Post

The Bulwark
@thebulwark.com

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

477 reposts2.2K likes

Maria Llivia
@mariallivia.bsky.social

Medicine: Ibn Sina (Avicenna) wrote The Canon of Medicine, which served as a foundational textbook in European medical universities for centuries. Optics & Physics: Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) pioneered the modern scientific method and revolutionized the study of optics and vision.

Maria Llivia
@mariallivia.bsky.social

Historically, the Arab world led global scientific advancement during the Islamic Golden Age (8th–14th centuries): Mathematics: Scholars like Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi developed algebra (al-jabr) and introduced the Hindu-Arabic numeral system and decimal concepts to the Western world.

Maria Llivia
@mariallivia.bsky.social

Literature & International Recognition: Modern Arabic literature is a vibrant global field. Writers such as Hisham Matar (Pulitzer Prize winner), Tayeb Salih, Mahmoud Darwish, and Jokha Alharthi (Man Booker International Prize winner) are internationally acclaimed.

Maria Llivia
@mariallivia.bsky.social

Nobel Laureates: Ahmed Zewail (Egypt)1999 Ahmed Zewail (Egypt) 2018 Moungi Bawendi (Tunisian heritage) (2023) Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) 1998 Political/Peace Laureates: Several Arab figures have won the Nobel Peace Prize, including Anwar Sadat, Yasser Arafat, Mohamed ElBaradei, and Tawakkol Karman.

Shoe Queen of Atlantis
@salomekjones.bsky.social

And algebra is literally an Arabic derived word 1550s, from Medieval Latin algebra, from Arabic "al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wa al-muqabala" ("the compendium on calculation by restoring and balancing").

@RexDoctor
@rexdoctor.bsky.social

There are millions of Americans who poll when asked that they "Do not want Arabic numerals taught in the American school curriculum." 🙄

KS_1968
@karenroberts.bsky.social

Ofc they produce science and literature. Just because you're a worm addled luddite that cant see beyond the end of your latest conspiracy theory doesn't mean these things don't exist.

K.P O'Connor
@ko-spyder.bsky.social

If anyone here has a MAGA friend out there. This is one more to add to the "The president is a full-on white supremacist" pile. If he wasn't, RFK would have been fired within minutes. I have a MAGA friend convinced I'm in the wrong...Can't wait to watch her twist herself into pretzels over this.

Egadfly
@egadfly.bsky.social

The brain worm took him years ago. That's actually the worm in his otherwise empty head, pulling levers and turning pulleys, speaking into a microphone. It must be exhausting. For the worm. Hey. Worm. Take a break. You sound tired.

Colin
@egnowit.bsky.social

He recognizes the historical contribution of Muslims and Arabs at the end of the clip, but says post-Muslim Brotherhood (whatever and whenever this is), there is no Arabic science and literature. Which is also racist and false.

DarLee
@thedlee.bsky.social

From the 8th-15th centuries, 600+ years, they dominated the study of math & astronomy. Arabic numerals. The decimal system. Algebra. The astrolabe. Trigonometry. Geometry. 60% of stars we can see with the naked eye have Arabic names. Neil DeGrasse Tyson praises them all the time. Rfk is an idiot.

MTfromCC
@mtfromcc.bsky.social

Clearly, the guy running the US government’s role in health care knows nothing about history and is more than a little bigoted.

Crunk
@crunk1977.bsky.social

Just last year, Omar Yaghi won the Nobel prize in Chemistry (he won the Wolf prize in 2018) and Yasmeen Lari declined to accept the Wolf prize in architecture.

carlos._.deleon
@theblankstares.bsky.social

Um, as far as I can tell, RFKJr hasn't won any of those awards either. Off the top of my head, the most notable things about this clown is that he's a junkie that eats road kill and has a brain worm. The gall.

chx1975.bsky.social
@chx1975.bsky.social

I am tired answering everyone independently but no, Al-Khwarizmi didn't invent algebra. He was building on Indian work (and much older Babylonian) he added substantially but no he didn't invent algebra. The first written languages predate arabs by milennia. This doesn't make rfk jr right of course.

Michael
@michaelkstahl.bsky.social

Babylon is present day ... Iraq and Cunieform is dated to 3400BCE, and was invented in ... Mesopotamia. If you know something different and have citations, share.

davidbofinger.bsky.social
@davidbofinger.bsky.social

I think most people here understand that no one person invented algebra. But everyone builds their inventions on work by others. If you had to pick one person to honour for inventing algebra, mightn't it be al-Khwarizmi?

Ludius Magnus
@ludiusmagnus.bsky.social

Wrong about the present, wrong as hell about history. There are serious problems with Arab/Muslim nations, and they have nothing to do with race or even religion, and everything to do with authoritarianism. RFKjr and Trump have put us in that race to the bottom.

Raging Mad Vet
@smconnors8337.bsky.social

6 Arabs won the Nobel Peace Prize 1 Arab won the Nobel For Literature 3 Arabs won the Nobel for Sciences All between 1978 and 2025. Now did I know that? Of course not, I spent 3 minutes researching this roadkill eating moron. Jesus were an embarrassment

Friedo
@friedo90423867.bsky.social

"Arabs" don't need to win any prizes. Without the Arab world and its research, there wouldn't be any science anywhere in the world at all. Well, then again, what do you expect from MAGA?

Friedo
@friedo90423867.bsky.social

I felt that RFK’s reference to "the Arabs" was somewhat disrespectful. I wanted to soften that by using quotation marks. I find this behavior—insulting entire population groups—appalling. Trump does the same thing. They are simply small-minded people.

Eliot Ivanhoe MD
@doceliot.bsky.social

RFK knows a whole lot of facts that aren't true. His Wuhan Cover-Up book is dazzling by the sheer quantity of annotations of brilliant sounding references that are all false. He has no idea that he's wrong about everything. The truth discerning function of his mind has turned to worm shit.

Elise
@bnat4.bsky.social

Not to mention all the remarkable Arab scientists working in the US right now (and the ones who will never come here bc of racist fools like Kennedy).

Pragmatic Educator
@praged.bsky.social

Algebra is literally an Arabic-derived term. The Muslim world kept knowledge alive while Europe was held hostage by the Catholic Church during the dark ages.

AuntieU
@umaija.bsky.social

Idiocracy on display by a Kennedy no less. His family should arrange an intervention to get him out of public view. Shameful ignorance and racism.

Sarkat
@sarkat.bsky.social

Sure. But if he’s gonna make himself look ignorant to do that, we should take the opportunity to mock him for it.

genxjennifer.bsky.social
@genxjennifer.bsky.social

This is insane racist garbage. I want to provide a personal counterpoint. I had a pediatric medical condition. My treating specialist was a Muslim man from an Arab-speaking country. He was a wonderful doctor, person, and scientist. Decades later, I met physicians that he trained & he was so beloved.

Major Rager
@majorrager.bsky.social

If I was a journalist I’d tape this to a frisbee, throw it at him, and demand he read it out loud. Hell, I’d even help him sound out the big words.

Marinus van den Berg
@marinusvandenberg.bsky.social

Wat is deze man achterlijk. Hij heeft duidelijk geen scholing gehad in zelfd de basale wetenschappelijke grondslagen uit de moslim cultuur. Dat kost veel mensen het leven. Maar weet hij veel hij kan niet logisch tellen.

tactrician.bsky.social
@tactrician.bsky.social

Naguib Mahfouz - Nobel Prize Lit (1988), Ahmed Zewail - Wolf Prize (1993), Nobel Prize Chemistry (1999), Omar Yaghi (Jordan) – Nobel Prize Chemistry (2025), Hisham Matar - Pulitzer (2017) - even if none of that were true, judging 500 million people by a prize tally is bigotry of the largest order.

John Slocum
@jslocum.bsky.social

Abject racism has no place among senior government officials responsible for carrying out the people’s business. We can’t continue paying the salaries of people who abuse their positions by using then as platforms to spew such garbage.

Colin
@egnowit.bsky.social

While she's Persian and not Arabic (and I doubt that this is much of a difference to him), Maryam Mirzakhani won the Fields medal, the first woman to do so. Sure, she taught at Stanford, but she was raised in and educated in Iran.

Colin
@egnowit.bsky.social

Also, Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in literature. Mahmoud Darwish is a notable Palestinian poet. Just because Kennedy's not familiar with Arabic literature doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Another Iranian-educated author (not Arabic, but might not make a difference to him) is Azar Nafisi.

Informed Takes
@peebsy0.bsky.social

He's white, so when another white wins at something he must celebrate it as a personal victory. This is sports culture. White dudes are being hypnotized.

Jason
@greedyrunner.bsky.social

I see now, having watched the video, this point doesn't really land. However, what he says tells us what a nasty, racist piece of shit he is. Given he is a destroyer of science and medicine, it is also ironic.

OKC405
@okc405.bsky.social

Guess he's never heard of their significant contributions to mathematics: The word algebra comes from the Arabic al-jabr. Arabic numeral system (0-9) & the use of positional notation & decimal fractions. Islamic mathematicians developed trigonometry.

Keith M. Judge
@optimist-press.bsky.social

The Arabic-speaking world has given us the number zero, mathematics and chess, for starters. That's just off the top of my head.

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

Keith M. Judge
@optimist-press.bsky.social

Half of our medical doctors in Chicago are Arab-speaking. We would be so fucked without them. I eat Palestinian food almost every day. I would starve to death without my Arab-speaking brothers and sisters.

Prince
@prince61.bsky.social

Everything he said republicans have not produced either, but republicans have produced child sex traffickers, child rapists, heroin addicts, rapists, crooks, corrupted liquor cabinet and dumb bitches that lie for an 🍊 🐒.

Anton van Walraven
@avwraven.bsky.social

Plenty of excellent Arab, and Palestinian writes. It's just that Nobel committee nor the West has much interest in them. And form an Arab perspective: Who would to win book prizes from their former colonizers? I wouldn't. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/159795...

penguinrandomhouse.comThe Question of Palestine by Edward W. Said: 9780679739883 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: BooksThis original and deeply provocative book was the first to make Palestine the subject of a serious debate--one that remains as critical as ever. • With a new foreword by Saree Makdisi "A compelling.....
bonacker.bsky.social
@bonacker.bsky.social

Arab nations continue to drive significant global advancements through pioneering investments in renewable energy infrastructure, leadership in artificial intelligence research and governance, and large-scale architectural and technological modernization projects. JUST ISLAMOPHOBIC RANTINGS.

Bourbonick
@idontknowhowe.bsky.social

We literally use Arabic numbers for everything, we would have been centuries behind where we are if they hadn’t continued with maths and sciences while we fell into the dark ages. What’s this “what have you scienced for me LATELY?!” bullshit?

Gia Monroe 🇺🇸
@giamonroe.bsky.social

So which “Arabs” is he mad at? The ones who gave Kushner $2 billion. The ones who gave Trump a 747? The ones who let America build military bases in their countries. Or is he trying to make sure Stephen Miller knows he’s properly racist so he gets an invite to Katie’s next party?

poulax
@poulax.eurosky.social

Not to mention the genius who wrote Al-Jabr, Al-Khwarizmi made his name survive in history in "algorithm" by revolutionizing them too

Claire
@clrthrn.bsky.social

My inner 12yr old is personally furious at the Arab that gave us algebra. It's a personal hate though at one person, not taking down a whole race for it.

Mortimer Shade
@mortimershade.bsky.social

Nah, it is the ones that gave us al-kīmiyāʾ (الكيمياء) aka alchemy and thus chemistry. Y'know, that topic that totally doesn't have a Nobel Prize that gets given out.

flsucks.bsky.social
@flsucks.bsky.social

Trump also had a $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi in his meme coin, as well as $500 million from UAE. Trump also has partnerships with 26 foreign countries to develop Trump branded properties, many Muslim or 50% Muslim countries. I'm sure there's a bunch more quid pro quos & grifting involved.

beihai.bsky.social
@beihai.bsky.social

Left unmentioned is how Turkish (Ottoman) and European imperial ambitions in the Arab world subjugated the people for centuries. If you subjugate people, deny them education and opportunities for advancement, they're not likely to advance.

beihai.bsky.social
@beihai.bsky.social

i am Irish too and Irish faced prejudice for over a century in the US, JFK had to give a speech promising he was going to be a President who was Catholic but not a Catholic President, whereas others trumpeted how they were going to be a "Christian" President.

Lennie
@drgs100.bsky.social

Jebus Fucking H. Heroditus Christ. And I though this man had run through all the stupidity he could. What does this goon know of science, literature or art? As we say here in Scotland, "What a cunt".

Chris Fredda 🩷💜💙
@seeyouinnj.bsky.social

Imagine saying this when science flourished in Arab countries while Europe experienced the Dark Ages, and all of our modern math and science uses Arabic numerals. On top of that, we’ve spent decades waging wars over there because we’re upset about all the science they have access to.

Jab
@forcedryder.bsky.social

I wouldn’t brag about that — that Arab science made the extermination of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans possible is not a good thing in my book

tension352.bsky.social
@tension352.bsky.social

This has nothing to do with RFK's racism but the dark ages were not dark. There was not an actual decline in science or innovation and the average person's life in Europe during the Early Middle Ages were most probably better than during the Classical period.