The following quote from Billyblobber hits the proverbial nail fair on the head. This was made on another post, which has since been locked out (at least, I assume that is what the padlock symbol means!), so I will quote it here:
"Many of the problems with Muslim extremism are based on the geopolitical history in the areas in which it has taken hold; when it has similar amounts of time / generations exposure to Western lands / politics, it results in more liberal variants of the religion, over time, like all of the Abrahamic religions."
"Like all of the Abrahamic religions":
- Contrary to popular perception, not all branches of Christianity developed in contact with Western civilisation. An example of this would be the Coptic Church of Ethiopia (which led to the centuries old legend of "Prester John" - a mystical Christian ruler somewhere in the heart of the African continent). When the first European explorers finally managed to enter that part of the world in the early 19th Century, they observed great acts of barbarity being carrried out as part of Coptic rituals. (For further details of this, Alan Morehead's White Nile is very informative).
That Western civilisation subsequently went on to advance, whereas Arab civilisation was all but destroyed in the 13th Century has more to do with luck than it has to do with anything else. The Mongol invasions of the Arab world in 1256 AD, followed by the sacking of Baghdad in 1258, devastated Arab civilisation in the same manner in which the Mongols devastated all others that tried to oppose them. After a short siege by the Mongol armies, Baghdad surrendered - only to be completely devastated in retaliation. 800,000 of the city's population was slaughtered, and all the city's vast libraries were destroyed, including the "House of Wisdom" (an institution which at one stage had boasted the largest collection of books in the world). So great was the destruction of Baghdad's libraries that the Euphrates River was said to have been visibly stained by the ink from all the books that had been dumped into it.
Less well known is the fact that by then, Western Europe had already come within a hairsbreadth of receiving exactly the same treatment. In the autumn of 1241, Mongol armies invaded Central Europe and brushed aside all opposition just as easily as they had defeated all other enemies that they had encountered. The Hungarians were defeated at the battle of Mohi, and in the vast bloodletting that followed, 50% of the Hungarian population was killed. Simultaneously, other Mongol armies invaded Poland, and also carried out great slaughter and devastation, culminating with the battle of Legnica in April of 1241. During that battle, an allied Polish / German army received a decisive defeat, leaving Western Europe wide open to Mongol invasion.
That this did not happen was due to the sudden death of the Mongol leader, Ogedai Khan. Ogedai was a chronic alcoholic, who died shortly after daylight on the morning of 11 December 1241, following an all-night drinking session. With the death of the supreme Mongol ruler, all other sub-rulers had to return eastward to elect a new supreme leader. For whatever reasons, the successors of Ogedai Khan decided not to invade Western Europe, but instead to turn their attentions to the Arab lands to the southwest of the Mongol heartland. This left the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor free to continue their incessant squabbling, completely oblivious to the disaster that had all but overtaken them!
There is no natural, inherent superiority of Western civilisation over those of Asia (or anywhere else, for that matter). Nor did the rise of Western civilisation come about because of any superiority of its our "holy book" over those of others. Rather, Western civilisation firstly was able to revive, and then to go on to greatly advance, solely because it was spared the Mongol invasions that completely wrecked the then dominant civilisation, that of the Arabs.
That the Mongol invasion of Western Europe never eventuated was solely due to a certain beverage, chemical formula C 2 H 6 O, for which the Great Kahn developed an over-fondness for.
As the Australia comedian Kevin Bloody Wilson expressed it, "Praise be to Grog!"
Bill
