Mario Tama/Gettv Images

Some comments and Headlines from this morning’s newspapers on the heartbreaking incidence.;

“ I have been through many of such tragedies, participated in funerals,  protested against Gun violence, but today I just want to weep”

“I thought of my own children now in school and cried. Then I was angry.”

From Norway, very touching comments;

“Dear all, the people of the USA and all the families who suffer through this enormous tragedy. My deepest condolances to all of you, I am all heartbroken. I know I speak on the behalf of every norwegian when I say that we share your sorrow, we cry together with you. Take care of each other, and remember the words of one of the children who survived the Utøya massacre last year here in Norway. ‘If one man can show this much hate, imagine how much love the rest of us can give.’

I light a candle tonight – for every child that passed away, for every mother and father who lost their everything today, and for the American people who lost their fellow Americans, brothers and sisters.”

In deepest respect”

A newspaper Headline;

““Running and Hoping to Find a Child Safe”

From London;

“Sick of Americans and their ritual of grief – lowering the flags and offering prayers.

If you cared about your children why not do something that might save them from this kind of thing.

If you’d done this after Aurora, perhaps these children would be alive today.

It’s not rocket science.”

More Comments- Gun violence-Domestic Terrorism!

“Let’s call gun violence what it really is — terrorism — and let’s do something about it now.”

“Instead of focusing on the civil war in Syrian and the unknown, remote, potential nuclear threat in North Korea or Iran, we should be asking ourselves what we can do to help ourselves right here and solve our own societal problems.’”

“Meanwhile, the gun lobby, timid politicians and the Supreme Court continue to aid and abet rampant gun violence that is nothing less than domestic terrorism, carried out with weapons of mass destruction that are too freely owned and carried.”

Following Historic Manuscripts of Muslim Sapin and re-conquest of  parts of Spain by Ferdinand are at display at “The John Carter Brown Library”. One Mnanusript below is enalrged but others are small. The description at the bottom of post about Averroes reads” His school of philosophy is known as Averroism. His theological thinking took some unusual turns, and he has been described as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe”.

Averroes( Ibn Rashud) tried to reconcile Aristolinism with Islam and Saint Thomas Aquinus used similar logic to reconcile theology with reason and coined the phrase ” Averroism”. Averroes followed Al-Farabi school of thought ” Reason Above Revelation”. During the early European Rennaisance period term “Averrorism” became synonymous with ” “Atheism”

Spain and the Human Diaspora in 1492

The year 1492 is known to every American schoolchild as the year of Columbus’s first arrival in the Americas and the beginning of a vast colonial undertaking by European powers. Earlier that same year, the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella had completed their conquest of the parts of Spain that had for centuries been under Muslim rule. With the recapture of Grenada, Jews and Muslims were required to convert to Christianity or leave the combined kingdoms of Spain. Between 1492 and 1610, some 3,000,000 Muslims voluntarily left or were expelled from Spain, resettling in North Africa. This displaced population provided an army of recruits prepared for commercial war against Christendom, launching piratical attacks from bases in Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripoli.

At the time, half the world’s Jews lived in Spain, often achieving eminent positions in society. They were placed under severe pressure to convert or leave Christian areas as early as 1391, while grandfather agreements in peace treaties allowed the continued practice of Islam for at least a generation or so. Many Jews left Spain for Portugal, while most accepted conversion. The Inquisition was introduced to inspect the veracity of the converts. The conversion or removal policy came to Grenada early in 1492.

[1] Columbus Takes Leave of Ferdinand and Isabella

Girolamo Benzoni. Das vierdte Buch von dern neuem Welt. (Frankfurt a.M.: J. Feyerbend, for Theodor de Bry, 1594).

Columbus takes leave of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabello of Castile. (Plate viii from the illustrated De Bry edition.)

[

2] Tolerance and the Re-Conquest of Islamic Spain

Sebastian Münster. Cosmographiae universalis lib. VI. (Basel: 1554).

Officially, a policy of tolerance existed in Islamic Spain. Jews and Christians were freely permitted to exercise their religion, under certain strictures. Christians, for example, were forbidden to proselytize, to build new churches, or to openly display the cross. From March 1492, however, a zero-tolerance policy for observant Jews was the rule throughout Spain. Separate grandfather agreements for Muslims existed in each kingdom and principality. The treaty in Granada allowed the moriscos to retain their religion, but Archbishop Hernando de Talavera was charged with the responsibility of converting them. Early in 1502, conversion or exile was ordered for all Moors in Granada. Similar orders went out for Muslims in Valencia and Aragon in 1526, but many were able to stay after paying a bounty for a 40-year suspension of the edict. The Arabic language and mode of dress was forbidden in 1566, and unconditional expulsion was finally effected between 1606 and 1616.

[3] Columbus Makes Landfall

Girolamo Benzoni. Americae pars quarta. (Frankfurt a.M.: J. Feyerbend, for Theodor de Bry, 1594).

Here, Theodor de Bry imagines Columbus arriving and exchanging greetings with indigenous islanders of the Caribbean. When the explorer arrived at Cuba, he thought it likely that he had reached the Asian mainland. He had brought with him an interpreter for Arabic, Luis de Torres, who was a recent Jewish convert to Christianity. Columbus hadthe intention of meeting with the Great Khan, understood from Marco Polo and other sources to be the highest political authority in the region. To set the stage for a trade agreement, he sent Luis de Torres into the interior of Cuba to search for the imperial court. Torres returned without success, but Arabic became thereby one of the first Old World languages to be heard by the Indians of the Caribbean.

Columbus himself was deeply religious, and anticipated that vast material wealth from trade would be employed in the recapture of the Holy Land and hasten the fulfillment of Christian prophecy.

[4] The Spanish Inquisition

Juan Gomez de Mora. Auto de la Fe celebrado en Madrid este ano de MDCXXXII.(Madrid: 1632).

The Inquisition was originally conceived as a means of halting the activities of French heretics. In the beginning, it was run by a committee of Cardinals, but later came under the supervision of Rome. In Spain, a separate operation was conceived by Ferdinand and Isabella with control vested in the Spanish crown, an unconventional arrangement which the papacy grudgingly and haltingly agreed to. The focus of the Spanish Inquisition was in the beginning on New Christians of Jewish heritage who were suspected of relapsing into their old faith. Later, Protestants and Muslims also came under the institutional examination. This pamphlet, a report to King Philip IV, includes a ceremonial prayer addressing “the Judaic superstition, the Mohammedan Sect, and the heresy of Lutherans”.

In practice, the storied Spanish Inquisition was never as effective or well-funded as a modern police state and was forced to rely on occasional denunciations by suspicious and envious neighbors who watched for outward signs of religious scruple, like prayer rituals or an avoidance of pork.

The arms of Spanish cities and the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon are displayed in this plate.

[5] The Spanish Inquisition in Protestant Eyes

Raimondo Gonzales de Montes. A discovery and playne declaration of sundry subtill practices of the Holy Inquisition of Spayne. (London: John Day, 1569).

Though the Spanish Inquisition was focused chiefly on converted Christians suspected of lapsing into former beliefs and practices, Protestant writers and artists in England, Germany, and the Netherlands were the most effective publicists of righteous indignation against the dubious methods of interrogation which commonly resulted in false confessions, if not injury or death. This English engraving accompanied an English edition of a Sanctae Inquisitionis Hispanicae artes aliquot delectae, orginally published in Heidelberg in 1567. Here holding “feet to the fire” is not just a metaphor.

The mysterious author, Reginaldus Gonsalvius Montanus, was probably a Spanish or Flemish Protestant. This is a prime example of the European half of the Black Legend, under which the worst excesses of Spanish policy were presented as the norm. The American portion of the Black Legend was focused on the portrayal of Spanish colonial mistreatment of the New World indigenous peoples.

[6] Moorish Architecture

Juan Alvarez de Colmenar. Annales d’Espagne et de Portugal. (Amsterdam: 1741).

Though Muslims in Spain were required to convert or leave the country, Islamic cultural influences remain, the most obvious being architectural monuments built by both Muslim rulers and Christian sovereigns with the help of Muslim workers. The great mosque of Cordoba, the world’s third largest, was refashioned as a great cathedral following Christian victory there.

Some of the most prominent structures are featured in this set of annals by Alvárez de Colmenar, published in the mid-eighteenth century, including the Alhambra and the Royal Palace in Seville.

The Alcázar of Seville, the Moorish-style Royal Palace shown here, was built on the ruins of an old Moorish fort. The Arabic al-quasr means “palace”. Construction was undertaken by King Pedro of Castile from 1364, using Moorish workers, under a distinctly Islamic design. The structure was often enlarged and remodeled, including among other things contrasting Gothic and Italian Renaissance elements. The apartments are still used by Spain’s royal family.

Other Islamic elements of Spain include a residue of the Islamic law used there for centuries, including in particular the titles of officials, such as alcalde (“mayor”), which were also introduced into Spain’s colonial American governments.

	[22] Alexandria’s LibrariesHartmann Schedel. Register des Buchs der Chroniken und Geschichten.(Nuremberg: 1493).An artist’s conception of the burning of the storied library at Alexandria, Egypt, from the German 1493 edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Pre-Islamic Alexandria held the greatest collection of writings in the ancient world. Its destruction is regretted in Western and Middle Eastern sources alike. The settlement was founded in 332 B.C.E. by Alexander the Great and became the largest city in the Mediterranean basin. It was the greatest city of Hellenistic and Jewish culture, fostering such achievements as theSeptuagint, a translation by Jews of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek. An amazing 700,000 scrolls were housed in two celebrated libraries, and a fine university developed. In later Roman and Byzantine times, it became a great center of Christian learning, rivaling Rome and Constantinople.The libraries were gradually destroyed from the time of Caesar’s invasion (48 B.C.E.) and suffered especially in 391 A.D. when Theodosius I ordered Pagan temples and other facilities to be destroyed. The city was in commercial decline when it fell to Muslim Arab forces in 642, and its importance lessened further when they moved their capital to Cairo in 969.
	[23] The Great Physician andPhilospherAvicenna, 980-1037. Principis Avic. Libri canonis, necnon De medicinis cordialibus [et] Cantica / ab Andrea Bellunensi ex antiquis Arabum originalibus ingenti labore summaq[ue] diligentia correcti atq[ue] in integrum restituti vna cum interpretatione nominu[m] Arabicoru[m], q[uae] partim mendosa p[ar]tim incognita lectorem antea moraba[n]tur. Opus plane aureu[m], ac omni ex parte absolutum. (Venice: [1527]).Ibn Sina (980-1037), known to the West as Avicenna, was of Persian origin and became the most famous philosopher of medieval Islam and was everywhere the most influential medical writer from 1100 to 1500. His classification of the sciences was adopted by the medieval schools of Europe.In the illustrated title page of this medical book, portraits appear of the great classical and medieval Islamic figures of medicine and philosophy: Aesculapius, Hippocrates, Galen, Avicena, Rasis, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus and Averroes. Also shown is a view of the first page of the glossary of Arabic medical terms from the front of the book.It is not by accident that the Venetian printer Lucantonio Giunta included three Muslim men of learning with the names and portraits of the great Greek and Roman scientists and philosophers: Avicenna, Rasis and Averroes. Rasis, also rendered as Rhazes (850-923), is known to Arabs as abu-Bakr Muhammed ibn-Zakariya al-Razi. He was born in Persia and rose to the position of chief physician in a great hospital in Baghdad. Having written 140 medical works, the most important being translated later into Latin, he had a great influence on medical science in medieval Europe.Averroes (1126-1198), known by his full name in Arabic as Abu ‘l-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd, is better known just as Ibn Rushd. Averroes was an Andalusian polymath born in Córdoba, Spain, in its Muslim era; he died in Marrakech, Morocco. In his career, Averroes was an authority in early Islamic philosophy and theology , Islamic law and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, in the sciences of medicine, astronomy, geography, mathematics and physics, and even in Arabic musical theory. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism. His theological thinking took some unusual turns, and he has been described as the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe. LOAN FROM THE LOWNES COLLECTION, JOHN HAY LIBRARY, BROWN UNIVERSITYTo see More Manuscripts click on link below;http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/islam/pages/spain.html  Posted by F.Sheikh

George Harrison with Ravi Shankar in 1967.

Ravi Shankar was a giant in music world both in subcontinent India and in the West. I attended two of his concerts, one in Lincoln Center and other in New Jersey PAC, and it was exhilarating experience especially when Allah Rakha is playing tabla. Recently he was performing along with his daughter Anoushka Shankar, also a virtuoso pianist. At New Jersey PAC, we actually went to listen to his daughter Anoushka Shankar who was supposed to play sitar along with his father but unfortunately got sick and did not play.

Some excerpts are worth reading from obituary posted by NYT;

Ravi Shankar, the sitar virtuoso and composer who died on Tuesday at 92, created a passion among Western audiences for the rhythmically vital, melodically flowing ragas of classical Indian music — a fascination that had expanded by the mid-1970s into a flourishing market for world music of all kinds.

His final performance was a concert with his daughter, the virtuoso sitarist Anoushka Shankar, on Nov. 4 in Long Beach, Calif. He was also the father of the singer Norah Jones.

Ravi Shankar, whose formal name was Robindra Shankar Chowdhury, was born on April 7, 1920, in Varanasi, India, to a family of musicians and dancers. His teacher was Allaudin Khan and he married his daughter, Annapurna Devi, also a sittarist.

Often his tabla player was Alla Rakha, who became a renowned soloist in his own right. At times, Mr. Shankar also shared the spotlight with Ali Akbar Khan, a master of the sarod, another Indian stringed instrument. These concerts, including an annual performance at Carnegie Hall, adhered to traditional forms, in which the musicians would improvise on a raga, often ecstatically, for about an hour per piece.

Through his recitals and his recordings on the Columbia, EMI and World Pacific labels, Mr. Shankar built a Western following for the sitar. In 1952 he began performing with Menuhin, with whom he made three recordings for EMI: “West Meets East” (1967), “West Meets East, Vol. 2” (1968) and “Improvisations: West Meets East” (1977). He also made recordings with Rampal.

Click below to read full article;

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/arts/music/ravi-shankar-indian-sitarist-dies-at-92.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&smid=fb-share&adxnnlx=1355428932-ZGYEAS8Iv56gxhCAStVMAQ

Posted by F. Sheikh

Robert Ingersoll, the Great Agnostic, played a vital role in defining the religion’s place in public sphere and separation of church and state. He was a great orator, his lectures were mixed with humor and many orthodox religious people would come just to listen to him. This article is a about the contributions of Robert Ingersoll, but it is also a great commentary on religion’s role in public space, secularism and separation of church and state. Susan Jacobi writes in The American Scholar;

“Known as Robert Injuresoul to his clerical enemies, he raised the issue of what role religion ought to play in the public life of the American nation for the first time since the writing of the Constitution, when the Founders deliberately left out any acknowledgment of a deity as the source of governmental power. In one of his most popular lectures, titled “Individuality,” Ingersoll said of Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin:”

“They knew that to put God in the Constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship, or not to worship; that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man, and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality and liberty of all; to prevent the few from governing the many, and the many from persecuting and destroying the few.”

“Although Ingersoll opposed organized religion in general, his specific targets were believers and clerics who wanted to impose their convictions on their fellow citizens and stifle inquiry that challenged faith. If he could not quite convince his audiences that all religion was superstitious myth, he did convince many to seek out a form of religion that admitted the insights of contemporary science or non-mythological history. Ingersoll himself was not much interested in debating abstract theological or philosophical questions, although he did so occasionally with reform-minded believers like his good friend Henry Ward Beecher, the best-known clerical orator of the late 19th century and a leader of liberalizing forces within American Protestantism. Ingersoll was, however, interested in creating a bridge between the world of secular freethought, for which he spoke so eloquently, and religions, including Reform Judaism and liberal Protestant denominations, that were willing to make room for secular knowledge. (Unitarians had done this in the 18th century in response to Enlightenment political thought and geological discoveries that posed the first solid scientific challenge to the biblical precept that the Earth was only 4,000 years old.) Ingersoll considered “moderate” religious believers if not allies, then a vanguard that, by rejecting biblical literalism, would unintentionally cast doubt on all religion”

Ingersoll and his sense of humor, the author writes;

“A man who combined reason with humor, who drew audiences looking for entertainment along with enlightenment, was much more dangerous than someone disposed to harangue audiences with the conviction that they were simply wrong about what they had been taught since birth. Everyone who paid to hear Ingersoll speak knew that he or she would go away with the memory of good laughs to accompany unsettling new thoughts”

“Newspaper quotations from Ingersoll’s speeches would be punctuated by “Great Laughter” and “Laughter,” which followed Ingersoll’s description of the haphazard founding of the Church of England after Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn. “For a while the new religion was regulated by law,” Ingersoll remarked, “and afterward God was compelled to study acts of Parliament to find out whether a man might be saved or not. [Laughter.]”

To read full article please click on link below;

http://theamericanscholar.org/a-new-birth-of-reason/