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I find it extremely amusing that Muslim apologists would like to take credit for one Taj Mahal in a land which had great buildings millennia pre Islam, crediting it on the "Islamic culture & civilization," whereas the
builder tore down many, many more temples compared to monuments he built, re,
Despite his Hindu mother, Shah Jahan did not follow the liberal religious policy instituted by his grandfather, Emperor Akbar. In 1632 he ordered all Hindu temples recently erected or in the process of erection to be torn down. Christian churches at Agra and Lahore were also demolished. In the same year the Portuguese settlement at Hooghly near Calcutta was also attacked. The Portuguese were accused of piracy and of kidnaping Mogul subjects, infecting them with Christian doctrines, and shipping them as slaves to Europe. The settlement was reduced, and several thousand Christians were killed.
, & even "Islamic" architecture is Byzantine Persian architecture plagiarized,but deny that Judeo Christian culture contributed anything worthwhile although that era was steeped in these religions.
Did Judaism & Christianity contribute? I personally don't know, I don't claim to know either.
There have been philosophers from Weber to Jurgen Habermas, many not practicing Christians or even believers, who've credited these faiths, others have felt differently & felt that these faiths were not contributing at best & obstacles at worst.
However, as these faiths exist currently, they often have pretty beneficial effects, & I speak with my personal experience in Bangladesh, India etc.
I think Kafirist himself admitted that Muslim parents have many hangups about whom their daughters befriend, what they wear etc, I too have noticed that.Peruvian Skies mentioned in her "most excellent adventures" that many Muslim parents she knew pulled their daughters right out of school to get them married off. But Christian girls I noticed in Bangladesh, India had extremely few such hangups compared at least to Muslim, they wear & travel wherever they want.This refects in the high % of Christian girls who graduate out of universities in India & Bangladesh.Christians in Bangladesh also have equal inheritance for women, while Bangladeshi Muslims rioted over proposals to give women equal inheritance. Also, Christian schools, universities etc, which are very much products of Christian culture & civilization, do loads of good to the world today in terms of spreading knowledge, more than any madrassas I know, they don't churn out jihadis. Even with Judaism, they managed to outlaw stonings & death penalty millennia ago, Reform & even Conservative Judaism-which form the vast majority of Jews, has an excellent track record in women rabbis, rights of gays,freethinkers & of course scientific & technological achievements.
Ultimately its quite futile to speculate what & how Christianity did\didn't contribute to Enlightenment, because its not possible to do an experiment to see whether Enlightenment would happen without it or not.
Today however, I don't find most Christians plagued by most of the ills which plague Islam.
I can say the same about followers of my religion-Zoroastrianism, regardless of some millennia old texts, Zoroastrians, Zoroastrian women are some of the most enlightened I know.
This isn't true for all Muslims or Muslim societies, but Islam in general does seem to have very poor effects.
Topic: Why are most prominent scientists western rather than muslim?