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John Oakley's avatar

The West were the colonists and pirates, so we shouldn't be surprised that for the last 1000 years they were considered by the cradle of civilisation, to be savages. "As you sew, so shall you reap". Communication is what communicates ... so hadn't we better be more careful?

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David Pinder's avatar

My point, John, was that there ain't much to choose between any us so it is inappropriate to single out one particular group for praise or blame. (That said, I do think the British action on slavery is worthy of especial praise but I admit my bias.)

You say, "The West were the colonists and pirates ..." and frame it in the past 1,000 years. But what I have written about here predates any such activity by the West.

To give just one example, when the Library of Alexandria was sacked by Omar’s faithful in 642, six-tenths of a million manuscripts were reduced to ashes in the 4,000 baths of the city. A nine centuries aggregation of Hellenic and Semitic scholasticism was lost: "Caliph Omar believed the contents were either heretical or unnecessary."

That's one of the greatest acts of civilizational vandalism the world has ever known, and it was carried out in the name of Islam.

Then, of course, in 1299, the Ottoman Empire came into being, and that lasted right up until WW1. Along the way, in 1683, it was a damn close-run thing when the Polish king helped the West beat off the massive attack on Vienna.

"As you sow, so shall you reap", you say. Given the timeline, doesn't that suggest that it is more appropriately applied to the Islamic aggressors?

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