The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #54826   Message #854149
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
27-Dec-02 - 01:55 PM
Thread Name: The great Muslim round up
Subject: RE: The great Muslim round up
Well, I've lived in two centuries, but that's enough for me to appreciate that these are only a small transient part of history. When you make a generalisation about a religion you are talking about things that work on a much larger scale.

The shape of the world today, the distribution of power and wealth, the way we live in our various corners of the world - all these are rooted in what has happened in the past. For various reasons a few countries in a few parts of the world developed some significant technological advantages which meant that for a few generations they exercised unfettered domination over the rest of the world, for good and ill. And in real terms that continues today, as a glance at the front pages of today's papers confirms.

It so happened that these countries were one way or another predominantly Christian of one sort or another, but the connection between these two things is pretty tenuous.

It's perfectly possible to imagine an alternative history in which, for example, the technological breakthroughs and the imperial expansion had happened based on the Islamic World. In which case maybe GUEST, Christians Yuk!!! would have been sounding off about how there weren't any Christian countries where people wanted to emigrate, and about how this indicated some characteristic of Christianity that made it fundamentally backward-looking, or whatever.