Why Muslims are under rated.

[Sami_23]

The OP is biased. And does not know anything about history or the movement of people or religious agendas.

What can one say other then the OP is ignorant and if this is the best Islam has to offer then they are truly back in the "Stone Age" = 8,000 BCE and have no hope of engaging the current era.

How am I biased? I admitted I was wrong about Fell but Jerald Dirks and others are reliable experts. I also posted a testimony from a Native American convert to Islam.

[cratehorus]

If, in the absence of evidence of any transoceanic contact at all, there were "theories" thrown around about first Mesoamerican civilization having to have been inspired by old worlders, be they Norse (Haha!), Chinese (Ha!), Africans (Huh?), but no equivalent theory going the other way, I'd say the write up has a point.

Why is popular junk history not populated by stories of the great stone architecture of zimbabwe being evidence of African culture having been inspired by the renegade band of magalithic building Incas?

There is a theory that the Incas discovered Africa

Tupac Inca navigated and sailed on until he discovered the islands of Avachumbi and Ninachumbi, and returned, bringing back with him black people, gold, a chair of brass, and a skin and jaw bone of a horse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BApac_Inca_Yupanqui

and that the Polynesians discovered South America and were trading Sweet Potatoes with them by atleast 700 AD

Between 300 and 1200 CE, Polynesians in canoes spread throughout the Polynesian Triangle going as far as Easter Island, New Zealand and Hawaii, and perhaps on to the Americas. The sweet potato, which is native to the Americas, was widespread in Polynesia when Europeans first reached the Pacific. Sweet potato has been radiocarbon-dated in the Cook Islands to 1000 CE, and current thinking is that it was brought to central Polynesia c. 700 CE and spread across Polynesia from there.

One is the name of the sweet potato, which was domesticated in the New World. Easter Island kumara and Hawaiian ʻuala (also compare the Māori name kumāra) may be connected with Quechua and Aymara

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbi...ic_contact

[Anomalocaris]

1. Tupoc inca yupanqui was an contemporary of Columbus. So even if he did make a trip to Africa, his trip could not really be said to be a separate per-columban exchange.

2. Inca empire was on the pacific side of south America, it would be truly amazing if balsal craft with cotton sails as possessed by the incas could have traversed the Drake passage to reach Africa, much less return and round the Drake passage against wind and tide.

3. Yes, polynesians had Sweet potatoe. I forgot about that. But the absence of evidence of any other exchange, for example pigs and chickens that Polynesians took with them to virtually everywhere else they went, make the notion of substantial contact problematic. I might argue sweet potatoe might have been exchanged through some one off event, such as encounter of Polynesian and south American craft at sea, than through true land based contact involving fully stocked Polynesian ship with pigs and chickens landing in south america.

[Angrboda]

Well thank the gods at least that it wasn't the jaw bone of an ass!


Don't sweet potatoes float?

[Cato]

'I was here first' is hardly a claim to cultural superiority, even if you could prove it. If I grant you that Muslims were the first to discover the continents of the Western Hemisphere, what does this mean? Let me help...it means absolutely nothing. Just ask the Scandanavians; there is actually proof that they were here first despite the lack of lasting influence.

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I almost forgot. If you think for a moment that egomaniacs like Columbus and Cortez both conveniently forgot to mention the subjugation of indigenous Islamists, you are historically ignorant.

If you want a reason for the relative historic insignificance of Islam outside of military conquest, you need only to study Al Ghazali.

[cratehorus]

1. Tupoc inca yupanqui was an contemporary of Columbus. So even if he did make a trip to Africa, his trip could not really be said to be a separate per-columban exchange.

First of all, his name is Tupac like the rapper..... second of all the trip was apparently in 1480 before Columbus arrived

2. Inca empire was on the pacific side of south America, it would be truly amazing if balsal craft with cotton sails as possessed by the incas could have traversed the Drake passage to reach Africa, much less return and round the Drake passage against wind and tide. I think the theory implies the Incas had better ships than we currently kow about.

I think the theory implies they had better boats than we currently know about

3. Yes, polynesians had Sweet potatoe. I forgot about that. But the absence of evidence of any other exchange, for example pigs and chickens that Polynesians took with them to virtually everywhere else they went, make the notion of substantial contact problematic. I might argue sweet potatoe might have been exchanged through some one off event, such as encounter of Polynesian and south American craft at sea, than through true land based contact involving fully stocked Polynesian ship with pigs and chickens landing in south america.

They actually did find specifically pre-columbian chicken bones and it's used as evidence, that the Polynesians contacted atleast the Mapuche people of south-central Chile
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbi...he_contact

In recent years evidence has emerged suggesting pre-Columbian contact between the Mapuche people of south-central Chile and Polynesians. Chicken bones found at the site El Arenal in the Arauco Peninsula, an area inhabited by Mapuche, support a pre-Columbian introduction of chicken to South America. The bones found in Chile were radiocarbon-dated to between 1304 and 1424, before the arrival of the Spanish.

[Anomalocaris]

1. Lets not get into whose imprecise transliteration is the more correct one, unless you happen to not only speak Quechua, but have done research on how sounds in Quechua shifted since 1480s.

2. The very existence of the journey is highly doubtful, so saying it predates Columbus by an exact and yet not very great amount of time seems to be arguing for other purpose rather than weather native American culture and those of old world influenced each other significantly before Columbus.

3. That a trip whose existence is highly question requires tools whose existence is independently and just as highly questionable does not create a situation where either proposition strengthens the other.

4. Other study shows the alleged Polynesians chickens were more plausibly European.

However, a later report in the same journal looking at the same mtDNA concluded that the Chilean chicken specimen clusters with the same European/Indian subcontinental/Southeast Asian sequences, providing no support for a Polynesian introduction of chickens to South America.[11]

[The Grand Nudger]

I can't believe I missed this thread...lol. Yes, Islam as a political identity had a golden age, hundreds of years ago. They held the slack in the line while christian Europe was dealing with the throes of the middle ages. Of course, you have places like Iran, a former "center of the world" and shining beacon of civilization that has been reduced to babbling Imams in the here and now.

But....Cherokee as Muslim.....that would be news to the Cherokee....lol. Did your boy Mo pull another midnight ride over the Atlantic (and through time) ala Jesus in John Smiths account of pre-historic N.America? In what way does religious conversion have anything to do with whether or not N. Americans where originally Muslim? WTF? You know there were people here long before there was such a thing as Islam..correct?

[Sami_23]

But guys, lets just look at the Mayan and Tzotzil Indian Muslims. They were all originally Muslims before Christians conquered and forced them to convert to Christianity. Even now, there are converts and they say Islam truly rediscovered their indian values. Surely this means that Islam has a significant history in Indian roots.

I believe over 300 Tzotzil, Mayan have converted to Islam in Mexico. That's pretty impressive.

[jonb]

I almost forgot. If you think for a moment that egomaniacs like Columbus and Cortez both conveniently forgot to mention the subjugation of indigenous Islamists, you are historically ignorant.

If you want a reason for the relative historic insignificance of Islam outside of military conquest, you need only to study Al Ghazali.

I as an artist might have a different perspective on that little number.