Re: OT: needed: witty facts re: positive aspects of Islamic culture

On Wednesday 09 April 2008 13:18, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> I would also like to point out to Stevo that many of the Middle East's
> great cultural advancements were actually made *after* they had
> adopted Islam.  So you can't really blame their subsequent decline on
> the religion, except perhaps indirectly via the Crusades. But even
> then, I'm not convinced Christendom wouldn't have found another excuse
> for the campaigns.  Religion makes a great scapegoat for war, a good
> way to whip the troops into a fervor, etc, but it's rarely the true
> cause...
And you'd be right.  The Eastern Roman Empire had basically sunk into a
recession as far as the sciences went.  And it had its stupid hostilities
with the Parthians/Sassanians/Persians, which restricted the cultural
contacts with the East and the Southeast.

The first Caliphate (Khilafah - delegated authority: in this case, Mohammed's)
shook all of that up, and allowed things to get interesting in the sciences
again.  Of course the Khilafah had its own problems, but being closed to the
sciences wasn't one of them, until after the Mongol invasion, when the Sunni
ulama declared "the gates of ijtihad (independent inquiry into judicial and
scientific etc matters) are shut."

FWIW, the Crusades were a major PITA to the Muslims in the Levant, as well as
the Christians in those countries, since far too often they were suspected of
divided loyalties; the Mongol invasion devastated the Mesopotamian and
Persian centres, and they were much more culturally vital then, so the impact
was much more severe; the Spanish Expulsions and Inquisition had an effect as
well, but lesser; what the Reconquista did was to throw much of the Western
Mediterranean Muslim society back on its heels.  A lot of the later Andalusia
had not been culturally vital.

Just my 0.02c

Wesley Parish

--
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-----
Gaul is quartered into three halves.  Things which are
impossible are equal to each other.  Guerrilla
warfare means up to their monkey tricks.
Extracts from "Schoolboy Howlers" - the collective wisdom
of the foolish.
-----
Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, what is the most important thing?
Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.