To go a bit deeper, at its founding, Islam actually *was* more civilized than the tribalism that existed around it. This both gave it a selling point to about anyone, and the organization to overcome the existing systems.
However, this belief in its superiority is still there, even though it is plainly obvious to about everyone that it is an inferior way, compared to civilization. The end result is that Islam has taken up the mantle of barbarism against civilization, while still furtively asserting it is superior.
What really crippled Islam, however, was the Persian philosopher al-Ghazali, in the 11th and 12th Centuries. His philosophy was paradoxical, and ultimately fundamentalist: that Muslims should seek knowledge, which they were doing, but they should not seek knowledge outside of the Koran, the Tafsir and the Tawil, the books that explain it in detail, because “all knowledge” is contained within them.
It was with his philosophy and its related Persian xenophobia, that was the end of Islamic learning. It didn’t happen immediately, but spread throughout the ummah, and fortunately did not reach the great Islamic libraries in Spain until after the Christians had retaken the place.
In those parts of Islam already prone to primitivism, al-Ghazali was preceded by Salafism, best described as reverting in behavior and knowledge to the time of Mohammed, and then in the 18th Century by Wahhabism, which is also the embrace of severe primitivism, and utterly destructive of anything else, since. As soon as Wahhabis take over a decorated mosque, for example, they destroy all the art and whitewash the walls. They control Saudi Arabia, as well, and have even obliterated all historical traces of Mohammed and other artifacts. History bad.
And unfortunately for Muslims, the vast majority of Sunni Imams are trained in Pakistan, in Wahhabi madrassas schools. So no matter what Sunni sect, nor how modernist it is, they will likely get radical fundamentalist clergy, who will try to radicalize them, and recruit their children to go on violent jihad.
Fortunately, when barbarism fights civilization, barbarism almost always loses, for the simple reason that everyone can tell what works better. While this is less obvious in the West, in Africa, Islam is hemorrhaging followers who convert to Christianity. Voting with their feet.
And if you are reliant on brutality to keep your followers, you have already lost.
ping to a very informative post by yefr
to debate -- I wonder if that is always true -- after all the Moslem hordes invaded and took over the higher civilisations of India, Iran