TRUTH distorted by petro-dollars of Islam

In February 2010, I visited the Science Museum.

I was shocked by its exhibition on 1000 inventions of the Islamic world !

Here is a letter I wrote to its Visitors Experience Centre and trustees.

Months after sending it, the Visitors Experience Centre sent a milli mouthed reply about this being an external exhibition and its research being out of Science Museum's hands.

Trustees have yet to answer.

Trustees of the Science Museum

The Science Museum
Exhibition Rd
South Kensington
SW7 2DD

Ref – 1001 facts or fictions ?

Dear Science Museum,

I know starlight is bent by the huge mass of the Sun. I didn’t know that the light of knowledge could be bent by the huge mass of “money”.

Over the weekend, I brought my children to the Science museum to expand their knowledge of scientific discoveries. While there, I visited the temporary exhibition of 1001 inventions of the Muslim civilization. I hoped to learn some great new facts, but instead, I was disappointed by the biased, unbalanced and incomplete vision of the “inventions” mentioned in the exhibition. To say the exhibition “stretched the truth” would be an understatement.

Most inventions mentioned in the exhibition were borrowed from other cultures. Most of the time, information on the exhibits either made a cursory note or totally ignored the roots of the invention / inventors. For example, lustrous tiles have been made in Babylon for thousands of years. Ishtar gate from 575 BC is a wonderful example of lustrous tile work long before Islam came to Iraq. Zero was invented by the Indians centuries before Arabs taught it in their universities. Astronomy has been the preoccupation of humankind since the dawn of history. It certainly wasn’t limited to predicting lunar cycles, citing of the new moon. Indian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Mayan astronomers had worked out distances and orbits of all major stars and planets etc long before the Arabs. Fine carpets were manufactured and traded by Persians long before the Arabs discovered this little luxury. Why attribute these invention to Arabs and Islam in particular ? Scientists, craftsmen and great architects existed long before the 7^th Century.

Hospitals, public baths and many other luxuries of life mentioned in the exhibition were in existence long before the 7^th Century. Perfumes, distillation techniques, medical tools exhibited were the mainstay of life when Tutankhamen was still a young Pharaoh. To imply that Islamic culture “invented” these is surely falsification of history.

Biggest surprise was when the exhibition called the first millennium of Islam as the Golden age ! Armies of Islam decimated the world population, obliterated cultures from Constantinople to the Karakorum, burned libraries and wiped out universities across the globe. Millions of people were killed, as gleefully recorded by Islamic rulers around the world. Millions more where enslaved, forced to convert and made to work on grand architectural projects mentioned in the exhibition. Certainly not a "Golden Period" for most of the Globe !

There is so much the exhibition could have explored about new techniques pioneered by the Islamic world in art, architecture, literature, weapons but instead, it tried to commandeer inventions it inherited or expanded on from other cultures.

Its disappointing to see an institution as eminent as the Science Museum distorting known historical facts, especially when one considers the large number of young impressionable minds that visit such a well known museum.

I am very disappointed to see the Science Museum putting on such a badly researched exhibition. I can’t understand why you would have done this except to get large sums of money for sponsorship or donation from institutions interested in spreading such misinformation.

Is it ever worth sacrificing the truth of science and research for money ? I am not sure if even the Science Museum can square this equation.

Yours Truthfully,

Bhagwat Shah

Return to Index

Return to Bhagwat's main page

Return to ShriNathji's Haveli