The Arab world, and Arabic history, is not homogenous. Some Muslim nations were very progressive, others were very backwards. Just like non-Muslim nations, really.
There was definitely a period when western Europe was very backwards whereas a lot of meaningful and important progress was made in Muslim countries. There have been Islamic empires that were relatively tolerant about differences, and certainly didn't destroy everything they deemed heretic.
We have a strong tendency to generalise: everything that's a bit distant from us has to be either one thing of the other thing. We're terrible at nuance, yet it's vital in order to understand history.
Islam was the religion of a pretty varied number of empires over centuries. Within those centuries you will find many examples of brutality as well as real triumphs for humanity. Islam in particular has strong views about supporting the poor in society.
You can look at every single culture or person and you are gonna find a mixed bag. It's hard to argue that Islam did not at some point contribute greatly to progress unless you are viewing the actions of people a millennium ago in light of modern morals and knowledge.
You make a great point. The Arab world (and, to a lesser degree, the Byzantine Empire) preserved and continued Western progress. For a long time, Baghdad and Beijing (and, quite possibly, Alexandria) were centers of the civilized world.
By the Enlightenment, the great ideas were coming from all over-- American Indian civilizations, pirate ship organizations, the Arab world, and (later) the East. The (mostly American?) idea that the bulk of progress came from a bunch of bigoted Puritans is pure credit-taking. They played a role, but a small one compared to Parisian salons.
In fact, the Pilgrims had the opportunity to "live in religious freedom" in the Netherlands and left because it was too liberal.
Counter point: Islamic empires until the Ottoman empire collapse post WWI. They flourished, yet were not "progressive" in the modern Western sense of the word.
"Muslim world" is somewhat misleading glamorizing generalization in all such statements. Pretty much all examples which are used as a proof of the MW comparatively advanced stage at early medieval times come from Iran/Persia, and Middle East. Both were very much advanced well-before Arab conquests, and simply continued to be so. There were many other parts of MW which were much below that level, or which to tge contrary experienced devastation, and decline as a result of the conquest. The Christendom was very uneven too, of course. And lots if people lived in mud huts in both realms.
Also, blaming Mongols as if they were the sole destroyers is absolutely incorrect.
Let's not forget that the Islamic world was key (though not alone) in preserving our scientific and cultural knowledge.
At that time, Islamic society was quite modern and tolerant - and even often the destination for persecuted religious groups such as the Jews in Spain.
It is absolutely clear that modern Islam is, in fact, much more "conservative" than it used to be in the beginning. Indeed, the very beginning of Islam was a radically progressive movement in the region. It freed slaves, it gave rights to women, it treated with other religions and it abhorred hereditary and even defacto differences between humans. Many of the things that we now find so backwards were a) not as strict at the time and b) much more advanced than other societies in the region.
A good example is the difference between the initial Islamic state and the Persian empire. The Persians didn't even fully understand that they were dealing with a sort of grassroots movement, and were constantly trying to find the equivalent of a high status ruler to talk to. But early leaders in the Islamic world were completely different, living in normal or even poor circumstances and operating in a much more democratic manner than was the norm.
Later, these societal properties were the reason that the Arabic world was able to preserve and advance science and culture. Sadly, this did not last into this century, but the reasons for this are complex and almost surely political.
I say this is important to remember because we need to realize that religion and - further - ethnicity (and of course race) are not ingrained attributes determining who is conservative. We need to remember that there was a time when Islam was the paragon of reason and rationality, while Christianity was the embodiment of fanatic action.
In the end, it is all politics, not the people. We do well to remember these things, because it keeps us from condemning other cultures, as it so often happens!
To go even further: I imagine if the Arab world was politically unified with Europe today, there'd be a lot of people saying that it was always a unified Mediterranean cultural entity, sharing Monotheistic Abrahamic religions, Greek intellectual foundations, and having a long-term shared history in the Roman world. It's not a point of view commonly encountered today, though, probably because Europe and the Arab world aren't politically unified.
That is to say, if you decide that a region should be seen as unified (perhaps because of modern political boundaries), one can cherry-pick common elements to try to reach that conclusion. It's not entirely incorrect, but it's a biased way of presenting the evidence in order to justify a preconceived belief.
You seemed to have popped out of the proverbial woodwork and that too of a most malodorous kind.
If you want to engage in a discussion on this topic, don't hide behind anonymity, understand properly what has been written and don't use ad hominem attacks.
For your edification w.r.t. my comments; there is a lot to unpack but here are the highlights for you to research on :
a) Arabs as a Ethnic group who originated in a particular "backward" geographical area.
b) Islam as a religion/philosophy/political/social framework which originated with them. Note also that Islam is the youngest of the major abrahamic religions.
c) Conquest of neighboring "advanced" countries under the Islamic banner thus appropriating their achievements under the same. Do some research on the civilizations of these countries as they were before Islamic conquest.
d) Spread of these achievements to Europe who named it the mythical "Golden Age of Islam". Note that this also includes knowledge gained from other civilizations who were not conquered but whose knowledge was studied and spread by scholars (of various ethnicities) in the now large geographical area under Islamic rule.
The above is factual History and this is what is being pointed out.
Perhaps but to me this still implies the idea that the arab and muslim worlds are somehow mysterious in the West.
I don't know how true that was in the USA but certainly Europe has had more than a thousand years of intimate contacts with the arab world, which is not mysterious at all.
Well most of the Islamic age progress was mostly done by Persians and Turkic folks rather than Arabs, out of which none of the scholars were based in Saudi Arabia of all places.
On the other hand, Arabs were extremely good at racial name calling (calling Persians Ajami, and calling chess evil and shit).
Later caliphs f.ex. among the Ottomans were quite progressive particularly politically. But you are right. I just note that there have been different standards, and for a time the prevalent standard was not opposed to science, learning and culture.
The arab conquests were like ~700, we're talking about hundreds of years later. I think 'the muslim world' can take some credit for developments on that timeframe.
Seriously jacquesm? I'm truly shocked at this coming from you. I have a lot of respect you & love reading your stuff, but really?
"Christianity experienced enlightenment and Islam did not"?
Surely you're not so ignorant as to dismiss the thousand years where the Islamic world was the abode of knowledge, science and civilization while Europe was in the dark ages.
Yes, shit sucks for them now. But to say they never experienced enlightenment (btw, the effects of the Islamic world on the "enlightenment" is well known). Part of the problem is that we're not over our colonial instincts. Just look down on the other cultures, we're obviously the best. Our country, our people, our skin color, right?
I've read about outwardly atheist and vocal scientists and philosophers from the 1100's in the Islamic world. And he was pretty revered (although today they wouldn't be able to walk down the streets of most Muslim countries with their head intact).
Many of our principles are borrowed from Islamic civilization that preceded us. It's the equivalent of dismissing Egyptians and saying their problem is that they never achieved civilization like us.
I still can't express how shocked I am at the shallowness of your comment. I really hope it is because you're upset.
EDIT: btilly was kind enough to point out where I misinterpreted what jacquesm was stating. I took his comment as a slight, whereas it was far better thought out observation.
The "core of the religion" obviously supported greater knowledge for roughly 500 years. That's a fairly long time. And yes, they were conquerors. But historically who wasn't in 800-1200 AD? Remember, one of the reasons the Islamic Golden Age ended was that Baghdad was conquered by the Mongols. (We've had a relatively stable world map since World War II... that's historically pretty rare.)
I do think that the last 750 years of the Arab world have been dominated by more stronger church-oriented viewpoints, which is unfortunate for the advance of ideas. But that does not imply extreme intolerance per se or radical violence. To be honest, I don't know anything historically as radical as Saudi Wahhabism or its terrorist spin-offs (well, nothing so "mainstream" at least). The Ottoman Empire and Mughal Empire, as far as I know, displayed some tolerance towards different religious sects (although they were never equals and tolerance varied wildly on the ruler), and the justice / law system in place seems roughly close to what the Christian world had before the Renaissance / Enlightenment days. The forced conversion stats you are quoting are, as the Wikipedia article says, controversial... and the times were different anyways.
Today, although the human rights of many Islamic countries are wretched, I certainly can think of several of non-Islamic countries with worse human rights problems, compared to Islamic countries such as Jordan, India, post-revolution Tunisia, or heck even a middle-of-the-road semi-violator like Indonesia. (See: Congo, North Korea, pre-reform Mynamar)
That's not to excuse the fact that a large portion of Islam nations suffer from wretched human rights. But, again I will ask you: if you really believe that Islam is fundamentally violent and this fact can't be changed, what's your solution to this? Personally, I believe that thought pattern is rather dangerous. This is what 1.6 billion people believe. Are you condemning all of them?
If the focus was more narrow, like Wahhabism, that's a different story: Wahhabism has touched a lot of radical Islamic terrorist groups, and Wahhabism is clearly a religious tool of the Saudi state. Now, many Western countries like the United States are allies with Saudi Arabia. If we were really concerned about Islamic terrorism, you'd think we'd be rather concerned about this relationship. (There's political reasons behind this relationship, of course...)
And you cannot understand the "tolerant" period in the middle east without realizing that that period happened with a partially muslim government, but with the society very much an eastern roman society.
1) Barely any muslims at all. The actual society was near 100% Christian at the time with small concentrated pockets of Judaism, and a muslim army concentrated in the capital.
All of the organisations that made the golden age happened, almost without exception, were Roman organisations that existed before the muslim invasion and got more freedom to operate. It ended they started getting systematically killed.
Even so, immediately the dhimma system was introduced. If that's what people call tolerant, then why not say that Nazis were very tolerant of the Jews ? It's essentially the same thing.
2) Even so, this muslim government itself was not tolerant, given for example it's treatment of institutions of learning. Yes they did not just go out and directly destroyed all of them, but ...
In 642 AD, Alexandria was captured by the Muslim army of Amr ibn al `Aas. Several later Arabic sources describe the library's destruction by the order of Caliph Omar.[34][35] Bar-Hebraeus, writing in the 13th century, quotes Omar as saying to Ya?ya al-Na?wi: "If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them."[36] Later scholars are skeptical of these stories, given the range of time that had passed before they were written down and the political motivations of the various writers.[37][38][39][40][41]
While the library was notorious for political interference, keep in mind that it recovered from every attack except this one, mostly because the previous destructions of the library did not involve a massacre (they were not bloodless either, but there is a large difference). The muslims killed everyone they could find in a large area around it before burning it.
Muslims, during the golden age, made a habit of killing scientists. Yes there were a lot of scientists during that period, but to say that the muslim part of that society tolerated them is stretching the truth beyond recognition.
3) Massacres were very likely a common occurence. While not much history is known from that period from Egypt), this is from Spain, same government (more or less), same time period, same "Golden age" :
I see that you have expressed both sides to some degree however I find what you say a mischaracterizes the history significantly. There was very little tolerance of muslims when the reconquista happened, muslim rule had a much wider degree of tolerance for the era despite not being up to modern standards.
This is from a student journal so you can follow the link and look up their citations but this quote sums up what I want to express.
"In contrast, other scholars may argue that the position of minorities under the Ottomans was lenient compared to minority treatment elsewhere in the world, such as in certain parts of Europe. According to Edward Said, abuses of “Orientalism,” which he described as a Western way of “dominating” or “restructuring” the history of the Middle East because of prejudice against Arab-Islamic peoples, has caused a misconstruction of the historical narrative.2 According to Bruce Masters, Westerners were typically biased against Muslims, and often distorted realities in the relationships between Christians, Muslims and Jews under the Ottoman Empire.3 As such, it must be noted that historical interpretations, or misinterpretations, must be intensely scrutinized when discussing the position of Jews and Arabs under the Ottoman Empire."
A fair assertion. Also, it is important to note Adam Smith et. al. got many of their ideas from the Islamic world (credit economy and such), not from Protestant reforms. Popular history seldom gives the Islamic world the credit it deserves for influencing later progress in Europe. There's a good case to be made that in the absence of Arab advances, Europe would have remained mired in feudal states and regional economies for a much longer time.
Whether the reader finds this change positive or negative ... reflects their views on the merits of nationalism, and ultimately globalism.
But that is the thing; it wasn't a two-way street. When a country/culture is conquered by the sword, they don't have a say in how their culture is suppressed/destroyed/distorted; the conqueror can rewrite history as he chooses and that is exactly what has happened with Islam. In fact some folks have called Islam as merely an "Intermediate Civilization" between Greek/Roman and Renaissance periods (see Between Hellenism and Renaissance—Islam, The Intermediate Civilization by S.D.Goitein).
An analogy that i make is - Arabs : 7th-12th centuries :: Mongols : 13th-15th centuries.
Both were "primitive" in comparison to the cultures they conquered, but were indispensable in acting as a conduit for the spread of ideas from one part of the world to another.
There was definitely a period when western Europe was very backwards whereas a lot of meaningful and important progress was made in Muslim countries. There have been Islamic empires that were relatively tolerant about differences, and certainly didn't destroy everything they deemed heretic.
We have a strong tendency to generalise: everything that's a bit distant from us has to be either one thing of the other thing. We're terrible at nuance, yet it's vital in order to understand history.
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