Food for thought...Excerpt regarding the dark ages of the 7th to the 10th centuries...

The great cities of the East – in Syria and Asia Minor – suffered violent destruction at the hand of the Arabs in the early seventh century. Sudden ruin during war, it might be objected, is one thing; these cities, however, were never rebuilt. In fact, significant archaeological remains in the entire Mediterranean as well as Middle Eastern regions (beyond Roman influence) seem to have entirely vanished for the next three centuries. Construction – to say nothing of preservation – was not nurtured by Islam. Indeed, “almost all knowledge of these countries’ histories disappears, and does so almost overnight.” Of Egypt, Scott writes that the change imposed upon them in the early 7th century “can only be described as catastrophic.”  Islamic lands, as Naipaul recounts with personalized detail, have tended to experience a measure of what Egypt did so acutely: the effective loss of her own history. Moreover, another highly significant feature is now part of the archaeological record: a layer of sediment found throughout the Mediterranean known as the “Younger Fill.” This stratum of subsoil, which is not confined to the Mediterranean but is found in all the shores occupied by Muslims, represents the “geographical signature of the end of Graeco-Roman civilization.” This subsoil was deposited between the mid-seventh and mid-tenth centuries, precisely coinciding with the deafening archaeological silence. It can be explained by the wholesale abandonment of irrigational and agricultural systems when the littoral peoples abandoned coastal settlements for hilltop fortifications in response to unremitting Muslim raids. Scott acknowledges that Pirenne’s overall hypothesis remains disputed. It nonetheless dawns on the reader that it was controversial in Pirenne’s day for the same reason it is today: today’s multiculturalists weren’t the first to be motivated by animus towards European civilization. One is thus left to ponder – there really is no sidestepping it – the extent to which received wisdom on the Dark Ages is a byproduct of prior predisposition to paint Catholicism as a retrograde force. Among European countries, incidentally, only the English use the term “Dark Ages”; Henry VIII and his successors had reasons to make all things Catholic look dark. Portraying the history of Islam in glowing terms, likewise, has been another means of denigrating European civilization, and ultimately Christianity. Paradoxically, scholars in Communist China, oddly enough, have discovered the truth. As Rodney Stark records in The Victory of Reason, Chinese scholars undertook a lengthy study of what ultimately accounted for the West’s pre-eminence. After decades of investigation, they concluded: not guns, politics, or economics – factors they had felt may have been decisive. Instead, they were led to something deeper:  we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this. The deeper look – as these Chinese scholars found – always pays the most dividends. Many today say that what Islam needs most is “reform.” Those who know it best, however, regard that as wishful thinking – given the displays of malice making headlines today. The 13th century Dominican Meister Eckhart inadvertently left us a wise precept when he wrote: “if God were able to turn away from truth, I would cling to the truth and let God go.”  That might sound a bit subtle – or irreverent. But since truth is one of the names of God – at least in Christian understanding – Eckhart was not placing anything above God. He was stressing that there can be no conflict between God and the Truth. It is uncanny how the destiny of whole peoples – towards flourishing or foundering – hinges on their perception of such fundamentals.   Matthew Hanley is senior fellow with the National Catholic Bioethics Center.