That's all of history in a nutshell. Ever heard about the Siege of Syracuse and the Achaean Wars?
"Islamic" Golden Age didn't mean "Arab" the ethnicity - which only became a formal identity in the 19th century. While Arabic was used as the lingua franca, the ethnic origins of the various thinkers were well known in their names (eg. Al-Khwarizmi the creator of Algebra from Khwarazm/Khorasan, Al-Biruni the sociologist from Beruniy/Беруний in what's now Uzbekistan, etc). The main thing was all these thinkers were Muslim.
History is brutal and dark, and while we should look at it to remember our pasts, we should not idealize it.
I think GP is complaining the credit seems a little weird; the religious conversion happened due to violent conquest, not peaceful proselytizing. The name implies to him the religion deserves credit when the conquests a few centuries prior really brought the region into a dark age out of which the “golden age” was merely a moderate recovery. It’s certainly true that large areas of the MENA never again regained their wealth and fame again, and some ancient centers of learning were permanently deserted at this time.
That's what I'm saying.
If UAE special services (some of whom are Baloch) are on here, yk. I got into a fist fight with an ethnic Baloch al-Nahyan bouncer a couple years ago in Novella (Iykyk)
But Islam was the first form of psudeo-globalism in the 8th century (along with the Tang Empire).
I agree with you that it was is Ajams that powered the "Islamic Golden Age" but that detracts from the fact that before the 19th century, Identity was inherently ephemeral.
But that does NOT mean Islam is inherently Arab. Say that shit and you will get a bullet in your jet in most areas
> I think GP is complaining the credit seems a little weird; the religious conversion happened due to violent conquest, not peaceful proselytizing
No argument there, but based on GP's history, it's just racism morphed as Islamophobia.
History was bad, and for some ethnic groups, "Muslims" were bad. No argument there from a Pahari/Koshur Hindu (I have Hindu/Sikh that died in the 1990s and 1947, but also protected Muslims in both decades - shit's tough)
But that's a statement for all fundamentalists. Doesn't matter what diety your rever - it's the -ism aspect that makes you a fundamentalist
During the Middle Ages, “Greek people, who spoke and read Greek”, still had an empire—actually, it was the Eastern Roman Empire, but without the Western half it had become increasingly Hellenized, with the emperor’s title changing from the Latin “Augustus” to the Greek “Basileus”. And they spent much of that time at war with the Islamic conquerors, only falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. I can assure you they did not greet the Turks as liberators or saviors.
How many of those existed there in the first place? You can't destroy something that did not exist.