Dear david f,

>> With the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans the upper classes largely became Muslim to preserve their position.<<

Yes, this is how I have known it. What I wanted to point out was, that this was not the case with Hungarians (or if, it did not last after the occupiers left). However, I think we have deviated too much from the original topic.

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Dear david f,

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« The knowledge wasn't wasted. The advances made during early Islam found their way to the west and helped spark the Renaissance and the Enlightenment … »
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Thanks for the confirmation. I suspected that to be the case, otherwise I suppose we wouldn’t be where we are today. My concern was that all that knowledge was neglected and never progressed by those brilliant Arab-Islamic civilisations which, as you indicate, have stagnated – if not regressed - ever since.

If religion was so inextricably entwined with science, as it seems to have been in ancient times, I suppose it is possible that after having initially contributed to the early development of science, religion succeeded in having it eliminated when the religious leaders realised the threat science represented to their authority.

It seems there is evidence of interaction among religion, astronomy and architecture in the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Mexico and Cambodia and, perhaps, also in a number of so-called “lost civilisations”. The mystery, of course, is just how this phenomenon developed in different parts of the world in those ancient times when there were no means of communication.

I am amazed at the apparent ease with which civilisations are deregulated and end up in the dustbin of time. Not only are they fragile, they are also perishable :

http://themindunleashed.org/2014/09/new-evidence-lost-civilizations-really-existed.html

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Dear Banjo Paterson,

Other civilisations have disappeared. Over four thousand years ago there was a civilisation centred on the Indus River with the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-dara. They were literate and left inscriptions which have not been deciphered. Probably as a result of invasion the civilisation disappeared, and literacy did not reappear in the area for a thousand years. When it did reappear the new symbols had no relation to the older script.

Dear George,

While Catholics and Protestants were tearing each apart in the Wars of the Reformation there was an island of peace. There were Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics within the Ottoman domains. The Ottomans demanded that the different kinds of Christians live in peace with one another, and that's what happened. Diarmaid MacCulloch's "The Reformation" tells about it.

Dear david f,

I am not a historian, but folkloristic memories (folksongs) of e.g. the Hungarians and Slovaks certainly do not testify to those times as “islands of peace”. Or whether Protestants were happier with the occupation than Catholics as the following might indicate:

“Protestantism and Islam entered into contact during the 16th century… As both were in conflict with the Austrian Holy Roman Emperor and his Catholic allies, numerous exchanges occurred, exploring religious similarities and the possibility of trade and military alliances.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestantism_and_Islam).

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Dear David and George,

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There are a couple of things I thought I should mention :

The first is that it was reported in the French media that the elder of the two Kouachi brothers who attacked Charlie Hebdo had trained in an Al-Qaeda camp in Yemen for a few months in 2011 and it was there that he saw a photo of Charb, the editor of the satirical magazine, on a hit list displayed on a notice board.

CNN footage of the camp and the hit list was shown on French TV.
According to the CIA, Saïd, the elder brother, had attended a Muslim fundamentalist university called al-Imane in the capital, Sanaa in 2009.

Both brothers were born in Paris of Algerian parents. Like most French people, they may possibly have heard of Charlie Hebdo but it is highly unlikely they ever saw it let alone read it.

It was in Yemen that they received the assignment to attack Charlie Hebdo and assassinate Charb. The day of the attack they went to the wrong address and had some difficulty finding it. When they finally located the newsroom of the magazine they asked who was Charb and killed him first before mowing down the other cartoonists and journalists. Some managed to survive to tell the story.

The other thing I wanted to mention was that according to a special report on the jihadists requested by François Hollande, there are about 1,300 French jihadists, most of whom are in Syria. Their number has increased considerably over the past two years. Most of them identify ideologically as Salafis and are “encouraged” by Wahhabis ( a particular orientation of Salafism), both of whom are part of the Sunni movement of Islam. They represent the dominant minority in Saudi Arabia and are also present in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait.

Though I have not seen the report, its author was interviewed by “Le Monde”, a reputable French newspaper. He stressed that the terrorists should be referred to as Salafists, not Muslims - who have nothing to do with terrorism.

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Dear Banjo,

<<Though I have not seen the report, its author was interviewed by “Le Monde”, a reputable French newspaper. He stressed that the terrorists should be referred to as Salafists, not Muslims - who have nothing to do with terrorism.>>

The above statement is silly and wrong. All Salafists are Muslims, and some Muslims have much to do with terrorism.

<<Most of them identify ideologically as Salafis and are “encouraged” by Wahhabis ( a particular orientation of Salafism), both of whom are part of the Sunni movement of Islam.>>

The Salafists are Sunni Muslims.

Dear George,

I regard the Wars of the Reformation as a Civil War within the Catholic Church not within Christendom itself as Orthodox Christians were not involved. Unlike the US Civil War the secessionists were able to secede successfully. In civil wars as in other wars each side seeks allies. The article you referred me to told of similarities between Islam and Protestantism. When I was a soldier in WW2 in the US army we were shown a series of propaganda films called “Why We Fight.” The Soviet Union was presented as populated by people who were much like us. Later during the Cold War the US emphasised how different we were from the ‘godless’ communists. In the 1950s the US changed the national motto from ‘e pluribus unum’ (one out of many) to ‘In God we Trust’. The pledge of allegiance was changed from ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all’ to ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all’. These changes were propaganda exercises. There have been legal attempts to restore the former pledge.

The similarity between Protestantism and Islam was a wartime propaganda exercise. Both Protestantism and Catholicism centre around the worship of Jesus and are much more like each other than either is to Islam. The two branches of Christianity may eventually reunite. I doubt that either branch will unite with Islam.