Originally Posted by
DemonGeminiX
Actually, if we go back in history, way before fundamental radical Islam took hold (which is a fairly recent thing, circa 1940s or 50s.... look up Sayyid Qutb, it's his fault mainly), then we'll see a bunch of Islamic and Ottoman contributions to science and mathematics. There were a bunch of scholars that got hold of Ancient Greek and Roman documents and decided to research and push it forward. Our numbering scheme (the symbols we use for numbers, e.g. 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) actually comes from the Middle East. We call it Arabic numerals. So they weren't always insane murderous desert people. When they were more secular and tolerant, they helped push advancements in civilization and thought. If we could stop the radicalization and we could get them back to that way of thinking, then the world would be a far better place.