Despite islam, not because of islam.
You sure like rewriting history. You do realize that without 7th-century Islam, the violent tribal society it emerged from would’ve
never given rise to the mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and philosophy that shaped civilization itself.
It was
because of Islam, bruh, not in spite of it. Don’t let your hatred for the violent, reactionary and
modern version of the faith erase the history that made your modern world possible.
Persia was the center of European scientific learning from about 600 bc to 1200 AD. When Islam conquered Baghdad they took it over. Mohammed forbade the mixing of Muslims with Zoroastrians. So the Zoroastrians were allowed to just get on with it. Which explains why the Islamic countries kept being scientifically litterate. After the Mongols conquered Baghdad Islam became backward. Islam shifted to a more militant culture which is where it's still at.
The culture wars regarding Medieval Islam has led to a weird situation where nationalists and conservatives want to believe Islam is more backward than it was. The leftists want to believe that Islam was more peace loving and functional than it was. Muslims themselves spread rediculous fantasies about how amazing Mohammed and the Muslims were.
If you want to pin the scientific acheivements of the Middle-East to a specific relgion, I'd pick zoroastrianism over Islam. The Islamic golden age came at a time when the Byzantinians were in decline and the Arab rulers had wisely kept the zoroastrian structure of learning intact. As a result the Quran is obviously a product of zoroastrian scholars. Written in a zoroastrian tradition. Just with Islamic words.
We're not so acquainted with zoroastrianism in the west. Western history has a long tradition of seeing us as the descendents of Greeks, locked in constant opposition with the East. This is a Renaissance invention. The Greeks certainly didn't see it that way. The Persians weren't seen as the monster we get in the film 300. When in reality the Greeks admired and looked up to the Persians. But because the Mongols destroyed Baghdag and because the monks of Constantinople kept the Greek works, we got a skewed narrative. But now thanks to archeology, we know better.
