Scientific renaissance in Muslim countries

By Hasan Zillur Rahim

A remarkable interactive exhibition called “Islamic Science Rediscovered” at the Tech Museum in San Jose, California in the heart of Silicon Valley is drawing large number of visitors. The exhibition celebrates “a Golden Age of Science and Technology” when, from the 8th to the 13th century, Muslims led the world in such fields as architecture, arts , astronomy, engineering, exploration, flight, mathematics, medicine, optics and water management.  (http://www.thetech.org/islamic_science_rediscovered/)

A timeline highlighting the significant events in Islamic culture and science during the golden age greets the visitor at the entrance to the exhibit. Once you grasp the outline, you can begin to focus on the specifics.In “Technology and Inventions,” we are acquainted with the remarkable Banu Musa Brothers – Muhammad, Ahmad and Hasan (800/805/810-873) – who excelled in engineering, mathematics and astronomy. Al-Jazari (1136-1206) was a polymath who invented over fifty mechanical devices and automated machines, described in meticulous detail in his “Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices.” What distinguished Muslim technologists were that their inventions made people prosperous without causing any social disruption.

Shari’ah Issues in Multi Level Marketing

Realities of MLM Business:

1.     “MLM is a sales system under which an agent (or salesperson or distributor) of a company receives a commission on his own sales and a commission on the sales from each person he convinces to become an agent. First a person becomes an agent of the company by buying a product of the company and registering as its member; (or just registering as its member without buying any product). After that each agent has to sell the company's products or services to other individuals and recruit those as agents to sell the company's products or services. Each new person the agent gains are asked to bring his own recruits. The result is that under an agent a hierarchical substructure gets developed known as a down line. Each distributor gets sales commissions on his or her direct product sales. He or she also makes a commission on the sales of the distributors in their down line according to the method of a pyramid scheme.”

China vs USA - The Currency War : Where Lies the True Solution?

In the twenty first century after the War on Islam dubbed as war on terror, probably one of the most debated issues in the international arena is the Chinese currency being undervalued. It is something that has received huge criticism from the western world especially from USA. For last few years USA has repeatedly called China to devalue its currency. Even USA has labeled China as currency manipulator! The past two G-20 summits has been dealing with this issue. The question is should China revalue it and let the currency appreciate or keep it as it is? Is that the appreciation of Chinese currency will solve the problem for USA and the rest of the western world? If so, then why the Chinese currency was kept low (if it is artificially) earlier? Or there are even bigger issues in this. This article tries to explain all of these and the issues within by going through the history of currency standard, why and how devaluation is done, and why it is that now an appreciation of Chinese currency has been repeatedly asked for? And why does it concern USA so much?