How Muslim inventors changed the world



By Paul Vallely


From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we in the West take for granted. Here are 20 of their most influential innovations:

(1) The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after eating a certain berry.

He boiled the berries to make the first coffee. Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray on special occasions. By the late 15th century it had arrived in Makkah and Turkey from where it made its way to Venice in 1645.

It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in the City of London. The Arabic “qahwa” became the Turkish “kahve” then the Italian “caffé” and then English “coffee”.

(2) The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled us to see. The first person to realise that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham.

He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab word “qamara” for a dark or private room).

He is also credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.

(3) A form of chess was played in ancient India but the game was developed into the form we know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward to Europe — where it was introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th century — and eastward as far as Japan. The word “rook” comes from the Persian “rukh”, which means chariot.

(4) A thousand years before the Wright brothers, a Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to construct a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts.

He hoped to glide like a bird. He didn’t. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought to be the first parachute, and leaving him with only minor injuries.

In 875, aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles’ feathers he tried again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft for ten minutes but crashed on landing — concluding, correctly, that it was because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing. Baghdad international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.

(5) Washing and bathing are religious requirements for Muslims, which is perhaps why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today. The ancient Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it more as a pomade.

But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and aromatics such as thyme oil. One of the Crusaders’ most striking characteristics, to Arab nostrils, was that they did not wash.

Shampoo was introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed’s Indian Vapour Baths on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV.

(6) Distillation, the means of separating liquids through differences in their boiling points, was invented around the year 800 by Islam’s foremost scientist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy into chemistry, inventing many of the basic processes and apparatus still in use today — liquefaction, crystallisation, distillation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation and filtration.

As well as discovering sulphuric and nitric acid, he invented the alembic still, giving the world intense rosewater and other perfumes and alcoholic spirits (although drinking them forbidden, in Islam). Ibn Hayyan emphasised systematic experimentation and was the founder of modern chemistry.

(7) The crank-shaft is a device which translates rotary into linear motion and is central to much of the machinery in the modern world, not least the internal combustion engine. One of the most important mechanical inventions in the history of humankind, it was created by an ingenious Muslim engineer called al-Jazari to raise water for irrigation.

His Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (1206) shows he also invented or refined the use of valves and pistons, devised some of the first mechanical clocks driven by water and weights, and was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions was the combination lock.

(8) Quilting is a method of sewing or tying two layers of cloth with a layer of insulating material in between. It is not clear whether it was invented in the Muslim world or whether it was imported there from India or China.

However, it certainly came to the West via the Crusaders. They saw it used by Saracen warriors, who wore straw-filled quilted canvas shirts instead of armour. As well as a form of protection, it proved an effective guard against the chafing of the Crusaders’ metal armour and was an effective form of insulation — so much so that it became a cottage industry back home in colder climates such as Britain and Holland.

(9) The pointed arch so characteristic of Europe’s Gothic cathedrals was an invention borrowed from Islamic architecture. It was much stronger than the rounded arch used by the Romans and Normans, thus allowing the building of bigger, higher, more complex and grander buildings.

Other borrowings from Muslim genius included ribbed vaulting, rose windows and dome-building techniques. Europe’s castles were also adapted to copy the Islamic world’s — with arrow slits, battlements, a barbican and parapets. Square towers and keeps gave way to more easily defended round ones. The architect of Henry V’s castle was a Muslim.

(10) Many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi. His scalpels, bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery and many of the 200 instruments he devised are recognisable to a modern surgeon.

Complete list here.

Good for them, also they were reading and writing while the rest of europe was in the dark ages.

So what? Neither intelligence nor inventiveness is limited to any one race or creed.

The early muslims enjoyed the vast libraries of the Roman(byzantian) and Greek thinkers while the Europeans where busy pillaging what was left of Rome. Only after the crusades did some of the lost knowledge start filtering back to Europe. I commend the Muslims for all the invotions they brought. But something happend along the way and the Muslims of today are a very bad reflection of what was. Maybe they should reflect to the past to see where to go in the future and stop killing innocent people, or standing while the radical nuts take over a very important and fundemantel part of the human race.

I don't put too much thought into who created the first "anything", because there is always someone else who created it first. Often the person who is most well known gets the credit for it.

Have a nice day!
Lorelei

and the extremist muslims invented hijacking planes.

Thank you for your sincere, thought out comment. I knew politics would jump into this thread, and I'm not going to waste my time with that; but for those who are genuinely interested in reading about early inventions from other parts of the world, it is here for them to read .

No they didn't.

I'm hoping you were kidding.

Most likely not.

Why are you hoping that?

Because it's a pretty ignorant and false statement.

The first recorded hijacking was in Peru (check it out on wikipedia), in 1931. Americans were pretty notable for doing so as well, most famous of all being D. B. Cooper.

Because European Christians have Hijacked planes, Asians have hijacked planes, before the Muslims ever did.

crashing into buildings on purpose I think was kinda invented by Bin Laden and Al Queda who are muslims, so the statement is true. So it wasnt an ignorant statement, what was ignorant was that not enough Muslims were outraged about.

and this has what to do with the inventions made by muslums centuries ago.

Yet they didn't say "hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings", just hijacking planes. And even if we're talking about crashing into buildings, the idea of using planes themselves as weapons dates back to Japanese kamikazes (who were not Muslims) in World War II, and I'm sure some pilots who were too damaged to make it back purposely crashed into enemy targets before WW2 as well.

I think it was the Irish who high jacked a Goodyear blimp and ran it into the Blackpool tower 27 times before giving up.

Anyways, sorry to get off topic. It's impressive how big of a role the Muslims played in furthering many of the sciences, arts, schools of thought, etc. The simplified the Roman numeral system, which I'll forever be in debt to them for (try multiplying with Roman numerals, it's annoying). They spent huge sums on luxuries and palaces, but at the same time were nearly unprecedented patrons of learning. It's very impressive.

Baghdad was the center of knowledge around the 8th century, people from all over the known world came to share ideas. Alot of astronomy comes from the middle east. But the muslims had their own Dark Ages which halted all the progress.

Indeed, I was most impressed with them only being 200 km off the circumference of the earth. Now that is a challenge to tackle.

I'm guessing you started this thread hoping for the reaction you got.

Nope, sorry. There is plenty anti-muslim retort here without me adding to it.

How about 20 terrorist orgainizations that are Muslim based?

Ok I know I am just as guilty here, but please lets get the topic back on track this is not a bash the religion thread. The Christian/Moslem piñatas threads are located in the spirituality section in isles 9.
Thank You
Irish

To be honest I don't see the reason in categorizing all of these people as being Muslim. I think it was you Empress, who just a few days ago made a point of people being viewed as humans rather than members of a nationality or any other group.

If this was, however, a thread about inventions from a particular nationality at any particular time I would see no problem with it, as that would serve a purpose in historical terms; but that's not the case.

Apart from that, it made for a great read.

I imagine that the inventors listed were all muslim, hense the reason for the title. I suppose you could search for their names in historical documents to see if that information is provided. Perhaps it would have been better if the original author replaced muslim with middle east or 'early man' .

it is pretty amazing that these guys has access to all theses fantastic libarys, the majorty could read, ( i seen that on discovery channel). and while Europe was tromping around in mud and America as we know it dident even exist.

Out of curiosity what was the reaction you wanted from this thread?

Would you have reacted differently to "20 ways catholic inventors changed the world" or "20 ways Athiest inventors changed the world"?

How does it fit with the heading of this forum?

I didn't 'want' any particular reaction per se, I was more or less hoping people would read it and go 'oh, interesting'


Nope, I would have been equally impressed.



The closest thing I could find to Ancient History.

No, the first man to fly was from Birmingham England, he strapped a huge flat cap to his head and was propelled by a whippet, some people say he completely cleared the canal, and that was it, why did he need to develop this invention any further, some people say it wasn't an invention and he was just a nutcase with a big flat cap, make up your own mind.

Muslims invent some things? why did it come to a stand still that's the big question,
I'll have a go at answering it, Muslim hoards invade a country, lets say Persia the country's has many scholars and scientists before the muslim invasion they manage to carry on working until islam takes over completely, then everything stops.


It's believed by many historians that muslims burnt the library at Alexandria.

That's hard to argue. Invention and science were heavily funded under Islamic caliphs and emirs. More likely constant warfare between rival Islamic sects or with Christians caused funds to slowly disperse towards other aims, as well as Europe finding trade routes around Africa to circumvent Istanbul.

It has nothing to do with the past but a lot to do with the future. Islam society or muslims had been a focal point of human history and gave much to the modern world but they must join it not destroy what they helped build. Their is a lot of blame to go around but there is no excuse to kill innocents in the name of Allah. Or in the name of Democrasy

1 way Muslim extremists are going to ruin the world.

Terrorism.

Yes the Semitic races are amazingly innovative,here for example is a list of Jewish Nobel prize winners:

At least 173 Jews and persons of half-Jewish ancestry have been awarded the Nobel Prize,1 accounting for 23% of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 2006, and constituting 37% of all US recipients2 during the same period. In the scientific research fields of Chemistry, Economics, Medicine, and Physics, the corresponding world and US percentages are 27% and 39%, respectively. (Jews currently make up approximately 0.25% of the world's population and 2% of the US population.)
Chemistry (29 prize winners, 19% of world total, 28% of US total)
Economics (22 prize winners, 38% of world total, 51% of US total)
Literature (13 prize winners, 13% of world total, 27% of US total)
Peace (9 prize winners, 10% of world total, 11% of US total)3

Physics (47 prize winners, 26% of world total, 38% of US total)
Physiology or Medicine (53 prize winners, 28% of world total, 42% of US total

Chemistry:

Adolph von Baeyer 1 (1905)
Henri Moissan 2 (1906)
Otto Wallach (1910)
Richard Willstätter (1915)
Fritz Haber (1918)
George de Hevesy (1943)
Melvin Calvin (1961)
Max Perutz (1962)
Christian Anfinsen 3 (1972)
William Stein (1972)
Ilya Prigogine 4 (1977)
Herbert Brown (1979)
Paul Berg (1980)
Walter Gilbert (1980)
Roald Hoffmann (1981)
Aaron Klug (1982)
Herbert Hauptman 5 (1985)
Jerome Karle 6 (1985)
John Polanyi 7 (1986)
Sidney Altman (1989)
Rudolph Marcus (1992)
George Olah 8 (1994)
Harold Kroto 9 (1996)
Walter Kohn 10 (1998)
Alan Heeger 11 (2000)
Aaron Ciechanover 12 (2004)
Avram Hershko 13 (2004)
Irwin Rose 14 (2004)
Roger Kornberg 15 (2006)

Economics:

Paul Samuelson (1970)
Simon Kuznets (1971)
Kenneth Arrow (1972)
Wassily Leontief 1 (1973)
Leonid Kantorovich (1975)
Milton Friedman (1976)
Herbert Simon 2 (1978)
Lawrence Klein (1980)
Franco Modigliani (1985)
Robert Solow (1987)
Harry Markowitz (1990)
Merton Miller 3 (1990)
Gary Becker (1992)
Robert Fogel 4 (1993)
John Harsanyi 5 (1994)
Reinhard Selten 6 (1994)
Robert Merton 7 (1997)
Myron Scholes 8 (1997)
George Akerlof 9 (2001)
Joseph Stiglitz 10 (2001)
Daniel Kahneman 11 (2002)
Robert Aumann 12 (2005)

Literature:

Paul von Heyse 1 (1910)
Henri Bergson (1927)
Boris Pasternak (1958)
Shmuel Agnon (1966)
Nelly Sachs (1966)
Saul Bellow (1976)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)
Elias Canetti (1981)
Joseph Brodsky (1987)
Nadine Gordimer (1991)
Imre Kertész 2 (2002)
Elfriede Jelinek 3 (2004)
Harold Pinter 4 (2005)

Peace:

Tobias Asser (1911)
Alfred Fried (1911)
René Cassin (1968)
Henry Kissinger (1973)
Menachem Begin (1978)
Elie Wiesel (1986)
Shimon Peres (1994)
Yitzhak Rabin (1994)
Sir Joseph Rotblat (1

Physics:


Albert Michelson 1 (1907)
Gabriel Lippmann (1908)
Albert Einstein (1921)
Niels Bohr 2 (1922)
James Franck (1925)
Otto Stern (1943)
Isidor Rabi (1944)
Wolfgang Pauli 3 (1945)
Felix Bloch (1952)
Max Born (1954)
Igor Tamm 4 (1958)
Ilya Frank 4 (1958)
Emilio Segrè (1959)
Donald Glaser (1960)
Robert Hofstadter (1961)
Lev Landau (1962)
Eugene Wigner 5 (1963)
Richard Feynman (1965)
Julian Schwinger (1965)
Hans Bethe 6 (1967)
Murray Gell-Mann (1969)
Dennis Gabor (1971)
Leon Cooper 7 (1972)
Brian Josephson (1973)
Ben Mottelson (1975)
Burton Richter (1976)
Arno Penzias (1978)
Sheldon Glashow (1979)
Steven Weinberg (1979)
Arthur Schawlow 8 (1981)
K. Alexander Müller 9 (1987)

Leon Lederman (1988)
Melvin Schwartz (1988)
Jack Steinberger (1988)
Jerome Friedman (1990)
Georges Charpak 10 (1992)
Martin Perl 11 (1995)
Frederick Reines 12 (1995)
David Lee 13 (1996)
Douglas Osheroff 14 (1996)
Claude Cohen-Tannoudji 15 (1997)
Zhores Alferov 16 (2000)
Vitaly Ginzburg 17 (2003)
Alexei Abrikosov 18 (2003)
David Gross 19 (2004)
H. David Politzer 19 (2004)
Roy Glauber 20 (2005)

medicine:

Paul Ehrlich (1908)
Elie Metchnikoff 1 (1908)
Robert Bárány (1914)
Otto Meyerhof (1922)
Karl Landsteiner (1930)
Otto Warburg 2 (1931)
Otto Loewi (1936)
Joseph Erlanger (1944)
Herbert Gasser 3 (1944)
Sir Ernst Chain (1945)
Hermann Muller 4 (1946)
Gerty Cori 5 (1947)
Tadeus Reichstein (1950)
Selman Waksman (1952)
Sir Hans Krebs (1953)
Fritz Lipmann (1953)
Joshua Lederberg (1958)
Arthur Kornberg (1959)
Konrad Bloch (1964)
Francois Jacob (1965)
André Lwoff (1965)
George Wald (1967)
Marshall Nirenberg (1968)
Salvador Luria (1969)
Julius Axelrod (1970)
Sir Bernard Katz (1970)
Gerald Edelman (1972)
David Baltimore (1975)
Howard Temin (1975)
Baruch Blumberg (1976)
Andrew Schally 6 (1977)
Rosalyn Yalow (1977)
Daniel Nathans (1978)
Baruj Benacerraf (1980)
Sir John Vane 7 (1982)
César Milstein (1984)
Michael Brown (1985)
Joseph Goldstein (1985)
Stanley Cohen (1986)
Rita Levi-Montalcini (1986)
Gertrude Elion (1988)
Harold Varmus (1989)
Edmond Fischer 8 (1992)
Alfred Gilman 9 (1994)
Martin Rodbell 10 (1994)
Stanley Prusiner 11 (1997)
Robert Furchgott 12 (1998)
Paul Greengard 13 (2000)
Eric Kandel 14 (2000)
Sydney Brenner 15 (2002)
H. Robert Horvitz 16 (2002)
Richard Axel 17 (2004)
Andrew Z. Fire 18 (2006)

Why is there no Nobel prize for philosophy?

I really dont know why people hate the Jewish people, they have never massacred any one, they added so much to science and economics arts and much more. I guess its just jealosy.

Jewish Philosphers:

Isaac Abravanel
Judah Abravanel (Leone Ebreo)
Alfred Adler
Felix Adler
Mortimer Adler
Theodor Adorno 1
Samuel Alexander
Hannah Arendt
Aristobulus of Paneas

Raymond Aron
Sir Alfred (A. J.) Ayer 2
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel
David Baumgardt
Paul Benacerraf
Julien Benda
Walter Benjamin
Gustav Bergmann 3
Henri Bergson
Eliezer Berkovits
Sir Isaiah Berlin
Paul Bernays
Max Black
Ernst Bloch
Ned Block
Leonard Bloomfield
Franz Boas
George Boas
David Bohm
Niels Bohr 4
George Boolos 5
Leon Brunschvicg
Martin Buber
Georg Cantor 6
Ernst Cassirer
Stanley Cavell 7
Noam Chomsky
Leon Chwistek 7
Hermann Cohen
Morris Raphael Cohen
Jonas Cohn
Hasdai Crescas
Arthur C. Danto
Jacques Derrida
Hubert Dreyfus
Emile Durkheim
Ronald Dworkin
Albert Einstein
Solomon Feferman
Herbert Feigl
Arthur Fine
Alain Finkielkraut
Jerry Fodor
Abraham A. Fraenkel
Adolphe Franck
Philipp Frank
Semyon Frank
Sigmund Freud
Erich Fromm
Solomon Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron)
Ernest Gellner
Gersonides
André Glucksmann
Alvin Goldman
Sir Ernst Gombrich
Theodor Gomperz
Nelson Goodman
Kurt Grelling 8
Adolf Grünbaum 7
Hans Hahn
Judah Halevi

Gilbert Harman
Zellig Harris
Herbert L. A. Hart 9
Jeanne Hersch
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Douglas Hoftstadter
Sidney Hook
Max Horkheimer
Edmund Husserl
Isaac b. Solomon Israeli
Edmond Jabès
Roman Jakobson
Vladimir Jankélévitch
Richard Jeffrey
Hans Jonas 7
Horace Kallen
Jerrold Katz
Felix Kaufmann
Walter Kaufmann
Hans Kelsen
Raymond Klibansky

Kurt Koffka
Aurel Kolnai
Alexandre Koyré
Georg Kreisel
Saul Kripke
Paul Kristeller
Leopold Kronecker
Richard Kroner
Thomas Kuhn 10
Imre Lakatos
Emmanuel Levinas
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
Adolf Lindenbaum 11
Karl Löwith
Gyorgy Lukács
Isaac Luria
Moses Maimonides
Karl Mannheim
Gabriel Marcel 12
Ruth Barcan Marcus 13
Herbert Marcuse
Karl Marx
Fritz Mauthner
Alexander Men
Moses Mendelssohn
Emile Meyerson
Marvin Minsky
Ludwig von Mises
Richard von Mises
Michel de Montaigne 14
Sydney Morgenbesser
Ernest Nagel
Thomas Nagel
Leonhard Nelson
John von Neumann
Otto Neurath 3
Robert Nozick
Martha Nussbaum 15
Arthur Pap
Philo of Alexandria (Philo Judaeus)
Michael Polanyi
Richard Popkin
Sir Karl Popper
Emil Post
Moritz Presburger 11
Ilya Prigogine 16
Hilary Putnam 17
Ayn Rand
Wilhelm Reich
Hans Reichenbach 18
Abraham Robinson
Franz Rosenzweig
Saadiah Gaon
Edward Sapir
Israel Scheffler
Max Scheler 19
Alfred Schutz
Lev Shestov
Abner Shimony
Georg Simmel
Herbert Simon 20
Peter Singer
Joseph Soloveitchik
Baruch (Benedict) de Spinoza
Edith Stein
William Stern
Leo Strauss
Alfred Tarski
Teresa of Ávila, Saint 21
Juan Luis Vives 22
Jean Wahl
Friedrich Waismann
Simone Weil
Paul Weiss
Max Wertheimer
Morton White
Norbert Wiener
Eugene Wigner
Ludwig Wittgenstein 23

Not to be too down on philosophy but those prizes are supposed to go "those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."

I see.

I’ve often wondered if it was the oppressive nature of the religions, both Christian and Muslim. The west was scientifically stagnant for centuries, except in the field of weapons and cathedrals, and didn’t begin again till people started taking the chance of being a heretic and going against the wishes of the church... IMO

I like coffee!

What? How is that relevant.

From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we in the West take for granted. Here are 20 of their most influential innovations:

(1) The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after eating a certain berry.

He boiled the berries to make the first coffee. Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray on special occasions. By the late 15th century it had arrived in Makkah and Turkey from where it made its way to Venice in 1645.

It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in the City of London. The Arabic “qahwa” became the Turkish “kahve” then the Italian “caffé” and then English “coffee”.

READ!!!@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why is Islam so violent?

Because we as a people have disregared their contributions !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


The history of coffee

For us Westerners coffee is three hundred years old, but in the East it was widespread as a beverage, in every level of society, since earlier times. The first definite dates go back to 800 b.C.; but already Homer, and many Arabian legends, tell the story of a mysterious black and bitter beverage with powers of stimulation. In the year 1000 about, Avicenna was administering coffee as a medicine. And there is a strange story, dating from 1400, of a Yemeni shepherd who, having observed some goats cropping reddish berries from a bush, and subsequently becoming restless and excited, reported the incident to a monk. The latter boiled the berries, and then distilled a bitter beverage, rich in strength, and capable of dispersing sleep and weariness.

However the discovery occurred, the fact remains that the coffee plant was born in Africa in an Ethiopian region (Kaffa). From there it spread to Yemen, Arabia and Egypt, where it developed enormously, and entered popular daily life

Hmmmmm, is that Islam?

I thought Coffee was invented in Mexico?

Me too.



Me too.

Fair enough!

and

Oh Interesting.....(which it really is!!)

Thanks for the answers.

for those that haven't realized it yet... i believe the reason this thread was posted is simple one... such small number of certain population yet such a great accomplishments...

and same goes for Jewish people mentioned on this thread


if you don't feel like posting a comment about the accomplishments mentioned i suggest you "PUT A SOCK IN IT" and consider keeping the SMARTASS comments for ex (They invented hijacking planes) to yourself...
writing things like this only proves how ignorant and brainwashed you trully are....

i can write you of hundreds cases in which people of OTHER religions did far worse things that 9/11

one example would be SREBRENICA(7000-10000 man and children separated and murdered in 3 day period) and ETHNIC CLEANSING that happened in my country in early 90's... many of you don't give a crap about that and i know that... many don't even know about it and i know that to ... but it happened and all your sophisticated WESTERN world didn't do crap about it... so i guess MUSLIMS aren't ONLY once that killed in name of their GOD.... and fact that rest of the world just stood by and waited for final result makes them as guilty as people that committed these crimes.

when was the last time anyone heard a Bosnian Muslim Scream about how all Christians should DIE and how they are all the same ?

thats what i thought !!!

actually they weren't the first to do that either - that would be the Japanese kamikaze

not to mention the German Selbstopfer

or by the US , Operation Aphrodite was the code name of a secret program initiated by the United States Army Air Forces during the latter part of World War II. The United States Eighth Air Force used 'Aphrodite' both as an experimental method of destroying V weapon production and launch facilities and as a way to dispose of B-17 and B-24 bombers (although only two B-24 were modified for the operation) that had outlived their operational usefulness.

The plan called for B-17 aircraft which had been taken out of operational service to be loaded to capacity with explosives, and flown by remote control into bomb-resistant fortifications such as German U-boat pens and V-1 missile sites.


In warfare, ramming is a technique that was used in the air, sea and tank combat. The term originated from battering ram, which is a siege weapon used to bring down fortifications by hitting it with force, of which the momentum of the ram being sufficient to damage the target. Thus, in warfare ramming refers to hitting a target by running oneself into the target.


History
Already in 750 BCE the main striking force of the Assyrian army was the corps of horse-drawn, two-wheeled chariots. Their mission was to smash their way through the ranks of enemy infantry. As siege weapons they used battering rams.




On January 5, 2002, Charles Bishop, stole a plane and crashed it into the Bank of America Plaza in Tampa, Florida

http://www.answers.com/topic/incidents-whe...used-as-weapons

The Egyptian name for ancient Egypt was "Kemet".

This is the source of the word "chemistry". It was initially "the science of the Egyptians". Of course, this was way before the birth of Mohammed. But still, it's another example of how much that part of the world contributed to world science.

The Kamikazee where attacking soldiers not civilians, The Muslim extremist have come up suicide bombings end of story

In 400 AD the Mayans created a calendar based on the orbit of Venus, which they defined as 584 days. The actual orbit is 583.92.

The modern western world is incredibly ignorant about how advanced other civilizations have been.