As a teacher of math and physics in Germany, I stressed, of course, that there were important contributions to math, astronomy, and any science by people from Arabic culture over centuries. Even the mathematical “books” from ancient Greece first came to us by Arab mediation (if they were saved at all) via the Iberian PI. (There also may have been some less welcome things coming that way.) We also teach that the term “Algebra” is derived from an Arab expression. Is that right?
I can’t see, however, in what way the respect for different cultures should require to support stubborn specifics endangering the basis for global cooperation. That teachers in countries using one or another variant of Arabic will teach their pupils in that language should be expected anyway, independent of whether that language is “wonderful” or not.
I completely disagree, but if anything I wrote was looking like “hate speech” to anybody, I strongly regret the effect even if being contrary to my intentions.
I don’t hate anything but nationalisms - using the term in the more generalizing way George Orwell introduced with his “Notes on Nationalism”. Only recently I started to reconsider if this can (must?) rightfully include to “hate” the criminal and despotic gamblers basing their power on any kind of nationalism. You can easily get a list of hundreds of them without excluding any “culture” that exists or existed in the world.
Agree.
Please also consider my opinion, that nobody can rightfully demand to get exactly what he (f/m) wanted and nothing else. After all there is context everywhere, and we need to also respect different weightings by different people insofar. The current state of the world isn’t as it should be, and every field of human activities should contribute to improvements.
Unfortunately you didn’t provide the Math formulas from your image containing Arabic script in a LibreOffice file. Therefore I couldn’t experiment with the elements. In very rare cases, and wasting a lot of time it might be a way, to create a kind of frame consisting of mathematical symbols (opertators, placements, …) as an OLE object (Math), to use Draw to convert it to (e.g.) a “Metafile”, to flip the graphic horizontally, and then to combine it with graphical elements (textbox or other) introducing the script.
Much better concerning everything to be communicated as “clear information” would be to use globally harmonized standards. This will require to abolish some local/regional well-loved peculiarities, among them …
I personally am ready to change my writing direction to RTL if this is necessary to prepare for a better future.
Nothing is too ugly to exclude it if it can help to make peace. Nothing is wonderful enouigh to justify insisting on it if it is incompatible with dire necessity.
