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by brigandish 23 days ago
Firstly, there is a difference between a telescope and the prior advances that led to a telescope being invented. The telescope was not invented by a muslim scholar, hence that being why no one gives credit to one of them for that.

Secondly, to this claim:

> That's why there's little to no credit given to Muslim scholars (Arabic, Persian, Moorish Spain, etc) by the western scholars, by conveniently dismissing the Muslim golden era as "Dark Ages" but at the same time stealing the knowledge (idea, equations design, tools, etc) for most of the prior inventions by the Muslim scholars, for example the telescope.

From the link you provided, in the very first paragraph:

> The works of Alhazen were frequently cited during the Scientific Revolution by Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Johannes Kepler, and Christiaan Huygens.

No credit or frequent credit - which is it?

1 comments

>No credit or frequent credit - which is it?

>>there's little to no credit given to Muslim scholars

Again, in the link you provided, in the very first paragraph, it mentions several great names who are said to have given frequent credit to muslim scholars. Are you saying that is false? If so, you have the ability to edit that Wikipedia article, and you should.

Don't forget the legacy section, where there is a long list of people and organisations giving him enormous credit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham#Legacy

The fact that Newton did not cite Alhazen or Al-Haytham in his seminal and infamous optic books in English tell you what you need to know regarding the treatment by the western scholars of the muslims scholars [1],[2].

IMHO, this critical omission caused most of the modern physics and optical books and textbooks did not include Alhazen or Al-Haytham eventhough he literally contributed to modern optics more than Newton himself and lately considered the to be the father of modern science. Most probably the word camera (from the Arabic word kamar meaning room) was derived from his experimental work on optic.

For perspective, I was educated in my high school in England, and in my Physics class no muslim scholars name ever mentioned in my many textbooks and in classes. The same goes to my chemistry and math classes. Guess how many times Newton was mentioned in my physics classes and textbooks? To be honest I lost my count because too many times.

Mind you this little to no credits phenomena happened across the board from math, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, medicine, etc.

To put the things in perspective, now if you don't cite seminal prior work related to your research your paper or thesis, it will be subjected to re-submission.

Imagine if Einstein did not even mention Newton's contributions in gravity, the English people will be go to war with Germany. OK, they did but that's for totally different reasons.

[1] Did Isaac Newton plagiarize his work from Ibn-Al Haytham?

https://www.quora.com/Did-Isaac-Newton-plagiarize-his-work-f...

[2] Opticks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opticks

> For perspective, I was educated in my high school in England, and in my Physics class no muslim scholars name ever mentioned in my many textbooks and in classes. The same goes to my chemistry and math classes. Guess how many times Newton was mentioned in my physics classes and textbooks? To be honest I lost my count because too many times.

Physics is the study of physics, not history, no muslim scholars are relevant to modern physics, whereas Newton is relevant to modern physics. That's either because he's closer in the chain or because his work remains relevant, but either way he gets a mention for being relevant. Not every European mathematician or physicist is mentioned either, for the same reason. Descartes never came up, nor did Brahmagupta, nor did Tesla… the list of greats would be too long to mention and just wouldn't be relevant. Complaining about people nigh on 400 years ago not writing citations properly is an insubstantial complaint, to say the least.

No one else needs to care about your religion but you.