Is this book THAT wrong as /pol/ says?

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Anonymous 08/14/15 (Fri) 13:25:42 231425 No.26093

>>26080

>Are Byzantines not a people of the book?

Yes they are

And it's still contradict the Kuran, your argument is invalid.

>Did Muslims have the capability to do so at the time?

Yes they had I think.

>It matters not whether it was cherry-picked or not as some Muslims still embrace it.

>some Muslims

every region,every religion,every sect, has a group that thinks different.

>>26090

>And the majority of muslims support them

Sure thats why they have 1.6 billion people in their armies right?

>don't mind them

sure,people don't mind IS who wants to blow up kaaba because IS thinks muslims worship it, or Talibans muslims kidnapping. Totaly don't mind yeah

Anonymous 08/14/15 (Fri) 19:48:58 464c3c No.26102

>>26092

>Shia controlled puppet government

>Iraq is majority Shia

No way, the US set up a government that appealed to the greatest section of society? What lack of perception, that a country half the way around the fucking world does not understand the intricacies of a nation whose borders make about as much cultural sense as a postcolonial african state!

>US is directly responsible

>placed the Shia controlled puppet government in power

Your previous statement contradicts your later one. the US helped start up a government, they didnt order it to execute Sunnis.

Furthermore, isnt there evidence to support the idea that IS is not in fact justified in their specific uprising, as they were not originally the Iraqi Sunnis, but rather an Al Qaeda splinter group. co-opting someone else's justified struggle does not automatically make your own justified, after all. this was the case for numerous instances, not the least of which was the Spanish American War.

also,

>There's no "good" or "bad" in the Middle East

same could be said of practically anywhere on the face of the earth, the Middle East is no grey waste of morality any more than Europe or Africa

Anonymous 08/14/15 (Fri) 22:01:21 a45e96 No.26108

>>26102

>No way, the US set up a government that appealed to the greatest section of society?

More like the US set up a government that gave proportional distribution of a federated system in theory, but put in who they thought to be a Yes-man that buddied up with our government to get himself the biggest slice of pie as the head of state. He then proceeded to undo any sort of fairness we had planned with head-spinning cronyism in both government and military positions. And when AQI started to take shape, absorbing all the people the US jettisoned as Baathists and the new Shia government expelled for their own goals, Maliki found his Iraqi army to be as big a joke as Stalin's Red Army right after his purges on the eve of Barbarossa. So he enlisted militia. Shia militia. Who retaliated against AQ and Sunni tribes with a near genocidal death campaign that further alienated the Sunni North/West.

We're pretty good at understanding the intricacies of a nation, really. What we suck shit at is vetting and understanding personal connections and motivations of the people we try to control by putting them into systems that should work in theory. It's a cultural thing for us as a country that live and die under mostly functional institutions, federalism, and social contracts. It's also why amateur armchair experts blame nebulous things like religion (Islam) or Arab culture and civics, for lack of any understanding of tribal politics, society, and personal and social pressures on the Iraqi individual.

>Furthermore, isnt there evidence to support the idea that IS is not in fact justified in their specific uprising, as they were not originally the Iraqi Sunnis, but rather an Al Qaeda splinter group. co-opting someone else's justified struggle does not automatically make your own justified, after all. this was the case for numerous instances, not the least of which was the Spanish American War.

Correct. What ISIS is to the Sunni Iraqis is an organization with the coherent leadership, funding, and material resources to elevate a Sunni coalition from a rag tag militia-fest to a powerhouse able to rival the government in Baghdad. ISIS is really just a fraction of this Sunni rebellion, and is mostly present on the front lines and in a handful of cities while local Sunni tribes and ex-Baathist/Iraqi Army rebels hold the rest. They're not friends, and really the only reason they haven't already taken Baghdad is because everyone expects a major free for all as soon as the capital falls between these Sunni groups.

Anonymous 08/14/15 (Fri) 22:15:43 c01db0 No.26111

>>26008

>>26009

>admitting your a /pol/ack

aaaaand your argument is considered null.

Anonymous 08/14/15 (Fri) 23:00:59 6c7c48 No.26120

>>26083

Here’s a question: Is the veracity of a statement dependent on its origin?

Do you agree or disagree with that statement?

>2)

You trivialized the destruction of Hindu temples. How else am I to take this?

>countless Christian, Jewish, and Hindu shrines and much older pagan ruins have survived into the modern age

As I've said, Christian and Jewish places of worship would be preserved as they are people of the book. As for the Hindu and pagan ruins, information would be appreciated.

>Yes there are. They're usually called myths.

Let me rephrase it slightly: Are there not events/people/etc that/who actually happened/lived and that/who were not documented until a long time after the fact?

>Two things: I thought Islam destroyed Classical literature?

I didn't say they destroyed all of it. They destroyed some of it. I will say that what I had said could have been more luculent. How else would we have obtained the classical literature that we had today if it were not for the Islamic Golden Age?

>Second, a love of classical literature is exactly the sort of reason someone like Baghdadi would record a legend like this.

What are you getting at?

>Arab literature and moralizing

Question: Is there any parable about burning books being bad/condemnable in Arab/Islamic/etc oral tradition (at the time)?

> if you're trying to extrapolate their [ISIS’] behavior to the general behavior of historical Muslim populations, you're flat wrong.

No, I'm not; see the dog-killings in bare naked Islam, or if you or f02410 get butthurt about that source, you can check these:

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2480/spain-dog-poisoning

http://www.chicagonow.com/steve-dales-pet-world/2015/03/muslims-object-to-dogs/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVoPrkX8Y5o

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5386/british-girls-raped-oxford

http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/14/muslim-gangs-continue-to-terrorize-55-neighborhoods-police-powerless/

>People do a lot of things…

Yes, but without the religion, they would not have the motivation to do CERTAIN things and to create CERTAIN things. I'll take your example: Without Christianity, Michelangelo would not have painted the Creation of Adam as that is a Biblical story.

>People are assholes cliché

Oh, is that why crime rates have been going up in relation to immigration in Europe? This might not be talking solely of Muslims, but they are a primary group of immigrants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime#Europe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_libraries#Human_action

In the years 651, 976, 1029, and 1151, libraries were sacked by Muslims. The books and the libraries themselves were destroyed under orders in three of them. Three (651, 976, 1029) of those three were done for the sake of Islam; the other one (1151) has no mention of whether it was motivated by Islam. However, the destruction of the Library of Alexandria is disputed. So I’ll concede that, sort of.

>your potential to genocide Jews and Native Americans.

Do you think I give a shit? And at least we would be left alone out of fear.

>So was the ERE and several European states leading up to the Peace of Westphalia. Hell, there were likely more theocratic states in the HRE than there ever were in the history of the Islamic Middle East.

In what ways?

>The Caliphate was not a government by religion, it was an imperium.

A caliph is still a political and religious leader, as it was the successor to the prophet Muhammad. Kings weren’t. The representative of Christ was the Pope, who, if I remember correctly, had to give consent to a king.

Anonymous 08/14/15 (Fri) 23:01:15 464c3c No.26121

>>26108

You understand the situation far better than I, sir, and for that I salute you. Admittedly though, the concept of trying to rebuild an entire nation, with a reshaped government and all, seems to me the most idiotic Sisyphean task imaginable, Its almost like one would need to break up these countries like British India, but that in itself holds irredentism problems as well as problems of resources and relative power.

but i must add,

>What we suck shit at is vetting and understanding personal connections and motivations of the people

would that not be the lack of understanding of the intricacies of a nation as well? I mean, if we cant understand the forces that drive the people and the context of their living environment, half or at least a third of the info we would need to make a beneficial governing structure is missing.

Anonymous 08/14/15 (Fri) 23:01:46 6c7c48 No.26122

File: 1439593306799.gif (1.22 MB, 320x180, 16:9, Yawn.gif)

>>26120

>>26083

cont.

Now, how about we look at this differently? After the fall of Rome, significant information vanished from Europe, which found its way in the Arab-speaking, thus, producing the Islamic Golden Age. Now, according to Wikipedia, it states that there are, essentially, three categorical reasons as to why it declined: economics, invasions, and the stifling of free thought. Now two of them are outside of their control, fair enough. But were those two permanent? Anyway, after its decline, Europe obtained the transcripts of classical works and started translating them; this eventually led to the Renaissance, which eventually led to Enlightenment. But what of the Middle East? What significant contributions did they make at the time? Where are they today? Riding piggy-back on the back of Europe and Asian countries?

Let’s go back to those three categorical reasons. If it were only those two and the third played so little of a part, then why have they not had their comparative Renaissance and Enlightenment? Why have they not contributed to science as they did in Golden Age?

I mean look at this:

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science

>In these [Islamic] nations, there are approximately 1,800 universities, but only 312 of those universities have scholars who have published journal articles.

>There are roughly 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, but only two scientists from Muslim countries have won Nobel Prizes in science (one for physics in 1979, the other for chemistry in 1999). Forty-six Muslim countries combined contribute just 1 percent of the world’s scientific literature

>Arabs comprise 5 percent of the world’s population, but publish just 1.1 percent of its books, according to the U.N.’s 2003 Arab Human Development Report.

>There was a modest rebirth of science in the Arabic world in the nineteenth century due largely to Napoleon’s 1798 expedition to Egypt, but it was soon followed by decline.

>…by 885, a half century after al-Mamun’s death, it even became a crime to copy books of philosophy. Times

inb4 s-s-stormfront blog

>>26111

>>admitting YOU'RE a /pol/ack

First, way to go on being an illiterate.

>aaaaand your argument is considered null

Second, you're a joke.

>>26085

>Yes I do

So you can provide proof of those claims?

Anyway I’m getting bored of this.

Anonymous 08/14/15 (Fri) 23:22:17 464c3c No.26127

>>26120

>without Christianity, Michelangelo would not have painted the Creation of Adam

well no shit he wouldnt have, but that example isnt one of religion being a motivator. what would have motivated him would be artistic expression and the pope's coin purse, if anything.

I wont say religion cant lead people to certain decisions, but RARELY is it the only factor in one's decision making.

also, while I'm thinking about it,

>In what ways?

look up the Archbishopric of Trier. it was an elector state of the HRE and was ruled by, well, an archbishop, a pretty clear sign of theocratic government. Trier was only one of several other states within the HRE that ran on theocratic regimes, and thats completely ignoring the secular power of the Papal state over central Italy.

by contrast we have the Islamic Middle east, which functionally were never (to my knowledge) under the rule of an imam. ruling out the Caliph, as, like anon said, his power was more secular than spiritual, sultans, emirs, and sheikhs dominate the political landscape of the premodern islamic world. its would be something along the lines of the English monarchy's relationship with the Anglican church

Anonymous 08/14/15 (Fri) 23:40:33 448f82 No.26128

>>26122

Well if you want to blame anything then blame the Ottoman Empire and then colonization by Britain and France, as well as the Jewish involvement. The Middle Eastern countries are developing, and their people are developing, so therefore the majority of Muslims have to develop with it.

Anonymous 08/14/15 (Fri) 23:42:40 448f82 No.26129

>>26122

I don't actually see the point in arguing whether black, Asians, Jews, Muslims, Christians and whatever the fuck, are dumber than white males. Like honestly, what is the point, nothing would change even if it was true and it's never going to be proven true. Just get off /pol/ and do something else with your life because living out of hate is no life.

Anonymous 08/14/15 (Fri) 23:46:57 a45e96 No.26130

>>26120

>Do you agree or disagree with that statement?

Interpretation is highly dependent upon the interpreter.

>You trivialized the destruction of Hindu temples. How else am I to take this?

I did no such thing. I trivialized nothing but an absurdity: that historical Muslim powers were more inclined to iconoclasm by nature than was normal.

>As I've said, Christian and Jewish places of worship would be preserved as they are people of the book. As for the Hindu and pagan ruins, information would be appreciated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hindu_temples_in_India

>Let me rephrase it slightly: Are there not events/people/etc that/who actually happened/lived and that/who were not documented until a long time after the fact?

Yes. Usually in legendary terms i.e. King Arthur. What makes this case even more concrete is that Umar is a pretty well known person. There's countless hadith and sira literature concerning him, and he turns up in several non-Muslim sources. And yet not one of them has ever mentioned him burning the LIbrary of Alexandria. And these are the kinds of sources that would literally take the time to describe his favorite kind of food. You're also arguing against the grain here: analogy is a well studied element of Arabic literature which regularly applies contemporary issues in classical terms. For the nearest comparison to European culture, see how European art regularly depicted Medieval and Renaissance figures performing Biblical or ancient history scenes i.e. the Israelites dressed as Medieval knights driving out the Canaanites, or Cesare Borgia becoming the face of Jesus Christ.

>I didn't say they destroyed all of it.

You said >destroyed classical literature

If you're now prefacing this with a qualifier, how does this make Islam any different than Europe's own history with haphazard treatment of the Classics?

>What are you getting at?

Baghdadi, like many Arab writers, wrote parables and analogies to teach moral lessons. Like a less furry version of Aesop's fables using personal anecdotes real, imagined, or with a hint of 'truthiness'. Baghdadi wanted to make a point about the wisdom of ancient literature versus blind fundamentalism.

>Question: Is there any parable about burning books being bad/condemnable in Arab/Islamic/etc oral tradition (at the time)?

None. Which is why you're reading its first instance in Baghdadi some 400 years after Umar's reign.

>No, I'm not; see the dog-killings in bare naked Islam, or if you or f02410 get butthurt about that source, you can check these:

None of these are related to ISIS. As I've mentioned here >>26108, Western observers with little understanding of either their immigrants or the Middle East fall back on vagueries often. Both immigrant violence and ISIS violence are acts of violence, but they are not the same kind of behavior any more than African bush wars are the same as African American ghetto violence. But this is not /pol/, and I'd rather we discuss historical subjects.

>Yes, but without the religion, they would not have the motivation to do CERTAIN things

Unknowable alt history. Michelangelo was an impeccable artist because of his talent. He is simply famous for the work his patrons wanted him to do. Western art had plenty of amazing things happening once religious art stopped being the most popular. Without Christianity, Michelangelo would have still been a superb artist. Similarly, without Islam, you'd still have gangsters and street thugs performing acts of violence.

>Oh, is that why crime rates have been going up in relation to immigration in Europe?

Yes. Not a /his/ topic however.

>In the years 651, 976, 1029, and 1151, libraries were sacked by Muslims

As the wiki says for 651, [citation needed]. You'll notice the story goes the exact same way as it does for Alexandria - i.e. a meme recorded centuries after the fact for contemporary reasons.

Now notice the other dates (1151 does not count, it was one empire sacking the capital of a rival). See how they all took place some 400 years after the initial Arab Conquest? And remember how I said writers like Baghdadi first started writing about the folly of book burning to describe contemporary events?

And I don't see how this helps the initial claim that Islam was the reason. The religion has a 1400 year old history in this region, and there are only two recorded instances on this list with a definite religious cause.

>In what ways?

Divine right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire

>the Emperor as a representative or messenger of Christ, … "One God, one empire, one religion".[176]

>A caliph is still a political and religious leader, as it was the successor to the prophet Muhammad. Kings weren’t.

Kings certainly were. It's literally where the phrase "by the Grace of God" comes from in European monarchy.

Anonymous 08/14/15 (Fri) 23:59:20 a45e96 No.26131

>>26121

>would that not be the lack of understanding of the intricacies of a nation as well?

In a way, yes. We don't see it that way as our paradigms involve institutions and systems, and we rarely ever incorporate fields like psychology and sociology when studying them. For some reason we only do this for ourselves.

>Now two of them are outside of their control, fair enough. But were those two permanent?

Pretty much. The centers of the Golden Age were Spain and Khwarezm. Catholic Spain conquered the former, and the Mongols burned the latter to the ground. Imagine what would have happened to the Renaissance and Enlightenment if, I don't know, Aztecs invaded and burned down Essex, the Rhineland, and Northern Italy and permanently turned these places into Aztec colonies shaped by Aztec political and material culture.

Why do you think religious conservatives started rising up in the Middle East at this time? Because they continually blamed godlessness as the reason why the Muslim world was being conquered from without.

>Why have they not contributed to science as they did in Golden Age?

Because up until the arrival of European powers, the whole Middle East was under the control of Mongol-Turkic dictators for over 800 years. How was Russia under the Tartar yoke?

>by 885, a half century after al-Mamun’s death, it even became a crime to copy books of philosophy.

[citation needed]

Also patently false. Many of the greatest philosophers of the Islamic world studied in the 10th century. How did Al-Ghazali even have anyone to complain about in the 12th century if copying philosophy was banned in the 9th?

The Muslim world is in a shitty place today. You don't need a stormfront blog to tell you this. You do however need something better to tell you why, and especially how it got there.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 00:08:15 a45e96 No.26132

>>26122

>http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science

A caveat: My comments on this article are only in regards to certain small details about the subject of decline in the Arab world. The article itself is very good, and simply has the the same kind of generalizations and lingering old theories presented as probable fact that all populist history articles tend to have.

Also, there is nothing stormfront about The New Atlantis. This time at least you did well not copy-pasting questionable content from BNI or GatesofVienna. Continue the trend and you'll be better off for it.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 03:39:11 84ed51 No.26134

File: 1439609951164.jpg (40.52 KB, 634x274, 317:137, racist-map.jpg)

>>26129

I'm not even the guy you're arguing with, but your response is just very disingenuous.

>>I don't actually see the point in arguing whether black, Asians, Jews, Muslims, Christians and whatever the fuck, are dumber than white males.

It's relevant to the study of geopolitics, geo-economics, public policy and evolutionary psychology to name a few things.

>>Like honestly, what is the point, nothing would change even if it was true

It can actually, because countries, like Singapore, China and to a lesser extent S.Korea and Japan have no qualms about eugenics.

And if non-white peoples start accepting racial and genetic differences then white countries will look like Luddites for not accepting them.

>>and it's never going to be proven true.

PISA scores say otherwise.

>>Just get off /pol/ and do something else with your life because living out of hate is no life.

>>muh hate

>>muh bigotry

>>muh discrimination

A lot of /pol/ is actually non-white, like me, you racist bigot poo poo head. :^)

Most of the world is racist, friend. What you call hate is perfectly normal human behavior.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 03:50:06 c01db0 No.26135

File: 1439610606376.gif (534.82 KB, 640x636, 160:159, 1437666907037.gif)

>>26122

>haha look at me, I am obviously superior because I can see grammatical flaws in something that I can't refute

Kill yourself mate.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 04:49:55 6c7c48 No.26138

>>26135

>can't even spell and use punctuation correctly in a short fucking shitpost, which, if it had been longer, I may have excused, but it wasn't.

>implying you even had an argument to refute

Try harder, faggot.

As for the others who have responded to me fairly, I'll get them to some time later, and I'll check into that Triers thing.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 05:12:44 a45e96 No.26140

File: 1439615564794.jpg (185.03 KB, 1015x1279, 1015:1279, HRE_Dioceses_Prince-Bishop….jpg)

>>26138

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electorate_of_Trier

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electorate_of_Cologne

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electorate_of_Mainz

Basically, bishops became feudal lords in the Frankish regime (they are already administrators in the failing WRE), ultimately leading to three major HRE electors as archbishops for centuries. Across Europe plenty of other ecclesiastic baronies and principalities existed, too, such as Avignon, Utrecht, Münster, The Teutonic Order, Aquileia, Metz, Augsburg, Bremen, Liège, Durham, and so on.

Comparatively, Muslim states had historically no imams or ayatollahs as feudal or independent princes except in very rare cases, such as a Shia heresy.

Hell, when the Ayatollah Khomeini took over Iran, he had to write a manifesto justifying his move, and most of its philosophical points comes from Plato's 'Republic' since mainstream Shia theology does not have a history of ecclesiastic statehood to argue from.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 05:21:24 a45e96 No.26141

>>26138

>>26140

Also, the Middle Ages was full of conflict between the Pope and various European princes over who had the right to rule the church in each jurisdiction. Centuries of civil war erupted in the HRE over this, and England split off entirely to form the Anglican Church over the matter.

By the way, the English crown is also the head of the Anglican Church, and there might just be about as many priests in British Parliament as there are clerics in the Iranian parliament these days.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 07:05:41 c01db0 No.26143

File: 1439622341760.jpg (8.86 KB, 221x255, 13:15, 1431691328296.jpg)

>>26138

>>can't even spell and use punctuation correctly in a short fucking shitpost, which, if it had been longer, I may have excused, but it wasn't.

>implying it shouldn't be the other way around

>>implying you even had an argument to refute

>not even being able to read a short post about how /pol/ discredits your entire argument, or as you call without backing up anything a"shitpost"

tl;dr, fuck off /pol/.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 07:51:52 84ed51 No.26145

>>26143

No, you fuck off. So far all you've contributed nothing to this discussion other than saying that people from /pol/ have no valid opinions, and attempting to troll >>26138

Okay, great. Now, if you have nothing else to add then fuck off.

I'm non-white and I don't even care about /pol/, but you morons are as idiotic as the stormfags that you claim to hate much.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 12:53:36 5da47b No.26153

The storm kikery ITT is the demonization of the Dark Ages all over again.

All what was posted under the Rhodesian flag was basically the same load of crap Humanist wrote about the Dark Ages:

>X were ignorant, primitive, violent, had low tech, X's philosophical development was on hold and X also smelled like shit until Y came and has enlightened them.

Same load of crap.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 14:09:30 5cdba9 No.26156

>>26141

Yeah, but British priests don't believe in God, they just follow official government policy. That's how the Church of England has worked since they government took it over. When the government became atheist, so did the church.

Clerics do run the Iranian state.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 14:13:04 a45e96 No.26157

>>26156

Give it time, like Britain. The first Malis had 50% of seats occupied by clerics. Today it's 14%.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 20:18:09 c01db0 No.26181

>>26145

>No, you fuck off. So far all you've contributed nothing to this discussion other than saying that people from /pol/ have no valid opinions, and attempting to troll >>26138

>implying saying people from /pol/ are retarded "muh master white rase" isn't a necessary thing to point out

>I'm non-white and I don't even care about /pol/

I doubt this, due to this being an anonymous network and all.

Anonymous 08/15/15 (Sat) 20:22:09 d9a12e No.26182

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>>25738

>The first European travelers to reach Benin were Portuguese explorers in about 1485. A strong mercantile relationship developed, with the Edo trading tropical products such as ivory, pepper and palm oil with the Portuguese for European goods such as manila and guns.

>mfw nogs have been obsessed with bling since time immemorial

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 03:32:11 50b5f4 No.26210

>>26181

>>implying saying people from /pol/ are retarded "muh master white rase" isn't a necessary thing to point out

If you're so sure of this statement then there's no need to point it out, is there?

>>I doubt this, due to this being an anonymous network and all.

Pilipino ako pare. Kaya i-Google Translate mo ito: Isa kang baklang gago.

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 04:07:20 5029d9 No.26218

Scott Locklin had written about Diamond's tome some time ago. It's worth reading:

>I read "Guns, Germs and Steel" some years ago, and provided many "aha" moments. Diamond's explanations are extremely compelling, even to someone with more than a passing education in history, geography and historiography. Of course, they are all a "just so" story, rather than an accurate representation of how things turned out. Geography *of course* is important in the historical development of different nations and civilizations. Is geography (along with associated factors of agricultural technology, domesticated animals and his pained explanation about why Europeans were better with guns than the Chinese who invented them) the only factor in why Western Civilization grew to dominate others? Of course it isn't. Europe had no unique access to these things: Asian civilizations had arguably superior such advantages.

>Victor Davis Hanson makes a similar "one factor" argument in his book "Carnage and Culture." Hanson's argument is that Westerners are simply better at war than other civilizations, because most Westerners were influenced by the Ancient Greeks, who developed a superior method of combat and of developing innovations than other nations did. Is Hanson's theory 100% the One True Answer? No, the rise of Japan and the invincibility of Mongol raiders rather puts his theory to fault, but it's at least as important as geography. There are all kinds of "one factor" arguments possible, all of which could make for as convincing a book as this one.

>Victorian historians thought it was the vigor of "Nordic" civilizations which made Western world domination inevitable: also convincing if that was the only book you had read on that particular day, and also ultimately deeply silly (basically, this means the West dominates because it is dominant). Other Victorian historians made out human history to be the product of great battles, all of which had a huge element of random chance.

>Spengler also famously thought of civilizations as "cultural organisms" which eventually get old, become frail and die, just like any other organism whose telemeres have gotten shorter. I would imagine, like in, say, finance, the actual explanation for history is kind of complicated. I bet the Greek way of war has something to do with it, along with geography, culture, the Catholic Church, language and a whole lot of random chance. It's nice to think we know exactly why something happened, but a lot of what happens in the world, especially the world of human beings, is just plain random noise. Putting one factor explanations on history as Diamond does is not particularly helpful.

>There is also the matter of historical perspective. Diamond writes as if everything leading up to the present time of European world cultural domination were some kind of historical inevitability, and that *of course* -thus it will always be. This is the sheerest nonsense. At various times in human history, "Western Civilization" consisted of illiterate barbarians living in mud huts. In very recent times in human history (like, say, the 1930s), it kind of looked like that's where the West was heading again. Other civilizations culturally and physically eclipsed or dominated the West through history: the Japanese, the Chinese, the Islamic civilizations, Egyptian, Assyrian, Mongolian, Persian or Russian (if you count them as different, which I do) civilizations made Western civilization irrelevant through vast swathes of human history. Such civilizations may again eclipse Western civilization. Just to take one example, the Zoroastrian Persian civilization lasted longer than Rome, covered more territory and was in many ways more advanced: they even generally beat the Romans in warfare in the middle east.

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 04:07:58 5029d9 No.26219

>Why should I privilege the Romans over the Persians, just because some nations who were rather vaguely influenced by Rome now dominate the nations who were influenced by the Persians? I privilege them because they are my cultural ancestors, though in 1000 years, the poetry of Rumi may be more important than that of Martial.

>Finally, there are the matters of Diamond's historical veracity and bigotry. To address the second thing first, he seems to take a sort of perverse glee in making racial pronouncements to the detriment of "Western" people. According to Diamond, Western people are dirty, and have developed special immune systems; something I find hard to believe, and doubt is backed up by anything resembling statistical fact. Why wouldn't east Asians have developed superior immune systems? They lived in cities longer than the ancestors of most Westerners. Also, according to Diamond, he can tell that the average New Guinean is "on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive and more interested in things and people than the average European or American. (page 20, along with a tortured explanation of why Diamond's vacation perceptions are supposed to be superior to a century of psychometric research)" This is the sort of casual bigotry that used to inform Nordicist history about the dominance of the West, except somehow it becomes politically correct when pointed at Western people in modern times.

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 06:05:24 5924a3 No.26240

>>26210

>If you're so sure of this statement then there's no need to point it out, is there?

Given how many people on this board are from /pol/ it is a given that it must be constantly reminded that they're all fucking retarded

>Pilipino ako pare. Kaya i-Google Translate mo ito: Isa kang baklang gago.

Could have gotten that through google nigger though your now more likely to be Filipino or just a white trying super hard

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 07:12:09 f23de7 No.26247

>>26240

>>Given how many people on this board are from /pol/ it is a given that it must be constantly reminded that they're all fucking retarded

People can make their own decisions without any help from you.

>>or just a white trying super hard

>>Only white people browse 8chan and /pol/. Getaloadofthisfaggot.jpg

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 07:24:17 5924a3 No.26249

>>26247

>People can make their own decisions without any help from you.

It's not about giving other people Opinions its called telling people they're retarded as shit for posting in a /pol/ infested garbage heap

>>>Only white people browse 8chan and /pol/. Getaloadofthisfaggot.jpg

Never said that, but even so if your not a fucking Aryan wannabe you must either be really fucking edgy or just going their out of habit, seriously /pol/ is terrible.

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 07:25:16 5924a3 No.26250

>>26249

>>26247

>inb4 hypocrite

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 07:44:28 f23de7 No.26253

>>26249

>>It's not about giving other people Opinions its called telling people they're retarded as shit for posting in a /pol/ infested garbage heap

You posted on this /pol/ infested garbage heap, ergo you're just as retarded as the rest of us.

I'm neutral with regards to /pol/ but it's a good place to get trendy news from all over the world.

If you think it's shit, that's fine. My point is, don't shove your opinions where they are not needed.

I've talked to stormfags and I've talked to people like you. I'm neutral to both sides. It's not my fight. I come here for the historical conversations, and the guy with the Rhodesian flag made some good points even if I don't agree with all of them.

You on the other hand, can't stop talking about

>>muh evil racist stormfags.

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 10:32:51 6c7c48 No.26267

>>26127

>>26140

Those electorate states definitely theocratic, but could the HRE be considered as such on whole? No argument about the Papacy, it was theocratic, the Byzantine Empire as well.

>>26128

Yes, the Ottomans did eventually conquer them, but did the Ottomans not imitate European culture? Why did they not also encourage scientific and mathematical learning in the Middle East as well?

>The Middle Eastern countries are developing, and their people are developing, so therefore the majority of Muslims have to develop with it.

As opposed to when they weren’t? And they don’t have to develop with it; they could refuse to and stagnate.

>>26130

>Interpretation is highly dependent upon the interpreter.

No, I want you to answer the question. Fuck, I’ll rewrite for you:

Do you agree or disagree: The veracity of information detailing the existence of a person or event depends on the source of that information.

>I did no such thing. I trivialized nothing but an absurdity: that historical Muslim powers were more inclined to iconoclasm by nature than was normal.

Read your sentence again. It’s sarcastic treatment came off as trivializing:

>And how terrible that India has no more Hindus and beautiful Hindu temples dating back thousands of years.

>None of these are related to ISIS.

Who said this was just about ISIS? This whole discussion started from my saying European culture and Islam are incompatible and mutated after I used destruction fueled by Islam as substantiating evidence.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hindu_temples_in_India

I see you, and I raise you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_Temples:_What_Happened_to_Them

http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/temple_aurangzeb.html

http://www.stephen-knapp.com/islamic_destruction_of_hindu_temples.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_of_non-Muslim_places_of_worship_into_mosques

inb4 2 are blogs.

Now, maybe, that’s why Hindu temples survived. They were converted into mosques. That reminds me of the Hagia Sophia as well. They took it over and converted it into mosque. Architecture may have been preserved/survived due to that, although I think it unwise to assume all temples had survived for this reason.

>If you're now prefacing this with a qualifier, how does this make Islam any different than Europe's own history with haphazard treatment of the Classics?

I originally didn’t think I needed a qualifier. The statement is similar to these sentences:

>He killed men.

>People burned books.

Neither of these sentences mean that the subjects killed/burned all men/all books. It’s a noun used generally.

Could you please provide evidence of what Europe did to those Classics and which ones?

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 10:33:23 6c7c48 No.26268

>>26267

>>26130

cont.

>None. Which is why you're reading its first instance in Baghdadi some 400 years after Umar's reign.

Was Baghdadi’s a parable or just a report?

>Unknowable alt history.

No, it’s not. Without Christianity, he would not have painted the Creation of Adam. I need one to get the other. No Christianity. No Creation of Adam.

>for contemporary reasons.

How do you know what it was for? Do you know other people’s motivations?

>And remember how I said writers like Baghdadi first started writing about the folly of book burning to describe contemporary events?

Prove that that is what Baghdadi and other writers were doing.

>And I don't see how this helps the initial claim that Islam was the reason

What? Islam was the cause; therefore, it supports it in those instances.

> How did Al-Ghazali even have anyone to complain about in the 12th century if copying philosophy was banned in the 9th?

That’s a shit-tier argument even if it is true; here’s why:

>Murder is a crime.

>So why are there still murders?

>Russia

Russia lost two to three centuries of prosperity; Russia was able to liberate itself in about two centuries and had many wars until it underwent its own Enlightenment in the 18th Century:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_Russia

>800 years of Mongol-Turkic control

Russia was able to liberate itself 200 years later; what prevented the Arabs/Muslims from doing the same?

>stormfront blog

>Implying I read stormfront blogs

> Similarly, without Islam, you'd still have gangsters and street thugs performing acts of violence.

Unknowable alt history.

> Like a less furry version of Aesop's fables

Kek.

>Divine right

All I can say to that is that I always though it a brilliant defense. No disputation.

>> 26143

>>implying it shouldn't be the other way around

Proof-reading two sentences vs. several paragraphs, you tell me.

>> not even being able to read a short post about how /pol/ discredits your entire argument, or as you call without backing up anything a"shitpost"

>Imma a nigger who can’t into logic

Nice genetic fallacy by the way. You’d make a good test subject in studies of intelligence of monkeys.

>> 26249

> fucking Aryan wannabe

Showing how you know fuck all about /pol/, other than a piss-poor generalization.

Also you stated how I pointed out “grammatical flaws” in your pepe post. That isn’t a grammatical error; it’s punctuation. Read a book, you triggered nigger.

>>26145

m8, I’m just getting bored of this debate, regardless of whether I’m right or wrong.

>> 26128

This post is so filled with assumptions, and I have no energy to deal with them.

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 10:37:52 6c7c48 No.26269

>>26268

*generalization should be stereotype.

Also, fixing my copypaste screw ups

>>26143

>>26249

>>26128

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 15:16:55 a45e96 No.26291

>>26267

>No, I want you to answer the question. Fuck, I’ll rewrite for you:

I know you do. That's the point of a loaded question: it's set up in a way that either answer confirms your position: that highly biased blogs are just information sources and your opponents are just attacking the source rather than the content. My answer to that question is inconsequential, and I gave you an answer that rejects the leading question altogether to accurately describe the nature of a biased secondary or tertiary source (that last bit is important).

>Read your sentence again. It’s sarcastic treatment came off as trivializing:

I did. It didn't. Had the Hindus been wiped out of existence, then that sentence would have been trivializing their extermination. But that's not the context at all. The context was your position that Islam historically destroyed classical literature and monuments and temples, despite the fact that so much survived into modern times, and what I trivialized was your response, which was only a copy-paste block from Wikipedia in some attempt to 'A-ha!' me I imagine, where my own point was again proven right: yes, sometimes Muslims went wild, but no pattern of wanton and complete destruction exists to suggest that Islam, and not an outlier group of Muslims every few centuries, is the cause of modern Jihadism's rampage.

>Who said this was just about ISIS? This whole discussion started from my saying European culture and Islam are incompatible and mutated after I used destruction fueled by Islam as substantiating evidence.

I did, and the other anon you responded to that prompted this entire discussion. All you have shown thus far is insubstantial evidence of any Islamic pattern for destroying historical places throughout history or of creating theocracies, or of how either of these qualities are somehow incompatible with European culture when European culture has done both, probably to an even greater extent. If you want to say 'a subset of modern Muslim immigrants show a pattern of non integration and incompatibility with modern European culture,' then by all means. Fine. But don't project back into history so carelessly in the search for support for this platform.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_Temples:_What_Happened_to_Them

>Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them is a two-volume book by Sita Ram Goel, Arun Shourie, Harsh Narain, Jay Dubashi and Ram Swarup.

All political Hindu activists, and one man with a PhD in something, maybe history, maybe not.

>http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/temple_aurangzeb.html

>Destruction of Hindu Temples by Aurangzeb

>by Aurangzeb

Clearly he failed spectacularly. And one man is not a raise to the pot here: the claim was that Islam was the cause, not individual Muslims.

>http://www.stephen-knapp.com/islamic_destruction_of_hindu_temples.htm

An actual good list of historical sources with absolutely no source criticism involved. Any time some court scribe writes something flowery about a Turkic sultan raiding the Indian border, it's taken at face value. Yes, military raids are destructive events. But Islam doesn't get up on horses to steal the silver off a temple roof, professional raiders do, the same way the Lithuanians didn't see Christianity coming at them in the 13th century, but a German adventurer.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_of_non-Muslim_places_of_worship_into_mosques

These are desecrations/conversions. nor was it anywhere near total. Thousands of Hindu temples remained as Hindu temples uninterrupted. Same with Constantinople: The Hagia Sophia was converted, but many city churches were not.

>Neither of these sentences mean that the subjects killed/burned all men/all books. It’s a noun used generally.

Because the former is a person, a moral agent with verifiable past action, and the latter is a general noun for every moral agent ever who could have did a specific thing. But you can't use Islam the same way. Islam is not a person, it is not a moral agent or an agent of any sort, and is as ridiculous to use this way as any other amorphous concept.

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 15:32:45 70a925 No.26293

File: 1439739165554.png (285.67 KB, 700x750, 14:15, ackchyually.png)

>>26267

>the Byzantine Empire as well.

Nitpicking: the Pope is a monarch too (but that's not necessary and it's not always been like that): straight theocracy.

The Roman Emperor instead was a secular ruler first, and a religious authority as a consequence (indeed he's not there anymore, nor he's needed by Orthodox hierarchy). So it's a situation more precisely defined as caesaropapism.

Sorry for interrupting your shitflinging.

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 15:34:39 a45e96 No.26294

>>26268

>Was Baghdadi’s a parable or just a report?

An analogous parable, because absolutely no one ever recorded such an event, and the story itself is suspiciously interchangeable between Egypt and Iran.

>No, it’s not. Without Christianity, he would not have painted the Creation of Adam. I need one to get the other. No Christianity. No Creation of Adam.

And in its place, we might have gotten the Creation of Athena.

>How do you know what it was for? Do you know other people’s motivations?

>Prove that that is what Baghdadi and other writers were doing.

Baghdadi and other authors preface their stories with a reference to their own generation. That's how Arabic analogy writing works. If you want an English example of the style, check out Usamah ibn Munqidh. Baghdadi has never been translated, to my knowledge, so you'll have to find something analogous unless you can read Medieval Arabic.

>What? Islam was the cause; therefore, it supports it in those instances.

If you believe that, then fine. But then what was the cause of all the rest of the time where it didn't happen? NotIslam? If Baghdadi not a proper Muslim if he's supportive of not burning down old books?

>That’s a shit-tier argument even if it is true; here’s why:

Nyet. That's an even worse argument. Let me fix that.

>Murder is a crime

>So why are people committing open acts of murder without any punishment or retribution whatsoever by the authorities, and why are they holding public office as chief justices?

11th century philosophers weren't hermits innawoods printing newsletters secretly for their underground philosopher network here. They were public figures who sold books in public marketplaces and regularly worked as court officials in Muslim governments.

>Russia was able to liberate itself 200 years later; what prevented the Arabs/Muslims from doing the same?

The Mongols didn't settle in Russia. Nomads didn't flood the streets and countryside of Moscow and Novgorod to turn its farmlands into grazing fields.

>Unknowable alt history.

No, just look at any immigrant criminals with an atheist or agnostic lifestyle.

Anonymous 08/16/15 (Sun) 15:38:11 a45e96 No.26295

>>26293

>So it's a situation more precisely defined as caesaropapism.

Thank you. It's a term that also describes what the Caliphate actually was, except in comparison to others the Caliphs were literally cucked out of any control over religion by the Ulema class.

Anonymous 08/17/15 (Mon) 05:03:19 5924a3 No.26328

File: 1439787800026.jpg (319.36 KB, 1280x1920, 2:3, 1439668670390.jpg)

>>26253

>I'm neutral with regards to /pol/ but it's a good place to get trendy news from all over the world.

Oh please because, "Boy it forced to get forskin cut off in a satanic Jewish ritual" is very trendy

>If you think it's shit, that's fine. My point is, don't shove your opinions where they are not needed.

Am I shoving it down your throat? no I just made one comment and replied to the ones that replied to me, as a polite person should do

>I've talked to stormfags and I've talked to people like you. I'm neutral to both sides. It's not my fight. I come here for the historical conversations, and the guy with the Rhodesian flag made some good points even if I don't agree with all of them.

I am here for the historical conversation aswell, and as someone who has been on /his/ pretty much since I came to 8chan, and that's why I try and remind people to never take that shit seriously and to usually Ignore the thread (inb4 your posting in the thread hurr, I would agree but I'm politely replying to people replying to me)