J.A. Morris, just for the sake of accuracy.

Submitted by Moshe (Israel), Sep 27, 2006 at 04:54

You claim that "The theory that a great Islamic civilization ever existed is delusional". I think that this claim is unfair and ignoring well documented and known historic facts.

To support your claim you state among others that: "the Muslim savages busted out of the Arabia Peninsula and proceeded to conquer other established civilizations." This is very true. However they were not worse than the other Asiatic barbarian savages who conquered Europe 200-300 years earlier while destroying the Roman Empire, which was also "a very well established civilization".

It looks like initially the Muslims were much more diligent pupils than the barbarians who conquered Europe. The Muslims learnt to read the books which they inherited (robbed if you like it better), and used their knowledge to advance sciences like astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy. While in the period of the darkest Middle Ages, the emerging European Christianity was routinely burning books (and also witches and heretics) the only places where lights remaining from past civilizations were still shining could be found in the more affluent Muslim World. If you add to it their initial successes on the battle fields, you cannot negate the right of the Muslims to consider that period as a glorious past.

The real problem of the Muslims is their miserable present. And the problem of the rest of the civilized world is that with time, the Muslims have degraded their culture into a cult of violence, death, and destruction. The Turkish Empire which was the last Islamic world power degraded into "the sick man on the Bosphorus". Luckily for the Turks, they had an Ataturk who understood correctly the curse which Islam has brought upon his country.

"Hungary, particularly, was ruined, plundered and ravaged and took 200 years to recover from the Muslim occupation."

That's correct. Rumania and the rest of the Balkanic countries are still recovering from it.

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