hysteria, and the death fatwa issued against cartoonist Molly Norris, who has since "gone ghost" in fear for her life. Not to mention the death threats, explicit or implied, over innumerable other things that offend many Muslims.

Apologists like to point out that many Muslims take disrespect toward Islam, Allah, and his prophet very seriously, and they suggest we tiptoe respectfully around that religious sensibility. I would like to point out that such apologists are cowards, appeasers, and religious hypocrites, and remind them that violent lunacy is not deserving of respect. And this segues into suggestion number three...

3) STOP PRESSING FOR LIMITS ON FREE SPEECH AND FOR THE CRIMINALIZATION OF ISLAMOPHOBIA:

From the Salman Rushdie affair to Molly Norris' sad vanishing, the list of Islamist assaults on our precious freedom of speech is far too long to do justice to here. And the West has too often responded not with firm resistance, but by preemptively censoring itself: witness Random House rescinding its offer to publish The Jewel of Medina, a novel that an academic warned might outrage Muslims, or the Yale University Press publishing a book about the Danish cartoons that will not include the cartoons themselves.

Islamists know that the key to winning the war of ideas against the West is to keep hammering away at our freedom of speech - our right and our ability to critique and denounce a totalitarian ideology that is hell-bent on bringing the West under its heel. Criminalizing blasphemy, defamation of religion, "Islamophobia" and the like will put us at a mortal disadvantage. Indeed, the world's largest Islamic assembly, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has made the criminalization of religious defamation, specifically "Islamophobia," its number one priority - and Obama has sent a sympathetic envoy to that party to help them achieve it.

To earn our respect and the beginning of trust, you must embrace, not threaten, our freedoms and our values.

2) STOP LETTING THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD SPEAK FOR YOU:

For decades now, the Muslim Brotherhood has shrewdly worked to establish its subversive presence in America through a complex network of front groups and “legacy groups” which includes virtually every recognized Muslim organization in this country. Over time these groups – most notably the ubiquitous CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations – have gradually muscled their way into position as the representative voice of all Muslim-Americans.

Maddeningly, our government, law enforcement, and media have taken the bait and embraced these groups unquestioningly – blindly engaging an enemy that seeks the “elimination of Western civilization,” as an internal Brotherhood document proclaims. Such Islamist groups completely control this country’s dialogue with our Muslim citizens.

Americans have been asking since 9/11/01:

Where are the moderate Muslims? Why have they not risen up en masse to show that they stand with us against the extremists?

For Muslims to earn the respect of the West, those moderates in America and around the world must prove first that they exist - by uniting, organizing, promoting themselves not only to the media and government but to the public, and fearlessly confronting the deeply-rooted network of Brotherhood groups. And they must also speak out forcefully in unqualified solidarity with the West against their co-religionists' terrorism and stealth agenda.

1) START TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN DESTINY INSTEAD OF BLAMING THE WEST:

In contrast to Western notions of self-reliance and free will, the Arab world suffers from what Hugh Fitzgerald calls an “Islam-inculcated inshallah-fatalism” characterized by the habitual mantra “Inshallah,” or “If God wills it,” used in reference to virtually every action. As Fitzgerald writes,

Why try very hard when, in the end, every fiber in your individual or collective being tells you that, in the end, it's all up to Allah, and he will intervene, quite inexplicably and suddenly, whenever he wants?

This is fatal to cultural, technological, scientific, economic, and spiritual development.
Without the culturally ingrained confidence that human beings can, through their own decisions and choices, impact the external world and to a large extent steer their own destinies, a people is doomed to stagnation, jealousy, and parasitism, and tends to look outside themselves to affix blame.

To earn the West’s respect, such Muslims must stop shrugging “inshallah” about all things great and small, stop laying the blame for their conditions on conspiracy theories of Western imperialism and thievery, and actively take responsibility for a better future and a peaceful, shared destiny with the West.

(This article first appeared on NewsReal Blog, 12/26/10)

http://marktapson.blogspot.com/2010/12/top-10-ways-islam-can-earn-wests.html

Easy Nash
If there are 23,000 jihadist websites and blogsites out there in cyberspace, there is no reason why we should not create 100,000 non-jihadist websites and blogsites: easynash(2007)

Quotes Of Canadian Minister Of Citizenship, Immigration And Multiculturalism Hon. Jason Kenney(2009):
1)When you become a citizen, you're not just getting a travel document into Hotel Canada.
2)I think it's scandalous that someone could become a Canadian not knowing what the poppy represents, or never having heard of Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Dieppe or Juno Beach.
3)We mention freedom of conscience and freedom of religion as important rights but we also make it very clear that our laws prohibit barbaric cultural practices, they will not be tolerated, whether or not someone claims that such practices are protected by reference to religion.
4)I think we need to reclaim a deeper sense of citizenship, a sense of shared obligations to one another, to our past, as well as to the future, a kind of civic nationalism where people understand the institutions, values and symbols that are rooted in our history.
5)New Canadians are naturally conservative in the way they live their lives: they are entrepreneurial; they have a remarkable work ethic; they are an aspirational class; they want stability; they are intolerant of crime and disorder; they have a profound devotion to family and tradition, including institutions of faith; that whole spectrum of values is conservative.

Orestes Brownson's noble hope: "that we have reached the term of our downward tendency; that radicalism has had its day; that a reaction has commenced, and that the mass of our people will recover from their folly, and henceforth not fear to be conservative."

669)Two Japanese Scientists, A Couple Of Boogers, Claim That Snot Has The Power To Alter Scents; Quotes from Blogpost Four Hundred.

2010-12-16T22:45:00.002-05:00

668)Ibn Sina Or Avicenna: An Encyclopedia Article By Dr Nader El-Bizri Of The Institute Of Ismaili Studies; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred.

2010-12-16T22:30:00.003-05:00

"The truth, as the famous Islamic scholars repeatedly told their students, is that the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity. To quote the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Sina: "My profession is to be forever journeying, to travel about the universe so that I may know all its conditions." "(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

"The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims. Exchanges of knowledge between institutions and nations and the widening of man's intellectual horizons are essentially Islamic concepts. The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry. I can not illustrate this interdependence of spiritual inspiration and learning better than by recounting a dialogue between Ibn Sina, the philosopher, and Abu Said Abu -Khyar, the Sufi mystic. Ibn Sina remarked, "Whatever I know, he sees". To which Abu Said replied," Whatever I see, he knows"."(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Ibn Sina or Avicenna

Dr Nader El-Bizri

This is an edited version of an article that was originally published in Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopaedia , Vol. 1, pp. 369-370, ed. Josef W. Meri , Routledge (New York-London, 2006).

Download PDF version of the article

Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan Ibn Sina (ca. 980-1037 CE), known in Latin as Avicenna, was a physician, natural philosopher, mathematician, poetic mystic, and princely minister. Of Persian descent, he was born in Afshana in the province of Bukhara. His chief philosophical work, Kitab al-shifa’ (Book of Healing), which was known in Latin as Liber Sufficientia, together with its condensed revision, Kitab al-najat (Book of Deliverance), led many to regard him as being the authoritative Neoplatonist integrator of the Aristotelian corpus. However, his intellectual acumen elevates his station beyond that of a commentator and lets him stand as an insightful thinker in his own right. His philosophical investigations covered mathematics, music, logic, physical and psychical sciences, as well as metaphysics and theology.

In geometry, he critically examined Euclid’s Elements and attempted to prove its fifth postulate. In his Aristotelian intromission conception of vision, he showed that the velocity of light had a finite magnitude. Partly influenced by Porphyry's Isagoge, Aristotle's Organon, and Galen's logical investigations, he eventually developed intricate forms of propositional logic.

Furthermore, he founded a proto-theory of meaning that was partially embodied in his work Kitab al-hudud (Book of Definitions), wherein he arrived at definitions by way of a rigorous distinction among concepts. Unlike most Platonists, he celebrated the merits of the art of persuasion and rhetoric. In astronomy, he endeavoured to systematise his observations that were grounded in Ptolemy's Almagest, and in mechanics he built on the theories of Heron of Alexandria while also seeking to improve the precision of instrumental readings. In his physical inquiries he studied different forms of energy, heat and force, while presenting a more coherent account of the interconnection between time and motion than what is habitually associated with Aristotle's Physics. One of his important achievements in natural philosophy was his account of the soul in Kitab al-nafs (Treatise on the Soul), which was preserved in his al-Shifa and al-Najat, and was translated into Latin under the title De Anima. Therein, he presented an affirmation of the existence of the soul that rested on a radical mind-body dualism in an argument that is customarily referred to as “the flying person argument,” which anticipates Descartes's “cogito ergo sum.” He also elucidated the notion of “intentionality” in the workings of the internal sense of the facility of estimation (wahm) and its pragmatic entailments.

Ranking among the most influential of metaphysicians in the history of philosophy, Ibn Sina offered an original elucidation of the question of “being” (al-wujud) that was mediated by a methodical distinction between essence and existence and oriented by an ontological consideration of the modalities of necessity, contingency, and impossibility. Taking the contingent to be a mere potentiality of being, whose existence or nonexistence did not entail a contradiction, Ibn Sina construed all creatures in actuality as being necessary existents due to something other than themselves. Consequently, any contingent had its essence distinct from its existence while being existentially dependent on causes that are external to it, which lead back to the One Necessary Existent due to Itself Whose Essence is none other than Its Existence. In this, Ibn Sina eschewed Aristotle’s reduction of “being” into the Greek conception of ousia (substance or essence), and he conceived the Deity as being the metaphysical First Cause of existence rather than being the physical Unmoved Cause of motion. Although his consideration of Divine creation was primarily mediated by an attempt to found a synthesis between Aristotle’s naturalism and monotheistic creationism, his ontology remained more akin to Neoplatonist emanationism, which took the One Necessary Existent to be the Source of all existential effusion. In this processional hierarchical participation in “being”, the Active Intellect played a necessary role in the genesis of human knowledge.

Following Plato, Ibn Sina held that knowledge, consisting of grasping the intelligible, ultimately determined the fate of the rational soul in the hereafter. Believing that the universality of our ideas was attributed to the mind itself, he additionally held that our passive individual intellects are in a state of potency with regard to knowledge, unlike the Active impersonal and separate Intellect that is in a state of actual perennial thinking. Consequently, our passive intellect qua mind acquires ideas by being in contact with the Active Intellect without compromising its own independent substantiality or immortality. In a mystical tone that becomes most pronounced in Kitab al-isharat wa-l-tanbihat (Book of Hints and Pointers), Ibn Sina also maintained that certain elect souls are capable of realising a union with the Universal Active Intellect, thereby attaining the station of prophecy.

His philosophical views were debated by Averroes and Maimonides, criticised by al-Ghazali, and integrated by intellectual authorities in medieval Europe, such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Roger Bacon. His thinking also impacted the course of development of the ontotheological systems of prominent Muslim scholars such as Suhrawardi, Tusi, and Mulla Sadra. In all of this, his philosophical wisdom did not outshine his celebrated reputation as a physician, and his classic Kitab al-qanun fi’l-tibb (The Canon in Medicine), which was translated into Latin in the twelfth century CE (Liber Canonis), commanded an authority that almost surpassed that of Hippocrates and Galen and acted as the decisive compendium of the Greco-Roman- Arabic scientific medicine, and as the reference Materia Medica, throughout the medieval period and up to the Renaissance.

Primary Sources
Ibn Sina. Kitab al-shifa’, al-ilahiyyat. Edited by Ibrahim Madkour, George Anawati, and Said Zayed. Cairo: al-Hay’a al-misriyya al-‘amma lil-kitab, 1975.
---. Kitab al-shifa’, Kitab al-nafs. Edited by Fazlur Rahman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960.
---. Kitab al-najat. Edited by Majid Fakhry. Beirut: Dar al-afaq al-jadida, 1985.
---. Kitab al-hudud (Livre des definitions). Edited and translated by A. M. Goichon. Cairo: Institut francais d’archeologie orientale du Caire, 1963.
---. Kitab al-‘isharat wa’l-tanbihat (Le livre des directives et remarques). Edited and translated by A. M. Goichon. Paris: J. Vrin, 1999.

Further Reading

Afnan, Soheil. Avicenna: His Life and His Works. London: Allen and Unwin, 1958.
Corbin, Henry. Avicenne et le recit visionnaire, Tehran: Societe des monuments nationaux de l’Iran, 1954.
Gardet, Louis. La connaissance mystique chez Ibn Sina et ses presupposes philosophiques. Cairo: Institut francais d’archeologie orientale du Caire, 1952.
Goichon, A.M. Lexique de la langue philosophique d’Ibn Sina. Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1938. ---. “Ibn Sina.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol. III. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960.
---. La philosophie d'Avicenne et son influence en Europe medievale. Paris: Librairie d’Amerique et d’Orient, 1971.
Goodman, Lenn E. Avicenna. London: Routledge, 1992.
Gutas, Dimitri. Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988.
Hasse, Dag Nikolaus. Avicenna’s De Anima in the Latin West. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 2000.
Janssens, Jules, and Daniel De Smet (Eds). Avicenna and His Heritage. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002.

http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=112130

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

667)Bacteria Growing With Poisonous Arsenic Instead Of Vitalizing And 'Indispensable' Phosphorous Changes The Debate On The Origins Of Life On Earth.

2010-12-05T17:35:00.008-05:00

Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la'allakum ta-'aqiloona: "Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect"(Holy Quran 2:242)

"In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

"Nature is the great daily book of God whose secrets must be found and used for the well-being of humanity"(Aga Khan III, Radio Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan, February 19th 1950)

"The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)

"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)

"Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason"(Aga Khan IV, Spiegel Magazine interview, Germany, Oct 9th 2006)

"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)

"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Bacterium grows with arsenic

Microbe uses toxic element instead of phosphorus
By Rachel Ehrenberg

Web edition : Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

EnlargeONE MICROBE'S POISONThe microbe known as strain GFAJ-1 grows when fed arsenic and deprived of phosphate, a crucial ingredient of life. Evidence suggests the bacterium is using arsenic as a building block for molecules, such as DNA, that normally require phosphate.Courtesy of Science/AAAS

When cooking up the stuff of life, you can’t just substitute margarine for butter. Or so scientists thought.

But now researchers have coaxed a microbe to build itself with arsenic in the place of phosphorus, an unprecedented substitution of one of the six essential ingredients of life. The bacterium appears to have incorporated a form of arsenic into its cellular machinery, and even its DNA, scientists report online December 2 in Science.

Arsenic is toxic and is thought to be too chemically unstable to do the work of phosphorus, which includes tasks such as holding DNA in a tidy double helix, activating proteins and getting passed around to provide energy in cells. If the new results are validated, they have huge implications for basic biochemistry and the origin and evolution of life, both on Earth and elsewhere in the universe.

“This is an amazing result, a striking, very important and astonishing result — if true,” says molecular chemist Alan Schwartz of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. “I’m even more skeptical than usual, because of the implications. But it is fascinating work. It is original and it is possibly very important.”

The experiments began with sediment from eastern California’s Mono Lake, which teems with shrimp, flies and algae that can survive the lake’s strange chemistry. Mono Lake formed in a closed basin — any water that leaves does so by evaporation — making the lake almost three times as salty as the ocean. It is highly alkaline and rich in carbonates, phosphorus, arsenic and sulfur.

EnlargeARSENIC AND OLD MUDNASA scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon samples sediment cores from California's Lake Mono that yielded a bacterium that appears to use arsenic instead of phosphorus in its metabolism, a result that suggests the chemistry of life is more flexible than thought.© 2010 Henry Bortman

Led by Felisa Wolfe-Simon of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., the researchers cultured microbes from the Lake Mono sediment. The microbes got a typical diet of sugar, vitamins and some trace metals, but no phosphate, biology’s favorite form of phosphorus. Then the team started force-feeding the critters arsenate, an analogous form of arsenic, in greater and greater quantities.

One microbe in particular — now identified as strain GFAJ-1 of the salt-loving, mostly marine family Halomonadaceae — was plucked out and cultured in test tubes. Some were fed loads of arsenate; others got phosphate. While the microbes subsisting on arsenate didn’t grow as much as those getting phosphate, they still grew steadily, doubling their ranks every two days, says Wolfe-Simon. And while the research team couldn’t eliminate every trace of the phosphate from the original culture, detection and analytical techniques suggests that GFAJ-1 started using arsenate as a building block in phosphate’s place.

“These data show that we are getting substitution across the board,” Wolfe-Simon says. “This microbe, if we are correct, has solved the challenge of being alive in a different way.”
Arsenic sits right below phosphorus in the periodic table and so, chemically speaking, isn’t that different, Wolfe-Simon notes. And of the six essential elements of life — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur (aka CHNOPS) — phosphorus has a relatively spotty distribution on the Earth’s surface. If a microbe in a test tube can be coerced to live on arsenic, perhaps life’s primordial home was also arsenic-rich and life that used phosphorus came later. A “shadow biosphere” of arsenic-based life may even exist unseen on Earth, or on some lonely rock in space.

“It isn’t about arsenic, and it isn’t about Mono Lake,” says Wolfe-Simon. “There’s something fundamental about understanding the flexibility of life. Any life, a microbe, a tree, you grind it up and it’s going to be CHNOPS. But we have a single sample of life. You can’t look for what you don’t know.”

Similarities between arsenic and phosphorus are also what make the element so poisonous. Life often can’t distinguish between the two, and arsenic can insinuate itself into cells. There, it competes with phosphorus, grabs onto sulfur groups, or otherwise gums up the works, causing cell death. Some microbes “breathe” by passing electrons to arsenic, but even in those cases the toxic element stays outside the cell.

Researchers are having a hard time wrapping their minds around arsenate doing the job of phosphate in cells. The ‘P’ in ATP, the energy currency for all of life, stands for phosphate. And the backbone of the DNA double helix, the molecule containing the genetic instructions for life, is made of phosphate. Basic biochemistry says that these molecules would be so unstable that they would fall apart if they were built with arsenate instead of phosphate.

“Every organism that we know of uses ATP and phosphorylated DNA,” says biogeochemist Matthew Pasek of the University of South Florida in Tampa. He says the new research is both fascinating and fantastic. So fantastic, that a lot of work is needed to conclusively show exactly how the microbe is using arsenate.

Both phosphate and arsenate can clump up into groups, and with their slightly negative electric charge, slightly positive DNA would be attracted to such clumps, says Pasek. Perhaps the arsenic detected in the DNA fraction was actually a nearby clump that the DNA wrapped itself around, he speculates.

The microbe may be substituting for phosphate with discretion, says geochemist Everett Shock of Arizona State University in Tempe, using arsenic in some places but not others. But Shock says the real value of the work isn’t in the specifics. “This introduces the possibility that there can be a substitution for one of the major elements of life,” he says. Such research “stretches the perspective. Now we’ll have to see how far this can go.”

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/66953/title/Bacterium_grows_with_arsenic

665)The Institute Of Ismaili Studies Publishes Its Second Volume From The Rasail Ikhwan Al-Safa; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred.

2010-11-26T13:41:00.005-05:00

664)The Center For Middle Eastern Studies At The University Of Chicago Publishes 'Ismaili And Fatimid Studies In Honour Of Paul Walker'.

2010-11-23T13:13:00.005-05:00

The Center For Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago has published a book 'Ismaili And Fatimid Studies In Honour Of Paul Walker'
http://chicagostudiesonthemiddleeast.uchicago.edu/pwalker.html
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/chicago-studies-on-the-middle-east-ismaili-and-fatimid-studies-in-honor-of-paul-e-walker/

Contents:

Hidden Imams and Mahdis in Ismaili History by Farhad Daftary

Kawn al-'Alam: The cosmogony of the Isma'ili da'i Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Nasafi by Wilferd Madelung

Maqriziana XII. Evaluating the Sources for the Fatimid Period: Ibn al-Ma'mun al-Bata'ihi’s History and Its Use by al-Maqrizi (with a Critical Edition of His Résumé for the Years 501–515 A.H.) by Frédéric Bauden

Sources for al-Qadi al-Nu'man’s Works and Their Authenticity by Ismail K. Poonawala

Was Nasir-e Husraw a Great Poet and Only a Minor Philosopher? Some Critical Reflections on his Doctrine of the Soul by Daniel De Smet

A Shi'i-Mu'tazili Poem of al-Sahib b. 'Abbad (d. 385/995) by Maurice A. Pomerantz
An Illustration of the Caliph al-Hakim together with his Astronomer/Astrologer Ibn Yunus by David A. King

The Almohads and the Fatimids by Maribel Fierro

Church Building, Repair, and Destruction in Fatimid Egypt by Marlis J. Saleh

Urban Violence at Baghdad in the Rivalry between the Abbasid and Fatimid Caliphates by Abbas Hamdani

Professor Paul Walker's writings feature very prominently on my Blog on the link between Science and Religion in Islam, especially his writings relating to Philosophical Ismailism:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/

A Collection Of Posts Describing The Ethos Of My Blog On The Link Between Science And Religion In Islam; Quotes Of Aga Khans And Others.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/463a-collection-of-posts-describing.html

A Collection Of Posts Describing The Philosophical, Theological, Doctrinal, Historical, Scientific And Esoteric Underpinnings Of My Blog.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/02/568a-collection-of-posts-describing.html

My Favourite Cosmologist-Philosopher-Theologian-Poets: Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani, Nasir Khusraw And Ikhwan Al-Safa; A Collection Of Posts On My Blog.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/11/428my-favourite-cosmologist-philosopher.html

A Collection Of Posts Describing The Philosophical, Theological, Doctrinal, Historical, Scientific And Esoteric Underpinnings Of My Blog.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/02/568a-collection-of-posts-describing.html

Quotes Of Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan III, Imam Jafar As Sadiq and Others making reference to Philosophical Ismailism:

"The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)

"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"God – may He be Glorified and Exalted – created Intellect ('aql) first among the spiritual entities; He drew it forth from the right of His Throne, making it proceed from His own Light. Then he commanded it to retreat, and it retreated, to advance, and it advanced; then God proclaimed: 'I created you glorious, and I gave you pre-eminence over all my creatures.'"(Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, Circa 765CE)

"The beginning of all things, their origin, their force and their prosperity, is that intellect ('aql), without which one can profit from nothing. God created it to adorn His creatures, and as a light for them. It is through intellect ('aql) that the servants recognize God is their Creator and that they themselves are created beings …It is thanks to intellect ('aql) that they can distinguish what is beautiful from what is ugly, that they realize that darkness is in ignorance and that light is in Knowledge"( Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, (al-Kulayni, Usul al-Kafi, Vol. 1, pp. 34), circa 765CE)

"The Intellect is the substance of (God's) unity and it is the one (al-wahid), both cause and caused, the act of origination (al-ibda) and the first originated being (al-mubda al-awwal); it is perfection and perfect, eternity and eternal, existence and that which exists all in a single substance"( Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, 11th centuryFatimid Ismaili cosmologist (Kitab al-Riyad, pp. 221-222))

"Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it"(Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani,10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971CE, from the book, 'Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary', by Paul Walker)

"Every particle of the Creation has a share of the Command of God, because every creature shares a part of the Command of God through which it has come to be there and by virtue of which it remains in being and the light of the Command ofGod shines in it. Understand this!"(Abu Yakub Al Sijistani, 10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971, Kashf al-Mahjub("Unveiling of the Hidden"))

Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la'allakum ta-'aqiloona: "Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect"(Holy Quran 2:242)

"Here is a relevant verse from the Noble Qur'an, cited by Nasir-i Khusraw, hujjat-i Khurasan in his Khawaan al-Ikhwaan : "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then lets you reach your age of full strength, then lets you become old - though some of you die before - and then lets you reach the appointed term; and that haply you may find the intellect (la'allakum ta'qilun)."(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

"According to a famous hadith of the Prophet Muhammad: The first(and only) thing created by God was the Intellect ('aql)"(circa 632CE)

Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

663)An Exchange On My Facebook Wall On Why I Find The Al Sijistani-Khusraw Cosmological Doctrine So Attractive And Supremely Appropriate To My Blog.

2010-11-23T12:43:00.007-05:00

A Facebook friend made this comment on a thread on my Facebook wall:
You have many posts relating to Nasir Khusraw on your Blog; makes sense since both he and Abu Yakub Al Sijistani subscribed to the same cosmological doctrine based partly on Neoplatonism and this doctrine is central to your blog linking science and religion in Islam;

To which I replied:
The attraction of this particular cosmological doctrine for me stems from the fact that it has a slot where empirical scientific discoveries can fit in neatly. Equally as important, perhaps even more important, is how this doctrine originated, developed and evolved: Plato(around 340BC) was one of those 'pagan' Greek philosophers whose ideals and thinking had a definitive spiritual flavour to them. No doubt he was influenced by earlier Hindu, Persian and Jewish traditions. After Christianity emerged another Greek philosopher Plotinus(around 250CE) took the ideals of Plato and seasoned them with the monotheism of Judeo-Christianity, creating Neoplatonism. You can see why this philosophical doctrine was so appealing to the Muslims when they arrived on the scene around 600CE. Firstly the they took the prophetic hadith "Seek knowledge, even in China" very seriously and translated all the texts they found in Byzantine from Greek to Arabic. This is where they discovered Plato, Aristotle and others. The monotheism of judeo-Christianity was naturally appealing to them as well. Philosophers like An-Nasafi, Al-Sijistani, Nasir Khusraw, Hamid al Din Kirmani, Ibn Sina, Alfarabi and others seized on this doctrine and gave it a decidedly Islamic character, changing it to suit their purposes. So the Ismailis added the Natiq and Asas to Universal Intellect and Universal Soul to give the 4 wellsprings of knowledge, others did other things and the whole thing evolved further. For me then the cosmological doctrine of Al Sijistani and Nasir Khusraw has many traditions embedded in it: Judaism, Hinduism, early Persian thinking, pagan Greek philosophy, Judeo-Christianity and Islam, ie, all the Abrahamic traditions and many others. I then took this doctrine and married it to the last 400 years of amazing scientific discovery and decided to write a Blog about it: a multiplicity of traditions that all lead to Unity.

Epilogue comment by me:
In a post islamist-jihadist world remaining Muslims could possibly use a doctrine like this to become an integral part of the community of civilizations.

Related posts:
A 600-Post Blog Summarized: The Story Of My Blog Told Through Collections Of Posts To Date; Spring And Summer Reading For Those Who Are Interested
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/04/599a-600-post-blog-summarized-story-of.html

My Favourite Cosmologist-Philosopher-Theologian-Poets: Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani, Nasir Khusraw And Ikhwan Al-Safa; A Collection Of Posts On My Blog.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/11/428my-favourite-cosmologist-philosopher.html

A Collection Of Posts Describing The Philosophical, Theological, Doctrinal, Historical, Scientific And Esoteric Underpinnings Of My Blog.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/02/568a-collection-of-posts-describing.html

A Collection Of Posts Describing The Ethos Of My Blog On The Link Between Science And Religion In Islam; Quotes Of Aga Khans And Others.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/04/463a-collection-of-posts-describing.html

Quotes Of Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan III, Imam Jafar As Sadiq and Others making reference to Philosophical Ismailism:

"The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)

"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"God – may He be Glorified and Exalted – created Intellect ('aql) first among the spiritual entities; He drew it forth from the right of His Throne, making it proceed from His own Light. Then he commanded it to retreat, and it retreated, to advance, and it advanced; then God proclaimed: 'I created you glorious, and I gave you pre-eminence over all my creatures.'"(Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, Circa 765CE)

"The beginning of all things, their origin, their force and their prosperity, is that intellect ('aql), without which one can profit from nothing. God created it to adorn His creatures, and as a light for them. It is through intellect ('aql) that the servants recognize God is their Creator and that they themselves are created beings …It is thanks to intellect ('aql) that they can distinguish what is beautiful from what is ugly, that they realize that darkness is in ignorance and that light is in Knowledge"( Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, (al-Kulayni, Usul al-Kafi, Vol. 1, pp. 34), circa 765CE)

"The Intellect is the substance of (God's) unity and it is the one (al-wahid), both cause and caused, the act of origination (al-ibda) and the first originated being (al-mubda al-awwal); it is perfection and perfect, eternity and eternal, existence and that which exists all in a single substance"( Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, 11th centuryFatimid Ismaili cosmologist (Kitab al-Riyad, pp. 221-222))

"Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it"(Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani,10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971CE, from the book, 'Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary', by Paul Walker)

"Every particle of the Creation has a share of the Command of God, because every creature shares a part of the Command of God through which it has come to be there and by virtue of which it remains in being and the light of the Command ofGod shines in it. Understand this!"(Abu Yakub Al Sijistani, 10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971, Kashf al-Mahjub("Unveiling of the Hidden"))

Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la'allakum ta-'aqiloona: "Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect"(Holy Quran 2:242)

"Here is a relevant verse from the Noble Qur'an, cited by Nasir-i Khusraw, hujjat-i Khurasan in his Khawaan al-Ikhwaan : "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then lets you reach your age of full strength, then lets you become old - though some of you die before - and then lets you reach the appointed term; and that haply you may find the intellect (la'allakum ta'qilun)."(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

"According to a famous hadith of the Prophet Muhammad: The first(and only) thing created by God was the Intellect ('aql)(circa 632CE)

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

662)Dr Shaf Keshavjee, Lung Transplant And Cancer Innovator, Urges Citizenry To Step Up To The Plate And Donate Lungs And Other Organs To Save Lives.

2010-10-20T12:53:00.008-04:00

On Call With Dr Karl Kabasele, CP24 Television Talk Show, Monday October 18th 2010: This 3-part interview with Dr Shaf Keshavjee, Master Surgeon, Brilliant Scientist, Surgeon-In-Chief of the University Health Network(comprising Toronto General Hospital, Princess Margaret Hospital and Toronto Western Hospital) covers the latest breath-taking discoveries in Lung Transplantation, Regenerative Medicine, Lung Cancer Treatments among other things:

http://www.cp24.com/servlet/HTMLTemplate?tf=ctvlocal%2Fhub%2Fhub.html&cf=ctvlocal%2Fcp24.cfg&hub=CP24Oncall

Click on the 'Watch It Now' for Parts 1, 2 and 3 on October 18th 2010

Related posts on my Blog:

Dr Shaf Keshavjee, Master Surgeon, Brilliant Scientist: A Collection Of Posts; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/08/640dr-shaf-keshavjee-master-surgeon.html

Behind The Scenes-Dr Shaf Keshavjee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlnP_r32PSQ

Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred:

"All human beings, by their nature, desire to know."(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, circa 322BC)

"Nature is the great daily book of God whose secrets must be found and used for the well-being of humanity"(Aga Khan III, Radio Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan, February 19th 1950)

“The physician considers [the bones] so that he may know a way of healing by setting them, but those with insight consider them so that through them they may draw conclusions about the majesty of Him who created and shaped [the bones]. What a difference between the two who consider!”(Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, Muslim Theologian-Philosopher-Mystic, d1111CE)

"My profession is to be forever journeying, to travel about the Universe so that I may know all its conditions."(Ibn Sina, aka Avicenna, 11th century Muslim Philosopher, Physician and Scientist, author of the Canon of Medicine, circa 1037CE)

"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)

"The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims. Exchanges of knowledge between institutions and nations and the widening of man's intellectual horizons are essentially Islamic concepts. The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry. I can not illustrate this interdependence of spiritual inspiration and learning better than by recounting a dialogue between Ibn Sina, the philosopher, and Abu Said Abu -Khyar, the Sufi mystic. Ibn Sina remarked, "Whatever I know, he sees". To which Abu Said replied," Whatever I see, he knows"."(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)

"Science is a wonderful, powerful tool and research budgets are essential. But Science is only the beginning in the new age we are entering. Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief. Science and the search for knowledge are an expression of man's designated role in the universe, but they do not define that role totally....."(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987)

"Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly"(Aga Khan IV, Toronto, Canada, 8th June 2005)

"An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found. That process is often facilitated by an independent governance structure, which serves to ensure that the university adheres to its fundamental mission and is not pressured to compromise its work for short-term advantage. For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence"(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 1993, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan)

"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

661)Bacteria Strut Their Stuff: Videos Catch Microbes Walking On Hairlike Appendages; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred

2010-10-14T22:13:00.002-04:00

"Here is a relevant verse from the Noble Qur'an, cited by Nasir-i Khusraw, hujjat-i Khurasan in his Khawaan al-Ikhwaan : "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then lets you reach your age of full strength, then lets you become old - though some of you die before - and then lets you reach the appointed term; and that haply you may find the intellect (la'allakum ta'qilun)."(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

"Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds, and the clouds which they Trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth; (Here) indeed are Signs for the people of intellect"(Noble Quran)

"Every particle of the Creation has a share of the Command of God, because every creature shares a part of the Command of God through which it has come to be there and by virtue of which it remains in being and the light of the Command ofGod shines in it. Understand this!"(Abu Yakub Al Sijistani, 10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971, Kashf al-Mahjub("Unveiling of the Hidden"))

“The physician considers [the bones] so that he may know a way of healing by setting them, but those with insight consider them so that through them they may draw conclusions about the majesty of Him who created and shaped [the bones]. What a difference between the two who consider!”(Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, Muslim Theologian-Philosopher-Mystic, d1111CE)

“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 13 April 1984)

"Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly"(Aga Khan IV, Toronto, Canada, 8th June 2005)

"Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason"(Aga Khan IV, Spiegel Magazine interview, Germany, Oct 9th 2006)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Bacteria strut their stuff

Videos catch microbes walking on hairlike appendages

By Tina Hesman Saey
Web edition : Thursday, October 7th, 2010
View the video

Jokes that open with a bacterium walking into a bar just got a little less far-fetched.

Some bacteria can just stand up and toddle away on hairlike legs, a new study shows. The finding, reported October 8 in Science, could help scientists better understand how bacteria form dense antibiotic-resistant communities called biofilms and may lead to better ways to combat troublesome and sometimes deadly microbes.

Researchers had already documented bacteria swimming through liquids or crawling on their bellies across a surface, but no one had ever seen bacteria getting up and walking. No one, that is, until a group of undergraduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign made movies of Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria moving on a microscope slide. Working under the supervision of Gerard Wong, a biophysicist now at UCLA, the students adapted a technique used by physicists to track microscopic particles. Computer programs allowed the researchers to quickly sort through video footage of teeming bacteria to find out what individual cells were up to.

“My students started seeing all this neat stuff,” Wong says. “They’d tell me, ‘Yeah, sometimes they just pop wheelies and stand up.’”

What the students saw were rod-shaped P. aeruginosa bacteria standing up on end and then staggering around the slide. The unsteady walks required the use of hairlike appendages called Type IV pili, the scientists found. Without pili, bacteria just lie there. But with pili, P. aeruginosa bacteria “have the ability to both be a sprinter and a long distance runner,” says George O’Toole, a microbiologist at Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, N.H.

The stringy appendages were already known to be needed for twitching motility, a type of locomotion in which pili at one end of a bacterium pull the cell across the surface. “When the bacteria are lying down flat it’s almost like front wheel drive,” Wong says. Crawling bacteria move in relatively straight lines over fairly long distances — an average of six micrometers by Wong’s measurements — possibly enabling the microbes to move toward chemical attractants.

Walking bacteria stand on splayed pili. Tugging on one of the pili sends the cell lurching in that direction. As each pilus gets tugged the bacterium staggers and stumbles, moving randomly across the surface. Walking bacteria covered more ground and moved faster than their crawling counterparts, the researchers found. Such behavior could enable microbes to explore the local environment quickly.

As it turns out, walking is a common activity for bacteria. After a cell divided in two, about 67 percent of the time one of the newborn cells would get up and walk away from its sibling, the researchers observed.

Interactions with the surface are important for forming biofilms. Bacteria need to attach to the surface and release if conditions aren’t favorable. “And it really seems like standing upright is a key transitional step,” O’Toole says.

In the new study, Wong and his colleagues watched as P. aeruginosa bacteria used their pili as launch platforms. A bacterium first rises up on its end and then spins itself around, powered by a molecular motor that drives a whiplike swimming apparatus called a flagellum. Pili adjust the angle at which the cell is tilted. Finally, the microbe builds up momentum and shoots off the surface.

“They don’t just fly off a surface,” Wong says. “There’s a whole coordinated series of pirouettes.”Blocking bacteria’s ability to stand up may prevent biofilms from forming on medical implants and other surfaces, O’Toole says.

Standing up means bacteria can move in three dimensions, not just on flat surfaces, says John Kirby, a microbiologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. “That’s a real eye-opener,” he says. “It’s like the Earth was flat, but now it’s not flat anymore.”

See video:
PRECOCIOUS WALKER from Science News on Vimeo.
A newborn bacterial cell stands up and walks away from its sister cell.Credit: Courtesy of Gerard Wong, UCLA Bioengineering, CNSI

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/64083/title/Bacteria_strut_their_stuff

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

660)Studying Tropical Genetic Blood Diseases: A Conversation With David J. Weatherall On Thalassemia; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred.

2010-10-14T21:47:00.003-04:00

"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)

"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"Nature is the great daily book of God whose secrets must be found and used for the well-being of humanity"(Aga Khan III, Radio Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan, February 19th 1950)

"In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

"In sum the process of creation can be said to take place at several levels. Ibda represents the initial level - one transcends history, the other creates it. The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy. Though they require linguistic and rational categories for definition, they represent elements of a whole, and a true understanding of God must also take account of His creation. Such a synthesis is crucial to how the human intellect eventually relates to creation and how it ultimately becomes the instrument for penetrating through history the mystery of the unknowable God implied in the formulation of tawhid."(Azim Nanji, Director, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, U.K., 1998)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Quotes from article below:
What exactly is Thalassemia?
"It’s a defect in the genes that makes it impossible for hemoglobin to properly form. Of course, in the 1950s, we understood little about hemoglobin’s biochemistry. Thalassemia was, and is, a terrible disease. The children generally don’t live to adulthood — and then only with constant transfusions. In the case of this little girl, her parents eventually took her to their village in Nepal, where she died."
"Eventually, we were able to employ newly invented biochemistry techniques to work out how a gene expresses the proteins that make the molecules of hemoglobin. It would turn out that hemoglobin is made up of two different strings of amino acids, alpha and beta, that should bind together. My colleagues and I found that there are two main types of the disease due to the defects in the alpha or beta chains.

A Conversation With David J. Weatherall

Studying Tropical Genetic Blood Diseases

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS
Published: October 12, 2010

Sir David Weatherall, 77, an Oxford researcher-physician, was among the first to use the tools of molecular biology to understand thalassemia. He was in New York to receive the Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award for “50 years of international statesmanship in biomedical science.” A condensed version of conversations with him follows:

Q. YOU GREW UP IN LIVERPOOL. HOW DID TROPICAL GENETIC BLOOD DISEASES BECOME YOUR LIFE’S WORK?

A. In 1956, after I’d finished my medical training, I was drafted for compulsory military service. At the time, there was an insurgency in Malaya, where the Commonwealth forces were fighting the Communists, and I was not anxious to get involved with that. Nonetheless, I soon found myself on a troop ship for Singapore.

When I got there, because I had no pediatric training, the army put me in charge of a children’s ward looking after the families of Commonwealth soldiers. And there I encountered a 2-year-old, the daughter of a Gurkha from Nepal. She had profound anemia. No one understood why. We kept her alive with transfusions.

So in my spare moments, I went to the biochemistry department at Singapore University Hospital, and worked with people there to try to figure it out. Within six months, we had an answer: thalassemia. That was a big surprise. This genetic disease was thought to occur only in the Mediterranean.

Q. WHAT EXACTLY IS IT?

A. It’s a defect in the genes that makes it impossible for hemoglobin to properly form. Of course, in the 1950s, we understood little about hemoglobin’s biochemistry. Thalassemia was, and is, a terrible disease. The children generally don’t live to adulthood — and then only with constant transfusions. In the case of this little girl, her parents eventually took her to their village in Nepal, where she died.

Q. SO SHE WAS THE BEGINNING OF YOUR INTEREST?

A. Yes. The army next sent me up to northern Malaya, where the last of the fighting was going on. I used this time to search for more thalassemia. I’d construct equipment from old car batteries and filter paper, and that’s how I separated the different hemoglobins in the blood samples I’d collect. Whenever I found anything abnormal, I’d post the slides to a good old boy, Herman Lehman, at a laboratory in London. We actually found one or two more cases that way.
By 1960, when I was done with my service, I was totally hooked on genetic blood diseases. I wrote my mentor at medical school back in Britain that I wanted to go somewhere to learn more about genetics, blood and protein chemistry. He wrote back, “If you try to do this in England, you will be sent for psychiatric advice. Better go to America.”

Q. AND THAT’S HOW YOU ENDED UP AT JOHNS HOPKINS FOR FOUR YEARS?

A. Exactly. But they failed to tell me that there were no thalassemics in Baltimore! So I found myself making frequent trips to New York to locate Greeks and Italians with the gene. I’d take the blood samples back on the train and sit all night working them up.

Eventually, we were able to employ newly invented biochemistry techniques to work out how a gene expresses the proteins that make the molecules of hemoglobin. It would turn out that hemoglobin is made up of two different strings of amino acids, alpha and beta, that should bind together. My colleagues and I found that there are two main types of the disease due to the defects in the alpha or beta chains.

Q. WAS THAT THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING THE DISEASE?

A. Yes. Later, when I returned to Britain, we and others were able to use that to develop a prenatal test for it — you looked for that imbalance of chain production. Also, in 1974, we found a form of it where there was no alpha strand present at all, causing babies to be stillborn. From that came the first demonstration of a gene deletion.

What was so important about our thalassemia research was that the techniques we pioneered became a kind of template for understanding genetic diseases. Breakthroughs from other researchers soon followed in cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s. This was an example of where studying something considered rare had truly widespread consequences.

Q. HOW COMMON IS THALASSEMIA?

A. No one knows precisely. It’s believed that there are about 60,000 births with it in a year in the poorer parts of the world. So there are hundreds of thousands of these children. What we certainly know that the impact is devastating.

That hit me very hard with the families we’ve come to know in Sri Lanka, where my Oxford research institute has a partnership to provide health care. Genetic diseases are sometimes difficult to explain, and people there are often unwilling to accept that both parents’ genes are equally responsible for the disease. The men blame the women, who suffer enormously. Lots of the families break up. There’s quite a high suicide rate, as well.

Q. WHEN YOU OFFER PRENATAL TESTING, YOU ARE ALSO OFTEN OFFERING ABORTION. IS THAT A PROBLEM IN SOME COUNTRIES?

A. It’s a problem in predominantly Catholic countries like the Philippines. It’s not been a problem in Cyprus, where 20 percent of the population carries the gene. It was a problem in Islamic countries, but that has now been rethought. In the intensely Buddhist countries, the reaction varies. In Sri Lanka, it’s not acceptable. In Thailand, they’ve come to some kind of an arrangement.

Q. IN YOUR ACCEPTANCE SPEECH FOR THE LASKER PRIZE, YOU COMPLAINED THAT MANY OF THE INTERNATIONAL HEALTH ORGANIZATIONS IGNORE GENETIC DISEASES. WHY IS THAT?

A. They don’t think enough people are impacted, so they are more interested in solving communicable diseases. Well, they are making progress with those, but they recognize that once you do that the frequency of the genetic diseases increases. As you start to control infections, you lower childhood mortality and many children with genetic diseases who might have died in their first years are living long enough to present for treatment. They have to deal with that.

Q. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LASKER PRIZE MONEY?

A. Probably use it for research. I’m 77, and I’ve been officially retired since 2000. In Britain, it’s not easy to stay working when you’re older. People don’t like it, which is foolish because some researchers are burned out at 30 and then someone like Max Perutz did 100 papers after his “retirement.” But it’s hard to get grants at my stage, though I’ve been very kindly supported with a small one from the Wellcome Trust.

If I’m spared another year or two, I want to look into a form of Asian thalassemia where there’s a strong hint that a high proportion of the kids might be able to go through their lives with low hemoglobin and without transfusions. We don’t know if this is genetic or perhaps something about their environment. That’s what I’d like to sort out before I depart. And that’s what the prize will probably finance.

Sir David Weatherall, 77, an Oxford researcher-physician, was among the first to use the tools of molecular biology to understand thalassemia. He was in New York to receive the Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award for “50 years of international statesmanship in biomedical science.”

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

659)2010 Nobels Recognize Potential Of Basic Science To Shape The World; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred.

2010-10-14T21:12:00.003-04:00

About the United States of America: "I'm less hypnotized by this country's material wealth than by its wealth of knowledge. This country today represents, without any doubt in my mind, the greatest intensity of human knowledge on the face of the earth. And that is an exhilarating thought, one perhaps not perceived by Americans as much as by non-Americans"(Aga Khan IV, LIFE magazine interview, December 1983)

"The United States' position as a world leader, in my view, grows directly out of its accomplishments as a Knowledge Society - and this Knowledge - rightly applied - can continue to be a resource of enormous global value"(Aga Khan IV, Austin, Texas, USA, 12 April 2008)

"The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims. Exchanges of knowledge between institutions and nations and the widening of man's intellectual horizons are essentially Islamic concepts. The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry. I can not illustrate this interdependence of spiritual inspiration and learning better than by recounting a dialogue between Ibn Sina, the philosopher, and Abu Said Abu -Khyar, the Sufi mystic. Ibn Sina remarked, "Whatever I know, he sees". To which Abu Said replied," Whatever I see, he knows"."(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)

"Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)

"A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations"(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique.)

"An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found. That process is often facilitated by an independent governance structure, which serves to ensure that the university adheres to its fundamental mission and is not pressured to compromise its work for short-term advantage. For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence"(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 1993, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan)

"...As we use our intellect to gain new knowledge about Creation, we come to see even more profoundly the depth and breadth of its mysteries. We explore unknown regions beneath the seas – and in outer space. We reach back over hundreds of millions of years in time. Extra-ordinary fossilised geological specimens seize our imagination – palm leaves, amethyst flowers, hedgehog quartz, sea lilies, chrysanthemum and a rich panoply of shells. Indeed, these wonders are found beneath the very soil on which we tread – in every corner of the world – and they connect us with far distant epochs and environments.
And the more we discover, the more we know, the more we penetrate just below the surface of our normal lives – the more our imagination staggers. Just think for example what might lie below the surfaces of celestial bodies all across the far flung reaches of our universe. What we feel, even as we learn, is an ever-renewed sense of wonder, indeed, a powerful sense of awe – and of Divine inspiration"(Aga Khan IV, Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, Ottawa, Canada, December 6th 2008)For the full version of this quote see:
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/easy-nashs-blogpost-four-hundred-updated-with-quotes-from-the-opening-of-the-delegation-of-the-ismaili-imamat/

"In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God"(Aga Khan IV, July 23rd 2008, Lisbon, Portugal)

The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)

"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)

"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)

"In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)

"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)

"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul. Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

Quote from a letter written by Our 48th Imam to a friend in 1952 under the title: 'What have we forgotten in Islam?':"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth. During the great period of Islam, Muslims did not forget these principles of their religion(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan).

"Nature is the great daily book of God whose secrets must be found and used for the well-being of humanity"(Aga Khan III, Radio Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan, February 19th 1950)

"My profession is to be forever journeying, to travel about the Universe so that I may know all its conditions."(Ibn Sina, aka Avicenna, 11th century Muslim Philosopher, Physician and Scientist, author of the Canon of Medicine, circa 1037CE)

"One hour of contemplation on the works of the Creator is better than a thousand hours of prayer"(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)

All human beings, by their nature, desire to know."(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, circa 322BC)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

2010 Nobels recognize potential of basic science to shape the world

Prizes go to IVF, graphene and ‘carbon chemistry at its best’

By Rachel Ehrenberg, Laura Sanders and Nathan Seppa
October 23rd, 2010; Vol.178 #9

Medical Nobel goes to developer of IVF
Robert Edwards receives prize for work that led to 4 million births Read More

Physics Nobel goes to graphene
Two-dimensional carbon sheets discovered in 2004 Read More

Basic tool for making organic molecules wins chemistry Nobel
Three researchers get prize for methods used to make drugs, electronics, plastics Read More

BLOG:Swedish academy awards
As Nobel season opens, one researcher looks back on a century of steadily increasing U.S. dominance.

A technology that has brought 4 million babies into the world over the past three decades has been recognized with a Nobel Prize, along with two innovations that promise to revolutionize how those children live in the 21st century.

The 2010 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine went to Robert Edwards of the University of Cambridge in England for pioneering in vitro fertilization, a process that overcomes many causes of infertility by creating embryos outside the body and implanting them in a prospective mother’s uterus.

Edwards began research on IVF in the 1950s and later worked with gynecologist Patrick Steptoe. In the late 1960s Edwards was the first to try human egg removal and fertilization in vitro, a Latin term meaning “in glass.”

“By a brilliant combination of basic and applied medical research, Edwards overcame one technical hurdle after another in his persistence to discover a method that would help to alleviate infertility,” the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute stated in announcing the prize.
Ultimately, Edwards’ efforts gave rise to both a medical breakthrough and a now-outdated term — test-tube baby. The first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born July 25, 1978.

One winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics, Konstantin Novoselov, was little more than a toddler at the time. Now 36, he and Andre Geim, both of the University of Manchester in England, published their Nobel-winning discovery just six years ago in Science (SN: 10/23/04, p. 259). Since then almost 50,000 research papers have been published on graphene, the material the pair isolated from graphite using ordinary adhesive tape.

Graphene is made of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern, forming a single layer so thin that it’s nearly see-through. For such a humble material, graphene displays some remarkable properties: It conducts electrons with extremely low resistance, can conduct heat 10 times better than copper and exhibits strange quantum effects. Graphene is also flexible and stronger than steel. The substance could form the basis for new kinds of electronics, transparent displays, efficient solar panels or lightweight plastic composite materials for use in aerospace and other applications.

“When you couple it with all of the applications, that’s what whips physicists into a frenzy,” says Joseph Stroscio of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Gaithersburg, Md., campus. “It’s an amazing little material.”

The winners of the chemistry prize developed ways to use another amazing material, the precious metal palladium, as a catalyst to build large molecules out of carbon atoms. The techniques the trio developed are already used in producing thin-screen displays and a host of drugs, including antibiotics, chemotherapy agents and the anti-inflammatory naproxen. More applications are bound to come as chemists continue to refine the technique, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in naming the winners: Richard Heck, who retired in 1989 from the University of Delaware in Newark; Ei-ichi Negishi of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.; and Akira Suzuki of Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.

All three figured out ways to make chemical reactions go by using palladium to disconnect and connect particular atoms with speed and efficiency. Known as palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions, different versions of the process already bear the names of each Nobel winner and are familiar to organic chemistry students, as well as those in industry and academia. The research that led to the prizes began back in the 1950s and has become part of the standard toolkit of chemists.

“This is fundamental carbon chemistry at its best,” says Joseph Francisco, a Purdue chemist and president of the American Chemical Society.

This year’s Nobel Prizes are worth 10 million Swedish kronor each, or about $1.5 million. Geim and Novoselov will split their prize evenly, as will Heck, Negishi and Suzuki.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/64079/title/2010_Nobels_recognize_potential_of_basic_science_to__shape_the_world

Related:
Pioneer of in Vitro Fertilization Wins Nobel Prize
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/health/research/05nobel.html?ref=science

Physics Nobel Honors Work on Ultra-Thin Carbon
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/science/06nobel.html?ref=science

3 Share Nobel in Chemistry for Work on Synthesizing Molecules
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/science/07nobel.html?ref=science

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

658)The Movie Story Of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: Very Relevant To Me Because My Blog Is Cross-Posted To My Wall And To NetworkedBlogs On Facebook.

2010-10-03T17:48:00.007-04:00

"All human beings, by their nature, desire to know."(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, circa 322BC)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Review: The Social Network

The story of Facebook, from a bad date to an online empire, is traced with genuine insight

By JOHN GRIFFIN, The Gazette October 4, 2010

The Social Network
Rating 4.5 out of 5
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Rooney Mara
Playing at: Angrignon, Banque Scotia, Brossard, Cavendish, Cinema du Parc, Colossus, Cote des Neiges, Kirkland, Lacordaire, Marche Central, Sources, Spheretech and Taschereau cinemas.
Parents' guide: Some Language, Drug Use.

The Social Network is the great romance for the first decade of the 21st century.

David Fincher deftly directs an outstanding script from TV guru Aaron Sorkin about a curious moment in history when people fall hopelessly in love with themselves and their machines. It is, of course, the story of Facebook.

The year is 2003. The setting is Harvard University. In a brilliant opening scene in a crowded college bar, Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg is having a beer with girlfriend Erica (live wire Rooney Mara, about to become the face of The Millennium Trilogy's Lisbeth Salander). In the parry and thrust of two frighteningly smart people with all their brain cells intact, the arrogant, insecure Mark manages to insult Erica on any number of fronts, revealing a complex, naive, class-conscious personality with a dysfunctional self-edit button.

"Dating you is like dating a Stairmaster," she observes as the conversation turns upon Mark's obsessions with the caste system at Harvard and his position as a Jewish tech nerd peering in on America's most privileged products of WASPdom.

The breaking point comes when he says, "You don't have to study. You go to B.U." It is one condescending remark over the line. She breaks up with him. "You're not a nerd," she notes. "You're an a--hole."

Stung, and slightly drunk, he goes back to his dorm room and writes a scathing, adolescent blog riposte to his rejection, involving her family history and bra size. It is a defining act in what would become the social networking institution known as Facebook, a $25-billion global phenomenon with 500 million members whose "friends" share 30 billion pieces of information a month. And it all started with hurt feelings on a date gone wrong.

This could have been just another boring business movie, but for Fincher's thoroughly contemporary, yet seamless, mix of flashbacks and flash-forwards, Sorkin's rapier dialogue (his TV classic The West Wing was no fluke), an entirely believable cast and a tale that could only have been spun over the last seven years.

Mark's intelligence far outweighs his common sense. When a cruel, sexist computer game he hatches by hacking into Harvard student sites takes off like wildfire, he decides there may a function in linking people up. It's raw and unformed, but rapidly comes together with information allegedly lifted off fellow Harvard students, the blue-blooded Winklevoss twins and their partner in a fledgling enterprise, Max Minghella's Divya Narendra.

Their subsequent lawsuit against Zuckerberg for intellectual property theft forms the dramatic core around which The Social Network so smoothly revolves. The other arc is an evolving relationship between Mark and "only friend" Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). Eduardo provides the $900 start-up money for the project, and functions as business partner and lightning rod. Until Sean Parker shows up.

As played with scene-stealing charisma by Justin Timberlake, Parker is the reclusive wunderkind technology entrepreneur who began as a busted 16-year-old hacker, went on to found Napster at the ripe old age of 19, and saw promise in what was then known as TheFacebook that far exceeded Saverin's vision but mirrored Zuckerberg's own.

After dazzling the socially inept Mark at a sleek New York restaurant, he persuades him to spend the summer of 2004 in Silicon Valley's Palo Alto, while Eduardo woos potential advertisers back East. The freeze-out begins as consummate hustler Parker begins to take the shaky 5-month-old service global. Eduardo will have a lawsuit of his own to file.

You want to experience The Social Network, even -or perhaps especially -if you value privacy and despise Facebook as a prime enabler in this sorry age of acute narcissism. The movie looks great, sounds great (thanks to an edgy score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), moves through its substantial running time at a comfortable clip and radiates intelligence, charm, wit and real insight into human nature. I can't imagine a more entertaining movie this fall, or a better movie about the Web, ever.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Social+Network+online+romance/3606304/story.html

Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

657)Scientists Find The First "Goldilocks" Extrasolar Planet: Not Too Hot, Not Too Cold But Just Right; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred.

2010-10-01T00:46:00.004-04:00

"...As we use our intellect to gain new knowledge about Creation, we come to see even more profoundly the depth and breadth of its mysteries. We explore unknown regions beneath the seas – and in outer space. We reach back over hundreds of millions of years in time. Extra-ordinary fossilised geological specimens seize our imagination – palm leaves, amethyst flowers, hedgehog quartz, sea lilies, chrysanthemum and a rich panoply of shells. Indeed, these wonders are found beneath the very soil on which we tread – in every corner of the world – and they connect us with far distant epochs and environments.
And the more we discover, the more we know, the more we penetrate just below the surface of our normal lives – the more our imagination staggers. Just think for example what might lie below the surfaces of celestial bodies all across the far flung reaches of our universe. What we feel, even as we learn, is an ever-renewed sense of wonder, indeed, a powerful sense of awe – and of Divine inspiration"(Aga Khan IV, Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, Ottawa, Canada, December 6th 2008)For the full version of this quote see:http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/easy-nashs-blogpost-four-hundred-updated-with-quotes-from-the-opening-of-the-delegation-of-the-ismaili-imamat/

"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)

"Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)

"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth."(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)

Chapter 21, Verse 30: Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together before We clove them asunder, and of water fashioned every thing? Will they not then believe?(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

Chapter 51, verse 47: We built the heavens with might, and We expand it wide(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

Chapter79, verse 30: And then he gave the earth an oval form(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

Chapter 86, verse 11: I swear by the reciprocating heaven.....(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

"One hour of contemplation on the works of the Creator is better than a thousand hours of prayer"(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

September 29, 2010

New Planet May Be Able to Nurture Organisms
By DENNIS OVERBYE

It might be a place that only a lichen or pond scum could love, but astronomers said Wednesday that they had found a very distant planet capable of harboring water on its surface, thus potentially making it a home for plant or animal life.

Nobody from Earth will be visiting anytime soon: The planet, which goes by the bumpy name of Gliese 581g, is orbiting a star about 20 light-years away in the constellation Libra.

But if the finding is confirmed by other astronomers, the planet, which has three to four times the mass of Earth, would be the most Earthlike planet yet discovered, and the first to meet the criteria for being potentially habitable.

“It’s been a long haul,” said Steven S. Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who, along with R. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, led the team that made the discovery. “This is the first exoplanet that has the right conditions for water to exist on its surface.”

In a recent report for the National Academy of Science, astronomers declared the finding of such planets one of the major goals of this decade. NASA’s Kepler satellite — which was launched in March 2009 as a way to detect Earthlike bodies — is expected to harvest dozens or hundreds.

Gliese 581g (whose first name is pronounced GLEE-za) circles a dim red star known as Gliese 581, once every 37 days, at a distance of about 14 million miles. That is smack in the middle of the so-called Goldilocks zone, where the heat from the star is neither too cold nor too hot for water to exist in liquid form on its surface.

“This is really the first Goldilocks planet,” Dr. Butler said.

Other astronomers hailed the news as another harbinger that the search for “living planets,” as Dimitar D. Sasselov of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics calls them, is on the right track.

“I’m getting goose bumps,” said Caleb Scharf of Columbia University.

But they expressed caution about this particular planet, noting uncertainties about its density, composition and atmosphere, and the need for another generation of giant telescopes and spacecraft in order to find out anything more about it. Other Goldilocks planets have come and gone in recent years.

The discovery was announced at a news conference Wednesday in Washington, and the findings have been posted on the National Science Foundation’s Web site and will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The authors said the relative ease by which planet was found — in only 11 years — led them to believe that such planets must be common.

“Either we have just been incredibly lucky in this early detection, or we are truly on the threshold of a second Age of Discovery,” they wrote in their paper.

Pressed during the news conference about the possibility of life on Gliese 581g, Dr. Vogt protested that he was an astronomer, not a biologist. Then he relented, saying that, speaking strictly personally, he believed that “the chances of life on this planet are almost 100 percent.”

Asked the same question, Dr. Butler squirmed and said, “I like data.” After a pause he added: “And what the data say is that the planet is the right distance from the star to have water and the right mass to hold an atmosphere. What is needed simply to find lots and lots of these things is lots and lots of telescope time.”

The latest results from Gliese 581 were harvested from observations by two often competing teams, using telescopes in Chile and Hawaii to measure the slight gravitational tugs the star gets as its planets swing by.

This is hardly the first time around the block for Gliese 581, which is a longtime favorite of planet hunters and now is known to have six planets in its retinue. It is a dwarf star about one-third the mass of the Sun and only about one-hundredth as bright, allowing planets to huddle closer to the campfire. “It hauntingly reminds us of our own solar system,” Dr. Butler said.

Two of Gliese’s planets have already had their moment in the limelight as possible Goldilocks planets. One, known as Gliese 581c, circles just on the inner edge of the habitable zone and was thus thought to be habitable three years ago. But further analysis suggested that the greenhouse effect would turn it into a stifling hell. Another planet, just on the outer edge of the Goldilocks zone, is probably too cold.

“One is on the hot side, the other is on cold side,” and the new planet is right in between, Dr. Vogt said. “It’s bookended.”

He and his colleagues estimated the average temperature on the surface of Gliese 581g to be between 10 and minus 24 degrees Fahrenheit, about the same as a summer day in Antarctica.
But that means very little, he said, because the planet, like all the others in that system, keeps the same face to the star all the time. So the temperature could vary wildly from the day-side to the night-side of the planet, meaning that an organism could perhaps find a comfortable zone to live in.

But nobody really knows what is going on on Gliese 581g, said Sara Seager, a planetary astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If it was all carbon dioxide, like Venus, it would be pretty hot,” she said, adding that she would give the planet a 90 percent chance of holding water.

That, she pointed out, is faint praise in scientific circles. “Sounds high, but would you fly on a plane that only had an 8 or 9 chance out of 10 of making it?” she asked.

“Everyone is so primed to say here’s the next place we’re going to find life,” Dr. Seager said, “but this isn’t a good planet for follow-up.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/science/space/30planet.html?_r=1&ref=science

Related:
Planet hunters find exoplanet that could potentially support life
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/09/planet-hunters-find-exoplanet-that-could-potentially-support-life.ars

Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

655)Lorne Gunter: Trudeau’s Impact Is Obvious. It’s Also Mostly Bad

2010-09-30T23:46:00.003-04:00

Lorne Gunter September 29, 2010

Pierre Trudeau died 10 years ago this week, so of course the tributes and legacy analyses have been coming thick and fast. Among my favourites was offered up by Chantel Hebert, one of the few people worth reading at the Toronto Star.

Well, I have one, too. But unlike most commentators, I come to bury Trudeau (or at least make sure he’s still buried), not to praise him.

While he certainly had a profound impact on Canada, it was mostly destructive. Even the few positive changes he made might be called inevitable; they were the type of changes that were coming to every western society by dint of cultural evolution anyway.

Trudeau was by and large a social engineer convinced of his own intellectual superiority and the cloddish unimaginativeness of nearly everyone else. Not only was he arrogant enough to believe that the natural laws of society and economics can be ignored by determined central planners without consequences, he was also arrogant enough to imagine the light had been given to him more than anyone else, so that he alone possessed the superior knowledge required to see what needed doing and everyone else should defer to him.

Some have argued that legalizing abortion, divorce and homosexuality were bold innovations by Trudeau. Yet nearly every Western nation did the same at around the same time. Trudeau merely ensured Canada was riding the same waves as the rest.

Give him some due. Trudeau faced down the FLQ during the October Crisis of 1970 and a decade later, while much of our chattering class trembled with fear at the prospect of Quebec separation, he shouldered the burden of defeating the sovereigntists in Quebec’s 1980 referendum.

Still, he backed down the separatist terrorists by invoking the War Measures Act and proving just how shallow his vaunted commitment to individual liberties truly was at crunch time. And he won the 1980 referendum at the price of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — which opened the Pandora’s box of judicial activism — as well as two decades of expensive Quebec appeasement that ended in Adscam.

Of course Adscam came long after Trudeau left office. Still, it was a natural and predictable outcome of throwing gobs and gobs of money at Quebec in an attempt to win the province’s federalist loyalty. When the first money thrown failed to buy Quebec’s love, more and more was thrown until there was so much money being sloshed around at projects of diminishing significance that it was inevitable sticky fingers would grab up some.

While not directly Trudeau’s fault, Adscam was a by-product of his chosen method of fighting Quebec nationalism.

His impact on culture was devastating. He implemented official bilingualism in the vain hope that Quebecers would feel more at home in Canada if they knew the post mistress in Houston, B.C. was fluently bilingual. In the process, though, he failed to placate the Quebecois, but managed to alienate millions of anglophones.

Today, four decades and several billion tax dollars later, we are barely more bilingual as a nation than we were when Trudeau began this social experiment and just as divided (or more so) along linguistic lines.

He imagined that multiculturalism would unify us in our diversity – although he never explained how, practically, that logical non sequitor was supposed to happen. Instead, it has led to divisive ethnopolitics, political correctness dictating national policy, the importation of overseas animosities and the ghettoization of large blocks of new Canadians. Even the inflow of refugee claim jumpers can be traced back to the way that Trudeau thought multiculturalism and easy immigration would make Canada more cosmopolitan.

Human rights commissions are part of his legacy, as was the Court Challenges Program that paid minority plaintiffs to file court cases demanding that they be given Charter rights.

After he left office, Trudeau frequently insisted he had fought for a Charter of Rights to protect individuals from the state, and claimed Court Challenges and the Charter’s provisions authorizing judges to “read in” in rights had both been meant to make that protection easier.

How naive.

Activist judges and activist special interest groups quickly learned they could use one another to advance a radical social remake of Canada, and Ottawa would pay for their court appearances. What was meant to be a shield from the power of the state instead created a cozy little cabal among lefty legal scholars and judges that simply shifted the might of the state from the elected Parliament to the unelected judiciary. Both are, after all, branches of government. So the Charter didn’t protect citizens from the excesses of the state, it merely managed to change the whip from one had to another.

Sure, having politicians vote away our rights is bad, but is it really worse than having overreaching judges do the same? At least the politicians we can vote out of office from time to time. Thanks to the Charter, the new boss is the same as the old boss, only also unreachable by the people.

The CRTC is a Trudeau creation, the people who tell us what we may watch on television and listen on radio. So, too, is the notion of the CBC as mouthpiece of social and political activism.
But as bad as that litany is, it is probably on the economy that Trudeau was at his worst.
Inflation, national debt, lost opportunities due to protectionism and economic nationalism — all were Trudeau’s legacy. Because he understood so little about economics and entrepreneurship, Trudeau was easily convinced that history would leave capitalism behind and replace it, if not with socialism, then with some form of command-and-control economy.

His reforms to unemployment insurance (now euphemistically renamed Employment Insurance) ensured our labour market would be badly distorted for nearly 30 years. His scheme of regional transfers — that at one time accounted for 40% of have-not provinces revenue — helped freeze poorer regions’ economies in amber and delay the day when their own desperation would lead to innovation and growth.

He presided over the largest expansion of government in our history; from 1974 to 1976, alone, Ottawa’s spending increased by 50%. He believed we could inflate our way out of debt, so never concerned himself with budget deficit, the consequence of which is an enduring national debt (although Conservative prime ministers have helped him out there). And he implemented wage-and-price controls that further damaged the economy they were meant to resurrect.

He even convinced himself it made sense to beggar a productive region — the West – for the enrichment of less productive ones. So he implemented the National Energy Program, which hurt both the economy and national unity.

Trudeau may have been a great theoretician, but if a solution required even a centesimo of practical understanding — and all successful solutions do — he wasn’t interested.

He may have had more impact on Canada than any other 20th century prime minister. Yet on balance, that impact was mostly bad.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/09/29/lorne-gunter-trudeaus-impact-is-obvious-its-also-mostly-bad/

Easy Nash

654)A Nod To A Gaggle Of Telus-Coloured Pinkies From Auckland, NZ: It's Breast Cancer Awareness Month And The Colour Is Pink; Quotes From Blogpost 400

2010-09-28T20:17:00.005-04:00

"Nature is the great daily book of God whose secrets must be found and used for the well-being of humanity"(Aga Khan III, Radio Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan, February 19th 1950)

"A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations"(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique.)

"Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

BREAST CANCER IN DEPTH

1)INTRODUCTION
-Noninvasive Breast Cancer
-Invasive Breast Cancer
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth.htm

2)RISK FACTORS
-Ethnicity and Race
-Inherited Genetic Factors and Family History
-Over-Exposure to Estrogen
-Breast Abnormalities
-Physical Characteristics
-Environmental Factors
-Viruses
-Insulin-Like Growth Factor
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth1.htm

3)PREVENTION AND LIFESTYLE FACTORS
-Exercise
-Dietary Factors
-Soy and Phytoestrogens
-Avoiding Alcohol
-Breastfeeding
-Specific Preventive Measures for High-Risk Women
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth2.htm

4)SYMPTOMS AND SIGNS OF BREAST CANCER
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth3.htm

5)DIAGNOSIS OF BREAST CANCER
-Monthly Self-Examination
-Mammograms
-Other Imaging Techniques
-Biopsy
-Lymphadenectomy
-Sentinel Node Biopsy
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth4.htm

6)PROGNOSIS OF BREAST CANCER
-Location of the Tumor
-Hormone Receptor-Positive or -Negative
-The Influence of Genes
-Tumor Markers
-Other Factors for Predicting Outlook
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth5.htm

7)TREATMENT OF BREAST CANCER
-Local Treatment.
-Systemic Treatment.
-Stage 0
-Stage I and Stage II
-Stage III (Locally Advanced)
-Stage IV (Metastasized Cancer)
-Recurrent Breast Cancer
-The Effects of Emotions and Psychological Support
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth6.htm

8)SURGERY IN BREAST CANCER
-Breast-Conserving Procedures
-Mastectomy
-Breast Reconstruction
-Investigational Minimally Invasive Procedures
-Follow-Up Care
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth7.htm

9)RADIATION TREATMENT IN BREAST CANCER
-Administration of Radiation Therapy
-Side Effects of Radiation Therapy
-Long-Term Complications
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth8.htm

10)MEDICATIONS USED IN BREAST CANCER
-Drugs Used for Breast Cancer
-Considerations for Drug Therapies
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth9.htm

11)CHEMOTHERAPY IN BREAST CANCER
-Adjuvant and Neoadjuvant Regimens
-Chemotherapy and Other Drugs Used in Metastatic Cancer
-Side Effects of Chemotherapy
-High-Dose Chemotherapy with Bone Marrow or Peripheral-Blood Stem Cell Transplantation
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth10.htm

12)HORMONE THERAPY IN BREAST CANCER
-Tamoxifen and Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators (SERMs)
-Aromatase Inhibitors
-Selective Estrogen Receptor Downregulators (SERDs)
-Progestins
-Ovarian Ablation
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth11.htm

13)LOTS MORE INFORMATION
-Resources
-References
http://healthguide.howstuffworks.com/breast-cancer-in-depth12.htm

Related posts on this Blog:

Saluting my wife and daughter for walking the 60km walk on the "Weekend to End Breast Cancer" this weekend; the cold hard facts on Breast Cancer.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/401saluting-my-wife-and-daughter-for.html

Cancer Treatment Takes A Giant Step Forward As Scientists Crack Code; Quote From Blogpost Four Hundred.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/12/535cancer-treatment-takes-giant-step.html

Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

653)Scientists Race To Find Dark Matter, The Stuff That Shapes The Visible Universe, In Canadian Mine; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred

2010-09-23T11:59:00.001-04:00

Chapter 21, Verse 30: Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together before We clove them asunder, and of water fashioned every thing? Will they not then believe?(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

Chapter 51, verse 47: We built the heavens with might, and We expand it wide(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

Chapter79, verse 30: And then he gave the earth an oval form(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

Chapter 86, verse 11: I swear by the reciprocating heaven.....(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

"The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims. Exchanges of knowledge between institutions and nations and the widening of man's intellectual horizons are essentially Islamic concepts. The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry. I can not illustrate this interdependence of spiritual inspiration and learning better than by recounting a dialogue between Ibn Sina, the philosopher, and Abu Said Abu -Khyar, the Sufi mystic. Ibn Sina remarked, "Whatever I know, he sees". To which Abu Said replied," Whatever I see, he knows"."(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)

"In sum the process of creation can be said to take place at several levels. Ibda represents the initial level - one transcends history, the other creates it. The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy. Though they require linguistic and rational categories for definition, they represent elements of a whole, and a true understanding of God must also take account of His creation. Such a synthesis is crucial to how the human intellect eventually relates to creation and how it ultimately becomes the instrument for penetrating through history the mystery of the unknowable God implied in the formulation of tawhid."(Azim Nanji, Director, Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, U.K., 1998)

"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Scientists race to find dark matter in Canadian mine

Adam McDowell, National PostFriday, Sept. 3, 2010

Wherever there’s a deep hole somewhere in the world, there is a physicist down it trying to shed light on the shadowy secrets of the universe, says Nigel Smith, the director of the deepest hole physicists have yet burrowed into. Exploring the subatomic realm means plunging into the subterranean one: He fastens a light to his hard hat and prepares to head two kilometres into a nickel mine on the 8:30 a.m. cage.

For at least the past 15 years, a global race to be the first team of scientists to illuminate dark matter has consumed the field of particle physics. Canada has dug deep to gamble on being the site of that first definitive, Nobel-worthy brush with the mysterious stuff. SNOLAB, located in an active Vale Inco nickel mine deep underground, near Sudbury, Ont., is the world’s deepest underground laboratory, and thus the one that’s most shielded from distracting cosmic radiation.

Here, various competing experiment teams are vying to be the first to see the blip of an elusive dark matter particle registering on their instruments.

“You’re looking for something that we don’t know is there. We don’t know for a fact that dark matter exists, but there’s very good circumstantial evidence for it,” says Fraser Duncan, SNOLAB’s associate director.

“That’s why a lot of us are putting a lot of effort into looking for it.”

“Canada has put itself firmly at the forefront of this research. That’s why I’m here,” says Dr. Smith, who moved here from England last year to run SNOLAB.

But setting up clean, radiation-limited lab space down a dirty mine is even harder than it sounds.
Fear of a speck of the wrong material in the wrong place drives the process. The sweat from a human finger touching the apparatus, just once, could contain enough naturally radioactive potassium to necessitate a decommissioning of the 12-metre-wide acrylic sphere at its centre — into which tens of millions in research funds have been sunk. And yet in one corridor, a pit is being dustily dug next to sensitive equipment, the two separated by tarps. “We’re mining inside a clean room,” Dr. Smith grins.

Sixty-five million dollars in government funding having been spent expanding the facility over the past six years, experiments are either running now or planned for the next few years. There’s more building on site, and applications for more experiments.

The cool, carefully controlled air of SNOLAB is hot with competition because the identity of dark matter has for years been the burning question at the nexus of particle physics, astronomy and cosmology. Dark matter could hold the answer to whether the universe will expand forever or eventually collapse in a Big Crunch.

The Large Hadron Collider beneath the Franco-Swiss border may hog most of the glamour for now, but a flurry of headlines, not to mention accolades for the researchers, would likely greet any announcement of dark matter evidence. The facilities play complementary roles in the ongoing quest to understand the universe on its smallest and largest scales.

“We’re attacking the problem from different perspectives,” Dr. Smith says, “but the results all focus in on the same problem. That’s why this is such an exciting time in physics.”

In Sudbury, reaching the possible site of that hoped-for eureka moment involves stepping into the creaky, dark miners’ cage, or elevator, and descending 6,800 feet beneath the surface (slightly more than two kilometres; for comparison’s sake, the famous Inco Superstack in Sudbury — the tallest smokestack in the Western hemisphere — stands 380 meters tall, or 1,247 feet).

From there it’s a walk through a muddy tunnel that Vale Inco has more or less tapped out for mining purposes. Called a drift, it stretches two kilometres before one reaches the front door of the laboratory. Then one begins the careful ablution process required to help keep the 5,000-square metre facility clean.

The 40 or so physicists, technicians and support staff working here make that journey each day on foot. Everything in the laboratory, from super-sensitive pucks of germanium to a crane capable of lifting 10,000 kilograms, must be brought via the cage — piece by piece if necessary — or hooked to the bottom of it. There is no other way in. It’s a ship-in-a-bottle problem, Dr. Smith says, except the neck of the bottle is 2,000 metres long and irregular. Mock-ups the same size and shape as pieces of lab equipment make test runs through the drift to make sure the real thing will fit; leaned against one wall is “Duncan’s donut,” a wooden ring about three metres wide and named for the associate director.

Researchers and technicians scurry to and fro; with three different experiments actively being set up, these are busy days for SNOLAB. Soon the window for visitors will close. Slipping on the standard-issue blue pyjama-like jumpsuit and hair net, Dr. Duncan says, “For the first time we’re starting to have a real sense of competing experiments.”

For physicists, the existence of dark matter is plain as day on a blackboard of calculations, but has so far proven stubbornly challenging to spot in real life.

Swiss physicist Fritz Zwicky proposed the existence of dark matter in 1934 after he observed that galaxies spin faster than one would expect, given the matter that is actually detectable. Dark matter does not emit, reflect or absorb light, making it difficult to observe. It comprises around a quarter of the mass in the universe and physicists believe it passes through the Earth all the time. Yet it remains extremely difficult to detect in a world where radiation is everywhere you look, and the chances of a measurable interaction are mind-bogglingly low.

“Dark matter is what causes large-scale structure and evolution of the universe. Normal matter would not have been able to coalesce into stars and planets if dark matter hadn’t been there to guide the process,” Dr. Duncan explains.

“Luminous matter that makes up us — the Earth, the galaxies, other planets — is thought to be the afterthought.”

Dark matter particles are presumed to have mass and gravitational properties, allowing them to act as a glue to mould ordinary matter into planets to galaxies. No one is sure exactly what this dark matter is, but the leading candidate are weakly interacting massive particles — or WIMPs, in the tradition of cute acronyms in physics.

Given the uncertainty about WIMPs, no one is sure of the ideal method of catching up with this scientific Road Runner. The hunt has spawned a variety of snare techniques to make Wile E.

Coyote proud. The common concept behind all of them is to isolate a “target” material, protect it from stray neutrons and radiation, and watch for a rare bump with a WIMP.

SNOLAB’s advantage lies in its depth beneath the Earth, which shields experiments from interference the cosmic rays that bombard the surface at all times. These rays are “noisier” than the subtle effects of WIMPs; Dr. Duncan likens SNOLAB experiments to seeking a quiet forum away from a concert in order to listen to a whisper. Down here, the effect of muon flux, a kind of cosmic radiation, is some 10 million times less than on the surface.

The trick is to be watching and taking measurements on one of the rare occasions when a WIMP makes an interaction with mundane matter. In the example of the Canadian PICASSO experiment, the hope is that WIMPs will collide with superheated bubbles of a carbon-fluoride molecule, bursting them with a distinctive pop audible to sensitive piezoelectronic sound sensors.
Rather than a single breakthrough event, SNOLAB’s director envisions a series of detections that begin to confirm one another.

“The first time you start seeing something, it’s going to be hints of signal. It’s actually easier of course if you don’t see something, because you know you haven’t seen something. If you do see something in your detector, then you need to worry about whether it’s a dark matter particle or a background particle you’ve not rejected or not shielded or protected against,” Dr. Smith says.
“When people start seeing consistent pictures of these particles coming out, then you know that you’re honing in. It’s going to be competitive.”

And wouldn’t it be nice if both the initial spark and the confirmatory follow-ups that led to a first scientific paper on dark matter were to come from Canada’s SNOLAB? “That’s what we’re aiming for,” Dr. Smith murmurs as he sits on a bench in the lunchroom, mid-coffee.

The more experiments that are set up at SNOLAB, the greater the chance of Sudbury being the site of a great leap forward for particle physics.

SNOLAB already has one large underground pit for large-scale apparatus. That was built for the original SNO experiment that, rather than dark matter, searched for solar neutrinos. Two more large pits are at different stages of construction. The “cube hall” will house two large silos for experiments while the “cryopit” has been roughed out, but without a particular experiment being chosen for it yet.

The funding and engineering processes for dark matter and neutrino experiments take years, so it’s best to get going early. However, the basic concepts behind the experiments are driven by physicists’ inspiration. “You can do it on the back of a napkin in an afternoon,” Dr. Smith says.
Meanwhile, to raise the probability of a WIMP bouncing off a particle of ordinary matter, scientists have made their detectors bigger, by factors of 10 or more per phase of their projects. Quite simply, the more matter there is for a WIMP to crash into, the greater the chances of a collision. Hence the need for room to grow.

Whatever the right technique or combination of techniques for WIMP-hunting turns out to be, Dr. Duncan says, “There’s certainly the strong possibility that Sudbury can discover these things. It’s absolutely safe to say that SNOLAB is at the forefront of this very competitive field. The facility we have is the best operational facility for doing this physics.”

Similar but shallower facilities exist in Japan, Russia, China, Europe and the United States. The competing, and larger, Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy, located underneath an average 1.4 kilometres of rock, is reckoned to offer the equivalent of 4,000 metres of water to shield experiments from cosmic rays. SNOLAB is rated at 6,100 metres, or more than 50% more.
In 2008, a team working at Gran Sasso observed what it claimed were brushes with dark matter. Some physicists have called that result a false alarm, and the observations remain unpublished.

“My view is if something’s not published, it’s a blog,” Dr. Smith says.

Since then, Sudbury has become a particle physics hot spot as experiments move in to SNOLAB.
Last month, the U.S.-based Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) team announced it was seeking funding to move its hockey puck-sized germanium crystals to Canada and set up at SNOLAB.

“Sometimes it’s summed up that we’re the best in the world at seeing nothing,” said Richard Schnee, a Syracuse University physics professor who acts as principal investigator on the CDMS project, in an interview last month. The project’s next phase, should it be funded, would seek to listen for dark matter with a detector 100 times more sensitive.

On Wednesday, the team behind another U.S.-led experiment, COUPP (for Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics) switched on a four-kilogram detector. Twenty-three-year-old PhD candidate Alan Robinson, originally from Vancouver, looks forward to a physics career during interesting times.

“There’s lots of opportunities out there, especially at the moment,” he says as colleagues cover the apparatus with insulation. “And there’s nothing like particle physics for getting your hands dirty, and for getting your thinking on.”

SNOLAB was proposed before Mr. Robinson was born, and actually predates the frenzy of research into dark matter. A group of five Canadian universities collaborated to start building the facility in the early 1990s as the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, a specialized centre for research into neutrinos, particles that probably have nothing to do with dark matter. Excavation to expand the facility has been ongoing since 2004.

“We evolved from an experiment that needed a specialized underground laboratory to a much larger underground laboratory that is designed to house several experiments simultaneously,” Dr. Duncan says.

SNOLAB was already the site of a major breakthrough. Neutrinos are elementary particles of extremely low mass that are difficult to detect. For decades, physicists were puzzled by the fact that the sun seemed to give off fewer neutrinos than the modelling had predicted. In 2001 an international team of scientists led by former SNOLAB director Arthur McDonald announced SNO project results that led to a new understanding of neutrinos, “solving” what was known as the solar neutrino problem.

The neutrino experiments here form part of SNEWS, a worldwide distant early warning system for supernovae. When a star explodes, the neutrinos escape the blast before light does, and so reach the Earth first. The hope is that the next time a star goes nova, neutrino detectors somewhere on Earth will alert telescope operators with enough warning to turn their gaze to the right part of space in time to take the first pictures of the start of such a cataclysm to be seen by human eyes.

In the meantime, to tour SNOLAB is to listen to a litany of worries over radiation and dust. It takes thousands of person-hours of work to transform each section of corridor from hot, dry, muddy mine into clean, cool, slightly moist laboratory space.

The nitpicky obsession with cleanness extends to the properties of everything that comes inside the airlock system — even before it arrives: Pucks of germanium for dark matter experiments are shipped here, not flown, because to elevate them into the stratosphere would indelibly mark them with cosmic rays.

The greatest worry is that a mistake could invalidate or call into question any breakthroughs logged here. The crucial task is knowing one’s detector and its environment inside and out.
“Really most of the problem is understanding your detector so you can make your calibrations,” Dr. Duncan says.

“That’s essential for the credibility of any result,” Dr. Smith agrees. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/story.html?id=3480080

Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

652)Stephen Hawking Suggests 'Theory Of Everything' ; Quotes From Blogpost Four Hundred.

2010-09-23T11:43:00.001-04:00

"Science is a wonderful, powerful tool and research budgets are essential. But Science is only the beginning in the new age we are entering. Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief. Science and the search for knowledge are an expression of man's designated role in the universe, but they do not define that role totally....."(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987)

"The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine Will"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul. Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"Here is a relevant verse from the Noble Qur'an, cited by Nasir-i Khusraw, hujjat-i Khurasan in his Khawaan al-Ikhwaan : "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then lets you reach your age of full strength, then lets you become old - though some of you die before - and then lets you reach the appointed term; and that haply you may find the intellect (la'allakum ta'qilun)."(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Tue Sep 7 2010
By Carl Hartman
The Associated Press

"The Grand Design" (Random House, $28), by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow:

Cosmologists, the people who study the entire cosmos, will want to read British physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking's new book.

"The Grand Design" may sharpen appetites for answers to questions like "Why is there something rather than nothing?" and "Why do we exist?" — questions that have troubled thinking people at least as far back as the ancient Greeks.

Hawking likes the tale of the old lady who accused a lecturing cosmologist of talking nonsense: She knew for a fact that the whole universe lies on a flat plate, borne on the back of an enormous turtle.

"What does the turtle stand on?" the lecturer asked.

"Another turtle," she replied. "It's turtles all the way down."

For some readers, the answer from Hawking, known for his work on black holes and author of the bestselling "A Brief History of Time," and physicist Leonard Mlodinow, may not be much more satisfying.

The "grand design," says Hawking, is to be found in M-theory, an idea launched in the mid-1990s.

Annoyingly, there's no agreement on what the "M'' stands for. The authors suggest "master," ''miracle" or "mystery." Others have also been proposed, but none of these names offers the layman much help in answering the basic questions.

"According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god," the book says. "Rather, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law."

This idea may trouble anyone who was fair at high school math but didn't major in the subject in college.

"M-theory has solutions," the book says later, "that allow for many different internal spaces, perhaps as many as 10 (followed by 500 zeros), which means it allows for 10 (followed by 500 zeros) different universes, each with its own laws."

A layman may wonder if one of those multitudinous laws might furnish a simple explanation of why something exists instead of nothing — and also wonder if there might be no such law in any of the possible universes.

Hawking writes that M-theory is a unified "theory of everything" that Albert Einstein was looking for but never found.

"If the theory is confirmed by observation, it will be the successful conclusion of a search going back more than 3,000 years. We will have found the grand design."

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100907/entertainment/us_book_review_the_grand_design

Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

651)The Ismaili: Passing Of Influential Professor Of Islamic Studies, Mohammed Arkoun, Leaves ‘A Gap That Will Be Impossible To Fill’

2010-09-23T11:02:00.004-04:00

from Ismaili.org :

Earlier this week, the world lost one of the most influential minds in contemporary Islamic Studies.

Professor Mohamed Arkoun passed away in Paris on 14 September 2010 at the age of 82. An outstanding research scholar and a rigorous critic of the theoretical tensions embedded in the field of Islamic Studies, he was a courageous public intellectual and a powerful voice in the frequently contentious debates on Islamic modernism and humanism.

“Mohammed Arkoun was not only a great scholar, but a public intellectual, committed to rethinking contemporary issues related to Islam and modernity,” says Dr Shafique Virani, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Toronto. “He will be dearly missed, but the freshness and innovation of his approach lives on through the many students and colleagues whom he impacted.”

A native of Algeria, Mohammed Arkoun was born in 1928 in Taourit-Mimoun, a small village in Great Kabylia. His mother tongue was Berber, with French being his second and Arabic his third language. He studied at the Faculty of Literature of the University of Algiers and at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Professor Arkoun was Professor Emeritus of the History of Islamic Thought at the Sorbonne, a post that he held since 1993. His career, spanning more than five decades, took him to universities in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States. He wrote extensively on Islam and modernity, and his critical approach endeavoured to rethink the role of Islam in the contemporary world. His sophisticated interrogation of the issues provided a welcome counterpoint to the highly ideological debate about Islam in both the Muslim world and the non-Muslim West.

Professor Arkoun was also a Senior Research Fellow in The Institute of Ismaili Studies’ (IIS) Department of Academic Research and Publications, and a Member of its Board of Governors. Dr Ali Asani, Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures at Harvard University, served on the Institute’s academic steering committee with him. He says that “Professor Arkoun stands out among contemporary Muslim intellectuals.”

“[He] courageously challenged scholars of Islam and Muslim societies to rethink the traditional categories and methodologies through which we analyse the role of religion, religious texts and institutions in Muslim societies,” adds Professor Asani.

Professor Arkoun played a significant role in shaping Western scholarship on the Muslim world. As the editor of Arabica, he maintained the journal’s high standards of scholarship while broadening its scope considerably. He was the author of numerous books in French, English and Arabic, including most recently: Rethinking Islam (1994), L’immigration: défis et richesses (1998) and The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought (2002),. His shorter studies have appeared in many academic journals and his works have been translated into several languages.

However, Professor Arkoun’s ideas were complex, and his writing was rarely easy reading. Dr Amyn Sajoo, a scholar at Simon Fraser University’s Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures in Vancouver, recalls the first time that he worked with Professor Arkoun, around 2001:

Arkoun was the first speaker in the IIS's Civil Society series of talks, which I hosted in 2000. Naturally, I invited him to contribute to the book coming out of that series — Civil Society in the Muslim World (2002) — and he agreed. When the draft arrived, it read like a novel by Marcel Proust — full of clever ideas with no clear order. I set about being a busybody editor, and his chapter ended up looking rather different from the original. What would the great scholar say to this messing with his text by someone he had barely heard of?

As I sat across from him, Arkoun flipped through the edited draft, his eyebrows going up and down, a ‘hmm’ every so often. Finally, he looked up and mused with a wry smile: ‘I understand.’ He knew that great and original ideas had to be melted down if they were to mean something to the general reader. It was a lesson for every scholar to cherish — and the beginning of a warm relationship.

Professor Arkoun’s involvement with the Ismaili Imamat traces back to a seminar of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture held in Fez, Morocco in October 1979, where he met Mawlana Hazar Imam. He went on to become an active and enthusiastic participant in the Award, serving on its Steering Committee for four cycles, and later as a member of its Master Jury for two cycles.

Recalling their work together on the Award in 1980s, Dr Mohamed Keshavjee says the professor espoused a unique outlook on architecture and its potential for catalysing positive change.

“At a formative stage in the development of the Award, he brought a new dimension to its discourse, highlighting some of the seminal issues facing Muslim societies in the 20th century as they tried to balance their traditions with their contemporary needs,” says Dr Keshavjee, who served with with Professor Arkoun on the Board of Governors of The Institute of Ismaili Studies. “He often spoke of the role of architecture in society with particular reference to those who were marginalised.”

Professor Arkoun saw the Award as a valuable “process of thinking” that engenders “a space for freedom, in which all crucial debates, made taboo by the devices of censorship and self-censorship in the present Islamic world, could be carried on with intellectual responsibility and shared concern between the West... and the Islamic world.”

Professor Arkoun at the 2005 IIS Summer Programme in Islam. Photo: Shahed Karim
He sought to recreate that space for freedom with his students, challenging them to revaluate preconceptions with a critical eye. Sahir Dewji, who recently completed the Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities at the IIS used to look forward to his lectures and was moved by Professor Arkoun’s passion for the issues of the Muslim world.

“He offered an epistemological approach within the study of Islam that encompassed everything from the Qur'an to the lives of Muslims today,” says Dewji. “For him, it was necessary to examine the complexities of Islam through a multitude of lenses — from philology to anthropology to sociology.”

Professor Arkoun’s critical perspectives on the issues of our day and his ability to challenge the way contemporary problems are conceived and considered, will undoubtedly be studied for years to come by scholars and students alike.

“The field of Islamic Studies is indebted to him for his refreshing and innovative perspectives,” says Professor Asani. “A brilliant mind and a gentle soul, he leaves a gap that will be difficult, if not impossible, to fill.”

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.

http://www.theismaili.org/cms/1087/Passing-of-influential-professor-of-Islamic-Studies-leaves-a-gap-that-will-be-impossible-to-fill

Related Posts:

In Memory of Professor Mohammed Arkoun
http://iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=111895

Mohammed Arkoun – FRONTIER OF THE MIND
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/mohammed-arkoun-frontier-of-the-mind/

Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

650)Arabic In The Sky: Saudi Aramco World Magazine Comes Up With A Comprehensive Article On Astronomy In Medieval Islam; Quotes From Blogpost 400

2010-09-15T18:26:00.010-04:00

"And the more we discover, the more we know, the more we penetrate just below the surface of our normal lives – the more our imagination staggers. Just think for example what might lie below the surfaces of celestial bodies all across the far flung reaches of our universe. What we feel, even as we learn, is an ever-renewed sense of wonder, indeed, a powerful sense of awe – and of Divine inspiration"(Aga Khan IV, Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, Ottawa, Canada, December 6th 2008)

"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)

"Astronomy, the so-called “Science of the Universe” was a field of particular distinction in Islamic civilization-–in sharp contrast to the weakness of Islamic countries in the field of Space research today. In this field, as in others, intellectual leadership is never a static condition, but something which is always shifting and always dynamic"(Aga Khan IV, Convocation, American University of Cairo, Cairo, Egypt, June 15th 2006)

"From the seventh century to the thirteenth century, the Muslim civilizations dominated world culture, accepting, adopting, using and preserving all preceding study of mathematics, philosophy, medicine and astronomy, among other areas of learning. The Islamic field of thought and knowledge included and added to much of the information on which all civilisations are founded. And yet this fact is seldom acknowledged today, be it in the West or in the Muslim world, and this amnesia has left a six hundred year gap in the history of human thought"(Aga Khan IV, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, 1996)

"The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11th 1985)

"Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

"The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952)

"Nature is the great daily book of God whose secrets must be found and used for the well-being of humanity"(Aga Khan III, Radio Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan, February 19th 1950)

"O brother! You asked: What is the [meaning of] `alam [world] and what is that entity to which this name applies? How should we describe the world in its entirety? And how many worlds are there? Explain so that we may recognize. Know, O brother, that the name `alam is derived from [the word] `ilm(knowledge), because the traces of knowledge are evident in [all] parts of the physical world. Thus, we say that the very constitution (nihad) of the world is based on a profound wisdom"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet, from his book "Knowledge and Liberation")

"Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it"(Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani,10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, d971CE, from the book, 'Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary', by Paul Walker)

Chapter 30, Verse 27: He originates creation; then refashions it - for Him an easy task. His is the most Sublime Symbol in the heavens and the earth(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

Chapter 21, Verse 30: Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together before We clove them asunder, and of water fashioned every thing? Will they not then believe?(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

Chapter 51, verse 47: We built the heavens with might, and We expand it wide(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

Chapter79, verse 30: And then he gave the earth an oval form(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

Chapter 86, verse 11: I swear by the reciprocating heaven.....(Noble Quran, 7th Century CE)

"All human beings, by their nature, desire to know."(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, circa 322BC)

The above are 16 quotes and excerpts taken from Blogpost Four Hundred, a collection of around 100 quotes on the subjects of Knowledge, Intellect, Creation, Education, Science and Religion:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Arabic In The Sky
Robert Lebling
saudiaramco.com

Scholars have identified 210 visible stars that carry Arabic names, some of which preserve older names that date back to Babylon and Sumeria. In this illustration, the 30 brightest stars with Arabic names appear as eight-pointed stars, in sizes adjusted for their relative magnitudes, or brightnesses.

On March 3, 1995, when American astronomers Andrea Dupree and Ronald Gilliland trained the orbiting Hubble Telescope on the constellation of Orion the Hunter, they captured a historic photograph: the first-ever direct image of the disk of a star other than the Sun.

Until then, star photographs had shown only points of light, but Dupree and Gilliland produced an image large enough to give the star a shape. The center of the bright orange image showed a mysterious hot spot twice the diameter of the Earth's orbit, surrounded by an ultraviolet atmosphere that emits prodigious amounts of radiation.

The star was Betelgeuse, one of the most famous of the red supergiants and the second brightest star in Orion.

The odd name of Betelgeuse, in the constellation Orion, comes from an Arabic original whose first letter was inadvertantly changed by a 13th-century astronomer. Second brightest in Orion, the star that was originally named in Arabic yad al-jawza’ appears (top) at the upper left, and above, in an antique-style rendition, at the end of the sleeve of the hunter’s tunic.

Betelgeuse (pronounced beetle-jooz or sometimes bet-el-juice) is an odd name—but then most of the common star names sound strange to the western ear. The reason is that most of them are of Arabic origin: Aldebaran (“The Follower”), Algol (“The Ghoul”), Arrakis (“The Dancer”), Deneb (“Tail”), Fomalhaut (“The Fish's Mouth”), Rigel (“Foot”), Thuban (“Snake”), Vega (“Plunging [Eagle]”).… The list goes on.

The derivation of Betelgeuse is more problematic than most, but experts today trace the name back to the Arabic yad al-jawza', “The Hand of the Giant”—the giant being Orion. A transcription error, confusing the initial letters b and y (in Arabic, ba and ya) because of their similar shape, dates back to the 13th century, when a star table by John of London (who lived and worked in Paris) named the star Bedalgeuze. Accepting this form, European scholars like the French polymath Joseph Scaliger thought the name meant “Armpit of the Giant” (properly, ibt al-jawza'). But yad al-jawza' goes back at least as far as the star charts of the Muslim astronomer al-Sufi in the 10th century and is probably much older than that.

The 48 traditional star constellations—Andromeda, Hercules, Perseus and so on—have Latin names, and most of them represent Greek mythical figures. These names were passed on to us by Ptolemy of Alexandria, the second-century Egyptian–Greek astronomer whose view of the universe was bequeathed to the medieval world. (Many of the Greek star figures were themselves borrowed from the myths of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.) But many of the popular names of the visible stars in these constellations are nevertheless Arabic. Some came from the star pictures that early Bedouins saw in the night sky; others were Arabic translations of Ptolemy's Greek terms. Many of these names would be immediately recognized by Arabs today; others would not.

Some of the star names are fragments of longer Arabic names—often shortened to fit on medieval astronomical measurement devices called astrolabes. Some have been distorted beyond recognition over the centuries, due to transcription and copying errors. At least 210 of the stars most easily seen with the naked eye have names derived from Arabic words, according to science historian Paul Kunitzsch of the University of Munich, an acknowledged expert on Arabic star names.

Kunitzsch has done extensive research on the transmission of Arabic star names into European usage. Of the 210 Arabic star names he identified, he finds that 52 percent come from authentic Arabic originals, 39 percent from translated Ptolemaic originals, and 9 percent from conjecture, erroneous readings or artistic choice.

The First Wave

Most of the Arabic star names we know today can be traced back to the treatises of al-Sufi, a Persian astronomer of the 10th century who wrote in Arabic. His Book of Constellations of the Fixed Stars built on Ptolemy’s second-century Almagest. This plate is a 15th-century interpretation of al-Sufi’s constellations of Centaurus and Leo.

The first wave of transmission of Arabic star names to Europe took place in the Middle Ages, from the 10th to the 13th centuries, and included about 48 names of the 210. This was the only period of direct “borrowings,” where star names were translated directly from Arabic star catalogs into corresponding European astronomical works. Most of the transmission occurred in Spain, where Christian astronomers were eager to learn from Muslim ones.

Kept alive for centuries by mariners, explorers and other stargazers, the Arabic star names are a living testimony to the golden age of Arab–Islamic astronomy. From the ninth to the 15th century, scientists working in the Arabic language, in a region stretching from Islamic Spain across North Africa and the Middle East to India, dominated worldwide scientific endeavor and provided the raw material for Europe's intellectual renaissance. Astronomy was one of the greatest of these pursuits.

Before Copernicus in the early 16th century, European and Muslim astronomers alike followed the cosmological model set forth by Ptolemy of Alexandria. According to Ptolemy, the Earth, at the center of the universe, was surrounded by a series of concentric translucent shells to which were attached the moon, sun, planets and fixed stars. The Arab astronomers translated Ptolemy's Greek star names into Arabic, and added some of their own that had been passed down by nomadic ancestors who used the stars and star-pictures to guide their passage through the great deserts of the Middle East. According to Kunitzsch and others, the Arabs also preserved star names from the Mesopotamian civilizations of the Sumerians and Babylonians.

Sidebar
Billions and Billions

Our universe, scientists say, contains about 100 million galaxies, or nests of stars, of which our own, the Milky Way, is one. In fact, the word galaxy comes from the Greek galaxias, meaning “milky.” The Milky Way is made up of some 50 billion stars.

The apparent brightness of a star is indicated by its “magnitude.” The brightest 20 stars are called “first magnitude.” First-magnitude stars are about 2.5 times brighter than second-magnitude stars; second-magnitude stars are about 2.5 times brighter than third-magnitude; and so on down to stars barely visible to the unaided eye, which are called “sixth magnitude.” This is an ancient system, used by the Greek astronomers Hipparchus and Ptolemy, that survives virtually unaltered to our day. The Islamic astronomer al-Sufi was particularly skilled at observing and recording stellar magnitudes using the Greek techniques.

Of all the billions of stars in the night sky, about 6000 stars from our galaxy and others—down to the sixth magnitude—are bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. Some 900 million—down to the 21st magnitude—yield enough light to be captured in photographs.

Of the visible 6000, only 1025 were named by Ptolemy in his Mathematike Syntaxis, better known as the Almagest. And of these, some 210 of the brightest and most visible stars have modern names of Arabic origin.
End of sidebar

Most of the Arabic star names we use today can be traced back to the star catalogue of the astronomer al-Sufi, known in medieval Europe as Azophi. His full name was Abu 'l-Hussain 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Omar al-Sufi, and he is recognized today as one of the most important scientists of his age.

Born in Rayy, Persia, in the late ninth century, al-Sufi studied and wrote in Arabic. Under the patronage of the Buwayhid Dynasty, he conducted astronomical observations in his homeland and in Baghdad, capital of the realm. His mentor was Ibn al-Amid, the vizier of the Buwayhid ruler. Ibn al-Amid wrote the foreword for one of al-Sufi's books, a major work on the astrolabe.
Al-Sufi was a conscientious observer of the fixed stars. In his day, the definitive guidebook for study of the stars was many centuries old: the Almagest, compiled by Ptolemy in about 150 ce.

The Almagest was Ptolemy's greatest mathematical and astronomical work, and it had a major influence on Islamic and European science for more than a millennium. In 903, al-Sufi published the first-ever critical revision of Ptolemy's star catalogue. He corrected erroneous observations and added others not recorded by the Greek master astronomer. Al-Sufi's treatise on star cartography, or uranography, was called The Book of Constellations of the Fixed Stars (Kitab Suwar al-Kawakib al-Thabita) and became a classic of Islamic astronomy.

The book covers all 48 constellations in the Ptolemaic system. The stars of each constellation are described in detail—positions, colors and brightness, or magnitude—with criticisms of some of Ptolemy's measurements that al-Sufi found to be in error. Al-Sufi's work was groundbreaking science for several reasons. It provided real star observations, at a time when most astronomers relied on the ancient measurements of Ptolemy's star catalogue.

It was also the first scientific effort to identify the old Arabic star names with astronomically located stars. Before al-Sufi, the wealth of star names had been handed down in literary or philological works, with little regard for identifying which stars they actually applied to. Al-Sufi was not 100 percent successful in his identifications, for some of the names were associated with more than one star in a single constellation or with several stars in different celestial images. But he pinned down most of them, so that his catalogue became the primary source for Arabic star names for centuries to come. Most of the names that we use today came to us from al-Sufi's list, either via the European–Mediterranean civilization of the Greeks or through the Arab–Islamic civilization. (The process was complicated by the fact that the Arabs translated Ptolemy's work, including its Greek star names, into Arabic and passed it along to the Europeans, who had lost the original Greek version until the 15th century.)

The very earliest Latin sources for Arabic star names were two 12th-century instruction manuals for astrolabes: De mensura astrolabii by Hermann of Reichenau and De utilitatibus astrolabii, attributed from earliest times to Gerbert d'Aurillac but now considered to be of uncertain authorship (with one section attributed to Hermann). Both works, probably composed in Spain, contain a handful of Arabic star names whose form has remained unchanged down to the present day, including Aldebaran, Algol, Alhabor (an alternate name for Sirius), Rigel and Vega.

Picture:
This celestial map or macrocosm is the opening miniature in the Turkish Zubdat al-Tawarikh, or History of the World, showing the seven heavens above the Earth, the signs of the zodiac and the 28 lunar “mansions.” The model for it is essentially Ptolemaic, that is, Earth-centered, even though it was produced in 1583, four decades after Copernicus proposed the solar-system model we know today.

Al-Sufi's work first became known in the West through Spain, where Christian and Muslim kingdoms coexisted and, when they were not jostling for influence or territory, cooperated. Christian king Alfonsox of Castile (known as Alfonso the Wise), a serious student of astronomy, ordered a free translation or adaptation of al-Sufi into Old Spanish, called the Libros de las Estrellas de la Ochaua Espera (1252–1256), and added it to his omnibus astronomy “textbook” known as the Libros del Saber de AstronomÃa (Books of Astronomical Knowledge). This opus also included the Alfonsine Tables, which furnished new data for calculating the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets in relation to the fixed stars, and revised the numbers in the Toledan Tables originally compiled by Andalusian astronomer al-Zarqali (called Arzachel in Europe) several centuries earlier.

Picture:
In a 13th-century Turkish miniature, Aristotle instructs students in the use of the astrolabe, a tool for measuring astronomical altitudes. First invented in Greece, it was extensively refined by Arab astronomers.

In the East, meanwhile, al-Sufi's book was regarded as canonical and was relied upon through the centuries by the great astronomers of the Islamic world, including one with a substantial impact on the West, Ulugh Beg of Samarkand (1394–1449). The nomenclature of the later Oriental star catalogues, celestial globes and other instruments went back mostly to al-Sufi or Ulugh Beg.

“Ulugh Beg” means “the Great Prince.” His real name was Muhammad Taragay. Raised in the court of his grandfather, the Mongol conqueror Timur (Tamerlane), Ulugh Beg spent much of his youth traveling throughout the Middle East, moving from one conquered city to the next. After Tamerlane's death, his son Shah Rukh inherited most of his realm, known to us as the Timurid Empire, and Shah Rukh appointed his own 16-year-old son Ulugh Beg to rule over Samarkand, the old Timurid capital, while he went on to establish a new political capital for the empire in Herat, Afghanistan. Ulugh Beg ruled Samarkand and its surrounding province for 40 years. He served briefly as ruler of the overall Timurid Empire, succeeding Shah Rukh, from 1447-1449.

Ulugh Beg became not only a patron of mathematics and astronomy but also an exceptional astronomer himself. He believed that the “hard sciences” were different from theology and literature, that they transcended societal and religious boundaries and were held in common by all peoples, regardless of faith or language. The prince collaborated with numerous leading scientists of his day and founded at Samarkand one of the largest and most important observatories in the Islamic world. Supporting the observatory was a center for astronomical studies; Ulugh Beg handpicked its scientists from among the empire's best. At its peak the observatory employed 60 to 70 working astronomers. With these impressive scientific resources, Ulugh Beg set in motion a project to compile the Zij-i Sultani star catalogue (published in 1437), listing names and freshly observed positions for 994 fixed stars, a work often described as comparable to al-Sufi's. In fact, the catalogue included 27 stars from al-Sufi's own work that were too far south in the heavens to be observed from Samarkand.

The Second Wave

The second wave of Arabic-origin star names arrived in late-Renaissance Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. During this period some 22 additional Arabic star names entered common use in Europe, both among scientists and in literature. Most of them were introduced by a German lawyer and amateur astronomer named Johann Bayer.

Bayer was born in Rain, Bavaria in 1572. He studied philosophy at Ingolstadt University and later earned a law degree at Augsburg. He worked as a lawyer in Augsburg and served as a magistrate there. Bayer also happened to be a talented and serious amateur astronomer, and in 1603, at the age of 31—just six years before Galileo introduced the first telescope to the field of astronomy—Bayer published an important astronomical work, the Uranometria, which has been described as the first modern star atlas, and which became the standard reference for all later atlases. Though later astronomers named new constellations and introduced new projection systems, as well as totally different artistic styles for drawings of the constellations, the Bayer influence was always present: The Uranometria is always the implied standard of comparison.

Sidebar:
Arabian Bear
o see how frequently we encounter Arabic names among the visible stars, look up in the northern night sky and locate one of the most easily recognizable constellations, Ursa Major (the Great Bear)—commonly known in North America as the Big Dipper because its seven main stars resemble a bent-handled water-dipper. All of these stars, from handle to bowl, have Arabic-origin names:

Alkaid—from al-qa’id, “The Leader”

Mizar—from mi’zar, “Loincloth”; originally called Mirak, from maraqq, “Loins”

Alioth—probably mistranscribed from Aliore, derived from al-hawar, “White Poplar” or “White of the Eye”

Megrez—from maghraz, “Root of the Tail”

Phecda—from fakhdha, “Leg”

Merak—from maraqq, “Loins”

Dubhe—from dubb, “Bear”
End of sidebar

The Bayer atlas contains 51 star maps or charts—one for each of the 48 traditional constellations of Ptolemy, plus a chart of the recently discovered southern skies and two planispheres, or flat representations of the celestial hemispheres (northern and southern). The Uranometria's star maps were engraved on copper plates by Alexander Mair and are large, over 37 centimeters (141/2") across. Each has an engraved grid, so the star positions can be determined to a fraction of a degree. Bayer took these highly accurate celestial positions from the new star catalogue of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, which had circulated in manuscript form in the 1590's but was not printed until 1602, one year before the Uranometria.

An important feature of Bayer's atlas was his new system of star nomenclature. He assigned Greek letters to the brighter stars, usually in order of magnitude. For example, the bright star in Taurus, the bull's eye, became α Tauri or Alpha Tauri. The Greek letters were recorded on the charts themselves and also in accompanying tables. Today's astronomers still use the binomial designation invented by Bayer.

For our purposes, however, the most relevant feature of the Bayer atlas is his recording of popular names for important stars, drawn from the works of Ptolemy and his successors, to assure that all known stars could be identified with those listed in the Bayer atlas. Bayer relied in large part on the first printed edition (published in Venice in 1515) of Gerard of Cremona's 1175 Latin translation of the Arabic version of Ptolemy's Almagest, as well as on the Alfonsine Tables and other parts of the astronomy “textbook” of Alfonso x, including an old-Spanish (Castilian) translation of al-Sufi's Book of Constellations of the Fixed Stars. He also consulted important commentaries on these works by Joseph Scaliger and by the Dutch philosopher and theologian Hugo Grotius.

In 1665, English orientalist Thomas Hyde published the first-ever translation of Ulugh Beg's star tables for European readers, with an extensive commentary on the star names. This Latin work, published at Oxford, bore the appropriately scholarly title Tabulae longitudinis et latitudinis stellarum fixarum ex observatione Ulugh Beighi. As we shall see, this translation and commentary was particularly valuable during the third wave.

Among the other scholars who contributed Arabic star names to the European corpus during the second wave were three noteworthy Germans:

Jakob von Christmann (1554–1613) was an orientalist who developed an interest in astronomy and in 1590 published a Latin translation of the writings of al-Farghani (called Alfraganus in Europe), a prominent ninth-century Abbasid astronomer who worked at the famed Baghdad center of learning, Bayt al-Hikma.

Wilhelm Schickard (1592–1635), mathematician, astronomer and orientalist, invented a mechanical calculating machine that could add, subtract, multiply and divide—a device sadly lost in the chaos of the Thirty Years' War and forgotten for three centuries.

Philippus Caesius (Philipp von Zesen) (1619–1689), poet and author, wrote a work in Latin in 1662 about the constellations and the legends attached to them, in the light of contemporary astronomy.

Picture:
In the late 1700’s, Giuseppe Piazzi of Palermo cataloged 6784 star names, producing what became the standard reference work of the 19th century.

The Third Wave

The third wave of Arabic star names came to Europe in the early 19th century. As in the second wave, western astronomers took what became modern star names not from the original Arabic sources, such as al-Sufi or Ulugh Beg, but from translations of these sources—that is, from European renderings of the Arabic star nomenclature. Some 140, or two-thirds, of the Arabic-origin names entered the European star charts during this period, 94 of them from a single star catalogue published in 1803 by the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi (1746–1826).

Piazzi, a native of Lombardy, is perhaps best known today for his discovery of the first “asteroid,” Ceres, in 1801. (Ceres, with a diameter of about 950 kilometers [590 mi], is now considered a dwarf planet.) Piazzi, a Catholic priest, taught higher mathematics and then astronomy at the University of Palermo. Prince Caramanico, viceroy of Sicily, commissioned him to build an observatory there. In preparation, Piazzi spent from 1787 to 1789 in France and England, studying practical techniques under world-class astronomers and acquiring instruments for the Palermo Observatory. The most famous of these acquisitions was a unique 150-centimeter (5') circular-scale altazimuth telescope built by the renowned instrument-maker Jesse Ramsden of London. Piazzi used this telescope in compiling his famous star catalogue, containing 6784 stars (7464 entries in the revised 1814 edition), recorded with an accuracy never before possible.

Sidebar:
The Summer Triangle

Three stars with Arabic names dominate the late-summer sky toward the east in the northern hemisphere: Vega, Deneb and Altair. Each is part of a separate constellation, but due to their brightness, they appear linked together as the “Summer Triangle.”

Blue-white Vega in the constellation Lyra (the Lyre of Orpheus) takes its name not from Spanish but from the Arabic word for “plunging” (waqi’) as applied to an eagle swooping down. The ancient Egyptians—as well as the people of ancient India—also viewed this constellation as an eagle. Vega is Lyra’s only bright star. Relatively close to Earth, some 25 light-years away, it is also one of the very brightest stars in the sky.

Deneb (Arabic for “Tail”) is the tail of the swan, Cygnus, and the brightest star in that constellation. Deneb has had other Arabic-origin names, most of them linked to the posterior of a fowl. Johann Bayer called the star Arrioph, from al-ridf, “The Hindmost.” Deneb is a blue-white supergiant, some 60,000 times more luminous than the Sun, but because it is very distant, it appears as the 19th-brightest star in the night sky. Deneb’s exact distance from Earth is uncertain, but the most likely estimates place it at about 1500 light-years away.

Picture:
As in other fields of learning, Muslim Spain played an important role in the transmission of astronomical knowledge to Europe. This 1986 Spanish stamp honored the astronomer and instrument-maker known as al-Zarqali.

Altair (“The Flier”) is the brightest star in Aquila, the Eagle, and the 12th-brightest in the sky. It is a “dwarf” star, just under 17 light-years from Earth, and one of the closest stars visible to the naked eye. Its name is short for al-nasr al-ta’ir, “the flying eagle,” a term applied by early Arabs to the three main stars of the constellation. There were instances when the brightest star alone (Alpha Aquilae) was given the name of the entire group, for example, on astrolabes, and the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians also called this very luminous star the “eagle star.” In modern movie lore, Altair is the solar system of The Forbidden Planet, a classic 1956 science-fiction film inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
End of sidebar.

For star names, Piazzi's Palermo catalogue relied heavily on Hyde's 1665 translation of the Ulugh Beg star list. (Despite its age, Hyde's work had remarkable staying power, being reprinted, with corrections, at Oxford in 1767 by Gregory Sharpe and in London in 1843 by Francis Bailly, among others, up to the modern era.)

“Piazzi fashioned his new names from Hyde's transcriptions of the names used by Ulugh Beg in the table text as well as names and endings brought forward in the commentary from all other sources,” Kunitzsch said in his 1959 classic Arabische Sternnamen in Europa (Arabic Star Names in Europe). “In general he does not follow Hyde's orthography very exactly. Many simplifications are introduced.” Piazzi also occasionally relied on German astronomer Johann Bode's star atlas Uranographie (1801) for some of his star-name forms, Kunitzsch found. Whatever their sources, Piazzi's star names enjoyed wide circulation. His catalogue was regarded as a standard reference work of the 19th century and was of great value to European and North American astronomers well into the 20th century.

Several other western scholars played significant roles during the third wave. Ludwig Ideler (1766–1846), a prominent Prussian chronologist and astronomer, made some noteworthy contributions to the understanding of Arabic star names. In 1809, he published a major work on the origin and meaning of star names that incorporated his own translation of the astronomical section of Zakariya' al-Qazwini's popular 13th-century cosmography, 'Aja'ib al-Makhluqat (The Wonders of Creation), supplemented with notes from classical and other sources.

Ideler was the first western scholar to divide Arabic star names into two groups: truly Arabic names and those which the Arabs fashioned by translating Ptolemy's Greek descriptions of stars' positions in the constellations. Ideler's book was used as a basic reference source in the West for over 150 years. Sadly, as Kunitzsch and other modern experts note, Ideler did not have access to al-Sufi's book on the fixed stars, and his work is riddled with errors due to his use of unreliable and chiefly secondary Arabic sources.

Richard Hinckley Allen (1838–1908), an American churchman, teacher and naturalist from Buffalo, New York, was another important figure in the third wave, known more for his passion than for his accuracy. He became interested in the history of star names after coming across a reference to a star with a strange name: Hamal (“The Ram” in Arabic), also known as Alpha Arietis, the first star in the constellation Ares. His interest developed into a hobby and then into a lifelong avocation. As was said at a memorial service after his death, “Like a prophet of the night, when the light of the day had vanished, he would name star after star, ... speaking of their relations to one another, and of the meaning of their names, as if he were more at home among their glories than most men would be with the persons and things of their daily environment.”

Picture:
istanbul university library / bridgeman art library (detail)
Working in the Galata Observatory founded near Istanbul in the late 16th century by the Turkish astronomer Takyuddin, astronomers had access to the best reference works and technology of the era.

Allen compiled a comprehensive work on star-name lore, published in 1899 as Star-Names and Their Meanings (later reprinted as Star-Names: Their Lore and Meaning), which drew much of its material from Ideler and thus repeated many of that scholar's errors. But Allen also helped popularize the names we have encountered that passed from Ptolemy and al-Sufi to Ulugh Beg and Bayer and Piazzi, as well as along other routes. Allen's book was if anything more influential than Ideler's on the popular understanding of star names, particularly those of Arabic origin, and is still often quoted today. Some of Allen's variants on these names have ended up in modern reference works, including the American Nautical Almanac and Webster's International Dictionary. At the same time, most of Allen's predecessors—the European and Arabic-speaking astronomers, cosmographers, philologists and others that he cites extensively in his book—remain shrouded in obscurity and in many cases have been virtually forgotten.

These, then, were the waves of knowledge that brought the Arabic-origin star names to the West:

The First Wave of medieval times, with the greatest number of Arabic star names, including the Ptolemaic corpus (150 ce), moving from al-Sufi (964 ce) to the astronomical compendium of Spain's King Alfonso x.

The Second Wave of the late Renaissance, with most of the star names moving from the first printed edition of the works of Alfonso x (1483) and from the first printed edition of Ptolemy's Almagest (Gerard's 1175 Latin translation from Arabic, published in 1515) to Bayer's Uranometria (1603).

The Third Wave of the 19th century, with most of the star names transmitted from al-Sufi to Ulugh Beg's star list to Hyde's translation (1665) to Piazzi's Palermo star catalogue (1803).

In part because of this complicated transmission process, the Arabic star names in use today are neither uniform nor consistent but rather, according to Kunitzsch, “a conglomeration of heterogeneous words fashioned at different times and in different ways.” Direct borrowings happened only during the Middle Ages. The word formations of the second and third waves are indirect borrowings—cases in which astronomers have taken terms from translations that appear in the European literature. But regardless of the nature of the borrowing, the process continued for almost a millennium, with new influxes of Arabic star names entering the literature of the West from time to time through the centuries. This process resembles, in a way, the periodic pulsations of brightness of the star Algol in Perseus, sometimes referred to as “The Winking Demon”—a star that, as you know by now, was named for us by the Arabs.

Robert W. Lebling is a writer and communication specialist based in Dhahran and a longtime contributor to Saudi Aramco World. His latest book is Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar (I.B.Tauris, 2010).

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/201005/arabic.in.the.sky.htm

Related posts on this Blog:

A Collection of Posts on Astronomy; Quotes of Noble Quran, Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan III, Nasir Khusraw, Abu Yakub Al Sijistani and Aristotle
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/05/613a-collection-of-posts-on-astronomy.html

Kepler Telescope Detects Possible Earth-Size Planet, Bringing Us Closer To Answering The Question: Are We Alone In The Universe?
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/08/645kepler-telescope-detects-possible.html

Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

649)What A Difference Four Hundred Years Makes: Sir Isaac Newton, Man Of Science AND Religion; Stephen Hawking, Man Of Science NOT Religion.

2010-09-09T11:03:00.006-04:00

Sir Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking lived around 400 years apart in the span of history. They occupied the same posts and chairs at Cambridge University in England, now considered the top university in the world, having displaced Harvard University in the latest world university rankings:

British physicist Stephen Hawking will step down from one of the most famous academic posts in the world this week.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE58T44R20090930

Their views on the link between Science and Religion are very different, however, and this becomes evident when one reads these two blogposts of mine:

Sir Isaac Newton: Man of Science and Religion.
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/283sir-isaac-newton-man-of-science-and.html

Brilliant, Severely Disabled Scientist Stephen Hawking, Approaching The End Of His Natural Life Span, Rejects Divine Role In Universe's Creation.
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Quotes of Aga Khan IV:

"The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Inauguration Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)

"In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

648)Brilliant, Severely Disabled Scientist Stephen Hawking, Approaching The End Of His Natural Life Span, Rejects Divine Role In Universe's Creation.

2010-09-08T11:30:00.010-04:00

"In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

No Need for God? Stephen Hawking Defies Divine Creation
Albert Mohler
Crosswalk.com

By any measure, Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous and influential figures in modern science. For thirty years, he served as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and his career before and after his decades in that post is the stuff of scientific legend. He is also probably the longest-living person ever to be diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis [ALS], and the very fact that he has been productive since that diagnosis at age 21 is a testimony to his sense of personal mission and sheer determination.

Professor Hawking is out with a new book, and in The Grand Design, he, along with co-author Leonard Mlodinow, now presses his case against God — or at least against any role for God in the origin of the universe or the beginning of time.

Asking the most basic questions of the universe's existence, Hawking and Mlodinow assert: "Some would claim the answer to these questions is that there is a God who chose to create the universe that way. It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. In this view it is accepted that some entity exists that needs no creator, and that entity is called God. This is known as the first-cause argument for the existence of God. We claim, however, that it is possible to answer these questions purely within the realm of science, and without invoking any divine beings."

In the pages of The Wall Street Journal last week, Hawking and Mlodinow summarized their case against God. After presenting a case for the incredible fine-tuning that was required for conscious life on earth, they argued that the incredible "coincidences" involved in this fine-tuning are not evidence of the work of God. To the contrary, they conclude that science can provide all the necessary answers: "As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." The headline of their article, "Why God Did Not Create the Universe," pulled no punches.

Major newspapers and media outlets across the globe announced that Stephen Hawking had now come out against belief in God. Yet, a closer look at the evidence suggests that this is actually nothing new for Professor Hawking. All of the major arguments presented in The Grand Design have appeared earlier in Hawking's previous books or in interviews.

As has been argued before by others, Professor Hawking tends to deploy arguments about God when he wants to sell books. Nevertheless, given his stature and influence, his ideas are worth careful attention.

The major thrusts of The Grand Design are the magnificence of the universe and the glory of theoretical physics. Hawking is committed to what he calls "M-Theory," a "super-string theory" that encompasses a host of theories and predictions about the nature of matter and time. Most importantly, this theory allows Hawking and Mlodinow to advance Hawking's theory that space and time have no boundary. If such a boundary did exist, Hawking allows that God might be a necessary or allowable theory of how all this began. But, if there is no boundary, there is no reason for God at all — the universe is self-explanatory.

Hawking actually believes that there are countless universes, and that the laws of physics on each might be radically different from all the rest. What we do know is our own universe and its operational laws, and these, he insists, do not require any notion of a divine Creator.

"Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing," Hawking and Mlodinow explain.

But is this really new? In his 1988 best-seller, A Brief History of Time, Hawking made very similar arguments and received strikingly similar press coverage. "So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator," he explained. But, Hawking rejected the very idea of a beginning as such, and so he actually dispensed with the need for any Creator. Furthermore, he was certain that his theories rendered any belief in a traditional deity to be groundless.

In his infamous introduction to the first edition of A Brief History of Time, the late astronomer Professor Carl Sagan asserted, "This is a book about God . . . or perhaps about the absence of God." Even more famously, Sagan argued that Hawking's theories meant that there is now "nothing for a Creator to do." Oddly, when A Brief History of Time was reissued for a tenth anniversary edition, Sagan's introduction was deleted.

Hawking has acknowledged that his work "is on the borderline between science and religion, but I have tried to stay on the scientific side of the border." That seems a strange comment, given the fact that he so routinely crosses that border.

On the other hand, that statement does betray another straightforward dimension of Hawking's thought. He seems to imagine God only in terms of a deistic deity and a "God of the gaps" who serves as a causal explanation only when all naturalistic theories run out of steam. If nothing else, Hawking's writings should warn Christians from taking refuge in any "God of the gaps" form of theological argument. If we invoke God only when we run out of other explanations, we will find God disappearing into a cloud of theory and endless theological surrender.

The God of the Bible is not merely a First Cause — He is the sovereign Creator and Sustainer of all that is, who rules the universe by His Word. Christians must recognize the "God of the gaps" as a false idol of theological surrender. Furthermore, Christians must also understand that any scientific admission of God as a possible First Cause without continuing rule over creation is no cause for celebration. The triune God cannot be reduced to a First Cause among other causes.

Stephen Hawking's worldview is based in positivistic scientism. He really believes that science holds all the answers. "Philosophy is dead," he asserts in this newest book. Why? "Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics."

In his 1980 inaugural address, given as he was installed as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, Hawking proposed that the great project of theoretical physics might be concluded by the end of the twentieth century. "By this I mean that we might have a complete, consistent, and unified theory of the physical interactions which would describe all possible observations."

That statement speaks profoundly to Professor Hawking's intellectual ambition — to explain the universe and all of its "possible observations." That is nothing less than titanic in scale of ambition. Indeed, it is the quintessential audacity of a brilliant secular mind.

Professor Stephen Hawking is a remarkable human being. His courage and tenacity are an inspiration to all. His work on the theory of gravity has changed the way the field of physics is taught. But, when he crosses that border from science to theology, his worldview leads him into abject disaster. The Grand Design is yet another attempt to celebrate the universe's breathtaking design, while denying the existence of a Designer. It will not be the last.

http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/mohler/11637624/

Related:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/hawking-rejects-divine-role-in-big-bang-creation-of-the-universe/article1693616/?cid=art-rail-technology

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100907/entertainment/us_book_review_the_grand_design

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

647)ISMAILIMAIL Makes A Post On The Ikhwan Al-Safa Or Brethren Of Purity (Via One Land, One King’s Blog)

2010-09-08T11:08:00.003-04:00

Quote from the article below:
"Their epistles, 52 of them, dealt with mathematics, natural sciences, psychical sciences and theology. They were inspired in parts by scholars of Greek, ancient Indian and Persian thoughts while incorporating scriptures of the Abrahamic tradition, the Torah of Judaism and the Canonical Gospels of Christianity. This behavior alone was odd for the time, however the ideas and sciences this elusive coterie propagated were what made it so particular. Indeed, the Brethren of Purity were very avant-gardiste for their time and their work not only helped shape medieval Islam but also Western culture."

The Brethren of Purity

Posted on September 1, 2010 by yshassan

I was researching influential secret societies of their time, beside the obvious ones, when I stumbled into the Brethren of Purity, a secret coterie of mystics that developed the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity during the mid Tenth Century in Basra, Iraq. Their epistles, 52 of them, treated of mathematics, natural sciences, psychical sciences and theology. They were inspired in parts by scholars of Greek, ancient Indian and Persian thoughts while incorporating scriptures of the Abrahamic tradition, the Torah of Judaism and the Canonical Gospels of Christianity. This behavior alone was odd for the time, however, the ideas, sciences, this elusive coterie propagated were what made it so particular. Indeed, the Brethren of Purity were very avant-gardiste for their time and their work not only helped shape medieval Islam but also Western culture. Scholars believe that one of the many ways this was done was through the learned Jewish of Spain during the twelfth century who studied and used the epistles of the Brethren of Purity in the propagation of knowledge in Western Europe. The work of the Brethren of Purity was such that the secret society was classified as an early form of freemasonry by the West, and as a group of “free thinkers” by some scholars of the East. The influence however of the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity does not end there. The views expressed in their epistles were so modern that many believe they inspired some of the greatest thinkers of our time. An example of such work is their view on evolution which is believed to have had an influence on Charles Darwin and his inception of Darwinism since English translations of the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity were available from 1812:

“[These books] state that God first created matter and invested it with energy for development. Matter, therefore, adopted the form of vapour which assumed the shape of water in due time. The next stage of development was mineral life. Different kinds of stones developed in course of time. Their highest form being mirjan (coral). It is a stone which has in it branches like those of a tree. After mineral life evolves vegetation. The evolution of vegetation culminates with a tree which bears the qualities of an animal. This is the date-palm. It has male and female genders. It does not wither if all its branches are chopped but it dies when the head is cut off. The date-palm is therefore considered the highest among the trees and resembles the lowest among animals. Then is born the lowest of animals. It evolves into an ape. This is not the statement of Darwin, this is precisely what is written in the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. Ape then evolved into a lower kind of a barbarian man. He then became a superior human being. Man then becomes a saint, a prophet. He then evolves into a higher stage and becomes an angel. The one higher to angels is indeed none but God. Everything begins from Him and everything returns to Him.”[1]

There is currently an undergoing project by the Oxford University in collaboration with the Institute of Ismaili Studies to publish a Critical Study in English of the Arabic Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. The first remarkable books of the serie can be found here.

[1] Comment and description of the philosophy on Evolution of the Brethren of Purity made by Muhammad Hamidullah.

http://onelandoneking.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/brethren-of-purity/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/the-brethren-of-purity-via-one-land-one-kings-blog/

Related posts on the Brethren of Purity:

The Ikhwan Al-Safa(Brethern Of Purity), The Original Encyclopedists: Balancing Revelation And Reason; A Collection Of Posts; Quotes Of Aga Khan IV
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/05/483the-ikhwan-al-safabrethern-of-purity.html

Easy Nash
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)

646)The Right Hon. Stephen Harper, 22nd Prime Minister Of Canada: Muslim Community Not To Blame For Bad Apples; Quote Of Prime Minister Stephen Harper

2010-09-07T17:15:00.006-04:00

“Even more exciting are the proposed contents of the Museum, a rich repository of art and artefacts tracing the evolution of Muslim culture through the ages. It will be a grand destination for Muslim visitors from across Canada and around the world, and it will introduce Canadians from other faith and cultural backgrounds to the compelling history of Islam, one of the world’s great religions and the inspiration for countless major advancements in art, science, music and philosophy."(Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Foundation Ceremony of the Aga Khan Museum, Ismaili Center and their Park, Toronto, Canada, May 28 2010)

http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html

WHITEHORSE - Individuals, not communities, are to blame for homegrown terrorism, according to the prime minister.

Stephen Harper addressed the recent Ottawa and London, Ont., terrorism arrests Friday, saying he doesn't believe they will inflame racial or ethnic tensions.

"Well, let's be very clear: These are not the acts of a community. The vast majority of the people from this community, like the vast majority of all Canadians, want absolutely nothing to do with this and expect the government to vigorously pursue, and expect our police and security forces to vigorously pursue, anybody who dabbles in criminal, or worse, terrorist activity," Harper said.

"Often, members of these communities help provide information to pursue these kinds of cases."

Three men - two in Ottawa and one in London - were arrested earlier this week and charged with various terrorism offences, including plotting to make explosive devices and supporting terrorist cells in Afghanistan to attack Canadian troops.

The RCMP moved in to make the arrests Wednesday and Thursday when intelligence suggested one of the men was preparing to travel to the Middle East. According to RCMP officials, the alleged terrorist plot was still "months" away from any attack.

"The issue is that when there are people who are engaged in very bad action, we make sure that our security forces are on top of that and are taking action before any serious damage is done," Harper said.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/08/27/15165056.html

Related Posts on my Blog:
The Canadian Conservative Government Featured On Easy Nash's Blog: Rt Hon Stephen Harper, Hon Jason Kenney Et Al; A Collection Of Posts http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/03/592the-canadian-conservative-government.html

A Collection Of Posts On My Blog Relating To The Stephen Harper Government's Magnificent New Citizenship Guide; Quotes Of Minister Kenney Et Al http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2010/03/576a-collection-of-posts-on-my-blog.html

Quotes of Prime Minister Stephen Harper:
1)Prime Minister Stephen Harper said of Mr. Babcock and his compatriots: “They paid dearly for the freedom that we and our children enjoy every day. Now they are all gone. However, their voices and stories live on. They live on in our commitment to never forget, to cherish their values they fought for and to remember their sacrifices.”
2)Prime Minister Stephen Harper saluted Babcock Thursday, paying tribute to “Canada’s last living link to the Great War, which in so many ways marked our coming of age as a nation". He said 650,000 men and women served in the Canadian forces during WWI
3)"The passing of Mr. Babcock marks the end of an era," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement. "His family mourns the passing of a great man. Canada mourns the passing of the generation that asserted our independence on the world stage and established our international reputation as an unwavering champion of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law."

Quotes Of Canadian Minister Of Citizenship, Immigration And Multiculturalism Hon. Jason Kenney(2009):
1)When you become a citizen, you're not just getting a travel document into Hotel Canada.
2)I think it's scandalous that someone could become a Canadian not knowing what the poppy represents, or never having heard of Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Dieppe or Juno Beach.
3)We mention freedom of conscience and freedom of religion as important rights but we also make it very clear that our laws prohibit barbaric cultural practices, they will not be tolerated, whether or not someone claims that such practices are protected by reference to religion.
4)I think we need to reclaim a deeper sense of citizenship, a sense of shared obligations to one another, to our past, as well as to the future, a kind of civic nationalism where people understand the institutions, values and symbols that are rooted in our history.
5)New Canadians are naturally conservative in the way they live their lives: they are entrepreneurial; they have a remarkable work ethic; they are an aspirational class; they want stability; they are intolerant of crime and disorder; they have a profound devotion to family and tradition, including institutions of faith; that whole spectrum of values is conservative.

Easy Nash http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/science_and_religion_in_islam_the_link/ http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/08/500blogpost-five-hundred-is-blogpost.html http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2009/03/453a-blog-constructed-within.html

In Shia Islam, intellect is a key component of faith. Intellect allows us to understand the creation of God: Aga Khan IV(2008)
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The Holy Qu'ran's encouragement to study nature and the physical world around us gave the original impetus to scientific enquiry among Muslims: Aga Khan IV(1985)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)