Mickey_Rat15 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 09, 2018 11:32 pm
Yukaphile wrote: ↑Tue Oct 09, 2018 6:06 pm
Actually not true. From what I've read, and I could be wrong, the jihadist mindset came about during the crusades. The Muslims were far more advanced than medieval Europe at the time. They had a post office, were studying astronomy, and could do math. Hell, didn't Saladin treat his prisoners well? And when he seized Jerusalem, he wanted to be seen as a savior, not a barbarian horde. A far cry from some modern armies who come in guns a-blazing raping, pillaging, murdering, what have you.
You are wrong. The jihadist mindset was in Islam from its beginning. Which is how the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean coasts were wrested from the Eastern Roman Empire in the first place and there was plenty of raping, pillaging, murdering and enslaving during that bloody bit of conquest. Unfortunately, that tends to be glossed over in Western European history texts, and the Crusades are treated as if they were the first major armed contact between Islam and Christendom.
That...really isn't the case, dude.
What actually happened was, the Byzantines and the Sassanids got into a pissing match, they were evenly matched, Khosrau II thought he was as good as his granddaddy Khosrau I (he wasn't), the (Easter) Roman Emperor thought he was as good as Justinian (he wasn't), the outlying provinces got sick and tired of Ctesiphon and Constantinople's combined bullshit, this new evangelist guy showed up, his people weren't THAT concerned about heretics in the administration, the Byzantines and Sassanids ground each other into the dirt so badly that their militaries were basically demoralized mobs barely willing to march let alone fight, and the Arabs had defecting provinces and angry peasants and motivated fanatics on their side, they got really lucky and took basically the entire Middle East and Iran in a couple decades, then it started to fall apart because the Persians and Egyptians realized they didn't like taking orders from Arabs, either, and the caliphate descended into infighting because the Ummayads took over from Muhammad's family and then they screwed the pooch and by the time it was all over the Ummayads were in Spain and a bunch of North Africans had decided to get in on this new Islam thing for the trade perks and these new Abbasid guys were running Arabia and Persia, until they fucked up and the Persians said "you know what, fuck this, we're better than you sand monkeys" and set up their
own country again, with blackjack and hookers, and that's why the Iranians and Arabs have historically had some legendary levels of bad blood and the Iranians have a whole lot of super-racist right-wing early 20th century assholes who wrote about how they thought Arabs were subhuman.
The Arab conquerors were actually slightly LESS dickish than the Byzantines and Sassanids. Not great by modern standards, sure, but it was the 7th century. Slavery was considered a mercy to defeated foes. Looting a city was perks of combat. Rape was just something that happened and only became a problem if it happened on a large scale. At least the Arabs didn't backstab people the way the Byzantines and Sassanids had a habit of doing.