[Marxism] re: Jared Israel, Islam & Europe in medieval period

[John M Cox <coxj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lou:
Which leads me to follow up on a
point that John Cox made the other day but which I forgot to reply to.

He cited Milosevic's words and added his own comment:

"Six centuries ago, Serbia heroically defended itself in the field of
Kosovo, but it also defended Europe. Serbia was at that time the bastion
that defended the European culture, religion, and European society in
general." Milosevic speech: http://www.icdsm.org/milosevic/kosovo.htm [and
for the record, Islamic culture was a bit further advanced than European
culture at the time.]

This is awful stuff. My own view is that the world would be much better
off
today if the Moors had beaten Charles Martel or if the Ottomans had swept
westward all the way into Great Britain. Islamic civilization was far more
advanced than Christianity.

Stuart:
What are you saying is awful, Milosevic's praise of Serbia's heroic
defense of Europe against Islamic culture, or John's (possibly ironic)
characterization  of Islamic culture as "a bit further advanced"?

me: I assumed that Lou was saying that Milosevic's invocation of Serbia's
'defense of Europe' from the Muslim hordes was 'awful'; and to clarify, I
wasn't being ironic, except that I could have written 'somewhat' rather
than 'a bit' further advanced. And I agree with Lou's points on the Battle
of Tours and so on. I just finished a semester as a Teaching Assistant for
a History course here at UNC-Chapel Hill called 'Islamic Civilization to
1500,' and I definitely acquired a deeper appreciation for Islamic
culture and civilization relative to Christian Europe in the so-called
Middle Ages -- I almost wrote 'relative to Europe,' but Europe itself was
home to a particularly advanced (and, for most of its history, rather
tolerant and multi-cultural) Islamic-ruled society, that of Al-Andalus
(Andalusia), which covered most of the Iberian peninsula for 500 years
until the mid-13th century, and continued for another quarter-millenium
around Granada--until the victory of Ferdinand and Isabel, which signalled
not only the end of Muslim civilization in Spain but also the eviction or
forced conversion of the Jewish population. A civilization that gave us
the Alhambra and many other great scientific, literary, and architectural
wonders was replaced by the Spanish Inquisition and a real cultural 'dark
age' ('dark age' usually refers to the very centuries when Al-Andalus was
flourishing -- but our European or Western Civ history books, for some
reason, don't tend to tell us anything about Islamic Spain). Although it
comes adorned with quotes from Christopher Hitchens and the National
Review on its back cover, I would recommend, for a history of Andalusia,
"The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a
Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain" by Maria Rosa Menocal, which was
published last year --

John Cox




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