Understanding Islam XVIII: “Official” Islam Refuted, Part 2

Statement 4: The West received the foundation of its intellectual world from Islam

When Islam destroyed the Greek culture of Anatolia in Turkey and the Mediterranean, many of the surviving Greek and Roman texts were translated by Arabic Christians into Arabic. Later when Europe began to recover from the destruction of the Roman Empire by barbarians and the destruction of the Byzantine Empire by Islam, the Arabic translations became part of the recovery process. So as a result of the destruction of Greek culture and the preservation of the texts by Christian Arabs, Islam gets credit for saving European culture. This is like congratulating Nazis for preserving Jew gold reserves and art collections in the 1930s and 1940’s. It is absurd.

Statement 5:  The Crusades were a great evil committed solely by Christians

The Christians of Europe no doubt committed some grievous errors in the Crusades. The worst mistake was attacking Constantinople and fatally weakening the Greek Byzantine Empire. This attack led to Islam’s success in conquering the Greek Byzantines, one of humanity’s great tragedies. Another dreadful error was the killing of thousands of Jews on the way to Jerusalem. Persecution of Jews occurred on more than one Crusade. Having said that, it was one of the few times that European Christians came to the aid of their tortured Orthodox Christian brothers. Remember— the Crusades were defensive warfare. Islam invaded and conquered the Christians of the Middle East. When the Orthodox Christians cried out for help, the European Christians responded.

Statement 6: There are mostly moderate Muslims and a few extremist Muslims

This is a perfect example of making statements about Islam based upon the Golden Rule and ignorance (or deceit) about the doctrine and history of Islam. The only scale for measuring Muslims is Islam, not western Christianized ethics. Only the Qur’an and the Sunna give us the scale to measure a Muslim. Any Muslim that follows the doctrine of either Meccan Islam or Medinan Islam is a moderate. Medinan Muslims (jihadists) are moderates, just like Meccan Muslims are moderates. The only extremist Muslim is an apostate, since apostasy is the “extreme” in Islam that is condemned.