What About The Islamic Golden Age?
The Muslim ruler Caliph Umar took over the city of Alexandria in 640 AD and dealt the library a final blow, reportedly using its contents as tinder for the city’s bathhouses, according to Mid-Content Public Library. According to some accounts, Umar said the works “either contradict the Qur’an, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous.
Muslim rioters set fire to the Alcazar library, the largest library in France. Was one of the biggest in France. Contained more than a million documents. Here is a picture of the Alcazar library on fire.
There have been 1,000 buildings burnt, 5,600 vehicles destroyed, and 3,300 arrests since last week in France. The riots were triggered by a Muslim criminal who fled police and almost hit a cyclist and a pedestrian before a French policeman shot him.
Bakhtiyar Khilji set fire in 1202 AD in the great library of Nalanda University which is reported to have housed more than 9 million manuscripts. The library continued to burn for three months after the invaders set fire suggesting the number of books burnt.
https://www.jewishrefugees.org.uk/2022/10/the-mythical-golden-age-and-the-nature-of-tolerance.html
Robert Spencer wrote: From 929 on the Ummayad rulers of Spain styled themselves as caliphs of Cordoba/ That caliphate, and Islamic al-Andalus in general, has become a potent mythin the twenty-first century. Historians ahve painted it as a paradise of prtomulticulturalism: Karen Armstrong, author of Islam: A Short History, claims that "until 1492, Jews and Christians lived peaceably and productively togehter in Muslim Spain - a coexistdnce that was impossible elsewhere in europe. Historian Mria Rosa Menocal asserts that hte Muslim rulers of Spain "not only allowed Jews and christians to survive but, following Quranic mandate, by and large protected them." In his June 4, 2009 outreach speech to the Muslim world from Cairo, U.S. president Barack Obama said: "Islam ahs a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia"
The Muslim conquest of Spain was brutal, and once Spain was subjugated to Islam the unfortunate Spanish infidel had to pay an exhorbatant Jizya tax. (No Muslims had to pay any tax). Robert Spencer writes how an emissary of the pope, John of Gorze, noted that the Christians of al-Andalus were living in fear and suffering under the burden of systematic discrimination.
"Paul Alvarus, a ninth century Christian in Cordoba, complained about the
"unbearable tax" that Musims lievied on Christians.
Nor could Christians say anything about their lot, because it was proscribed by
Islamic law, and criticizing Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur'an in any manner was a
death-penalty offense.
Simonnot, who rejects any suggestion of an Islamic golden age in Spain, points out that Jews were called apes. In Spain, when the various religious communities were fighting with one another, the Muslims called Jews monkeys and Christians pigs and dogs.‖123
Bostom confirms this, quoting the words of the great Cordovan philosopher and rabbi Maimonides. ―God hurled us amidst this nation of hostile Ishmael… never has a nation arisen more injurious to us than this people; no nation has ever been so intent on humiliating and degrading us, and on hating us.‖124
Maimonides’ erudition and eloquence did not save him from being persecuted. There were, Bostom says, several pogroms in the Muslim Spain. Simonnot mentions the Granada pogrom 1066 and Bostom describes the one which took place in Cordoba which, we know, affected Maimonides himself. These pogroms were conducted by the fanatical Almohad rulers, who aimed their wrath at anyone who didn’t agree with them, not only Jews. Even the great philosopher Averoës, a Muslim, came to suffer the consequences of their intolerance and was condemned to exile.
Serge Trifkovic wrote about the golden age of Islam here. https://www.sullivan-county.com/x/islam_myth.htm
According to Wikipedia, The Islamic Golden Age was a period of scientific, economic and cultural flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 13th century.
Scholars living in Baghdad translated Greek texts and made scientific discoveries—which is why this era, from the seventh to thirteenth centuries CE, is named the Golden Age of Islam.
Karen Armstrong is a writer who wrote about the history of Islam in a positive way. She wrote that: "Harun al Rashid was a patron of the arts and scholarship and inspired a great cultural renaissance. Literary criticism, philosphy, poetry, medicine, mathematics and astronomy flourished... In the West Harun al Rashid may be the best known of the caliphs and his name is generally associated with cultural advancement, scholarship and poetry.
Robert Spencer wrote that: "During his twenty three year reign as Abbasid Caliph Harun al RAshid invaded the Byzantine Empire eight times. Each time, he demanded the submission fo the territories hsi armies entered and the payment of the jizya. If the Christians refused, his forces would plunder the area thoroughly, making sure to take more than they would have collected in tribute.
Robert Spencer in his book The History of Jihad wrote:
At the beginning of the eleventh century there arose a Muslim commander... His name was Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030)... For 30 years, Mahmud terrorized non-Muslims in what is today northeast Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwest India. ...He led... seventeen large scale jihad incursions... Mahmud of Ghazni made an immense effort to conquer Gujarat... because he hoped that if he was able to destroy Gujarat utterly, its inhabitants would be shocked and demoralized into submission and would convert to Islam en masse. The people of Gujarat however, did not submit but resisted, and fifty thousand were killed.
He and his men attacked the city of Thanessar. Al Uthi, a Muslim historian wrote:
"The blood of the infidel flowed so copiously that the stream was discoloured... and people were unable to drink it." ...
In 1013 Mahmud and his men went on to Nandana... Here again the Jihadis slaugthered the population indiscriminately and destroyed the temples. Al-Utbi recounted: "The Sultan returned in the rear of immense booty and slaves were so plentiful that they became very cheap... But such is the goodness of Allah, who bestows honour on his own religion and degrades infidelity.
Mahmud of Gazni engaged in many more attacks.
pg 135 Like that of Harun al-Rashid, Mahmud's court became a center of culture and learning, witht he sultan patronizing scientists and poets, including the renowned persian poet Ferdowsi. This element of Mahmud's legacy tends to be remembered in teh contemporary West more than his bloody ventures into India.
Mahmud of Ghazni came from the Ghaznavid Dynast
khan academy is good on golden age of Islam https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/medieval-times/cross-cultural-diffusion-of-knowledge/a/the-golden-age-of-islam
Maimonides on Jewish humiliation under Islamic rule | The Jerusalem Post