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HuffPost is happy to believe in ancient aeroplanes as long as you say that a Muslim invented them

I have long believed that in order to expose the real face of the Liberal-Islamist axis, we have to look at what is happening inside the Muslim world (and not just inside the free world). For example, in the free world, you will see liberals actively promoting “whiny” complaints about the media spreading so called “Islamophobia” (see for example, this TEDx talk at Stanford).

Even though liberals actually control most of the media, they still promote this “whining” to increase the guilt among free societies, which results in ever more pandering towards the Muslims. While we in the free world wallow in self-condemnation over supposed “Islamophobia”, liberals almost never tell you what the media looks like in the Islamic world. Sample this bone chilling kids’ TV program that tells the ‘heroic’ story of a girl who walks in on her mom getting ready to become a suicide bomber!

The same doublespeak can be found in the way liberals make a show of supporting science and rationality over here in India but you will see how the same liberal outlets are happy to promote the opposite in the Muslim world.

Here is the HuffPost India, gladly trashing “unscientific” claims at the Indian Science Congress:

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Okay, first of all, they are wrong about the Pythagoras Theorem part. It is an established and near universally accepted fact within the academic community that ancient Indians were well aware of Pythagoras Theorem. That HuffPost would even try to present well known facts as “lies” means they probably were counting on the low self esteem of Indians who have passed through the colonised education system.

But what about the Vedic aeroplanes part? Surely that’s ridiculous and deserves to be mocked? Yes. And you might well do that.

But interestingly one hand HuffPost India is debunking this so called “bad science” and on the other hand, HuffPost Maghreb is actively promoting the same thing:

Don’t believe me? See this editorial:

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Published in Maroc (Morocco) and therefore written in French, the headline (translated) tells you the story of the world’s “First Aviator” Abbas Ibn Firnas and how he inspired Leonardo da Vinci. Well, let’s find out the amazing story of this amazing Muslim man from around the year 880 CE (at the time when Muslims ruled over Spain).

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Which translates to:

He launched himself from the top of a tower and managed to hover for a while before he crashed. Result : two broken ribs but a very promising beginning. It was thus that the first glider in the history of humanity was created, ancestor of Boeings and propellers that allow us to fly in the air today. ”

Wow! The ancestor of Boeing aeroplanes! How do we know this actually happened? A short trip to Wikipedia provides us a reference :

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That’s right : there is no evidence that this flight actually happened, except for one Moroccan historian who wrote about this nearly seven centuries after the death of Ibn Firnas! 

In fact, reading the actual words of the Moroccan historian on Wikipedia, the flight seems even more implausible. It is said that Ibn Firnas covered himself with feathers and attached a couple of wings, then flew around and managed to land at the same place where he started.

That’s not gliding, that’s controlled flight on wings powered by human muscles! And no, that’s also not possible. The Editor of Huffington Post is most welcome to try it out himself/herself for verification purposes.

Of course, when I researched the Ibn Firnas story further, I didn’t find any real academic references for this “flight” (naturally). However, I did find a blog that actually complains about skeptics like me, accuses us of being prejudiced against Muslims and tries to establish that the flight actually happened by quoting the Moroccan historian in “full context”.

And that’s where I learned what Ibn Firnas saw during his flight:

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To be fair to Abbas Ibn Firnas, he was definitely a genius, a man way ahead of his time who made many advances in physics and technology. After all, they named a crater on the moon in his honour. But Ibn Firnas did not invent a flying machine, let alone an “ancestor” of Boeings and propellers. The only people who seem to believe it are outlets like the HuffPost. And no, Ibn Firnas was also not the first person to attempt gliding flights (if he attempted it at all). The Chinese would have beaten him to it by several centuries.

And yet, HuffPost had no difficulty passing it off as real history and real science a “story” of a scientifically impossible feat, full of mythical references, written by one person seven centuries after the death of the supposed hero! For them, it was the ancestor of Boeing…

So much for caring about science and reality.

Science has always fascinated the human mind. That is why in every age, in every era, there have existed impostors who have tried to fool people in the name of science, like the alchemists who used to have “secret formulas” to turn lead into gold.

The HuffPosts and the larger Liberal complex of today claim to be inheritors of the spirit of inquiry that drives science. They are not. Instead, they are inheritors of those impostors who have tried to mislead people in the name of science.

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Abhishek Banerjee
Abhishek Banerjeehttps://dynastycrooks.wordpress.com/
Abhishek Banerjee is a columnist and author.  

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