I shudder to think

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Aug 16, 2012 at 02:00

Dear Dr Pipes:

Peter Hall correctly points out the "early" Islamic inventions happened soon after Islam conquered a country. Mr Hall cites the examples of Spain, Constantinople and India.

I shudder to think what our world would have looked like if Islam had never reached India and Persia. When Islam reached India, Indians were playing with a decimal number systems and had already used zero in a positional number system. Non-violence as a way of living proposed by Hindus and Buddhists (and also by Christ), may have started a period of superior growth and scientific, philosophical and spiritual inventions if Islam had not reached India. In fact, Muslims invaders got the honor of destroying two famous centers of Hindu/Buddhist learning (Taxila and Nalanda). Since the arrival of Islam, Indian history has been the history of an endless series of wars and violence. Before the arrival of Islam, there were many centuries of peaceful cultural and religious exchanges between India, Persia, China, and Greece. If these exchanges had not been disrupted by Islam, perhaps, our world might have seen unprecedented prosperity and growth.

The above is, of course, a hypothetical scenario but an equally valid question applies to our current time. I also shudder to think what the world would have looked like if the amount of oil that exists in Islamic world would have existed in almost any other country of the world instead. I think Australians, Chinese, Indians, Europeans, Americans, Brazilians and almost anyone else would have put that oil wealth to better use than its current owners.

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