SUBJECT: THE KING AND THE TELEPHONE SYSTEM Hello Peter, I don’t blame you for your ideas which are so stereotypical in their ignorance and bigotry that they should serve as a classic reference. But you know what, some of your arguments are difficult or impossible to dispute because they are quite right. It is too boring to respond to everything but let me start by giving you more ammunition to insult Muslims. Can you imagine that in the 1950s, when the King of Saudi Arabia tried to introduce the telephone into the Kingdom, at first he failed. Why? Because some of the Muslim religious “leaders” decreed such a device – which transported human voices over long distances (scary thought) - to be the work of Satan. (There is supposed to be no clergy in Islam and no church-like organization. “Religious men,” yes; “men of religion,” no.) So the wise king summoned two pious and well regarded holy men, and put each one at a different location of the capital, some kilometers apart. Each had a telephone set and they could talk to each other. The king asked one of them to recite verses from the Koran. He did. He than asked the other if he had recognized the voice of his colleague, and the special code word they had previously secretly agreed upon. Yes, he had. Could he hear the recitation of the Koran clearly? Yes, he could. Was the recitation accurate? Yes, it was. Were there any lies or distortions in what he heard? No, there were not. “But” said the King, “if this were truly a device of Satan, it would certainly not transmit the Holy Koran intact and undistorted. Therefore it cannot be from the devil. Therefore it should be allowed in the Kingdom. Do you agree? The wise men agreed. A nationwide telephone system was installed. Is this Islam? Of course not. Islam is what gave you 1, 7, 16 instead of I, VII, XVI. It is what gave you algebra, without which Newton and Leibnitz could not have developed calculus, without which the scientific and industrial revolutions would not have been possible. Algorithms are essential for modern digital computers: the word comes from the name of the Muslim mathematician, Al Khowarismi. Modern Western medicine grew out of the translated works of Ibn Sina. If you want to say that Muslim societies have come down a long way from their peak, I agree. If you must hate, then perhaps you should consider trying to hate accurately. Rather than hating Islam, upon which your renaissance was based, you should hate ignorant and superstitious Muslims. Many enlightened Muslims – very religious or less so - don’t like them either. But then hatred, like love, is blind. And why does such a regime exist to this day? Because the rulers need the holy men to help them hang onto their power. And why can archaic rulers hang onto power? Because they are protected by Western powers. Why? Because they do the bidding of their Western bosses with regards to the huge petroleum reserves. Also, according to the movie Fahrenheit 9/11, they help enrich certain powerful families beyond measure (but I guess not you, or you would be respectful for the sake of the lots of money). But not all Muslims reject science: theocratic Iran is trying to build up its technical know-how, including nuclear power. So here is the picture you don’t see (hatred is blind): You protect your “moderate Arab friends”, while contemptuously accusing them of being ignorant, superstitious and backward. If other Muslims strive to make advances in technology, you vilify and attack them and call them rogue states. You try to prevent them from acquiring the technology to threaten you like you can threaten them (except that you are beginning to lose the ability to really effectively control them, and that increases your hatred). Thanks a lot for the two-faced, immoral and hurtful approach.