Posted on 02/24/2008 5:51:09 PM PST by ventanax5
The Middle East had for thousands of years been more advanced than most of Europe. This situation didn't begin with the introduction of Islam. On the contrary: it ended with Islamization. The region we today call the Greater Middle East, which includes Egypt, Palestine, Syria, south-eastern Anatolia, Iraq, Iran and parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, is the seat of the oldest known civilizations on the planet and the source of many of the most important inventions in human history, including writing and the alphabet.
It is surely no coincidence that the first major civilization on the Indian subcontinent, the Harappan Civilization, arose in the Indus Valley in the northwest, i.e. closest to Sumerian Mesopotamia. A little understood culture at the Mediterranean island of Malta has left us with megalithic temples that may be the oldest freestanding stone structures in the world. Dating back to 3600 BC, they predate the pyramids of Egypt with a thousand years. Still, it is not a coincidence that literate European civilizations took root in lands that were geographically close to Egypt, the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia: The Minoan civilization at the island of Crete, later mainland Greece and the Balkans, then Rome. Even in the Roman Empire, the Eastern part was more urbanized than its Northern and Western regions, which is one of the reasons why the Eastern half proved more durable.
(Excerpt) Read more at brusselsjournal.com ...
...is that Islam has won.
Time for a Freeper in Eurpoe give some perspective on this.
Since the police have given up policing and the government has given up governing in Belgium - is Belgium an autonomous state like Kosovo?
Bump.
Thanks for posting Fjordman’s article. Outstanding!
I love how conservatives foolishly support Orientalists like the Lewis’s because the far left, Saidists, and Islamists attack them.
bump for later reading
Yes, Belgium is now an autonomous state like Kosovo, except that it gets to be the head of the EU now and then.
Islam has not won ... late in the day Europe will awake and resume its 2000 legacy of blood-letting.
Thanks! I always enjoy reading the Brussels Journal.
The Arbs beat the Persians ~ most through the hiring of Eastern Empire legions, but it was Arab money, Arab military strategy, and Arab leadership.
What you are forgetting is that a little event called The Dark Ages had begun circa 541 AD and destroyed the economy of most of Rome, as well as that of China, and a variety of other places. Western and Northern Europe were the most devastated. They were essentially abandoned for the next 500 years.
The Arabs pulled out of the Dark Ages in about 80 years, just like some of Byzantium. The Persians took a hit too, but they didn't have invading Slavs ~ just far less numerous Central Asians.
China, in contrast took 300 years to recover to the cultural and economic level it'd had in 540AD.
Western Europe took about 1000 years.
So, why did the Arabs in Mecca do in 80 years what took the folks in Western Europe 12 times as long?
Belgium has always had a well-deserved reputation for bad public records, bad public hygiene, and general sloppiness.
Great post!
Fills in what most of us took for granted with facts.
It was muslim murder, rape, enslavement, and pillage that brought the so called muslim golden age. A golden era made possible by the capture of Christian lands and Greek knowledge. Byzantium became the new Rome by the design of emperor Constantine as the Roman world became vulnerable through its own rot. Western and Northern Europe were always backwaters in the Roman world; the important areas were North Africa and Asia Minor. Western and Northern Europe were not so much devastated as they were never important. Many years passed as Western Civilization developed. Persia with its wealth and knowledge was captured only after ruious wars with Byzantium made both vulnerable to attack. However, the Dark Ages, a time of societal consolidation, did pass.
Unfortunately, muslims continue to live in the Dark Ages, worshiping evil including rocks in mecca and a primitive society espousing a death cult complete with slavery and misogeny. Muslim arab lands have the least productive people on earth. The low productive may only be genetic, a result of serious inbreed and goat heading. So, why won't the Arabs in Mecca leave the Dark Ages?
Yes, rapine and pillage ~ those were staple ingredients back then.
After that it was just one Turk after another until WWI. The Arabs obtained substantial liberty from the Allies who won that war.
They are, as it were, into their first 100 years of recovery after a nearly 1000 year long enslavement by a foreign power.
I supposed they might be excused for some degree of their screwups ~
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