RE: Even if theism is a failure, it's still superior to atheism
September 20, 2022 at 1:11 pm
(This post was last modified: September 20, 2022 at 1:37 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
I think the salient point, about Al ghazali, is that he was a malcontent and detractor (of then-contemporary islam) from the persian culture..that same culture that the islamic horse raiders had enslaved and appropriated in subjugation and from which the vast majority of islams claimed scientific prowess came from both before..and after..conquest.
I see it as a similar irony to how, in the end, the savages that the greeks and romans derided and subjugated militarily and culturally..break loose...becoming western europe, and ushering in the scientific revolution, even under the repressive aegis of roman christianity.
-I think I misread the bit about the battle of tours being a raiding party - jehenne is talking numbers, and using the low end. It's clear that the half a million combatants or so (in some retellings) would have been a logistical impossibility, but that the battle of tours was a raiding party gone wrong is not actually founded on the numbers of combatants on either side. It -was- a raiding party, as raids are a tactic employed by large armies as well as small. Both to capture material, to injure the enemies resolve, to recon their positions and response.... and to goad them into a disadvantaged fighting position in a so-called culminatory battle. That all backfired for the ummayads at Tours. It happened...just not to their enemies......
The trouble is that they had committed and then lost too many men in the failed raid - and with winter at their backs, they had to stay and fight the battle they picked, not the one they would have preferred. Martel had prepared for this (and exactly this-for years), they.... had not. Martel had built a meatgrinder, and the ummayads lead their horses into it believing themselves immune to defeat from such kafir rabble (and not for no reason, they'd been bullying the shit out of any and all comers prior to this). Al-rahman is redeemed by later islamic scholars, despite his failure in this regard, because his successors proved even less capable than he was to navigate the social and political and military realities of the andulusian territory. The period following was nothing less than the retreat of an entire culture, and the complete loss of flanking continental salients. The european savages were, as far as they were concerned..ungovernable at that point. It was a well prepared insurgency.
I see it as a similar irony to how, in the end, the savages that the greeks and romans derided and subjugated militarily and culturally..break loose...becoming western europe, and ushering in the scientific revolution, even under the repressive aegis of roman christianity.
-I think I misread the bit about the battle of tours being a raiding party - jehenne is talking numbers, and using the low end. It's clear that the half a million combatants or so (in some retellings) would have been a logistical impossibility, but that the battle of tours was a raiding party gone wrong is not actually founded on the numbers of combatants on either side. It -was- a raiding party, as raids are a tactic employed by large armies as well as small. Both to capture material, to injure the enemies resolve, to recon their positions and response.... and to goad them into a disadvantaged fighting position in a so-called culminatory battle. That all backfired for the ummayads at Tours. It happened...just not to their enemies......
The trouble is that they had committed and then lost too many men in the failed raid - and with winter at their backs, they had to stay and fight the battle they picked, not the one they would have preferred. Martel had prepared for this (and exactly this-for years), they.... had not. Martel had built a meatgrinder, and the ummayads lead their horses into it believing themselves immune to defeat from such kafir rabble (and not for no reason, they'd been bullying the shit out of any and all comers prior to this). Al-rahman is redeemed by later islamic scholars, despite his failure in this regard, because his successors proved even less capable than he was to navigate the social and political and military realities of the andulusian territory. The period following was nothing less than the retreat of an entire culture, and the complete loss of flanking continental salients. The european savages were, as far as they were concerned..ungovernable at that point. It was a well prepared insurgency.
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