In his speech in Cairo the other day, President Obama proudly proclaimed the Muslims invented the compass, printing, algebra, and the university. None of this is true. Europeans invented the university, the Chinese invented printing and the magnetic compass, and the Hindus of northern India invented algebra and the system of mathematics we use today, including the so-called Arabic numbers. Why do we call them Arabic numbers? Because when the Arabs conquered northern India they brought the mathematical systems invented by the Hindus back home with them. So I guess that’s something. They at least recognized the Hindu math was better than what they were using. What other wonders did this marvelous civilization invent? Why, according to the American left, just about everything.

 

Wilbur and Orville, two Bedouin chaps

Believed that if Allah so willed

They could make a machine that would fly them, perhaps

Though they knew there’s a chance they’d be killed

No matter the risk, no matter the peril

For Allah they’d do what it took

They flew a straight line, they flew in a curl

Then told all the world in a book

In Cairo a smart man, al-Bert was his name

Said gravity bends passing light

Then took off for Princeton and cashed in his fame

When Allah proved that he was right

A young man named Henry, while dining as planned

In the town of as-Sembly on kine

Threw a bone to a dog, drawing marks in the sand

And created the as-Sembly line

And thus so it went, and thus so it goes

That Muslims created it all

From fire to atoms, from heads to our toes

We owe it to them to recall

That without the great Arab advances to date

The world would indeed be so poor

That we’d witness the famine and terrible state

Of the masses lay crushed at our door

All hail to the Arabs, those masters of art

And science and math and the lot

Who sit in the sand by their fire and fart

Eating goat from the communal pot