A New Enemy?

ABC's 'This Week' brought us the information that the bombs that blew the Marines off the Amphibious Assault Vehicle were 'shaped charges' which would have been introduced into the theater by Hezbollah from Iran. We are honored at being attacked by the enemies of the Jews and saddened by our losses. Perhaps we shall join Hezbollah in idolatry of blood should we find a moment as Lawrence of Arabia of gentle memory is shown to have done in the movie. Better that they had followed the caliph of Baghdad in 813 CE, Al-Mamum, who sought to preserve the knowledge of other cultures, perhaps saving what we consider our ancient Greek texts, cf. http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Al-Khwarizmi.html. His scholars promoted what in Arab culture are called Hindi numerals from their origin in India, to us Arabic numerals. He employed the mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi, who wrote the first book entitled, in part, 'al jabr,' algebra of course, and whose name corrupted in Latin, algoritmi, is 'algorithm' to us. That caliph could be said to represent the party of God or evolution leading to the consciousness of its source, to paraphrase Teilhard de Chardin.