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PortugueseAfter claiming Muslims, not Columbus, discovered the New World, Turkish officials continue to promote revisionist history by claiming that Muslims discovered that the world is round.
It seems that the Turkish government has now launched a campaign to revise the history of science.
After Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed in November that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, around 300 years before famous explorer Christopher Columbus had arrived there, the Turkish Minister of Science introduced a new historical revision – Muslims discovered the world is round.
While addressing a group of businessmen in Konya, Turkey on Friday night, Science, Industry and Technology Minister Fikri Işık heralded the Islamic world’s influence on civilization, giving examples of leading Muslim discoveries.
One of the Muslim discoveries he championed was that “700 to 800 years before Galileo, 71 Muslim scientists led by al-Khwarizmi came together at the order of Caliph al-Ma’mun and revealed that the earth is round,” the minister was quoted as saying by Turkish news source Today’s Zaman.
“While Europe was deep into the darkness of the Middle Ages, Islamic scholars created inventions that shaped the future of the world,” he added.
Işık further claimed that a copy of the original document proving Islam’s role in astronomy is currently in the Museum of Islamic Science and Technology in Istanbul.
Caliph Al-Ma’mun did commission a group of Muslim astronomers and geographers, but it was to measure the distance from Tadmur (Palmyra) to Raqqah, in modern Syria, around 1200 years ago, with the aim of calculating the Earth’s circumference.
The widely accepted version of history is that Earth was regarded as flat until the 3rd century BCE, when the Hellenists proposed that the Earth was a sphere based on astronomical calculations.
Tell us in the comments below: What do YOU think of the new version of world history being promoted in the Muslim world?
Author: United with Israel Staff
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