Until the advent of materialism and 19th c. dogma, Western Civilisation was superior to anything Islam had developed. Islam has not aided in the development of the modern world; in fact civilisation has only been created in spite of Islam. Proof of this resides in the 'modern' world and the unending political-economic and spiritual poverty of Muslim states and regions. Squatting on richer civilisations is not 'progress'. Islam is pagan, totalitarian, and irrational.
One of the great cultural-Marxist myths, is that Islam is a system of toleration and love – especially for the 'other'. This claim is absurd. The Koran has only 2% of its content with anything friendly to say; and that is for Muslims only. Islam was spread in the main by fanatical and fundamentalist Jihadic war. That is simply a historical fact. There is no system of ethics; no Golden Rule; nor does the Koran or Islamic liturgy contain the many Christian injunctions to free-will; free-exchange; individuality in life and in faith. Neither does Islam express any respect for non-Muslims; the female; or those who are different in outlook and temperament. There is none of the Christian discourse of universal brotherhood, respect, gratitude and broad minded toleration. No 'good Samaritan' story makes an appearance in the Koran. Islam and its un-holy book, is simply a political theocracy demanding control, power and unfettered prostration from its devotees.
Bruce Thornton scholar and commentator wrote this about the myth of Islamic tolerance – an often cited 'benefit' of the Arabian moon cult, named Submission. Islam's name should be a rather obvious statement about its intolerant intent:
As many historians have shown, the historical facts of Islamic rule in Spain and elsewhere belie these claims. The “proud tradition” would have surprised the several thousand Jews massacred in Grenada in 1066, or the 300 Christians crucified, per Koranic injunction, in 818 during a three-day rampage of killing and pillaging in Cordoba, or the 700 Christians slaughtered in Toledo in 806. These are just a few examples of numerous Muslim massacres of Christians and Jews in Spain, whose lives were circumscribed by prohibitions on everything from the sorts of animals they rode to the height of their houses.
Indeed how true it all is. Christianity is by its very design a pacific system of belief. Gibbon's rant and lie that the followers of Christ destroyed the Roman empire, does contain a kernel of truth. The cult of Christ demands tolerance, and is decidedly against war – at least in the liturgical and theological expressions and demands of the Christian faith. There are no adjurations in the preachings and life of Christ which commend violence, war, slave trading, concubinage, and plunder. The opposite is true with Islam of course. Anti-Semiticism as I wrote before, is an import from Islam. Intolerance towards the Jew only occurred in Christian countries after the invasion of European and Jewish-Christian lands by the Muslim jihad. From 400 AD to 1100 AD the broad relationship between the kindred faiths was not one of completer harmony, but rather one of low intensity acceptance and toleration. The same was not true of Islam. Literally hundreds of thousands of Jews and Christians were killed in holy war in North Africa and Spain. Hundreds of thousands more – perhaps millions – reduced to slavery and penury as second-class, highly taxed knaves.
Thornton goes on to say that:
Apart from these inconvenient facts claims of Muslim tolerance suffer from a failure to consider more thoroughly the very notion of tolerance. In fact, there are two kinds of tolerance: the tolerance of principle, and the tolerance of expediency. Confusing the two, as both apologists and propagandists for Islam do, amounts to a rhetorical bait-and-switch.
Islam does have a tolerance of expediency. This means that no sentient conqueror or ruler is going to kill all of the tax payers of the newly established realm. Neither will you, as the 'divinely inspired' empire-builder, castrate or crucify all of the able administrators of your new realm. You also would not murder all the merchants and traders who bring in profits and rents. This is common sense.
Muslims did work with Jews, Christians and pagans out of expedience – not out of respect. Male Muslims paid no tax. Someone had to pay the taxes, build the buildings, maintain the roads and public squares, collect the tithes, labor on the land.....This 'toleration' was entirely self-interested. Jews and Christians were not equals. They wore armbands or distinctive hats and garb. They could not build houses ove a certain height. They could not not marry a Muslim. They had to keep the social peace and recognize that Muslims were superior. Indeed the jiyza or poll/head tax was paid in public, with the local Muslim ruler ritually humiliating the 'dhimmis' as they paid their taxes. The Koran demands this. It states unequivocally that non-Muslims are inferior and must be publicly humiliated. As I wrote before:
The Jewish and Christian states were likewise far more civilised and modern than anything that the Arabs had ever seen. Straddling key trade routes these states showing precocious urban and engineering development, but were however, quite weak militarily and easy conquests for the Arabs. As with Persia, Jewish-Christian wealth flowed to the new Arab leadership and the Jews and Christians were either killed, taxed or deported [with their assets stolen by Arabs]. In any event by 900 A.D. the richest areas of the Near East and North Africa were in Arab hands. Such was the basis of the 'Islamic Golden Age'. In modern parlance we call it 'squatting'.
The Islamic and Muslim empire was of course hardly monolithic. It stretched across a wide area of the world. Arabs, Turks, Persians and others took leadership turns or established regional empires or sub-empires. Yet just because these states squatted on, and took advantage of pre-existing trade routes, urban centers, engineering development, and all manners of learning, does not make them 'enlightened' or advanced. Once the Arabs and their successors took over these lands what happened? What was developed and improved? What was invented? These are the key questions which are never answered.
Islam has been an unmitigated failure in every economic-social-spiritual and philosophical sense of that word. There was no golden age of Islam. There were no 'dark ages' of Europe, a period of 1000 years which created the basis for the modern world. Egypt in 900 AD did not even have the wheel. The Europeans had horse collars, deep ploughs, windmills, water mills, and advanced technology throughout the width and breadth of society and the military. The Muslims did not. Those are the salient facts. You don't create a wealthy state or system if you are 'intolerant' and 'closed'. Islam is of course an intolerant and autarchic-fundamentalist system. That is why Islamic lands are so impoverished and so illiterate. The Muslim system militates against anything that can be considered modern and tolerant.