Mahmud Cannot Read
After more than 80 years since oil was discovered on the Arabian peninsula, after trillions of dollars have flowed into Saudi coffers, after tens of thousands of madrassas have been constructed throughout the world, what hath Muslims wrought?
Actually, nothing of any value to modern civilization.
If you had to take a guess, how many foreign language books do you think Arabs have translated into Arabic for the edification of their people in the past 1,000 years? Sadly, about 10,000 books. That's ten books a year. But not to worry, oil-rich Abu Dhabi plans to transform the emirate into the cultural lodestone of the Middle East, and in 2008 translated 100 books into Arabic. (1).
100 titles a year for more than 325 million Arabs [Wiki]. Norway with a paltry 4.5 million people translates that many titles into Norwegian every single week (2).
So what do the Arabs spend their oil moneys on? Well, indirectly they give to Muslim charities that then fund terrorism, spread Islamic extremism, and teach hatred of anything infidel. For example in the UK, Muslim schools teach their children to despise all that is Western in culture; here are a few things banned: Music, chess, cricket, drama, dance, sport, Shakespeare, and well, anything non-Muslim (3).
The problem of course is the Qur'an. As Riyadhul Haq, one of the teachers in such Islamic schools tells us, "Allah has warned us in the Koran, do not befriend the kuffaar. The Jews and Christians will never be content with you until you follow their way."
The Qur'an discourages Muslims from reading any books, for if a book contains what is already in the Qur'an it is superfluous, if it contains anything contrary to the Qur'an it is forbidden. Thus it is no accident that 70 percent of Turkish citizens never read books (4).
But I want to be fair: Muslims do read books other than the Qur'an. The best-selling book in Arabic year after year other than the Qur'an? Hitler's Mein Kampf.
During the Danish Cartoon Affair while Muslims were whining, crying, rioting, burning, and killing infidels over an insult to their prophet, an International Book Fair was held in Cairo between 17 Jan to 3 Feb 2006. While Muslims were protesting that free speech should not mean freedom to insult religion, they were precisely doing that very thing. Go Here to see some of the top selling Titles of Anti-Semitic and Anti-Christian publications.
So Mahmud, you can take offense at what I write here or you can leave comments on as many Islamic forums as you can protesting the way other Muslim governments waste their money. Stir up a hue and cry opposing the funding of madrassas that encourage extremism and anti-assimilation. You can take what I say as some petty bigoted attack and lose the lesson I am trying to teach you or you can reflect on what you may have to do to get out of the trap of Islam you find yourself in.
Here's some advice because I want Arabs to improve themselves:
Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on madrassas and mosques and Islamic centers, the Saudis should have simply sent every Arab youth to a good Catholic school or Jewish Yeshiva and instead of the world being saddled with millions of mostly unemployable, uneducated, backward, illiterate clods whose only joy in this world is thinking about virgins in the next, they would have had properly educated, decent, employable, literate contributors to modern civilization.
I'm not kidding about sending Arabs to Jewish schools. Just being near to Jews is enough to make Arabs more literate. West Bank Arabs have a literacy rate of 92.4% compared to Saudi Arabia's 78.8%. That's right, West Bank Arabs are better educated than Saudi Arabs. The last place any Muslim parent should send his or her child is to an Islamic school.
ENDNOTES
(1):
LA Times, 4 Jan 2008,Translating books into Arabic
While Abu Dhabi pours $27 billion into building five museums, including a Guggenheim designed by Frank Gehry and a Louvre designed by Jean Nouvel, another planned project will help expand Arabic libraries.
As part of efforts to transform the emirate into the cultural lodestone of the Middle East, the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, or Adach, has chosen 100 books to be translated into Arabic.
Among them are Alan Greenspan's memoir, "The Age of Turbulence," John Maynard Keynes' "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" and Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom." The goal is to translate 100 titles every year.
Adach has formed a nonprofit organization called Kalima (Arabic for "word") to undertake the translations and expand Arabic-language publishing in the United Arab Emirates.
About 10,000 books have been translated into Arabic in the past millennium, according to a 2003 study by the U.N. Development Program.
(2):
The Nordic Languages
By Oskar Bandle, Kurt Braunmüller, Lennart Elmevik, Gun Widmark, The volume of translation in NorwayPage 525
People visiting public libraries in Norway will find that more than half of the books (60 per cent) are translations.
...
The figures document that a communicative revolution has taken place - from around 50 books translated per year in 1900 to more than 5000 books in 2000.
(3):
Telegraph.co.uk, 19 Feb 2009, We must stop Muslim schools teaching that integration is a sin
Several recent surveys have noted an unusual phenomenon among young Muslims here and in Europe: that 16-to-24-year-olds are more hardline in their opinions than their parents or even their grandparents. The youngest generation is moving away from mainstream society, not towards it. The reasons for this are complex, but there can be little doubt that Islamic schools play a role in encouraging children and teenagers to isolate themselves. More than 50 per cent of the establishments I examined for my report on Muslim schools showed indications of strong fundamentalist influence and control. Some were set up by organisations that have been banned in some countries.
Not infrequently, Ofsted inspectors give glowing reports to schools that require much closer examination. Al-Mu'min Primary School in Bradford is linked to the al-Mu'min journal, which carries material from schoolchildren. Its website teaches that Western culture is "evil", photographs are "an evil practice of the unbelievers", and that "the person who plays chess is like one who dips his hand in the blood of a swine".
(4):
Europe News, 23 Feb 2009, 70 percent of Turkish citizens never read book
Ankara. 70 percent of the Turkish citizens never read books, Konda public opinion researchers said, APA reports. The research center conducted opinion poll among 6482 respondents and found out mood of national and religious discrimination, as well as isolation is still in a high level in the country.
According to researches, despite that there are many Turks living in the European countries, 90 percent of Turkish citizens never travel to the foreign countries.
73 percent of respondents were against the purchasing of real estate by the foreigners. Most of them considered the neighbor countries as a threat for the territorial integrity of Turkey.
The researchers found out interesting facts about the women's role in the Turkish society. 70 percent of respondents think that the woman can work only by consent of her husband. 57 percent said considered appearance of women in the public places without headscarves as unacceptable.
