the triumph of the literalists was the tipping point into the Islamic Dark Ages
But of course. The koran is a violent, racist, hate-filled book, full of commands to hunt and kill the infidel. The more literally it is taken, the more savage the adherents become.
On the other hand, as the Bible was pried from the exclusive grasp of the medieval Church, and placed in the hands of the people - in their own languages - Christian Europe emerged from the Dark Ages.
And a beautiful butterfly the People's Europe turned out to be.
Chartres Cathedral is the architecture of the Europe's Dark Golden Age. Burned down many times and each time re-built by anonymous men, even more expressive than before.
Europe, liberated from its it's hairy, barbaric popery, does not build such questionable follies any more.
The civilization that engineered the sleek, antiseptic, bulky rectangles on the tip of Manhattan island will NOT be able to prevail, in the long run, against it's many enemies. It's too fragile--too rootless. But maybe, with some sort of miraculous intervention, the civilization that inspired the tiny church at the base of the Trade Towers--crushed in the collapse--will.