BBC Radio 3 - The Essay - The Islamic Golden Age

[Guest]

The Islamic Golden Age is over. We await its rebirth! The story of civilisation, it seems to me, has been a series of rebirths, often against all expectations. Surely this should give us confidence in ourselves! In the third essay broadcast on Wednesday night, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the first Muslim member of the British Cabinet, gave her personal take on Persian scholar Imam Bukhari:

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay - The Islamic Golden Age: Baroness Sayeeda Warsi

Yet has the Islamic Golden Age ever really come to an end?

[Frances_iom]

...
In the third essay broadcast on Wednesday night, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the first Muslim member of the British Cabinet, gave her personal take on Persian scholar Iman Bukhari:...

actually the least academic and most political/ideological of the 4 essays - the others have been excellent and Warsi's discussion of Bukhari was put into much better context after Thursday's essay.

I was lucky enough to visit Bukhara and Samakand during the days of Soviet Central Asia - well worth a visit

...
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Yet has the Islamic Golden Age ever really come to an end?

yes several centuries ago - at the monent a bunch of oil funded fanatics who most in the West feel too scared to criticise in case they turn off the oil tap

[Frances_iom]

We await its rebirth!

why ? - the current nuts seem to await the Caliaphate until which time they feel free to kill + maim in the name of Allah the merciful etc etc - basically a bunch of fascists who belief they have the answer to all problems.

[Serial_Apologist]

The story of civilisation, it seems to me, has been a series of rebirths, often against all expectations.

Platform shoes, for instance.

Surely this should give us confidence in ourselves!

You mean confidence not to learn lessons from history, but rather to go on forever repeating the same mistakes?

[Serial_Apologist]

I see no reason to think differently about the future

Or the same in all probability, since you enjoy juxtaposing obverses...

[Forget It (U2079353)]

Episode 9 - reschedule?

Nightwaves on Nelson Mandela RIP, understandably took over the 22:45 time-slot for Episode 9.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03k0q3c

Anybody heard if it is to be rescheduled, and when that might be?

[Frances_iom]

but they still kept late junkshop in full - surely it could have lost 15mins tho admit the two Dodd interviews were good

[Frances_iom]

quick reminder - episode 11 is on tonight (Mon 3 Feb) - maybe we will never get to hear the missed episode 9;

[bb]

If anyone reading the Radio 3 Forum still wants to listen to episode 9, here it is on the BBC iPlayer:



BBC iPlayer - The Essay - The Islamic Golden Age: Al-Tabari

We were watching the Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC One (television) instead on Tuesday night, so we too had to catch up with Al-Tabari later!

BBC One (television) - The Richard Dimbleby Lecture

Charismatic and plain speaking, Christine Lagarde explained her thinking on the challenges facing the global economy:

'Good evening. It is a great honor to be invited to deliver this year’s Dimbleby Lecture, and I would like to thank the BBC and the Dimbleby family for so kindly inviting me—and especially David Dimbleby for his warm words of introduction.

This evening, I would like to talk about the future. Before looking ahead, however, I would like to look back—for the clues to the future can often be read from the tea leaves of the past.

I invite you to cast your minds back to the early months of 1914, exactly a century ago. Much of the world had enjoyed long years of peace, and giant leaps in scientific and technological innovation had led to path-breaking advances in living standards and communications. There were few barriers to trade, travel, or the movement of capital. The future was full of potential.

Yet, 1914 was the gateway to thirty years of disaster—marked by two world wars and the Great Depression. It was the year when everything started to go wrong. What happened?

What happened was that the birth of the modern industrial society brought about massive dislocation. The world was rife with tension—rivalry between nations, upsetting the traditional balance of power, and inequality between the haves and have-nots, whether in the form of colonialism or the sunken prospects of the uneducated working classes.

By 1914, these imbalances had toppled over into outright conflict. In the years to follow, nationalist and ideological thinking led to an unprecedented denigration of human dignity. Technology, instead of uplifting the human spirit, was deployed for destruction and terror. Early attempts at international cooperation, such as the League of Nations, fell flat. By the end of the Second World War, large parts of the world lay in ruins.

I now invite you to consider a second turning point—1944. In the summer of that year, the eminent economist, John Maynard Keynes, and a delegation of British officials, embarked on a fateful journey across the Atlantic. The crossing was risky—the world was still at war and enemy ships still prowled the waters. Keynes himself was in poor health.

But he had an appointment with destiny—and he was not going to miss it.

The destination was the small town of Bretton Woods in the hills of New Hampshire, in the northeastern United States. His purpose was to meet with his counterparts from other countries. Their plan was nothing less than the reconstruction of the global economic order.

The 44 nations gathering at Bretton Woods were determined to set a new course—based on mutual trust and cooperation, on the principle that peace and prosperity flow from the font of cooperation, on the belief that the broad global interest trumps narrow self-interest.

This was the original multilateral moment—70 years ago. It gave birth to the United Nations, the World Bank, and the IMF—the institution that I am proud to lead.

The world we inherited was forged by these visionary gentlemen—Lord Keynes and his generation. They raised the phoenix of peace and prosperity from the ashes of anguish and antagonism. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

Because of their work, we have seen unprecedented economic and financial stability over the past seven decades. We have seen diseases eradicated, conflict diminished, child mortality reduced, life expectancy increased, and hundreds of millions lifted out of poverty.

Today, however, we are coming out of the Great Recession, the worst economic crisis—and the great test—of our generation. Thanks to their legacy of multilateralism—international cooperation—we did not slip into another Great Depression that would have brought misery across the world yet again. We all passed the test—rejecting protectionism, reaffirming cooperation.

Yet there will be many more tests ahead. We are living through a time every bit as momentous as that faced by our forefathers a century ago. Once again, the global economy is changing beyond recognition, as we move from the industrial age to the hyperconnected digital age.

Once again, we will be defined by how we respond to these changes.

As we look ahead toward mid-century, toward the world that our children and grandchildren will inherit from us, we need to ask the question: what kind of world do we want that to be—and how can we achieve it?

As Shakespeare says in Julius Caesar: “On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”

This evening, I would like to talk about two broad currents that will dominate the coming decades—increasing tensions in global interconnections and in economic sustainability.

I would then like to make a proposal that builds on the past and is fit for the future: a strengthened framework for international cooperation.

In short, a new multilateralism for the 21st century ... '

IMF - A New Multilateralism for the 21st Century: the Richard Dimbleby Lecture

As for Al-Tabari, I am not sure that he would have proposed a new multilateralism for the second millennium, let alone the third, but in a profound sense, we are where we are today because of the foundations laid by those who came before us. Now it is our turn—to pave the way for the next generation. Are we up to the challenge? Our future depends on the answer to that question.