Security,Human Rights,Religion.

Part one of Security, Human Rights and Religion. One could write, practically for ever, on each of these subjects specifically. I will only touch on them in an attempt to put my feelings across and to justify dealing with them together.

I visited a friend in a care home and he had heard, on the radio, an article about a man who, hundreds of years ago, had calculated the circumference and radius of the world to what we now know to be a high degree of accuracy.

My friend could not remember details of the programme very clearly apart from thinking that the man was an Arab. Consequently at home, over a period, I sought information on the internet. One of the sites had compiled info under different headings, one of which was "Islamic World" Under that heading details were given of a man, Abu al-Rayan al-Biruni [973-1048]. I felt certain that was the man discussed in the programme my friend had listened to.

Feeding that name into a search engine yielded several pages devoted to explaining the practically mind blowing achievements, in that era, of al-Buruni in several scientific disciplines, including Geodesy, the study of the shape and area of the earth. Many knowledgeable people think that he was one of the best, in any era, polymaths in the world. He was a Persian, born in what is now called Uzbekistan and he died in Afghanistan. He was also considered to be very fair in his summing up of religions and beliefs other than his own. A crater on the moon, al-Biruni is named after him and the 1000th anniversary of his birth was honoured on a 1973 Afghan Post Stamp.

I have laboured the subject for, primarily, one reason alone, and that is to show my total lack of knowledge of the abilities of people, more than a thousand years ago living, in my opinion, in such an out of the way location.
May I safely suggest that there are millions, maybe billions, of people in the world with a similar lack of appreciation of the knowledge, and of the standard of development of the Islamic world a thousand or more years ago. May I also suggest that such a lack of appreciation needs to be rectified to enable a more balanced view of any potentially dangerous situation that may arise.

The paragraph before this reminded me of something in the same vein that I wrote in my book entitled "Fred's Rules" [ps 91 & 92]. This recalled a few words I had with a young man from Turkey. I had a recording of Deanna Durbin playing and he, standing at the front door, voiced the opinion that it was very nice. I was totally surprised that a young Turkish man could relate
to, and obviously appreciate, music completely out of his era. In response to a question he explained that it touched his heart. This left me very moved and I subsequently penned the words "I must not judge a person by their ethnicity or the colour of their skin but I should take note of the colour of their heart" This blog will be continued in Security, Human Rights and Religion, Part two.
Frederick W Gilling Thursday 3rd September 2009.