Scientific Suppression Quotes
In the French Revolutionary reign of terror, people were settling old scores and denouncing anyone they had an issue with as anti-revolutionary. And nobility were extremely suspect. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) was not only a great scientist but a wealthy noble who also was an expert on government finance and had served as a tax collector. Lavoisier’s defense was that he could finish his scientific experiments that the whole world could benefit from. Ironically, 3 months after Lavoisier was beheaded, the judge himself was denounced by an enemy and he too was sent to the guillotine.
The country was going through a period in which partisan ideology drove politics and public policy for many people. Scientific findings would be used if they supported ideological positions and they would be ignored if they did not. In some cases scientists were attacked and discredited if their findings contradicted established political positions.
This quotation illustrates the extreme naivety of some of the Muslim leaders. He and many Muslims actually believe that America and the West are out to assassinate Muslim scientists to prevent Islam from advancing. This is a convenient rationale for the poor scientific level of achievement in modern Islamic cultures. Bashar and other conspiracy theorists pay little attention to the many Muslim scientists who have been and are being trained in American, French, English and other country’s universities. Muslims attend the same classes and learn from the same professors as Western students. None get assassinated. Sectarian violence of Iraq Sunni and Shiite Muslims against each other has tragically taken the lives of some scientists. Almost 1000 years ago Islam and the Arabs had many of the great scientists of the world, but the intellectual stagnation brought about by extreme Islamic fundamentalism curtailed their technical development.
