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Actually there are good reasons to think that the Renaissance would have happened without Islam, not to mention the Enlightenment. The claims you mention are largely unsubstantiated being essentially political in nature, a by product of the current climate of cultural relativism taken to the...

...in India and rediscovery of its past is undoubtedly the British rule (the India of the 18th century was in a total state of intellectual decadence*). It is also a fact that Lord Curzon for example carried out a widespread preservationist programme for, in his words, the British cannot 'allow...

Muhammad bin Qasim, Mahmud of Ghazny, Muhammad Ghauri and the religious motivated crimes / forced conversions of the Delhi Sultanate, Tamerlane, the enslavement and killing of Hindu dhimmis who could not pay the dhimma all over Islamic rule and so on tell you something? Even the Mughal period...

Of course if one holds that Islamism has very little in common with Islam (popular today even among some of those who draw attention about the dangers of political Islam) then one could find appealing that the oil found in fundamentalist held countries is enough to explain the observed facts...

...left the door open to the same old Islam which in better historical conditions could regenerate easily, e.g. after the American invasion of Iraq* (which failed to contain Islam in the dictator's manner; as president Sisi once remarked the West still do not understand the intricacies of the...

...could easily be channeled toward a modern future (by believing in a benign Islam the Americans 'catalysed', inadvertently, the rise of ISIS*, finally it was a big mistake to allow Iraqis to put sharia at the basis of the state in the post-Saddam era etc). Contrary to what some say here it...

They have nonetheless a religious ideology which has created at least a 'tail' of violent practitioners all over the history of Islam (the whole Islamic world sometimes), even in periods of peace. Even today. And the perpetrators have, quite often, proved to be far from being poor. An ideology...

Who kill muslims here mate? Typical of those so called 'progressives' (regressive in fact) who have to invent 'fascists' with all costs in order to fuel their incurable delusion... http://www.danielpipes.org/18521/german-and-austrian-media-outrage-me

...what is clearly written in the Revelation / Quran (needed by any non-trivial reforms, unfortunately we basically need the transformation of islam*; 'small steps' reforms are unlikely to be the solution which to 'tame' islam once and forever, as I argued before). I do not see why not (so yes...

If we could somehow make the donkey follow Reason then it would be a good chance to convince him to drink. I am sure muslims fare much better in what Reason is concerned. Although I am rather pessimistic overall myself I would argue that this is a much better direction of research than...

...tortuous mental gymnastics, needing anyways at least an extra hidden belief that maybe Islam is not the last word in order to be a durable solution*). On the other side there are those who claim that Islam cannot be reformed in any way, personally I am on Ayaan Hirsi Ali's side here, we...

I am more optimistic than you, although I agree that Islam is much more difficult to reform (due to its specific 'fabric' *). A key part of the solution is to attempt to transform it via exposing muslims to the view that unaided Human Reason has primacy over tradition and even revelation...

Well when the leader of the Labour Party, elected with the largest margin in recent history I understand, shows open support for the Islamic terrorist group Hamas (proscribed by the European court of Justice) I would say we have a big problem. Inadmissible to praise the release of Hamas...

I would restate what you say, too many so-s :) -We can perceive that which we did not know before and humans are fearful yet curious people -Religion is an early attempt to explain what we perceive / the Universe -Unfortunately before the rise of science most religions taught that the deep...

As a side note to my last post, Maimonides left us an account of mainstream Islamic philosophy during the Middle Ages: God is primarily Willpower not Reason in islam, he does not act via secondary causes like the laws of Nature, no point to try to find laws of nature (moreover it is blasphemy...

...of the Christian philosophers after the 13th century, Rodney Stark showed well that the belief in Reason has important roots in Christian theology* (although I find his other theses way too strong) and so on. More generally I think that there are good reasons to believe that culture played...

Exactly. And the solution is rather that suggested also by Bruckner, Islam needs more, not less, criticism in order to flourish, and to move into a future it can share with other faiths.

...of the European Powers, giving thus a limited chance to the few, weak, modernists of the time (unlikely to have become more influential otherwise*). Even today there is basically no equivalent of the Radical European Enlightenment's criticism of religion in the Islamic world, still no...

I'm afraid we all live in the same 'progressive' 'bubble' world. But of course the 'progressive' part here has surprisingly little in common with Reason, being far from the Enlightenment acceptation of the term. Happily the 'bubble' is instable and prone to 'burst', indeed if the only rational...

Some never tire to remind us that muslims are a minority in Europe and that demographic projections are notoriously unreliable. No one deny the first of course (yet in the wake of extreme violence seen these days in Europe one is entirely justified to fear of what could happen if muslims ever...