Not many people know or realized how dumb umar al khattab was and how destructive he was to the civilization of mankind in general and to islam in particular. Upon conquering Egypt, umar ordered the burning of Alexandria Library. His closing statement when ordering the bonfire was In A.D. 642, Alexandria was captured by the Muslim army of Amr ibn al `Aas. Several later Arabic sources describe the librarys destruction by the order of Caliph Omar.[34][35] Bar-Hebraeus, writing in the 13th century, quotes Omar as saying to Yaḥyā al-Naḥwī: If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them.[36] (wikipedia) We have no reason to reject this story since it was written by the victor, so it must be true. The destruction of Alexandria Library set back human civilization a few thousand years, delayed development in science and mathematics, postponed the European Renaissance to 700 years (of course, the Mongol Sacking of Baghdad also didnt help much). The same umar was the same guy who killed his own daughter during pre-islamic days, the same umar who kissed the stone because I saw the Prophet do it lah woi, the same umar who slapped another sahabah for relaying a hadith. Later day muslim scholars try to justify all these umar stories with excuses and conjectures but we take information at face value and within context. Kalau nak cover line tu, siapa-siapa boleh cover line.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 06:08:10 +0000