The War On Terror (Part 001)

The "War On Terror"

Introduction

This essay describes the conflict known in the West as the War on Terror.
People in the West have been told by their media and governments that this conflict arose when Arabs and other Middle Eastern people attacked the West either without reason, for unknown reasons or because they are simply bad people.
This is actually a conflict between certain Western countries (mainly USA, UK and France) and the peoples of the Middle East, the Arabs and the Muslim nations.
This conflict did not begin in the late 1990s or on 11 September 2001 when the West became directly involved. The seeds of this conflict began around 1916 when the UK and France secretly planned to divide the Arab lands among themselves during the First World War. During the 20th century, the USA began taking over from UK and France as the major power in control of the region.

The Arabs

The Arabs are a people scattered over several countries. They speak Arabic, an Afro-Asiatic language related to Hebrew, Amharic and Maltese. They share a common culture, history, art, outlook and literature with regional differences in dialect and food.
The vast majority of Arabs are Muslim - followers of a religion called Islam whose scriptures are called the Quran (also spelt Koran). A significant minority of Arabs are Christian; many are secular in outlook. Family and clan are very important to the Arabs, sometimes more so than nationality.
Historically, Arabic science, astronomy and mathematics was a bridge between the ancient world of the Greek, Roman and Byzantine Empires and the modern world ushered in by the European Rennaisance.
The Arabs gave the world algebra, spherical trigonometry for navigation, the use of sine and cosine tables, cheques, plaster of Paris for setting broken bones, the manufacture of soft soap, nitric acid, acetic acid, ammonium salts, distillation, dyes, water pumps, curved mirrors and lenses. Coffee came from the Arab world, exported from the port of Mocca. Their translations of ancient Greek philosophical, scientific and mathematical writings into Arabic saved many of these works for modern times. During the 15th century, Arabic science formed the basis of Spanish and Portuguese navigation as well as most of the curriculum in northern Italy's universities.
Arab contributions to astronomy can be seen by the fact that many star names are Arabic (Betelgeux, Aldebaran, Algol). Arab craftsmen helped build the Taj Mahal, considered the most beautiful building in the world. Damasq, a type of furniture where wood is inlaid with mother of pearl, was developed by Arab carpenters. The first European hospitals were inspired by returning Crusaders after they had seen them in the Arab world. Falconry and horse breeding came to Europe from the Arabs; even today Arabic horse breeds are considered amongst the world's best horses.
Check the large number of Arabic words borrowed by European languages like English.
Their greatest gift to Europe was the modern numerals. Roman numerials were only used for recording numbers and could not be used for calculations. Calculations were performed on an abacus or on fingures. As numbers grew larger, new symbols were required with no end (for example, X = 10, C = 100, M = 1000). The numerals 1 to 9 and the zero originally came from India. These numerals were easier to use and the Arabs worked out how to use them for arithmatic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). What was once the province of highly trained experts became accessible to everyone, even children. These numerals are still called Arabic numerals.
These days, history has been rewritten with the Arab contribution to science wiped out. Western children are taught about Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome. Then there is a gap (called the dark ages or the middle ages) until the European Renaissance which leads to the modern civilisation of America. No mention is made of the Greek Byzantine or the mainly Arab Islamic Empires that carried the torch of ancient learning and greatly added to it before passing it on to Europe via Moorish Spain, the Cruscades, the Ottoman Empire and Arab trade with the Italian City States.
Western children are taught about the European age of exploration which brought spices and new fruits to Europe. They are not taught about the Arab control of trade routes from India and China to East Africa, which brought oranges, lemons, soap and Indian mathematics to Europe. European chemistry is praised as modern while Arabic alchemy is derided as a superstition. Few Western children know that when they do algebra at school, they are using mathematics invented by the Arab Islamic Empires several centuries before the European Renaissance.
So ingrained is this ignorence, that in the UK, a TV chat show host and politician, Robert Kilroy-Silk, was able to write in a newspaper in 2003 that Arabs had contributed nothing of significance to civilisation.
The following countries and regions can be considered to be Arabic:

Iraq (except the far north)

Syria

Lebanon

Palestine (most of this region is part of Israel or under Israeli occupation)

Jordan

Saudi Arabia

Kuwait

Bahrain

Qatar

United Arab Emirates

Oman

Yemen

Egypt

northern Sudan

Libya

Tunisia

Algeria

Morocco

The Arabs live in North Africa and, what is known in the West as the Middle East.
There are three other peoples that we need to introduce for this essay. They are mainly Muslim.
Incidently, many Westerners confuse the word Arab (essentially a race and language) with Muslim (followers of a religion called Islam). Some Arabs are not Muslims (for example the Christians of Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq) while most Muslims are not Arabs (examples include the peoples of Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia).

The Kurds are speakers of an Indo-European language descended from Ancient Persian. They are a people spread among four countries: Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. There are as many Kurds as there are Iranians but these people do not have their own country.

The Turks live mainly in Turkey and are closely related to most of the peoples in Central Asia. Their language, Turkish, is Altaic. Kebabs and yoghurt are Turkish contributions to the world.

The Persians are speakers of the Indo-European language, Farsi. They are the main inhabitants of Iran and also live in western Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia. Although the majority are Muslim, a few belong to the Bahai religion. Windmills and ice cream are Persian contributions to the world.

The Israelis will be introduced later.