for example, one story you hear by the revisionists is the idea that medieval europe forgot how to read, and had to relearn everything from books in spain, which was under islamic rule.
it's a half-truth.
they forget to tell you about the byzantines, for example, which were both there the whole time and were by far the most advanced society on the planet. in the end, the byzantines were actually ultimately badly weakened by french crusaders, who were the ones that really destroyed them. they weren't able to recover from that, and in the end fell to the turks - after a very, very long siege.
the turks then benefited greatly from their usurpation of roman power by inheriting all of the advanced technology. they don't tell you that, either. they make it seem like it was invented by turkish scholars, which is actually somewhat of a contradiction in terms. the turks were not an advanced people, at the time.
and, they forget to tell you about the importance of byzantine back-migration into rome at the start of the renaissance.
nor do they talk about the
reasons that western europe, particularly, was so stunted for what was a relatively short period of time, which had to do with the authoritarian powers pushed down by the church.
it was illegal to read; they'd
kill you for it. what kind of society would you expect to come out of a social, political, religious and legal system that literally bans reading?
so, of course they forgot how to read greek and latin. they were literally forbidden to do so, under penalty of death.
then, they tell you that the muslims saved all the books, which is worse than a half-truth - that's a lie. the muslims burned thousands of books! specifically, they burned the ones they didn't like. but, they
also burned the ones they liked, after they translated them into arabic. the revisionists want you to think this was a curator process, that they saved the knowledge from certain destruction; you're only falling for that because you're so ignorant about the history. what the muslims did was launch a systemic analysis of all of the knowledge in alexandria (and elsewhere) and rigorously sort through all of it, find the parts that contradicted islam, destroy them, and save the parts they thought upheld or otherwise complemented the koran by converting them to arabic and destroying the greek. so, it's technically true that the reason we have some specific greek texts is because this process happened. but, the reason we
only have these specific texts is also because this process happened! there's all kinds of things by classic authors that disappeared in this period because the muslims felt they were heretical.
(and, yes, the muslims were just doing the same thing the christians did. in fact, muslims and christians in that region would have looked roughly similar and spoke roughly the same language, too. quite a few contemporary historians labelled islam a christian heresy or a branch of judaism rather than a new religion. the lines were really kind of blurrily drawn, up until the crusades.)
so, they tell you about the good things the muslins did, but forget to tell you about the bad things. what does that remind you of?
then, they have the nerve to call this a "golden age" and assign it to islam. but, this "golden age" they speak of was a process of systematically destroying anything that contradicted islam, and then trying to make sense of the rest of it. worse, the actual thinkers involved were almost entirely persians and kurds. so, if this "golden age" is made up of iranians sorting through greek mathematical sources, what is islamic about it? if it's a golden age, what it is is a babylonian renaissance. again: if you actually read some good sources, you'll see how easy it is to debunk this revisionism. you just have to actually educate yourself about what actually happened...
and, don't get me started on slavery. y'all know muslims
invented slavery, right?
i've been clear, repeatedly, that i don't think that islam is an eastern religion or an eastern culture. islam is basically the same thing as christianity - it's a synthesis of jewish religion and greek philosophy. and, the cultures actually developed with more similarities than differences. what that means is that islam is a western culture, and needs to be understood that way. i will reject orientalism on it's face; they're the same as us, so there's no basis in othering them.
but, what that means is that you should realize that islam is essentially going through the same period of backwardsness that christianity went through 1000 years ago. saying "but, we were kings", or "make arabia great again" and then gloating about the situation being reversed 1000 years ago (however half-true that actually is) isn't an intelligent approach to the situation. you should have the humility and smarts to see the parallels between saudi despotism and papal authoritarianism. and, that means you should be on the side of the enlightenment, and in favour of expanding it.
i know i'm arguing with an imaginary person, but i don't think this is a straw man, and i think that more specific discussions will double down on my positions rather than contradict them.
they key point is to do your own research, and be careful about believing things people tell you when you don't have the expertise or background to critically analyze it by yourself.