Poll: Israel or Palestine?

[sapphi_snake]

badgenome said:

sapphi_snake said:

badgenome said:

sapphi_snake said:

Al-Andalus was an Utopia compared to the rest of Medieval Europe (it was better in pretty much every way). You gotta give credit where credit is due.

True, and the Jim Crow era was a "utopia" compared to the days of slavery (it was better in pretty much every way), but that doesn't mean there was anything laudable about it. But I guess you gotta give credit where credit is due.

Bad analogy, as my example was comparing contemporary countries, while you presented the same country in different historical periods. Criticising Al-Andalus is simply ridiculous, since the fact is that it was by far better than any other country in Europe at the time (it took the rest of Europe a long time to reach the same level). And it most likely would've been ahead constantly if it had a better army, wasn't torn by internal conflicts, and then destroyed by the Spanish. If you're gonna criticise Islam regarding Al-Andalus, then you should bash Christianity regarding the rest of Europe (which was in a miserable state at the time).

Uh... no. I did implicitly criticize Christianity by acknowledging that it managed to be even less tolerant at the time (though there were exceptions such as the Byzantine Empire which - much like Andalusia - vacillated between long periods of marked tolerance and fierce bouts of persecution). However, the Christians have made incredible progress in the intervening centuries. The Muslims have meanwhile been steadily eradicating pretty much every ancient Christian and Jewish community in their midst, so I'm not exactly inclined to heap praise on them because their forefathers were somewhat more tolerant than the wildly intolerant Christians about a millennium ago.

Well, one of the reasons Muslims are so backwards is that the conflicts Christians have caused them throughout time really didn't give them a chance to get their act together.