Product details
Paperback: 200 pages
Publisher: New English Review Press (January 1, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0988477874
ISBN-13: 978-0988477872
In his new book The Impact of Islam, historian Emmet Scott explores the origin of the “progressive Islam” myth, and comes to some startling conclusions: It was Christianity, he finds, not Islam, which civilized barbarian Europe between the tenth and eleventh centuries.
What Islam did bequeath to Europe at this time was war, piracy, and a massive revival of the slave trade – just when Christianity had almost succeeded in killing it off. Even worse, by their example, the Muslims seem to have influenced the growth in Europe of several toxic ideas between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, ideas which were to have far-reaching consequences. Amongst these were the concept of “holy war” (utterly alien to Christianity), the use of violence to suppress religious dissent, the judicial use of torture, and the acceptability of violence against the Jews. All of these things were found in Islam before they were found in Christianity.
In addition to this, Scott finds that the Turkish conquests in Europe from the fourteenth century onwards severely stunted the development of those regions, and that the example of the Ottoman slave trade, which was massive, in all likelihood inspired the Spaniards and Portuguese to initiate the Atlantic slave trade during the sixteenth century.
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