(April 27, 2015 at 10:50 pm)Jenny A Wrote: What if is always a two edged sword.1. I think Islam can be regarded as something of a copycat religion, an effort by backwards desert dwellers on the fringe of civilized world to recreate the advantages conferred by being the master of a dominating world spanning cult, just like Romans and their Christianity. I think it is highly doubtful Islam would have arisen had the roman world not turned christain. So if the collapsing late Roman Empire didn't bequeath Christianity to the succeeding dark ages and Middle Ages, there wouldn't have been Islam and an Islamic invasion.
The Middle Ages suffered from the power vacuum left by the Roman Empire resulting in a decline education and technological advancement. The question is how much of that decline was due to the fall of Rome and the resulting chaos and how much of it was due to Catholicism and Islam. Both religions preserved the skill of writing as did Judaism. But all three religions discouraged inquiry, not to mention creating a non-economic reason to fight one another.
Frankly, I think that in the absence of Christianity, all Europe would have become Islamic, which might have kept us in the Middle Ages much longer. So perhaps better with Christianity and worse with monotheism generally.
If there was just paganism following Rome's fall, we might have gotten the Renaissance hundreds of years earlier, or the lack of common ground might have delayed a couple hundred years. You got me.
2. Let's say somehow Islam arose despite the fact fall of Roman Empire left a pagan west, and Islam successfully conquered Europe. Would that lengthen the dark ages and delay Renaissance? I very highly doubt it. The initial Islamic conquest was anti-intellectual, but the 3 succeeding centuries was a brilliant golden age of civil and intellectual progress in the Muslim world. Muslim world was cosmopolitan, progressive and learned. It was not until the crusades and Mongol conquest that put an end to Islamic gold age. So it seems to me had Islam conquerors Western Europe, rather than imposing or lengthening the dark ages, it would almost certainly have quickly ended the dark ages in Europe, and possibly have also hastened some equivalent of Renaissance by a couple of centuries.
