The myth of Islamic intellectualism
Reader comment on item: Daniel Pipes fights the worldwide threat of Islamism - from Malibu

Submitted by J Campbell (Brazil), Mar 9, 2007 at 21:05

Islam contributed very little to the advancement of human knowledge other than to copy from the great civilizations that came before it. Take Hinduism for example, some of the contributions from ancient India hardly get a mention while grand, sweeping statements are constantly made about Islamic "contributions" to civilization by the many Islamists and misguided westerners.
Consider the ancient Indian mathematician called Panini who lived 2500 yrs ago. The UK website on mathematicians says this about this great Indian mind:

"Panini should be thought of as the forerunner of the modern formal language theory used to specify computer languages. The Backus Normal Form was discovered independently by John Backus in 1959, but Panini's notation is equivalent in its power to that of Backus and has many similar properties. It is remarkable to think that concepts which are fundamental to today's theoretical computer science should have their origin with an Indian genius around 2500 years ago."

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Panini.html

The irony is that the part of India where Panini used to live 2500 yrs ago is now the most lawless part of Pakistan and very likely Bin Laden's hideout. Need one say more about the true impact of Islam?

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