54 ‘Say ye: ‘We believe in Allah, and the revelation given to us, and to Abraham, Isma‘il, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to (all) prophets from their Lord: We make no difference between one and another of them: And we bow to Allah (in Islam).” I have come from the East, across the ocean and against the current, and I arrived here with two weak arms and a heart full of trepidation, doubt and uncertainty slapping me in the face — on my back the trace of a deep wound still bleeding from days gone by. But came I did, and threw my feeble body on the shores of your compassion. Like a drowned man, I was clutching at straws, and someone saved me, and here I am. My land is the Holy Land, where the Prophets preached and taught, and my people are those who, with their knowledge, brought many civilisations together. They added to the general reservoir of knowledge, developed it and presented it to Europe, like a beam of light that took Europeans from darkness to the Renaissance. My people gave the world the sciences: chemistry, physics, astronomy, algebra, etc. and left their mark and names on those contributions. The numbers that we use today are Arabic. We have given the West the zero. Where would we be, Supreme President, without the zero? I do not say these things in a spirit of triumphalism, but I say them to state the fact that we are not ignorant. The Arab nation has suffered, from occupation to occupation, until we entered into the dark ages of today.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTg0NzAy