Posted in Science, tagged climate change, NASA. Moscow, satellite image on August 10, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Checking out daily maximum temperatures in Moscow during the previous two months and comparing them with those last year made clear that they were about 10 centigrades higher. NASA has proof for this guess. The dark red areas were 12 degrees hotter as usual. Other parts of the world, including Nord Norge, were essentially cooler than normal.
Last update August 10, 2010.
Posted in Academics, Iran, Islam, Kuwait, Kuwait University, Science, tagged Gallup report, Science Metrix report, transgenic animals on February 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Earlier this week, New Scientist has reported on a recent discussion paper by Science Metrix, which concludes that Iran is showing the fastest scientific growth of any country in the world, nearly four times faster than the world average. Al Jazeera informed us today about the first transgenic animals in the Middle East. Nothing new in countries like America, the mere fact that Iran, which has been badly suffering for years under UN sanctions and branded as a pariah state because of its allegedly, as pretended, peaceful nuclear program, would be able to produce high quality research may change western bias towards backward, retarded Muslim societies.
According to Science Metrix, countries like Oman and the United Arab Emirates grow at a fast pace and the scientific output of Saudi Arabia, Israel or Iraq grows more slowly than the world average, the report mentions that Kuwait, Bahrain or Egypt are at a standstill [1].
On the contrary, based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1025 adult interviewees, conducted February 1-3, 2010, the new Gallup report ranks Canada first as regards American’s perceptions of 20 nations (90% total favorable) and Iran last (85% total unfavorable) [2].
Notes
[1] I have been working at Kuwait University for a couple of years and got a pretty different impression. As compared to my experiences in several European countries, enthusiasm and willingness to work hard could definitely be implemented easier in our undergraduates in Kuwait leading even to a couple of international publications.
[2] Americans other than Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett would hardly get a visa for Iran at the moment. So, Americans largely have to rely on media coverage of a country definitely in a crisis.
Last update February 21, 2010
Posted in Academics, Book Review, Islam, Religion, Science, tagged Eliot Weinberger, Hadith, Muhammad, Sharia, Tilman Nagel on October 3, 2009 | 3 Comments »
The original sources for the detailed descriptions of legends and fairy tales which circulate among both ordinary people in the Islamic world and, for example, Sufis since Muhammad’s and his followers’ conquest of much of the world have never been described in a scientific way. When reading, for instance, Eliot Weinberger’s Muhammad (Verso, London 2006), which is, according to the author, mainly based on the Holy Qur’an and ahadīth, or the traditions of the Prophet, one may ask the question how many generations of people have, over the centuries, embellished so nicely the historical facts (?) so that an attractive legend was created which fascinates even sober, contemporary Westerners, the main target audience of Weinberger’s nice booklet.
Allah’s Darling (or Allahs Liebling, the original title of the book which has, so far, been published only in German) is the attempt of the renowned German Orientalist Tilman Nagel, a professor emeritus of the University of Göttingen, to explain the origins and manifestations of the belief in the founder of Islam, Muhammad. The book is sort of a spin-off of Nagel’s opus maximum, his voluminous biography of the Prophet, mainly praised but also heavily criticized by others.
When having read the subtitle of “Allah’s Darling” (“Ursprung und Erscheinungsformen des Mohammedglaubens”), I was wondering whether the author wants to make the point that Islam is not an extreme form of monotheism, as claimed in particular by Sunni Muslims, but rather that Muslims are “Mohammedans”, a pretty frivolous, Orientalist, conception. He frankly admits that everyone who would undertake the task of highlighting the circumstances under which a faith could emerge which was essentially based on prefabricated “eternal” knowledge, ever-valid for any area of life; a faith in an ever-competent messenger of Allah, would inevitably face the “foolish” charge of Orientalism or Essentialism. He may be right, but whether the charge is in fact foolish was not clear to me after having read the book.
The seemingly sound construction of what one may describe as the House of Islam is, however, not different from that of other, older, world religions. That, after the Age of Enlightenment, fundamentalist Christianity, for instance, has largely (unfortunately not entirely, though) been repelled in modern, determined secular, societies may have something to do with the foundation of Christianity as the author correctly claims, but not with its Church(es), as it (they) developed in century-long processes, with its (their), for example, heated arguments regarding the “nature” of Jesus, the World’s Redeemer; or strange beliefs in the Virgin Mary. There is no difference in overall absurdity. It is self-evident that, in order to write a credible, in particular scientific, treatise or even book on one of the world religions authors should make clear in the very beginning that they are not religious! That is unfortunately not the case here.
Several times Nagel points to the huge problems of Integrationspolitik, i.e. how Muslims may be integrated in Western societies. He stresses again and again that the overpowering (erdrückende) majority of Muslims still live their fatalism due to strong beliefs in the believer’s general inability of getting hold of his own lives. For Nagel it seems to be clear that Mohammedanism should be regarded the main reason for the widely observed (in comparison) developmental retardation in Islamic societies. His plenty arguments, however, are taken from medieval authors commenting on ahadīth [1]; notoriously unreliable, as it becomes clear time and time again in Nagel’s narrative. The realm of medieval Islam (note that the Middle Ages describe the dark ages of European cultures and societies when, at the same time, the Islamic world was bright and pretty enlightened) was huge, though, and spanned from Spain to Central Asia, from North Africa to parts of India. Islam, as Nagel describes it using accounts of numerous medieval authors, Andalusian, Cairene, Damascene, or Iranian [2], is not, and never has been, a monolithic entity. There are four prominent Sunni schools of fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence, and two schools for the Shi’a, which are not covered in Nagel’s book.
In his epilogue, Nagel concludes with the description of his pretty unjustified dismay about the publication of now, since 1981, eight volumes of Muhammad. Encyclopedia of Seerah (The Muslim Schools Trust, London, 2nd ed. 1985), clearly a sort of personality cult. He might not even be aware of comparably voluminous works of contemporary authors about Shi’a Imams with a similar, of course questionable, approach [3]. That currently by the majority of the faithful practiced Islam won’t fit into a rapidly changing, now again flat, world with its traffic, world wide web, demands of intercultural competence etc, is commonplace. Professor Nagel acknowledges, in the preface of Allahs Liebling, one of his co-workers for introducing him to and solving emerging problems with electronic data processing. So, even he might not have arrived yet in modern times.
Notes
[1] When introducing the reader to his text, Nagel describes the pretty bizarre “fly” hadīth: The Prophet once narrated: “If a fly falls into one of your containers (of food or drink), immerse it completely (falyaghmis-hu kullahu) before removing it, for under one of its wings there is venom and under another there is its antidote.” The purpose here is clearly defamatory, not realizing that Christian salvation history is full of similar absurdities, not mentioning the Jewish Tanakh.
[2] As regards the latter, I am not even sure. Iran, a center of medieval Islam, seems not to be covered at all. Moreover, Nagel rarely informs the reader about the specific background of the authors he extensively quotes: the historical circumstances during the periods they lived when they created their scriptures. That, of course, raises questions about the targeted audience. Is it politicians, a lay audience? The book is not a reference text. In contrast to his claims, I would not even regard it a sound scientific study. Too copious, even biased, in its descriptions of absurdities (see [1]) which may have led eventually to his (or our) perceived totalitarian Mohammedanism of the Islamic world.
[3] I own, for instance, an English translation by Jasim al-Rasheed of the 1926 book by Baqir Sharif al-Qarashi’s The Life of Imam Ali bin Musa al Rida; Ansariyan Publications, Qum 2001, which was a personal gift by Kuwaiti Shi’ites on the occasion of their pilgrimage to the Holy Shrine of Imam Ridha in Mashhad in 2006, when I was invited to join the group. Much of Nagel’s descriptions of the Prophet’s reported excellence, for example of his physics, his manners, his generosity etc., which elevated him from ordinary people, may be found in the description of Imam Ridha as well. It would have been even more interesting to study the deeply rooted piety of ordinary, say, Iranian people in rural areas, including their legends and personality cults as regards Ali, Husayn, the numerous Imami Shi’a Saints, etc. In particular ahadīth related to Ali, the Nahj al-Balagha, may prove that Allah may have just another darling besides Muhammad.
Posted in Academics, Art, Islam, Science, tagged Abū’l-Wafā al-Būzjānī, islamic geometric patterns, Kamāl al-Dīn Yūnis bin Man’a, Wasma'a K. Chorbachi on September 5, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Those who have studied Islamic art and architecture for some time inevitably have asked sooner or later the following questions: How did they do that? Apart from the application of fundamental principles in geometry, how could they create most sophisticated and highly complicated geometric designs over extended areas in this stunning precision? And then, why did Muslims in the Golden Age of Islam do that? Who had taught them, and how? Where are the books and manuscripts? When and on what occasions met and collaborated scientists and artists in Islamic civilization?
In the early 1970s these simple questions struck a young and extraordinary talented Iraqi lady with a strong background in history and historiography when she searched for a suitable topic for a doctoral thesis at Harvard [1]. These questions weren’t obvious at that time. When Wasma’a Chorbachi had explained her preliminary proposal and her desire of finding the relevant literature which had obviously been lost during the centuries, she was rather quickly turned down. Her advisor expressed his strong opinion that there was not such a thing. There had never been. His good advise was rather to expand her list of questions in order not to fail, for instance, including questions such as: Has the interest in science or geometry been part of the average cultured person’s background in the ninth or tenth century? What practical geometry had been developed by the tenth century? What caused the growth of this phenomenon? Geographically, where did it begin and in what directions did it spread?
A Needle in the Haystack
Wasma’a started her search taking advantage of the extensive resources of the Harvard library system. She read through catalogues and indices of manuscript collections available in libraries throughout the world. By the end of the week she had come across Kamāl al-Dīn Yūnis bin Man’a, one of the most outstanding teachers at the main school of the early 13th century in Mosul, Iraq (which has later been named after him, al-Madrasah al-Kamālīyah, [2]). Among his work was a commentary on an earlier work of one of the most eminent mathematicians and scientists of the Islamic world of the 10th century, Abū’l-Wafā al-Būzjānī. He lived in Baghdad from approximately 945 CE until his death in about 987 CE. The transliterated title of the main work was also more or less the title of Wasma’a’s PhD project: “A treatise on what the artisan needs of geometric problems”, while the title of Kamāl al-Din Yunis’ commentary was “Commentary on the geometry problems.” Thus, by the third week of her search Wasma’a Chorbachi had already been successful in achieving her first aim: to locate the relevant literature as regards the teaching of medieval artisans of the Islamic world by scientists.
Wasma’a’s next step was to travel to Europe and find and read the original manuscripts, in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris where she had located a Persian translation of Abū’l-Wafā al-Būzjānī’s manuscript of the “Treatise on what the artisan needs of geometric problems.” In Paris, she found an unnamed, undated manuscript probably from the 14th century which clearly was of significantly greater importance than Abu’l Wafa’s work: “On interlocking similar and congruent figures.” Wasma’a writes:
“By the time I returned to Cambridge, I had located a range of written material, in the history of Islamic science and geometric design from the tenth century of the mid-nineteenth century, lying in library and museum storage rooms all over the world. In point of fact, my material turned out to be so convincing that it is now being used and propagated even by those who demonstrated such a strong sceptical attitude towards it at the beginning. Though locating the manuscripts took only two months, acquiring microfilms and/or photocopies of these documents without any backing or support took several years. Meanwhile, I was struggling to decipher the material, and to find an appropriate language in which to discuss it and describe the geometrical patterns with which it dealt.”
Confusing Language
Studying the right language (while noticing that different people with different background will describe what they see by using different terminology) took years for Wasma’a. It foremost included Group Theory, Crystallography and Symmetry Notation, fields with which historians and art historians are not really familiar per se. Wasma’a strictly applied scientific reasoning, though. It is interesting reading her rebuttal of ‘esoteric’ reasoning in explaining the ‘meaning’ in Islamic art which became most popular in the mid 1970s. According to proponents, the “principle of the unity of being” was even “pushed to a point of scientific fallacy such as the claim that all geometric patterns of Islamic art are derivable through a single method of construction based on the subdivision of the circle, in order to declare this art work an example of the ‘Unity of Being’.” Divine Unity, or Tawhīd, as the driving force for geometric patterns. That didn’t make sense in her opinion.
“The general public unfortunately remains unaware of this. If in these books, that are now readily available on the market, their authors had made clear that the presented views were modern understandings of old forms, turning them into symbols, there would be no reason to object. The problem lies in presenting these modern mystical views as historical truths, as if these symbols were the meanings at the time the art forms were created. The non-Islamicist who is exposed to these books [for example, I. El-Said’s Geometric Concepts in Islamic Art; L. Bakhtiar’s Sufi: Expressions of the Mystic Quest] will anachronistically assume that a modern interpretation is the historical truth. Where does one draw the line between true historical research and the creation of and attribution of symbolic meaning to forms from the past? How can we redeem the geometric shapes, forms and patterns from the shrouds of mystical interpretations in order to see the precise scientific design at their basis?”
Describing the visual perception and linguistic or even fashionable semiotics further served only to confuse the interested layman in particular in the 1970s [3].
In a comprehensive case study Wasma’a Chorbachi deconstructs one of several amazing brick pattern on one of the two Seljuq Kharraqan tomb towers (1093 CE) in the vicinity of Qazvin in northern Iran which consists, at first sight, of V-forms, X-forms as well as dots, but which, at second sight, comprises an extremely popular geometric structure, a square within a square within another square. I have described this pattern, which can be found, for instance, several times on the western and southern iwans of Esfahan’s Great Mosque [4], and how it may be created in another posting on this blog. It’s construction in five steps had been described in a systematic, scientifically correct, way in the above mentioned, unnamed, undated Paris manuscript No. 169 “On interlocking similar and congruent figures”, Wasma’a had been working on.
What follows is another case study of the Persian manuscript folio 192b about a similar structure of a kind of pinwheel which fascinates “in its use of a strict algorithm with irrational numbers.” It shows how the principles may lead to different designs which probably have been considered from a pure esthetic point of view.
“The science of symmetry of patterns tell[s] us that there are 17 different periodic two-dimensional groups and 7 groups periodic in a singular direction (string or ribbon), also that each of these groups could have an infinite number of different designs. As seen, these Islamic geometric manuscripts give us samples of the infinite design variations of the basic 17 periodic groups; these documented geometric problems or examples in turn could be the basis for developing many new sets of design.”
See Dr. Wasma’a Chorbachi’s homepage here.
Notes
[1] This posting is about a remarkable text by Wasma’a K. Chorbachi which was based on two lectures given at MIT, Cambridge, in November 1987 and had been published in Computers Math Applic 1989; 17: 751-789: In the Tower of Babel: Beyond Symmetry in Islamic Design. It deals with a lot of questions which I have asked myself (and many others) since I became fascinated of Islamic art and architecture in recent years.
[2] Despite his Arabic name, Wasma’a’s advisor considered Kamāl al-Dīn Yūnis a member of the Nestorian Church which had been revived in Iraq in the 12th century. Dr. Chorbachi explains her dismay with considerable prejudices as well. I suppose it is not entirely correct that the annoying response of her supervisor reflected a general ignorant attitude towards the achievements of the Islamic world in the West after WWII, as she describes it. Ignorant supervisors are frequently found in Academia, even at Harvard. It might in fact be the case that in particular Americans are in essence Eurocentric. Not to forget that the 1970s were a decade of great technological and scientific achievements mainly coming from the US, which were very much occupied in proxy wars of the Cold War, for instance in Vietnam. Islamic art and architecture may not have been regarded a fruitful field where scientific breakthroughs had to be expected. In any way, Wasma’a continued her search and found quite a lot of information about Kamāl al-Dīn Yūnis. I have to admit that in spite of considerable search of the internet, I could not identify the scholar yet.
[3] Mystic interpretations of Islamic geometric patterns are still prevalent in many esoteric circles in the West. When trying to talk about new discoveries or searches, for instance, the search for quasi-crystalline patterns, one generally faces incomprehension among people with a general interest in Islamic art and art historians. The “meaning” of the stunning patterns is of greater importance than the question, how could it be created. And whether it has been chosen for esthetic reason only.
[4] Interestingly, Wasma’a mentions 1122 CE as construction date of the iwans, i.e., after Assassin rebels had set the mosque on fire in 1121. She also mentions that the iwans were re-decorated in 1800. In fact, restoration and repair of the structures and tessellations constantly takes place. The celebrated decoration of, for instance, the western iwan is usually considered to be Timurid (15th century) or Safavid (16th and 17th century).
See ArchNet for further pictures of the two Kharraqan tomb towers.
Posted in Iran, Science, tagged B. F. Roukema, Benford's Law, election fraud on June 27, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Astronomer Boudewijn F. Roukema at the Centre for Astronomy of Nicolaus Copernicus University Torun in Poland has launched an analysis of vote counts of 366 voting areas, which had been published by the Iranian Ministry of Interior, and has applied Benford’s Law in order to detect election fraud. According to these calculations, “the null hypothesis that the vote count distributions satisfy these distributions is rejected at a significance of p ≤ 0.007, based on the presence of 41 vote counts for candidate K (Mehdi Karroubi) that starts with the digit 7, compared to an expected 21.2-22 occurrences expected for the null hypothesis. A less significant anomaly suggested by Benford’s Law could be interpreted as an overestimate of candidate A’s (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s) total vote count by several million votes.”
The study is not completely convincing. Still, the observed anomalies may be explained by chance alone. Moreover, figures 5 and 6 (pp. 5, 6) may have erroneously been exchanged. The motivation of conducting such an analysis is definitely driven by the assumption that the incumbent Iranian president was in urgent need for massive manipulation to become re-elected. That might not even be the case, as I have argued before. The brutal abolition of demonstrations in the previous two weeks have shown the true face of this regime which cannot easily been overthrown, in particular if one has to assume massive western support of a “Green Revolution” with now rather deleterious outcome, as we experience these days. Sad to say but Iran may be on its way to a police state.
The online manuscript by Dr. Roukema (as of June 16, 2009, i.e., 4 days after the election!) which has been submitted to the Annals of Applied Statistics can be found here.
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