A Further Perspective
Major Hasan — A True Believer
Eric Hoffer had his number decades ago.
Here’s a quiz that may appear some day on history tests:
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in November 2009, was:
a) Part of a terror network that had planned attacks on the United States since the 1990s;
b) A deranged psychotic who snapped under the pressure of treating soldiers returning from Iraq and who happened to be a Muslim;
c) A prime example of “The True Believer,” the lonely, frustrated individual who attaches himself to an overarching cause as a way of compensating for personal failures.
The answer, of course, is “c,” the true believer. There is no sense in searching his computer for ties to al Qaeda, or combing the psychology textbooks for a diagnosis, or listening to the journalistic sages such as Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, who says he “cringed” to discover that such an obvious lunatic as Major Hasan also happened to be a Muslim. The text for understanding Major Hasan’s actions is Eric Hoffer’s 1951 classic, The True Believer, written as an explanation of the appeal of secular religions in the 20th century. Hoffer’s book also explains why there will be many, many more Major Hasans.
Almost completely forgotten now and rarely encountered in the college curriculum, The True Believer was a dazzling explanation of why 20th century totalitarian creeds appealed to so many seemingly ordinary and non-descript individuals, particularly among the intelligentsia. A self-educated migrant worker who spent many years living on skid row, Hoffer had been endowed with a love of reading after losing his eyesight temporarily as a child and then regaining it again as a teenager. It was only after spending a winter cooped up in a mountain cabin with a copy of Montaigne’s Essays while prospecting for gold in Alaska, however, that he became convinced he could write. Hoffer eventually settled in as a longshoreman on the San Francisco docks, publishing The True Believer at age 49 and following with several more classics. A blue-collar worker all his life, Hoffer was probably the original Reagan Democrat — and indeed was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Reagan in 1983.
Writing just as Americans were trying to fathom the causes of the Cold War, Hoffer provided an astute, sometimes brutal, explanation of why millennial sects of communism and fascism appealed to seemingly ordinary individuals:
A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.… Their innermost craving is for a new life — a rebirth — or, failing this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by an identification with a holy cause.… To the frustrated, a mass movement offers substitutes either for the whole self or for the elements which make life bearable and which they cannot evoke out of their individual resources.
To Hoffer, this dissatisfaction with the personal life was the only thing that could lead to the level of self-renunciation —and even self-destruction — that mass movements often required of their followers:
All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action: all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and single-hearted allegiance.
Mass movements taught people to aspire a perfect world rather than the profane one around them, a glorious future rather than the sordid present, an ideal and perfect community rather than the uncertain company of their fellow men. In many ways they resembled religions — and indeed, Hoffer said all the major religions were mass movement in their earliest stages. “Though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious,” he noted. And while the secular religions of communism and fascism had disposed of God, they certainly had not abandoned the Devil. Unbridled hatred of an enemy, real or imagined, was the core of every fanatical creed.
Mass movements thrived amidst unanticipated poverty and in the disruptions of war, Hoffer wrote. But their core appeal was to the personal failings of individuals. Moreover, “a proselytizing mass movement deliberately fosters in its adherents a frustrated state of mind,” disrupting wherever it could the ordinary satisfactions of normal life:
Almost all our contemporary movements showed in their early stages a hostile attitude toward the family, and did all they could to discredit and disrupt it. They did it by undermine the authority of the parents; by facilitating divorce; by taking over the responsibility for feeding, education and entertaining the children; and by fostering illegitimacy. [Any resemblance to the contemporary Democratic Party’s social agenda, by the way, is purely coincidental.]
The core of mass movement, then, was a hatred of the present. And of course Western democratic societies, which had succeeded in raising the comforts and conveniences of everyday life to the highest levels in history, were always the object of the greatest scorn:
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Robbins Mitchell| 11.17.09 @ 6:42AM
I think another reason this type of extreme ideological or messianic movements attract lots of so called 'useful idiot's is because it gives people like that a ready made excuse to blame others for their failings...they can always blame 'fascists' or 'right wingers' or 'Christianists' or whoever for their failings and society's shortcomings,and the new movement gives them the hope or promise of being able to 'punish' those they see as eing responible for their own lack of fulfillment....wonder how many people,black or otherwise,voted for Baroque Hubris Obozo for that very reason...they thought he would take their 'enemies' down a peg or 2 and supposely elevate them in the process
Tom| 11.17.09 @ 8:33AM
Yes we can!
Alan Brooks| 11.17.09 @ 11:31AM
Robbins,
it is worse than that; future terrorists also know there will never be a virtuous world so they first turn to Islam, then become impatient-- the unbearable lightness of faith-- and finally become militants.
'Exacerbated' is the word.
Galen| 11.17.09 @ 7:42AM
For the record: some of Spain's Fascists had a slogan,"Death is our Bride!"
Louis Jenkins| 11.17.09 @ 8:32AM
"Islamic fundamentalism is no secret conspiracy."
It is not a secret conspiracy to those who seek the truth. But truth seekers are far and scattered compared to those who receive their dose of semi-truth from ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN...nightly news. If you're really interested you don't have go far to find out about Islam. You need to read and do some searching on your own.
Islam may not be such a frustrating way of life. No wife? Join Jihad and blow up a bunch of infidels and you'll get a great reward in heaven. Have a wife? If she doesn't toe the line just chop off her head, she was a bad wife anyway, and get a great reward in heaven. Perhaps that's why Islam is beginning to over take Christianity. It's a simple path to heaven.
Tom| 11.17.09 @ 8:35AM
Heaven being a brothel.
Appleby| 11.18.09 @ 7:39AM
Which is what drove me out of the Mormon church, by the way.
Isnt it interesting how many churches founded by powerful males end up brothels?
MattSwartz| 11.18.09 @ 11:30AM
During the Middle Ages, Catholicism came near to this "brothel-ness" as well, but was drawn back from the precepice somehow.
Howard| 11.17.09 @ 8:59AM
Excellent article!!. I remember Eric Hoffer back in the 1960's being LBJ's favorite philosopher. He was a tough SOB who was the antithesis of the panty waist liberals who staff the Obama administration. Another example of this archetype I believe was Lee Harvey Oswald. While I do not doubt his Communist sympathies, he was apparently had the same attributes of failure as this article implies. Good stuff.
Becky| 11.17.09 @ 9:33AM
Hoffer's book is as relevant today as when it was written. It is a small book, easy to read and extremely affordable. Yet it is as powerful as the author of this article alludes to.
After having read the book, the Obama supporters among my friends and relatives could fit in one of the frustrated categories Hoffer names.
Mark30339| 11.17.09 @ 9:44AM
Ideally, each of us should belong to something greater than ourselves. Christian teaching and experience encourages us to become part of the body of Christ, the person who redeems us to our Creator. Radical Islam encourages something else, and communism encourages yet another thing. It would seem that collectivist statism is the default yearning in the increasingly non-believer West.
Moosa Khan| 11.18.09 @ 12:24PM
One Question:
In Christianity Bible says:
Your body is a Temple preserve it. And all Christian pour alcohol on the walls of the temple is that the true following or preaching?
Pingback| 11.17.09 @ 9:48AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Major Hasan -- A True Believer [spec links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
1FreeMan| 11.17.09 @ 9:55AM
I have to disagree, Sir.
Maj Hasan was in contact with "persons of interest" in his mosque and was in contact with other "sleeper" elements here in the US. He was also seeking connections with known terrorist organizations. He was not a lone rogue but, instead, part of a growing problem. You need to better understand Islam and the interconnectivity of the Mosque and the people in that Mosque before you write another article. The men in the mosque are intimately connected and form a nucleus of thought and purpose. He did not act alone; he was prodded and encouraged from within the mosque and his weaknesses, many as they were, were exploited.
Your feeble attempt to pretend that the wolf is not at the door, organized and with a combined purpose, is irresponsible. When this investigation is over you will eat this article with a drink of wormwood to wash it down. You missed the mark.
He attacked heroic soldiers with a purpose and he was not acting alone or as a individual fanatic; he was aimed at that base like a weapon and the triggger-man is the Imman at his mosque. Plain and simple.
John II| 11.17.09 @ 1:03PM
Well, I would have worded 1FreeMan's objections differently, but they do raise a logical question regarding the hypothetical history test: how are the choices (b) and (c) different from one another?
Perhaps the p0int could be that, in the secularized west, history classes of the future will continue to privilege the Enlightenment optic, with religious tolerance restricted to a protective fondness for anti-Christian Islam.
Confucius say, "When two choices of three same, third choice unlikely for chooser." Thank you so much.
Margie| 11.17.09 @ 2:31PM
Student say, Teacher very good here.
Thank you very much.
.Bob K.| 11.17.09 @ 7:46PM
1FreeMan,
You have missed everything. I suggest that you read Hoffer's book. See Becky's post.
Bob K.
Leo| 11.17.09 @ 10:00AM
Dear Mr. Tucker,
“All the true believers of our time -- whether Communist, Nazi, Fascist, Japanese or Catholic -- declaimed volubly (and the Communist still do) on the decadence of Western democracies.”
Anita Dunn admitted that her coupling of Mao and Mother Teresa was not ordinary. The above quotation from your essay has a similar coupling of Catholic with tyrannical ideologies. Yes, Catholicism is a true believer as are the others, and Catholicism does decry the decadence of Western Democracies. I am not sure if you believe that Catholicism appeals to Catholics for the reasons offered by Hoffer, or if you believe that Catholicism decries Western decadence to establish tyranny.
The Catholic Church was founded by Christ. The CC teaches truth and love. Truth and love are not somethings; truth and love are a somebody—Jesus Christ. Catholicism yearns for a universal spiritual society that has for “…its foundation truth, its object justice, its driving force love, and its operation freedom.” The CC regards each human individual as sacred; thus it opposes abortion, euthanasia, most capital punishment, and materialism that enslaves individuals in a way that over emphasizes the body at the loss of a proper integration of body and soul.
Has the Catholic Church sinned in the past? Yes and no. “It is an institution staffed by human beings who have committed sins. But the Church as a theological and spiritual entity does not commit sins.”
Please respond, if you can, to clarify your coupling of Catholicism with tyrannical ideologies.
Leo
John II| 11.17.09 @ 1:38PM
Hey Leo. Well--Orwell, for example, takes a passing shot at the Catholic Church in his terrific 1946 essay on "Politics and the English Language," but even a man of his clarity will have blind spots fostered by his culture and his personal background.
We Catholics, when we're behaving ourselves, take the truth straight up without fussing too much over its idiot entanglements in a fallen world. After all, the Greek word 'katholikos' means 'universal'--know-what-I-mean?
Confucius say, truthfully, "Wise man love truth without resentment over error." Thank you so much.
L. Ross| 11.17.09 @ 4:32PM
Leo, while not a Catholic, I also took umbrage with the decision to include the Catholic church with Nazis in the same sentence. However, if you refer to the paragraph, you will realize Tucker was quoting Eric Hoffer's 1951 classic, The True Believer. I believe including the comparison of Catholics to despots is important, as we don't want to take things out of context. I for one, decided that I would take "The True Believer" with a large handfull of salt.
Mike| 11.17.09 @ 10:48AM
What TAS writers and readers are clearly too myopic to see is how well Hoffer's description fits their own behavior. Hoffer spoke eloquently about the tools leaders of mass movements use to manipulate their followers. Scapegoating is foremost among them. The elite of the right wing's relentless scapegoating of Obama is a perfect contemporary case study. Their success can be measured by the numbers of birthers, teabaggers and dittoheads there are today. Of course, they don't see themselves in that light, but "true believers" never do.
wbheff| 11.17.09 @ 11:56AM
Always remember the "rules" that our self-styled "liberal," or "progressive" types live by, as follows: Tell any lie you care to invent about a conservative, and that is accepted behaviour, because, even if it isn't true, such as the forged documents pertaining to President Bush, it should be true. Mention any fact about a "liberal" and especially about Obama, that is not favourable, and you are "scapegoating." Bah!
Le Cracquere| 11.17.09 @ 12:10PM
This won't do, I'm afraid. Any stretching of Hoffer's argument that's capacious enough to include a TAS reader/writer is more than capacious enough to include their opposite numbers at the Nation and Mother Jones, to say nothing of the Kos, the Democratic Underground, etc. So nice try, but you can't really escape your own argument's blast radius.
Bob K.| 11.17.09 @ 7:53PM
Mike,
Don't forget to include yourself! Your vulgar comment on "teabaggers" gives you away!
Bob K.
Jack Olson| 11.17.09 @ 11:41AM
Hoffer said that a mass movement had three stages, distinguished by which type of person dominated each stage. First, a disgruntled intellectual discredits the moral or intellectual basis of the existing order. Next, frustrated fanatics, especially the bored, adopt the cause even at the cost of self-sacrifice. Finally, practical men of action make their careers in the movement and establish themselves as a new power structure. Hoffer was right. Three movements which gained power after Hoffer wrote in 1951 followed this course: The civil rights movement, modern feminism, and the environmental movement. Each started as an idea and ended as a power structure. Muslim terror has its fanatics; from where will come its practical men of action who make their careers in its power structure?
Anthony| 11.17.09 @ 4:05PM
Thank you Mr.Olson. I can't help but note, as Mr. Tucker saw fit to mentioned Evan Thomas, that the overlay between the Islamic fanatics and the American Leftist fanatics, is a perfect fit.
Readers might recall that it was Evan Thomas, nee of CNN, who, during the Iraq war, made the hysterical claim that American troops were firing on the media. Alas, if only it were true.
I suspect, sadly, that it will be the American Leftist mass movement that will do in America long before the Islamic one gets us.
Margie| 11.17.09 @ 11:46AM
Reading this gave me a queasy feeling in my stomach.
The answer is: a) Part of a terror network that had planned attacks on the United States since the 1990s.
Mike| 11.17.09 @ 12:29PM
Le Cracquere,
Why do you assume I exclude the far left? And, why capricious at either extreme?
Le Cracquere| 11.17.09 @ 12:44PM
Mainly because I've read other posts by you. You're free to consider your ideas more reasonable than TAS's, but not many people would describe them as less partisan, less enamoured of scapegoats, or less marked by group ideological passions. All that's okay, but it then follows that if Hoffer's describing TAS, he's also describing you and most other leftist antagonists of the magazine. All of which suggests that you've expanded Hoffer's terms past the point of usefulness or coherency.
And I think you'll find I used the word "capacious," not "capricious."
Oldefarte| 11.17.09 @ 12:54PM
The answer, in my opinion, is ALL OF THE ABOVE. Intellectuals can philosophize in unlimited ways about WHY humans act like savages; but the bottom line is as old as worldly existance. God created man/woman with waht is known as FREE WILL, does not direct our actions, and allows us to determine our own fate. If we choose to act similar to Hasan,etc; then we simply GO TO HELL. End of story!!!!!
Pingback| 11.17.09 @ 2:21PM
Active Business Intelligence Portal – Software Dungeon Downloads | Management Busines links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Adam Smith| 11.17.09 @ 2:25PM
The answer seems clear, given that radical Islam certainly qualifies under A.
And Hassan was clearly B and A.
A bit of slant here in set up Mr. Tucker.
We all know what Hassan was and his motivation. His personal frustrations just helped fuel his extremism.
Adam| 11.17.09 @ 2:27PM
Correction to the above:
Nidal Hassan was clearly A & C.
Must remember to proof...
Curtis Rasmussen| 11.17.09 @ 3:32PM
My financial advisor is a true believer. She believes that Obama can provide improved healthcare for all without tanking the economy under a mountain of debt, penalties, and taxes. She is frustrated with the current system and believes our Marxist-in-chief can fix it all. She is irrationally emotional about this issue.
She is going to make financial decisions on my behalf based on this rosy fantasy island future. Time to find a new advisor.
John Byrnes | 11.17.09 @ 6:30PM
HOW TO PREVENT FUTURE NIDAL HASANS
We have read with concern the many signs Major Hasan provided which would indicate an unstable and potentially dangerous frame of mind. Our concern is that those who actually saw and heard the signs and those to whom the signs were reported did not act upon them. From Hasan’s contact with a radical imam, to the initials SoA (Son of Allah) on his business card, to his comment that he was a Muslim first and a soldier second – there is no doubt the signs that he was potentially dangerous were there for all to see.
Furthermore, he was under surveillance by two Terrorist Task Forces, one with Department of Defense oversight and the other with FBI oversight. So why wasn’t he stopped?
The answer is quite simple – The military does not have an objective and culturally neutral system that collects information and evaluates it to determine the degree (or level) of aggression an individual is displaying, nor has it people who have a clear responsibility to observe and report this information within an objective system nor a team who is responsible to evaluate it and respond. The military does not have the AMIS solution and it desperately needs it! Major Hasan has illustrated out vulnerable we are, learn more about the problem and the solution by reading our Blog: http://Blog.AggressionManagement.com
Serge from Wellington| 11.18.09 @ 5:50AM
One hundred fifty new task forces staffed with consummate professionals having perfectly clear objectives will not resolve the problem. What needs to be changed is the very system of immigration. America should once again become a melting pot for new immigrants; and she should carefully choose those who are allowed to settle in the country.
If unbridled Muslim immigration is not stopped, the sad Dutch situation is inevitable.
Holland is half-Muslim nowadays (and in Rotterdam - 75/100 Muslim). The local Lefties however aren't worried at all. More over, they are proud of their PC madness. Do you remember the slain filmmaker Theo van Gogh? The Somali woman who co-created his "anti-Islamic" documentary proved to be too much for the Dutch PC society: a member of their Parliament, she was chased away from the country, and fortunately found new life in America, and a job in a conservative think tank.
How different from Maj. Hasan... and his Palestinian ancestry.
So I repeat: change the system - carefully choose prospective immigrants and require of them to become American with no hyphen.
JimA| 11.17.09 @ 9:33PM
Hoffer's description of The True Believer also fits Al Gore, who has found a higher cause to compensate for his failure to become President.
Philip D. Hansten | 11.17.09 @ 11:39PM
More Hoffer wisdom in this new book:
PREMATURE FACTULATION: The Ignorance of Certainty and the Ghost of Montaigne
by Philip D. Hansten
www.Philoponus.com
Rich Rostrom| 11.18.09 @ 2:16AM
"Even the fabled caliphs... None of them died in bed."
WTF? 14 of the first 20 caliphs died of natural causes.
Serge from Wellington| 11.18.09 @ 5:56AM
Yeah right - to die of yataghan is perfectly natural for a caliph...
Nick| 11.18.09 @ 2:29AM
Mr. Tucker,
One correction, sir.
There were 14 victims slain by Hasan the Terrorist at Ft. Hood.
21 year old Francheska Velez was 3 months pregnant.
Appleby| 11.18.09 @ 7:44AM
And as the Nazis (and the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers and the Irish Republican Army) also demonstrated, some people join these organizations to get the quasi-moral authority to blow up buildings, beat up innocent bystanders, push people off the sidewalk and shoot off guns in crowded places.
Moosa Khan| 11.18.09 @ 12:49PM
One Question:
Did you read the last sentence of Hitler he wrote before he died?
He said that he did not wage a war for power, it was provoked! he just fought the war which was forced on him by the politics.
Now you tell me was Hitler wrong?
Margie| 11.19.09 @ 9:44PM
One question:
Now you tell me, you think Hitler was right?
..sorry, could not resist.
Carpenter| 11.18.09 @ 11:16AM
Thanks, Mr. Tucker, for an insightful analysis, and for a reminder of "The True Believer" which I reluctantly studied in university so long ago.
Our government and media, through either an enslavement to PC or sympathy to a destructive cause, pushes a number of dishonest myths: that Islam is a religion of peace (so it may be, but the western and Islamic notions of "peace" are not at all the same); and that there are "good" and "bad" Muslims.
Any Muslim who studies the Qur'an (most do not) is a potential factor in jihadic violence. Those who have a greater familiarity with western culture or society are more, not less inclined towards violence. How could they, when they know how kind and well meaning we are? Simply that the good life in the west, with all its attractions (drink, drugs, sex, abortion, pornography, secularism, homosexuality, atheism, etc.) tempts the Muslim away from his "deen" or righteous life, tipping the scales of Allah away from being admitted to Paradise on the Day of Judgement. Since Muslims believe they must earn their way to Heaven by a preponderance of good works (unlike Christians who are secure in being saved by God's Grace and by the sacrifice of Jesus on their behalf), the more they yield to temptation, the more they see violent jihad as a get-out-of-jail-free scheme.
Moosa Khan| 11.18.09 @ 1:15PM
Let me take this opportunity to explain what is jihad "Jihad simply means struggle" I pity all these Journals, Media and other people who speak Jihad without any knowledge.
Everyone struggles in different walks of lives irrespective of a religion or race, simply blaming someone's act against the whole religion is stupidity.
See through the history the mankind, it has always been fighting for something or the other.
At the beginning of the Mankind they fought against the tribes, then the civilizations then gold, then lands, then power and it is still on…
Is there any end for this? People now have no reason so they have started fighting against the race and religion. When will all this come to an end?
People remember one thing the generation of Humanity has started from one root that is ADAM & EVE (as per Christianity) where we all come from, later they divided themselves over a period of time and followed different religions or belief. Qu’ran has the records unedited. Lets take example of Christianity, according to the two divisions in the same religion one says Christ was the son of God the other says he was the Messenger of God. Which one is true here?
Qu’ran or Islam doesnot teach to fight. It teaches to live together “LIVE AN LET LIVE” it teaches peace! But why is everyone pointing at a religion as it is wrong.
Let me ask a question:
When a man commits a mistake if he is a Muslim why is the entire religion held responsible for this? Why when some other person from other religion does the same mistake, why isn’t his religion responsible?
Why does the media have to publish some crap like this? (Sources can be provided)
Let me also tell you some of the facts about How Muslim inventors changed the world.
From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we in the West take for granted. Here are 19 of their most influential innovations:
(1) The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after eating a certain berry.
He boiled the berries to make the first coffee. Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray on special occasions. By the late 15th century it had arrived in Makkah and Turkey from where it made its way to Venice in 1645.
It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in the City of London. The Arabic "qahwa" became the Turkish "kahve" then the Italian "caffé" and then English "coffee".
(2) The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled us to see. The first person to realize that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham.
He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab word "qamara" for a dark or private room).
He is also credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.
(3) A thousand years before the Wright brothers, a Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to construct a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts.
He hoped to glide like a bird. He didn't. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought to be the first parachute, and leaving him with only minor injuries.
In 875, aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles' feathers he tried again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft for ten minutes but crashed on landing - concluding, correctly, that it was because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing. Baghdad international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.
(4) Washing and bathing are religious requirements for Muslims, which is perhaps why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today. The ancient Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it more as pomade.
But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and aromatics such as thyme oil. One of the Crusaders' most striking characteristics, to Arab nostrils, was that they did not wash.
Shampoo was introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed's Indian Vapour Baths on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV.
(5) Distillation, the means of separating liquids through differences in their boiling points, was invented around the year 800 by Islam's foremost scientist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy into chemistry, inventing many of the basic processes and apparatus still in use today - liquefaction, crystallization, distillation, purification, oxidization, evaporation and filtration.
As well as discovering sulphuric and nitric acid, he invented the alembic still, giving the world intense rosewater and other perfumes and alcoholic spirits (although drinking them is forbidden in Islam). Ibn Hayyan emphasised systematic experimentation and was the founder of modern chemistry.
(6) The crank-shaft is a device which translates rotary into linear motion and is central to much of the machinery in the modern world, not least the internal combustion engine. One of the most important mechanical inventions in the history of humankind, it was created by an ingenious Muslim engineer called al-Jazari to raise water for irrigation.
His Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices (1206) shows he also invented or refined the use of valves and pistons, devised some of the first mechanical clocks driven by water and weights, and was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions was the combination lock.
(7) Quilting is a method of sewing or tying two layers of cloth with a layer of insulating material in between. It is not clear whether it was invented in the Muslim world or whether it was imported there from India or China.
However, it certainly came to the West via the Crusaders. They saw it used by Saracen warriors, who wore straw-filled quilted canvas shirts instead of armor. As well as a form of protection, it proved an effective guard against the chafing of the Crusaders' metal armor and was an effective form of insulation - so much so that it became a cottage industry back home in colder climates such as Britain and Holland.
(8) The pointed arch so characteristic of Europe's Gothic cathedrals was an invention borrowed from Islamic architecture. It was much stronger than the rounded arch used by the Romans and Normans, thus allowing the building of bigger, higher, more complex and grander buildings.
Other borrowings from Muslim genius included ribbed vaulting, rose windows and dome-building techniques. Europe's castles were also adapted to copy the Islamic world's - with arrow slits, battlements, a barbican and parapets. Square towers and keeps gave way to more easily defended round ones. The architect of Henry V's castle was a Muslim.
(9) Many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi. His scalpels, bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery and many of the 200 instruments he devised are recognizable to a modern surgeon.
It was he who discovered that catgut used for internal stitches dissolves away naturally (a discovery he made when his monkey ate his lute strings) and that it can also be used to make medicine capsules.
In the 13th century, another Muslim medic named Ibn Nafis described the circulation of the blood, 300 years before William Harvey discovered it. Muslim doctors also invented anesthetics of opium and alcohol mixes and developed hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes in a technique still used today.
(10) The windmill was invented in 634 for a Persian caliph and was used to grind corn and draw up water for irrigation. In the vast deserts of Arabia, when the seasonal streams ran dry, the only source of power was the wind which blew steadily from one direction for months. Mills had six or 12 sails covered in fabric or palm leaves. It was 500 years before the first windmill was seen in Europe.
(11) The technique of inoculation was not invented by Jenner and Pasteur but was devised in the Muslim world and brought to Europe from Turkey by the wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul in 1724. Children in Turkey were vaccinated with cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50 years before the West discovered it.
(12) The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of Egypt in 953 after he demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink in a reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a combination of gravity and capillary action.
(13) The system of numbering in use all round the world is probably Indian in origin but the style of the numerals is Arabic and first appears in print in the work of the Muslim mathematicians al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi around 825.
Algebra was named after al-Khwarizmi's book, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, much of whose contents are still in use. The work of Muslim math scholars was imported into Europe 300 years later by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci.
Algorithms and much of the theory of trigonometry came from the Muslim world. And Al-Kindi's discovery of frequency analysis rendered all the codes of the ancient world soluble and created the basis of modern cryptology.
(14) Ali ibn Nafi, known by his nickname of Ziryab (Blackbird) came from Iraq to Cordoba in the 9th century and brought with him the concept of the three-course meal - soup, followed by fish or meat, then fruit and nuts. He also introduced crystal glasses (which had been invented after experiments with rock crystal by Abbas ibn Firnas).
(15) Carpets were regarded as part of paradise by mediaeval Muslims, thanks to their advanced weaving techniques, new tinctures from Islamic chemistry and highly developed sense of pattern and arabesque which were the basis of Islam's non-representational art.
In contrast, Europe's floors were distinctly earthly, not to say earthy, until Arabian and Persian carpets were introduced. In England, as Erasmus recorded, floors were "covered in rushes, occasionally renewed, but so imperfectly that the bottom layer is left undisturbed, sometimes for 20 years, harboring expectoration, vomiting, the leakage of dogs and men, ale droppings, scraps of fish, and other abominations not fit to be mentioned". Carpets, unsurprisingly, caught on quickly.
(16) The modern cheque comes from the Arabic "saqq", a written vow to pay for goods when they were delivered, to avoid money having to be transported across dangerous terrain. In the 9th century, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad.
(17) By the 9th century, many Muslim scholars took it for granted that the Earth was a sphere. The proof, said astronomer Ibn Hazm, "is that the Sun is always vertical to a particular spot on Earth". It was 500 years before that realisation dawned on Galileo.
The calculations of Muslim astronomers were so accurate that in the 9th century they reckoned the Earth's circumference to be 40, 253.4km - less than 200km out. Al-Idrisi took a globe depicting the world to the court of King Roger of Sicily in 1139.
(18) Though the Chinese invented saltpeter gunpowder, and used it in their fireworks, it was the Arabs who worked out that it could be purified using potassium nitrate for military use. Muslim incendiary devices terrified the Crusaders.
By the 15th century they had invented both a rocket, which they called a "self-moving and combusting egg", and a torpedo - a self-propelled pear-shaped bomb with a spear at the front which impaled itself in enemy ships and then blew up.
(19) Mediaeval Europe had kitchen and herb gardens, but it was the Arabs who developed the idea of the garden as a place of beauty and meditation. The first royal pleasure gardens in Europe were opened in 11th-century Muslim Spain. Flowers which originated in Muslim gardens include the carnation and the tulip. (Courtesy: The Independent)
Please read the book of Paul Vallely “How Muslim inventors changed the world”
Howard| 11.18.09 @ 7:48PM
You have too much time on your hands.
Mary Ann| 11.19.09 @ 7:09AM
(laughing)
Moosa Khan| 11.20.09 @ 4:21AM
It is not about free time, its about the knowledge !!! which most of the fellow humans don't have.
Tony in Central PA| 11.18.09 @ 7:22PM
There's nothing wrong with being a true believer as long as what you believe is true.
Pingback| 11.18.09 @ 10:21PM
Flower Mound, TX Dentist Stresses Importance of DNA Testing in … | Dental Care Beauty links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
john| 11.19.09 @ 4:43PM
What is truth?
Margie| 11.19.09 @ 9:48PM
Read John 14:6.
Tony in Central PA| 11.19.09 @ 9:44PM
Are you channeling Pontius Pilate or a member of the Administration ?
Pingback| 11.20.09 @ 12:25AM
Clock Antiques | Home Clock & Radio links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Moosa Khan| 11.20.09 @ 5:37AM
On April 19, 1995, at 902 A. M the serenity of America's heartland was destroyed when a massive explosion levelled one side of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, and the threat of terrorism shocked the American nation. Damage from the blast covered many city blocks; more than 169 men, women, and children were killed and estimates range from 500 to 600 were injured. Hours later, Timothy McVeigh would be charged with the crime.
Why isn't Tim McVeigh's religion addressed here? Why only Islam?
Moosa Khan| 11.30.09 @ 1:18PM
What happened people? why are you all MUM without any words? do you want me to list out some more similar incidents where people from other religion have done and no word has been spoken about their religion.
Com'on speak up, are you trying to hide with shame or finding an excuse?
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