The Tragedy of a Non-Muslim West

The Corner @ National Review ^ | January 23, 2008 | Mark Steyn

[forkinsocket]

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[Kozak]

Mr Lewis better e careful what he wishes for. He just might get it now after all..

[MPJackal]

Now that is amazing. How could anyone look at Islam and think we would be better off having lived the past 1300 years under its repressive control?

[VR-21]

It's a good thing for Mark that we don't (yet) have an American "Human Rights Commission."

[Madame Dufarge]

the economic, scientific and cultural levels that Europeans attained in the 13th century could almost certainly have been achieved more than three centuries earlier had they been included in the Muslim world empire."

Indeed.

[domenad]

How the hell could any individual look at the contrasting development of the Islamic world and the Western world and say things would have been better but for victory? How does an individual so dumb manage to breathe while he sleeps?

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Yeah, we'd have all that great Iranian technology and the best of Wahabbi fashion.... Don't forget that soccer stadium in Kabul.

Kiss Chaucer, Aquinas, Chartres cathedral,Shakespeare, Bach and Beethoven goodbye though. Proust, Victor Hugo, and Henri Bergson would have had to write in Arabic. It gets complicated...

Bad news for Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, and Bergman.

[Cyber Liberty]

Still, it's fair to wonder why, if that's true, the West ended up with the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Revolution and the Islamic world got chronic underdevelopment, a pervasive religious obscurantism, Al Qaeda and the trust fund states of the Arabian peninsula?

I hear an answer rattling around the liberal blogosphere: If Islam were universal, then the Arab part of it would not be in grinding poverty and ignorance. It's because of the "Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Revolution" in the West that allowed the West to keep the poor Islamists stupid, see? Had Islam been allowed to overrun the world in the 7th century, then we'd be much more advanced today, probably flying around with cool jetpacks and beheading infidels with rayguns.

[domenad]

Let’s run down the list:

1. Economically retarded - perhaps this is the only somewhat true one - Islamic countries traded very freely and had flatter systems of taxation that allowed individuals to accumulate more wealth than the resulting feudal Europe (after you pay your tithe for being non-Muslim of course).

2. balkanized and fratricidal - Um, Sunni vs. Shia? Anyone?

3. hereditary aristocracy - last I checked, Saudi Arabia was one of the few countries with a true ruling aristocracy

4. persecutory religious intolerance - You have got to be absolutely bullcrapping me

5. cultural particularism - You have got to be phenomenally bulcrapping me

6. perpetual war - You were bullcrapping me. I knew it.

[domenad]

I say bring back Vlad “the Impaler” Tepesh. He knew how you handle Muslims spoiling for a fight.

[Trailerpark Badass]

mark for later

[Cicero]

Recently hired by NYU. He has won an extraordinary number of prizes and honors, as you might expect for a radical leftist. His field appears to be African-American history.

His CV is here; it’s a .pdf file.

http://silverdialogues.fas.nyu.edu/docs/CP/301/LewisCV.pdf

[JasonC]

Start from the premise that humanity is a cancer of the biosphere that merits extinction, and it all makes perfect sense.

[wideawake]

defining itself in opposition to Islam, made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, persecutory religious intolerance, cultural particularism and perpetual war . . .

I'm not sure how adopting all those things represents opposition to Islam, since they are all hallmarks of it.

[Cicero]

What do you know? At the bottom of his CV, it says, “Born in Little Rock, Arkansas.”

Must be something in the water down there. (Apologies to Freepers from Arkansas.)

[forkinsocket]

His field appears to be African-American history.

Ah. That explains his hatred of western civilization.

[Charles Martel]

In other words, the West would be better off if it had been incorporated into an all-conquering Islamic empire in the early Middle Ages.

This was the lament of certain high-ranking Nazis (who were obviously quite ignorant as to the nature of Islam... they fantasized about a world in which the Nazis bent Islam to serve them).

[tacticalogic]

Kiss Chaucer, Aquinas, Chartres cathedral,Shakespeare, Bach and Beethoven goodbye though. Proust, Victor Hugo, and Henri Bergson would have had to write in Arabic. It gets complicated...

I suppose it is somewhat simplified if over half your population is illiterate...

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

There is the usual neglect of the civilizing influence of Christianity. Immigrants are not flocking to places like France, England, Germany, and Italy because they are less advanced or more technologically backward.

[GATOR NAVY]

Had Islam been allowed to overrun the world in the 7th century, then we'd be much more advanced today, probably flying around with cool jetpacks and beheading infidels with rayguns.Cool!