Islam has created very little. A theological fascism in which the individual is but a tool of a moon god is hardly the cultural ethos which breeds brilliance and civil society advancement. Realistic and clear thinkers understand this. In Understanding Human History, Michael H. Hart evaluates the Islamic world and his conclusions reflect the reality of an impoverished ideologically inane system which denies natural law, rights, the truth, and the world of the 5 senses.
This book helps make up for his erroneous early assertion that Muhammad was the most important person in history. He isn’t. one of the most psychotic and deranged, yes. One of the most fascistic and intolerant and sex-addled yes. A typical robber-brigand-low life, yes. But important? Not in the context of civilisation – unless you are assessing the impact on civilisation by the barbarian cult of Muhammad.
Hart makes some important points which are lost in an age of Moslem-worship; and genuflection to massive statism and governmental control; not to mention eco-fascist hysteria. Islamic society with its clear hierarchy and division of the world into Muslims and non-Muslims must militate against all forms of civil, social, economic and scientific advancement. You cannot have a closed, unbending ideology where state and church are melded together and where the principal impetus is jihad and expansion to have the globe ruled by the Meccan moon cult; and expect anything other than war, backwardness, poverty, racism, supremacism and stupidity.
Hart makes the case that non-Muslim dhimmis under Islamic rule were worse than second-rate citizens. Non-Muslims are actually non-citizens and inhuman. Non-Muslims lack any civil, social or religious rights. This is true throughout Islamic history. It is an ugly, vicious lie that Arab culture or Islamic empires allowed for a multi-cultural harmony. Jews, Christians and non-Muslims were tolerated only for gold, taxation, women, slaves and as a focus of hate and racism.
As Hart recounts non-Muslims could never testify in court against a Muslim; own property; engage in trade outside of Muslim state control; walk on the same side of the street as Muslims; or ever dispute with a Muslim about any issue. These various humiliations, pressures and taxes on non-Muslims coerced many 'conversions'. Any human would make such a calculation. Convert and become a 'human'. Or stay committed to non-Islamic mores and remain a slave with no economic or social opportunities.
Thankfully Hart also dispenses with the nonsense that Muslims 'created the modern world'. Please. As he identifies Muslims invented nothing of value. Islamic 'scholars' made almost no major discoveries in mathematics and science, medicine or engineering, and certainly nothing comparable to printing and gunpowder in China in the Early Middle Ages or spectacles and mechanical clocks in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages. Muslims have never produced truly great geniuses such as Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler or Newton. Hart attributes this primarily to their lower IQ compared to Europeans, although the fascistic ideology of Islam is most likely to blame. Fascism is not exactly a cultural beacon to intelligence, inquiry or innovation.
What is likeable about Hart is his realism. The great sweep of Islamic intolerance which has cast an appalling chill over a huge swathe of the world is as Churchill so rightly noted a 'retrograde force'. Islam is primitive, irrational, fascistic and anti-humanist. It is impossible that such a set of 'un-cultural' factors can produce anything other than racism, supremacism, war and pillage.