re: What if the European peoples had banded together to destroy the early Islamic caliphates?

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There’s like 100 things wrong with this quote from you. First, the Crusades did not happen in the early days of Islam during the 600s and 700s when the first 3 caliphates were founded. The crusades were 400-500 years later when Islam was already firmly established and never going away. Also, the Crusades were often weak, half-arse efforts fought with mercenaries. Furthermore, the Crusades were not intended to stamp out Islam or destroy caliphates. They were intended to recapture Christian holy lands around Israel that had been invaded and captured by the Muslims centuries earlier.

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You skipped the Reconquista, which is the core of my point. The caliphates were on Europe’s doorstep in Spain in, what, 700ish? And Europe couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do shite about it. Could Europe have bankrupted itself to do so? Probably. But did Europe have the logistical power to launch a massive invasion into Northern Africa and the Middle East at that point? Almost certainly not. Did it have the unity to do so? Absolutely not.

And by time Europe was powerful enough and unified enough to do so, Islam was powerful enough in a defensive posture to withstand them. It took the Mongols to kick those doors in during the 13th century.

The Mongols did what Europe should have been doing. Rode into Baghdad and burned it to the ground.

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Believe it or not the Muslims of the 1200-1300 were much more civilized than our dark age ancestors. Unfortunately, they were also much more civilized than the Muslims of today

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Check into the sexual practices as outlined in the Koran with regard to children and explain to me exactly how they were more “civilized” than Europe?

They were allowing more scientific research than Europe due to church restrictions, but beyond that I’d like some specific examples of how they were bastions of enlightened civilization.

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They were allowing more scientific research than Europe due to church restrictions,

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It wasn’t so much restrictions as it was the fact that there just wasn’t enough resources to go around at that time. There was no printing press and therefore books had to be copied by hand. The monks at Catholic monasteries would use their time to copy books to keep all the knowledge and research of the day alive, but that was very slow and took up a great deal of time. You couldn’t really have schools back then because of this. There just weren’t enough learning materials to go around.

So the Catholic Church actually kept learning alive and stopped it from being lost forever. Not the opposite.

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Also, there wouldn’t have been so much conflict with neighboring peoples, and those countries economies would have thrived. 

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Read a fricking book moron.

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It wasn’t so much restrictions as it was the fact that there just wasn’t enough resources to go around at that time.

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I’m a Christian and while I don’t have time to outline in detail all the evidence that contradicts your statement suffice it to say you need to do additional research related to the church at the time and its relationship with science.

They were locking up or torturing people throughout that entire period for practicing what we would refer to as basic science.

Other than the first Crusade the Christians never really were united. Even in the first Crusade there was constant jockeying for who would get what with huge numbers of crusaders stopping after they got a castle or town.

I think the original OP is trying to say, what if the Europeans had been more organized and gone after all of the Islamic states and not just tried to get the holy land back?

It would not have been easy if everyone was organized and there was clear C&C. The closest that Islamic regime came to being destroyed was the Mongols who took most of the middle east.

To me it would be more interesting to say, what if Christendom had united in a Roman Empire sort of way to the expansion of Islam across north Africa?

Also, most of the science that the Islamic world was using was just old Greek and Roman stuff that the west lost during the dark ages. They had access to the Greek classics and expanded on them. So, they were using European science from 1000 years before. LOL

So the Catholic Church actually kept learning alive and stopped it from being lost forever. Not the opposite.

The opposition will forever try to tarnish the Catholic Churches name but it will never work.

It’s in the scripture. Catholic Church is alive baws and no matter how much hating on it you will do the Catholics have put in more work than any other religion and it’s not even remotely close.

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I’m a Christian and while I don’t have time to outline in detail all the evidence that contradicts your statement suffice it to say you need to do additional research related to the church at the time and its relationship with science.

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I stand by what I said. There have been some bad incidents in Church history of course, but for the most part the Catholic Church has championed science and learning.

The learning and advances of Antiquity would have been lost in the Middle Ages in Europe if not for the Catholic Church. Catholic monasteries are where much of this was preserved.

Also, a Catholic monk invented the field of genetics and there are also many other scientific concepts have started in the Church as well. Look it up and do your research.

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You talk about the caliphates as if they were led by godless barbarians at the time (those of which Europe at the time was actually dealing with) they were not. They were the center of learning and knowledge acquisition for their time. Attacking them would have been suicide. Much like the USA today

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This is all 100% false.

The original Islamic caliphates were unbelievably cruel and barbaric. They are exactly what ISIS has modeled itself after in modern times.

The caliphates spread Islam by invading, conquering, and then forcing all residents to convert to Islam or die. They would chop your head off with a scimitar if you refused to convert. That’s not a very civilized, developed, or cultured people.

Also, the invaders were made up of nomadic Arabs. Again, they weren’t a highly-advanced or developed civilization. In light of all this, the USA comparison is way off base.

As you can see, Islam has had violence as part of its foundation from the very beginning; starting with Muhammad and the first caliphs who succeeded him.