Has some one explored this hypothesis

Submitted by Rajeev (United States), Oct 3, 2010 at 17:21

Dear Dr Pipes:

Two of your readers (McGarry and Othman) independently suggested that Islam is the cause of the poverty. I am wondering if this indeed could be true. What would our world had looked like if Islamic raids on the entire midlle east, in Spanish Europe, and in modern Iraq, Persia, and Western India had not taken place? What would the world have looked like if the people who invented a major religion Arabian penninsula had travelled east and west like Buddist monks or had just waited in their religious seminaries like ancient HIndu and Greek teachers? If Palestinians had proposed an Olive branch to resolve the problem with Jews with peace (even if we question the legality of Israel)?

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