"The Japanese see India as the land of Lord Buddha ,which is why they have a lot of respect for Indians"

[Joe Shearer]

@etylo

Yes, you are slowly maturing to get to the level of Wikipedia. In another four or five years, you might learn something. Do come back then; you might have become interesting to talk to.

I quoted Wikipedia is becos it's easier for you Indians to understand and accept.

Actually we Indians make most of the entries for little kiddies who can't handle the original texts. I myself am an editor, and these interactions give me a good idea of how to pitch the language and the level for the kind of person who needs Wiki.

 

[etylo]

@etylo

Yes, you are slowly maturing to get to the level of Wikipedia. In another four or five years, you might learn something. Do come back then; you might have become interesting to talk to.

Actually we Indians make most of the entries for little kiddies who can't handle the original texts. I myself am an editor, and these interactions give me a good idea of how to pitch the language and the level for the kind of person who needs Wiki.

You Indians are known to trust and quote Wiki very often.

 

[Joe Shearer]

You Indians are known to trust and quote Wiki very often.

We devote time to it for the sake of the unfortunates who truly depend on it.

 

[Adonis]

Don't get too clever.

The reason the Afghan Taliban blew up the Buddha statues in Afghanistan, is because the United Nations would rather pay for the statues' preservation than feed starving children in Afghanistan.

In response to that, the Afghan Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddha statues.

Funnily enough, CNN and BBC did not tell the whole story or cherry-picked what to report.

lol the west are hypocrites.

Same goes for Republic of India kiddo.

Are you are justifying the act?

Besides after blowing them, did UN paid for the starving children?....

 

[jamahir]

Thought I'd reply in detail, but then realised no point wrestling with the pig.

You are free to move to any shithole when you've had your fill leeching the country.

That would be honorable, not that I believe you have any... So continue leeching the country.

Since I have to reply decently to my friend Kedar I won't reply to you in detail too. But let me ask you this one thing, are those "deadwood" people you mention, climbing on the backs of you 500 million Hindutvadis every minute and making noise by blowing trumpets for you to be constantly distracted and not contribute to the development of India and humanity ?

If I forgot the Chinese language, then you Indians are slave to the English language in that you Indians love the foreign English so much that you people make it the first official language of your country. After all, I do live in North America where English is the dominant and official language there.

Actually I wish that English was the national language of India because dividing up the country on basis of locally-spoken languages and then adding the element of religion to them has harmed India a lot. Some cities in India claim to be megacities or international cities but some locals demand that those not local speak the local language or else service will not be rendered. Greater knowledge-seeking from humanity would have been better possible if English had been the only medium of educational instruction with the local languages preserved by family education.

It was called Bharat where your forefathers lived.

And what was it called 3000 years ago when the Aryans entered from Iranic lands ?

I actually feel sad that Buddhism was wiped out from Afghanistan. What do you feel?

I feel bad too. In fact I and some other Muslims speak the Buddha to be among 125,000 prophets spoken about in Islamic belief so the Taliban did wrong about the Buddhist structures there but I don't know what happened before the Taliban. What about when the Sikhs ruled from Afghanistan ? What was the status of Buddhism there then ? I am not being antagonistic but sincerely curious.

You are missing out a very important binary number without which all the computer you are referring would never have been possible. Regardless, your argument is a weird one so I opt out.

I recently found this document which says that the Egyptians were known to use the Zero a thousand years before it was supposedly initiated in India :

The History of Zero Sophia Bidny 09/17/14 The invention of the concept of zero is credited to a few different civilizations. No one really knows who invented zero, because so far the only documentations that have been discovered on this topic refer to zero as though some concept of it already existed previously. There is no definite documentation of its actual invention.

The earliest account of a zero concept was in Egypt. The Egyptian number system was base ten only, with different symbols for 1, 10, 100, 1000 and so on. Numbers would be made by combining multiples of these symbols, so they had no use for zero as a placeholder. However, they did have a concept of ”base” or ”ground-level,” for their architectural plans, and for this they used the symbol for the Egyptian word nfr, also meaning ”beautiful,” or ”good.” For example, leveling lines used to guide the construction of stones for pyramids could be labeled ”1 cubit above nfr,” and so ”zero” - ”nfr” - was used as a reference point. There are records of this practice occurring by 1740 BCE.

A few hundred years later, in Mesopotamia (the Fertile Crescent), Babylonian mathematics had created a base-60 number system. However, there was a problem. When trying to write a number that involved a space in a certain level (for example, 60, which in base 60 is 601 + 0, and so it would be written 10) scribes would just leave a space for the 0. However, this means that the symbol for 1 and the symbol for 60 (or 10, in cuneiform) are identical. Clearly, this can cause issues. This would also be problematic when there was a 0 inside of a number. So, to solve this, the Babylonians created a placeholder. But this still isnt zero as we know it: as a number, the average of 1 and -1. It is only a placeholder.

Meanwhile, in the Americas around the 4th century AD, the Mayans were exploring the concept of zero as well. They used it as a placeholder in their elaborate calendars, within their base-20 number system. There were a variety of different glyphs that symbolized the zero placeholder, and the earliest of these is dated 36 BC. It and 7 other earliest accounts of this zero placeholder occur outside of the Maya homeland, so it is assumed that the invention of zero predates the Mayans. Whatever the case may be, the Mayans did end up utilizing zero in their number system eventually, though 1 just as a placeholder, and the symbol most widely used became an empty tortoiseshell shape.

The Incas also used zero as a placeholder. Instead of writing numbers down, they would tie knots in a cord, called a quipu, in a base ten system. The absence of a knot represented a zero.

Back across the Atlantic: the next developments occurred in India, and it is India which is commonly accredited with the concept of zero as an actual number. There was a parchement discovered, called the Bakhshali manuscript, which is known for being the oldest extant manuscript in Indian mathematics. It identifies zero as a dot underneath other numbers. Around the 7th century BC, the mathematician Brahmagupta, who used this dot notation, created some laws for the number zero, including :

• The sum of zero and a negative number is negative.

• The sum of zero and a positive number is positive.

• The sum of zero and zero is zero.

• The sum of a positive and a negative is their difference; or, if their absolute values are equal, zero.

• A positive or negative number when divided by zero is a fraction with the zero as denominator. (Not accepted today.)

• Zero divided by a negative or positive number is either zero or is expressed as a fraction with zero as numerator and the finite quantity as denominator.

• Zero divided by zero is zero. (Not accepted today.)

The concept of zero made its way to China (where they used counting sticks, and symbolized zero by an empty space), and then to the Middle East. The Persian mathematician al-Khowarizmi wrote a book in which he introduced the ”0” symbol, and used it extensively in algebra. The title of his book was al-Khowarizmi on the numbers of the Indians, which was translated into Latin. The Latin translator translated his name as Algoritmi, which gives us the word ”algorithm.”

Zero was not always viewed as simply a number. The ancient Greeks were rather suspicious of the whole concept of zero, asking philosophically, ”How can nothing be something?” This prompted religious arguments through the Middle Ages regarding zero and vacuums, and even in some cultures, zero was considered to be something from black magic. Nevertheless, the use of zero spread through Europe, and merchants found it highly useful when balancing their books. In Italy, however, the government was suspicious of Indian numerals, and outlawed the use of zero. Italian merchants used it illegally, and secretively called it ”sifr,” which is the Arabic word for zero. This word evolved into the English word ”cipher,” which has two definitions: a numeral, and a code. Eventually, all superstition about zero died away, and by the 17th century it was being widely used through Europe.

References

[1] http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~HistTopics/ Babylonian numerals.html

[2] http://www.livescience.com/27853-who-invented-zero.html

[3] http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/AncientAfrica/mad ancient egypt zero.html

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0 (number)

[5] http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/who-invented-the-zero

@Mentee @fitpOsitive @Bilal9 @Goenitz, you may find the above info interesting. Also, since astronomy was most possibly brought to India by the Greeks it is possible that the Greeks who borrowed their solar calendar from the Egyptians, having ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years. I am not denigrating Brahmagupta's work but just saying that human knowledge borrows from and germinates in all corners.

Don't get too clever.

The reason the Afghan Taliban blew up the Buddha statues in Afghanistan, is because the United Nations would rather pay for the statues' preservation than feed starving children in Afghanistan.

In response to that, the Afghan Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddha statues.

Funnily enough, CNN and BBC did not tell the whole story or cherry-picked what to report.

lol the west are hypocrites.

That is most probably not a true story - the Taliban are not quite the most humanitarian of people but in any case the Taliban could have fed the starving children three meals of "piousness".

 

[Mentee]

India is perhaps the only land where Buddhists faced a genocide by the Hindus so much so that they got eradicated shortly .

 

[vi-va]

Before I start, this is to remind ourselves that there was an earlier explanation that was due, and I would like to go back and write on that in response to your questions. Please guide me there when convenient.

At the time that the Buddha preached, and Mahavira preached, social conditions in India had reached a certain critical point.

A common mistake that strangers, or newcomers, to Indian history make is to see the Buddha as a unique figure, and ignore both the tremendously influential near contemporary that he had, Mahavira, the greatest preacher of the Jains, and also the ferment of thought around the sixth century BCE. It was a time of tremendous mental and physical effort to understand the human condition better.

Very briefly, the steppe wanderers who intruded in the second millennium BCE, probably within a century before or after 1500 BCE, were nature worshippers. Their divinities rose with the sunset, being, in fact, the Sun himself, dwelt in the waters as an ancient of great, perhaps unthinkable antiquity, known as Varuna in one pronunciation, as Ouranos in another, giving an archetypal divinity to the western branch of the wanderers from which these had split away as the Indo-Iranians, then split again as the Indo-Aryan speaking set of people. These divinities were the lord who brought rain, and whose weapon was the thunder itself, the over-arching sky, that so many other steppe dwellers, including the Mongols and the much later encountered Turks, deified.

In short, these gods were present in the whole wide world around humans, and were not to be located in a particular spot.

One other event before we move on: when they came into the sub-continent, this third or fourth set of in-coming people most probably found a divine system, a system of faith different from their own. By comparing the nature of the later theogony that is known, by watching the transition from the Vedas to the Puranas to the Upanishads, it is possible to reconstruct - without proof, all these were from oral works that were written down centuries later, around the 3rd, or even the 2nd century BCE - the adoption of new divine beings, this time, divine beings that related to the forests, and to birds, and beasts never encountered on the steppes. The full-blown theogony of the people of Upper India (NOT of people in other parts) was more or less developed centuries before the Buddha or Mahavira; they found a fully established pantheon of gods and goddesses.

I am forced to submit this background in order to explain, to somebody who is serious and who wants to view another point of view, at some length, like this, without leg-pulling, and without teasing young people who are remarkably ignorant.

Please tell me if I may continue.

Please continue if you have time, and I would strongly suggest you, sir, to open a separate thread, and copy over your post there as well.

Frankly speaking, this is kind of hard for me to understand, there are too many new words, and concepts in this story. I am lack of the knowledge on this matter.

 

[KedarT]

Why are you speaking Nepalese? You might get reported.

If this is Nepali, then that's another language that I can add to my list of spoken languages

In fact I and some other Muslims speak the Buddha to be among 125,000 prophets spoken about in Islamic belief so the Taliban did wrong about the Buddhist structures there but I don't know what happened before the Taliban.

Lord Buddha didn't believe in God so I'm not really sure how he is believed to be an Islamic prophet. But you respecting him despite his views, that's enough for us heathens

What about when the Sikhs ruled from Afghanistan ? What was the status of Buddhism there then ? I am not being antagonistic but sincerely curious.

Both Buddhism and Hinduism had been wiped out long back by the Muslim conquests. There was no trace of it during the Sikh empire in the 19th century.

I recently found this document which says that the Egyptians were known to use the Zero a thousand years before it was supposedly initiated in India :

I would recommend you to read the document properly and . No one really know who invented the zero but it being used as a numeral was invented in India. Credit should be given where it's due to our people without having to demean the achievements of other civilizations. In fact, I observe that you do the opposite. I rest my case and don't want to jump into a lengthy debate. So computers

India and the origins of Zero

Experts are clear that zero, as we know it, is an “Indian” invention — but how, why, and when it first emerged as a distinct mathematical concept is less a story of numbers, and more one of how different cultures looked at the world, how information was disseminated across countries, and how...

www.firstpost.com

Who Invented Zero?

The concept of zero, both as a placeholder and as a symbol for nothing, is a relatively recent development.

www.livescience.com

 

[GamoAccu]

If this is Nepali, then that's another language that I can add to my list of spoken languages

Lord Buddha didn't believe in God so I'm not really sure how he is believed to be an Islamic prophet. But you respecting him despite his views, that's enough for us heathens

Both Buddhism and Hinduism had been wiped out long back by the Muslim conquests. There was no trace of it during the Sikh empire in the 19th century.

I would recommend you to read the document properly and . No one really know who invented the zero but it being used as a numeral was invented in India. Credit should be given where it's due to our people without having to demean the achievements of other civilizations. In fact, I observe that you do the opposite. I rest my case and don't want to jump into a lengthy debate. So computers

India and the origins of Zero

Experts are clear that zero, as we know it, is an “Indian” invention — but how, why, and when it first emerged as a distinct mathematical concept is less a story of numbers, and more one of how different cultures looked at the world, how information was disseminated across countries, and how...

www.firstpost.com

Who Invented Zero?

The concept of zero, both as a placeholder and as a symbol for nothing, is a relatively recent development.

www.livescience.com

Other culture invented zero too. Hyper Indian nationalists think it invented the world.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indians-are-convinced-they-discovered-the-zero-can-they-prove-it/2017/03/10/de0821f4-19d2-4600-9403-2975c6a8b057_story.html

 

[MultaniGuy]

Since I have to reply decently to my friend Kedar I won't reply to you in detail too. But let me ask you this one thing, are those "deadwood" people you mention, climbing on the backs of you 500 million Hindutvadis every minute and making noise by blowing trumpets for you to be constantly distracted and not contribute to the development of India and humanity ?



Actually I wish that English was the national language of India because dividing up the country on basis of locally-spoken languages and then adding the element of religion to them has harmed India a lot. Some cities in India claim to be megacities or international cities but some locals demand that those not local speak the local language or else service will not be rendered. Greater knowledge-seeking from humanity would have been better possible if English had been the only medium of educational instruction with the local languages preserved by family education.



And what was it called 3000 years ago when the Aryans entered from Iranic lands ?



I feel bad too. In fact I and some other Muslims speak the Buddha to be among 125,000 prophets spoken about in Islamic belief so the Taliban did wrong about the Buddhist structures there but I don't know what happened before the Taliban. What about when the Sikhs ruled from Afghanistan ? What was the status of Buddhism there then ? I am not being antagonistic but sincerely curious.



I recently found this document which says that the Egyptians were known to use the Zero a thousand years before it was supposedly initiated in India :

@Mentee @fitpOsitive @Bilal9 @Goenitz, you may find the above info interesting. Also, since astronomy was most possibly brought to India by the Greeks it is possible that the Greeks who borrowed their solar calendar from the Egyptians, having ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years. I am not denigrating Brahmagupta's work but just saying that human knowledge borrows from and germinates in all corners.



That is most probably not a true story - the Taliban are not quite the most humanitarian of people but in any case the Taliban could have fed the starving children three meals of "piousness".

Actually What I said is probably the closest to the truth.

Why did the western media not tell the Afghan Taliban's perspective on the matter?

I have stated what is common knowledge.

 

[MultaniGuy]

Since I have to reply decently to my friend Kedar I won't reply to you in detail too. But let me ask you this one thing, are those "deadwood" people you mention, climbing on the backs of you 500 million Hindutvadis every minute and making noise by blowing trumpets for you to be constantly distracted and not contribute to the development of India and humanity ?



Actually I wish that English was the national language of India because dividing up the country on basis of locally-spoken languages and then adding the element of religion to them has harmed India a lot. Some cities in India claim to be megacities or international cities but some locals demand that those not local speak the local language or else service will not be rendered. Greater knowledge-seeking from humanity would have been better possible if English had been the only medium of educational instruction with the local languages preserved by family education.



And what was it called 3000 years ago when the Aryans entered from Iranic lands ?



I feel bad too. In fact I and some other Muslims speak the Buddha to be among 125,000 prophets spoken about in Islamic belief so the Taliban did wrong about the Buddhist structures there but I don't know what happened before the Taliban. What about when the Sikhs ruled from Afghanistan ? What was the status of Buddhism there then ? I am not being antagonistic but sincerely curious.



I recently found this document which says that the Egyptians were known to use the Zero a thousand years before it was supposedly initiated in India :

@Mentee @fitpOsitive @Bilal9 @Goenitz, you may find the above info interesting. Also, since astronomy was most possibly brought to India by the Greeks it is possible that the Greeks who borrowed their solar calendar from the Egyptians, having ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years. I am not denigrating Brahmagupta's work but just saying that human knowledge borrows from and germinates in all corners.



That is most probably not a true story - the Taliban are not quite the most humanitarian of people but in any case the Taliban could have fed the starving children three meals of "piousness".

Here you go you moron. I knew there are both sides to a story.
The CNN and BBC had lied to their peoples.

Read this:

Afghanistan's Buddhas: But Little Said About Dying Children​

By: Haroon Siddiqui Source: iViews Mar 30, 2001 No Comments

So it wasn't theology, after all, that made the Taliban smash the Buddhas of Bamiyan, but rather rage at the world for offering money and expertise to save the statues but not for the people dying daily throughout drought-stricken Afghanistan.
"Seven hundred of our children died a month ago because of malnutrition and the severe cold weather, and the world did not care, but now everybody talks about the statues!" said Sayyid Rahmatullah Hashemi, a 24-year-old Afghan envoy now touring the United States.
"When your children are dying in front of your eyes, you don't care about statues."
That logic can cut through even the thick wall of animosity we have erected towards the obscurantist Taliban for their gross human rights violations, particularly against women.
Hashemi's visit is a breakthrough. Speaking on campuses and to media, he is presenting an insight not usually available in the anti-Taliban drone of the American media and in the tripe of bejeweled and scented Hollywood stars striking feminist poses on behalf of poor, destitute and dying Afghan women.
According to a transcript of Hashemi's address to students at the University of Southern California, and an interview he gave the New York Times, what prompted the Taliban clerical hierarchy to destroy the statues was a visit last month by a delegation of European and UNESCO envoys, offering money and expertise to save, restore, or even move the artifacts.

_____________ In their four-year rule, the Taliban have restored a semblance of law and order, and demilitarized the population -- at a huge cost to human rights, no doubt. ______________

"The scholars told them that instead of spending money on statues, why didn't they help our children who are dying of malnutrition? They rejected that, saying, 'This money is only for the statues' (because of the American-led, United Nations-imposed economic sanctions).
"That made our people very angry . . . They were really pissed off. They said, 'If you don't care about our children, then we are going to blow up those statues'."
"I know it is not rational or logical to blow up statues in retaliation for economic sanctions. But if the world is killing our children and destroying our future, they have no right to worry about our past."
Hashemi may only be offering a post-fact rationale for an irrational act. But, as he noted, the Taliban have been in control of that area for some time and could have moved against the Buddhist relics earlier.
"If we had wanted to destroy those statues, we could have done it three years ago."
This line of thinking must make eminent sense to a people who have been through Hell on Earth in the last 30 years. Prior to the 1979 Soviet invasion, Afghans suffered a decade of Communist oppression and repeated purges. The war against the Soviets left 1.5 million dead, out of a population of 18 million. Another 1 million were maimed, mostly from Soviet landmines. About 5 million were made refugees -- 1.5 million went to Iran and 3.5 million to Pakistan. Post-Cold War, the vicious warfare between competing militias caused at least 100,000 casualties, and created another 1 million refugees.
In their four-year rule, the Taliban have restored a semblance of law and order, and demilitarized the population -- at a huge cost to human rights, no doubt.
Using summary justice, they even managed the miracle of wiping out opium production, something Colombia and the United States have failed to do, despite monumental bi-lateral efforts costing billions.
As late as 1999, opium production in Afghanistan was running at 4,580 tons -- more than three-quarters of the world's supply. At about $40 a kilo, it was worth about $180 million, the nation's chief source of revenue.
Under world pressure, the Taliban bulldozed the crops and banned further production. And recently, the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention certified that opium has indeed been virtually eliminated.
This self-inflicted economic wound brought the Taliban no outside economic balm because, by this time, the world was busy implementing the sanctions.
Meanwhile, a drought that swept a wide swath of West Asia, from Syria to Mongolia, has hit Afghanistan the hardest. About 1 million people face starvation. Hundreds of thousands are wandering towards the bigger cities. About 100,000 are huddled in emergency camps near the western city of Herat, which is where the children died.
Almost 500,000 Afghans have crossed into Pakistan (which already has 2 million refugees from the 1980s). Others are trying to enter Iran (which still has 1.2 million of the original refugees). About 12,000 are stranded on two islands on a river that's the border with Tajikistan.



Afghanistan needs 40 million tons of food grains, but has only 2 million tons. The United Nations appealed last fall for $230 million; it has pledges for only $18 million, mostly from Arab nations. Canada promised a mere $600,000 more.
On Monday, Hashemi met with State Department and National Security Council officials, and called for improved relations, including finding a way out of American insistence that the Taliban hand over alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden.
As much as the Taliban's philistinism and their gender apartheid are good fodder for fiery American rhetoric, it is not for the sake of Afghanistan's heritage or even for Afghan women that the economic sanctions were imposed. They were slapped on primarily because of American obsession with Bin Laden.
It is useful to keep that in mind when listening to the anguished voices of Afghans like Hashemi. Or when trying to make some sense of this week's decree by U.N. officials implementing the sanctions that a bread distribution program in Kabul is suspended until the Taliban permit the hiring of women to survey poverty in the Afghan capital. By the time they resolve the dispute, there may be nobody left to survey -- men or women.
_______________________________________________________________
Haroon Siddiqui is Editorial Page Editor Emeritus of The Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper. This column originally appeared in the March 22 edition of the Star and was re-produced with permission from the author.

Afghanistan's Buddhas: But Little Said About Dying Children

So it wasn't theology, after all, that made the Taliban smash the Buddhas of Bamiyan, but rather rage at the world for offering money and expertise to save the statues but not for the people dying daily throughout drought-stricken Afghanistan.

www.islamicity.org

 

[-=virus=-]

They're a weird society, I don't think they respect much of anyone lol spl when it comes to their idea of what a being true Japanese means, they wont even accept Koreans, Chinese and people from east asia in general as true Japs.. the Japs are the most ethno nationalist people on earth, but nobody ever talks of it. Which is fine, it's just an extension of their culture and unique way of life .. one could move to Japan, marry a Japanese person, become successful, famous... and they'll (society at large) love that even, just wont consider you a Japanese.. south asian or gora or arab or whatever else matters little.

If anything they're mean to Koreans for some reason, and its more than just a nagging Nanking residual resentment lol

I toh cant tell em apart but some people can..

sorry for the offtopic

 

[jamahir]

Here you go you moron. I knew there are both sides to a story.
The CNN and BBC had lied to their peoples.

Read this:

Afghanistan's Buddhas: But Little Said About Dying Children​

By: Haroon Siddiqui Source: iViews Mar 30, 2001 No Comments

So it wasn't theology, after all, that made the Taliban smash the Buddhas of Bamiyan, but rather rage at the world for offering money and expertise to save the statues but not for the people dying daily throughout drought-stricken Afghanistan.
"Seven hundred of our children died a month ago because of malnutrition and the severe cold weather, and the world did not care, but now everybody talks about the statues!" said Sayyid Rahmatullah Hashemi, a 24-year-old Afghan envoy now touring the United States.
"When your children are dying in front of your eyes, you don't care about statues."
That logic can cut through even the thick wall of animosity we have erected towards the obscurantist Taliban for their gross human rights violations, particularly against women.
Hashemi's visit is a breakthrough. Speaking on campuses and to media, he is presenting an insight not usually available in the anti-Taliban drone of the American media and in the tripe of bejeweled and scented Hollywood stars striking feminist poses on behalf of poor, destitute and dying Afghan women.
According to a transcript of Hashemi's address to students at the University of Southern California, and an interview he gave the New York Times, what prompted the Taliban clerical hierarchy to destroy the statues was a visit last month by a delegation of European and UNESCO envoys, offering money and expertise to save, restore, or even move the artifacts.

​

_____________ In their four-year rule, the Taliban have restored a semblance of law and order, and demilitarized the population -- at a huge cost to human rights, no doubt. ______________

"The scholars told them that instead of spending money on statues, why didn't they help our children who are dying of malnutrition? They rejected that, saying, 'This money is only for the statues' (because of the American-led, United Nations-imposed economic sanctions).
"That made our people very angry . . . They were really pissed off. They said, 'If you don't care about our children, then we are going to blow up those statues'."
"I know it is not rational or logical to blow up statues in retaliation for economic sanctions. But if the world is killing our children and destroying our future, they have no right to worry about our past."
Hashemi may only be offering a post-fact rationale for an irrational act. But, as he noted, the Taliban have been in control of that area for some time and could have moved against the Buddhist relics earlier.
"If we had wanted to destroy those statues, we could have done it three years ago."
This line of thinking must make eminent sense to a people who have been through Hell on Earth in the last 30 years. Prior to the 1979 Soviet invasion, Afghans suffered a decade of Communist oppression and repeated purges. The war against the Soviets left 1.5 million dead, out of a population of 18 million. Another 1 million were maimed, mostly from Soviet landmines. About 5 million were made refugees -- 1.5 million went to Iran and 3.5 million to Pakistan. Post-Cold War, the vicious warfare between competing militias caused at least 100,000 casualties, and created another 1 million refugees.
In their four-year rule, the Taliban have restored a semblance of law and order, and demilitarized the population -- at a huge cost to human rights, no doubt.
Using summary justice, they even managed the miracle of wiping out opium production, something Colombia and the United States have failed to do, despite monumental bi-lateral efforts costing billions.
As late as 1999, opium production in Afghanistan was running at 4,580 tons -- more than three-quarters of the world's supply. At about $40 a kilo, it was worth about $180 million, the nation's chief source of revenue.
Under world pressure, the Taliban bulldozed the crops and banned further production. And recently, the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention certified that opium has indeed been virtually eliminated.
This self-inflicted economic wound brought the Taliban no outside economic balm because, by this time, the world was busy implementing the sanctions.
Meanwhile, a drought that swept a wide swath of West Asia, from Syria to Mongolia, has hit Afghanistan the hardest. About 1 million people face starvation. Hundreds of thousands are wandering towards the bigger cities. About 100,000 are huddled in emergency camps near the western city of Herat, which is where the children died.
Almost 500,000 Afghans have crossed into Pakistan (which already has 2 million refugees from the 1980s). Others are trying to enter Iran (which still has 1.2 million of the original refugees). About 12,000 are stranded on two islands on a river that's the border with Tajikistan.



Afghanistan needs 40 million tons of food grains, but has only 2 million tons. The United Nations appealed last fall for $230 million; it has pledges for only $18 million, mostly from Arab nations. Canada promised a mere $600,000 more.
On Monday, Hashemi met with State Department and National Security Council officials, and called for improved relations, including finding a way out of American insistence that the Taliban hand over alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden.
As much as the Taliban's philistinism and their gender apartheid are good fodder for fiery American rhetoric, it is not for the sake of Afghanistan's heritage or even for Afghan women that the economic sanctions were imposed. They were slapped on primarily because of American obsession with Bin Laden.
It is useful to keep that in mind when listening to the anguished voices of Afghans like Hashemi. Or when trying to make some sense of this week's decree by U.N. officials implementing the sanctions that a bread distribution program in Kabul is suspended until the Taliban permit the hiring of women to survey poverty in the Afghan capital. By the time they resolve the dispute, there may be nobody left to survey -- men or women.
_______________________________________________________________
Haroon Siddiqui is Editorial Page Editor Emeritus of The Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper. This column originally appeared in the March 22 edition of the Star and was re-produced with permission from the author.

Afghanistan's Buddhas: But Little Said About Dying Children

So it wasn't theology, after all, that made the Taliban smash the Buddhas of Bamiyan, but rather rage at the world for offering money and expertise to save the statues but not for the people dying daily throughout drought-stricken Afghanistan.

www.islamicity.org

A propagandist for the Taliban writing about a Taliban ambassador touring the country of Taliban's master - USA - and writing about "alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden" and "Communist oppression" and the article carried on a website called IslamiCity... yeah, totally legit. If the Taliban was so humanitarian now it would first create free homes in nicely built neighborhoods for the 4.6 million homeless Afghans and it encourage even more females to participate in education and the workforce instead of shutting down the women's welfare ministry and replacing it with some stupid thing called haya ministry. If it was so humanitarian between its terror rule of 1996-2001 it wouldn't kill and maim people for stupid "moral" crimes. If the Taliban was so humanitarian it wouldn't be carried aboard American air force planes to the battle fields of Syria to fight Assad on behalf of NATO. Please stop defending criminals. The Taliban didn't care for the children dying of malnutrition, they blew up the statues because of their beliefs.

Lord Buddha didn't believe in God so I'm not really sure how he is believed to be an Islamic prophet. But you respecting him despite his views, that's enough for us heathens

There is debate among Muslims if Alexander the Great too or the Iranian king Koorosh / Kourosh ( Cyrus the Great ) are among the 124,000 prophets accepted in Islam.

Both Buddhism and Hinduism had been wiped out long back by the Muslim conquests. There was no trace of it during the Sikh empire in the 19th century.

I doubt. When Muslim rulers in South Asia let the Hindus live why would they wipe out the Buddhists ? Buddhism in at least what is now India had been wiped out much before the Muslims came in. Maybe this held true even for the place now called Afghanistan though because this place bordered Central Asia and China it is possible that pockets of Buddhism existed during Muslim rule after having escaped persecution by Hindu rulers earlier.

I would recommend you to read the document properly and . No one really know who invented the zero but it being used as a numeral was invented in India. Credit should be given where it's due to our people without having to demean the achievements of other civilizations. In fact, I observe that you do the opposite. I rest my case and don't want to jump into a lengthy debate. So computers

Firstly, I have already said this in my previous post :

I am not denigrating Brahmagupta's work but just saying that human knowledge borrows from and germinates in all corners.

You are right about the uncertain origin of zero and upon your recommendation I looked into my document again and it has this at the beginning :

The earliest account of a zero concept was in Egypt. The Egyptian number system was base ten only, with different symbols for 1, 10, 100, 1000 and so on. Numbers would be made by combining multiples of these symbols, so they had no use for zero as a placeholder. However, they did have a concept of ”base” or ”ground-level,” for their architectural plans, and for this they used the symbol for the Egyptian word nfr, also meaning ”beautiful,” or ”good.” For example, leveling lines used to guide the construction of stones for pyramids could be labeled ”1 cubit above nfr,” and so ”zero” - ”nfr” - was used as a reference point. There are records of this practice occurring by 1740 BCE.

So zero was used by the Egyptians both as a value to increase numbers ( 10, 100, 1000 etc ) and as a base to start count which is used in computing now especially in array layout - 0th element, 1st element, 2nd element etc. The fact of digital binary computers using either of two values to represent a bit - 0 or 1, that is just general usage and can come from anywhere.

India and the origins of Zero

Experts are clear that zero, as we know it, is an “Indian” invention — but how, why, and when it first emerged as a distinct mathematical concept is less a story of numbers, and more one of how different cultures looked at the world, how information was disseminated across countries, and how...

www.firstpost.com

Who Invented Zero?

The concept of zero, both as a placeholder and as a symbol for nothing, is a relatively recent development.

www.livescience.com

Both these articles don't mention Egypt and both glowingly reference a so-called Indologist called Peter Gobets who has made it his life to prove that "Indians" invented the zero through him organizing a movement called ZerOrigIndia. Cringey.

And this from the first article :

In 662, a Syrian Monophysite bishop named Severus Sebokht wrote approvingly about “the science of the Indians,” and “their subtle discoveries in astronomy, discoveries that are more ingenious than those of the Greeks and the Babylonians, and their valuable methods of calculation which surpass description.”

LOL, the object below is part of a Greek astronomical instrument from more than 2000 years ago now called the Antikythera Mechanism. The below part among other parts was found under the sea off Greece. It used the ancient Egyptian solar calendar :

 

[nahtanbob]

Other culture invented zero too. Hyper Indian nationalists think it invented the world.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indians-are-convinced-they-discovered-the-zero-can-they-prove-it/2017/03/10/de0821f4-19d2-4600-9403-2975c6a8b057_story.html

Indians have strongest claim for discovering zero. Of course you need to use zero to extend it to the decimal system. In any case ancient Greeks had the strongest tradition of Mathematics

 

[jamahir]

Indians have strongest claim for discovering zero. Of course you need to use zero to extend it to the decimal system. In any case ancient Greeks had the strongest tradition of Mathematics

That is incorrect. Please read my posts# 112 and 120.