Poirot - Thank you for announcing me.

I would like to remind you of a statement you made in case anyone posts any official statements.

Quote - "I take official statements on process as evidence."

Therefore any official statement Poirot will believe.

Antiseptic,

"I'm presently studying at tertiary level the historical expansion of Islam following the death of Mohammed."

(1) "the imposition of a just system of laws on populations that were often under despotic rule." Have you studied the Islamic invasion of India yet?
LOL

What course is this, and where is it taught, and by whom? As to the "historical expansion" of Islam, by what means did it expand?

(2) "The despots of medieval Europe were scared to death of it." Naturally, the arrival of Islam was followed by massacre, and slavery and third rate status for non-Moslems. You're really a satirist aren't you?

OZSHRINK,

"This isn't about history". Actually to a considerable extent, it is, the selective amnesia of Moslems and their apologists is very significant in influencing public opinion. The successful portrayal of Moslems as the eternal victims of Western aggression is the result of this propaganda.

Phillip,S

Presumably the supply of is virgins constantly replenished, where do they come from anyway?

mac, "imposition" implies force. Have you studied the history of the last 60 years? The Abbassid and Umayyid Caliphates lasted for several hundred years. How long do you reckon the US model will last?

Is it OK to napalm small children, subject entire cities to blockade for weeks, kill conscripts manning tanks trying to run from the fighting or blow up wedding parties with remote-controlled bombs from shipping containers 3000km away because they happen to be Islamic? Discuss...

I'm afraid your prejudice is showing - or perhaps that's just the bit you blow smoke out of... Either way, it's not a pretty sight.

An interesting feature of the early Muslim conquests is that, unlike most other conquests by religious entities, they did not try to spread their religion. Early Islam regarded Islam as a religion for the Arabian peninsula and discouraged conversion to Islam by the subject peoples of north Africa and other conquered areas. Muslims did not have to pay taxes, and conversion removed people from the tax rolls. Unlike Christian universities in medieval times which were only open to Christians Muslim universities were not restricted to Muslims. It was only later that Islam became a missionary religion with the intolerance displayed by such religions. One of the tragedies of history is the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula by fanatic Christians who introduced such practices as the Inquisition to root out all but the Catholic religion.

Antiseptic if you are only up to "Islam following the death of Mohammed" you have a long way to go before your in a position to make statements like "Islam was the most enlightened religion in the world for a very long time". As Mac said a lot depends on who is teaching you.
As an interesting test of your teachers veracity what did they tell you about Mohammeds treatment of the original Jewish tribes of the Arabian peninsula. What enlightened idea did he have for dealing with them?

David F,

Gaul was already Christian long before Charlemagne - in the south, the areas held by Visigoth kingdoms were Arian, but in Burgundy and Austrasia and Neustria, Catholic bishops and abbeys controlled vast areas of land, from the sixth century up until 800. Check out Henri Pirenne's work 'Charlemagne and Mohammed' or anything my Marc Bloch.

And by the way, the Muslims had slaves in Spain, according to the economic historian Vives, usually around fifty thousand at any one time.

As for Islam being totalitarian, it is no coincidence that totalitarians of pseudo-left and right, and their followers, are great lovers of grandiose architecture, from the Muslims to Mussolini and the Nazis to the North Koreans.

And a peaceful religion ? A force that can launch attacks against France and Poland and the Adriatic in the West, India in the south and Vietnam and Japan in the east, and which has almost no record of peaceful conversion, apart perhaps from the East Indies, can hardly be called peaceful. Certainly Islam is on a par, in that respect, with anything the west or Christianity could devise.

Joe