What positive things has Islam added to the world?

[Atheon]

Besides advancing science, preserving ancient Greek books, building remarkable buildings, establishing trade routes, and doing pioneering work in world exploration, what have the Muslims ever done for us?

[pr126]

Apparently Islam's history stops with Al Ghazali who halted all Islamic intellectual advancement in CE 1111 and "reformed" Islam to it's original 7th century mindset.

After the "Golden Age" there is nothing at all that is coming out from Islam that was useful for the advance of humanity.

By the way, those fabled scientist were from the conquered lands. Not Arab Muslims.

Have a look:

The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis


Anything that is taught about Islam today in the academia is putting Islam's image in only favorable light.
Airbrushing out the violent, imperialistic, intolerant ideology that is Islam.

There is nothing at all taught about the invasion, conquest, mass extermination of people by Islam for 14 centuries. (270 million butchered and counting)

See here:  http://www.historyofjihad.org/   Or something more recent: http://thereligionofpeace.com/

You won't find any of that in schools or universities. It is all scrubbed squeaky clean.

Have a read: Islam 101

[Baruch]

Come on, you don't go to college to get educated ... you go to get brainwashed.  Young people have dirty minds, and need to be brainwashed.

Before Muhammad, Arabs were only noted for the domestication of the camel, erotic/heroic poetry and tribal warfare.  With few exceptions, mainly Arabs who picked up civilization from conquered neighbors ... that is still all they are noted for, except petroleum has replaced erotic/heroic poetry.  People who have been forced to live in marginal lands for millennia, tend not to be progressive.  On the other hand, most Muslims are not Arabs ... so there is still hope for them, particularly if they are able to use both hands (in the desert you use the left hand for defecation and clean up with hot sand).  This is why no traditional Arab has a positive potty attitude.  Not to mention stinking, spitting, biting, kicking camels.

One of the Sunni problems, is that education is still controlled by the imams.  This used to be a problem in Judaism too, about 150 years ago.  In the West we kicked the clerics out of college or isolated them to seminaries ... but that was only 100 years ago.  Before  that, our education was pretty bad too.  When a madrassah primary educated Muslim encounters Western secular learning, it is a bit like those folks who were kidnapped by the aliens in Encounters Of A Third Kind.  Of course for the past 900 years, the West invaded Muslim lands like bad-ass aliens from Teen Screamer movies.  The West has yet to successfully remove the original inhabitants off the petroleum reserve, genocide the people living on top of it, and put the survivors in reserve-ations to be stared at like a human exhibit from Planet Of The Apes.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

Apparently Islam's history stops with Al Ghazali who halted all Islamic intellectual advancement in CE 1111 and "reformed" Islam to it's original 7th century mindset.

Which is... what? Islam in the 7th century was considered a Christian heresy alongside Iconoclasm and Monophysitism. The overwhelming majority of the "Muslim" troops who attacked the Eastern Roman Empire were Christians; the Muslims themselves didn't make much of an effort to convert people until much later. The reason the Caliphate was able to form in the first place was because the ERE was doing everything in its power to suppress heresies, while the Muslims were seen as liberators by many of the locals they conquered. They went into Persia for much the same reason that the ERE often did: there were Christians there under a Zoroastrian yoke, and they believed they were acting in the interests of their fellow "People of the Book."

I may attack modern Islam a lot, but I will give credit where and when it's due. Islam was not seen as a negative force by most of the people conquered by the soon-to-be Caliphate.

[pr126]

There is also a possibility that your sources are inaccurate?

I have studied Islam, and came to a conclusion that the ideology itself has absolutely no redeeming qualities.
Never has had any, and never will.

[doorknob]

No one is calling for Islam to get a pass, but when you make statements about the "Islamic doctrine" with certain aspects in mind, you are implying that all Muslims are the same, and that all Islam is the same. You yell "No True Scotsman" when that is the very thing you are saying; that only the Islam you criticize exists, and that it doesn't have different sects and different levels of adherences that vary from culture to culture.

Funny you seem to have a problem with any one criticizing Islam in any form. I was just pointing out that you pointed at Christianity to try and excuse Islam. There is no reason for you to protect Islam. We're criticizing the religion no different than we criticize Christianity.

Did I ever say we should hate Muslims or what ever it is you seem to think I'm prejudice about?

I know that not all Muslims are the same. Just as all Christians are not the same. That doesn't excuse the violence and pedophilia that goes on with religion as their excuse. Just like the fact that the bible supports slavery but not all Christians own slaves nor believe in owning slaves. Just because some Christians don't or never owned slaves doesn't excuse the Christians who do or did. So why do you expect me to excuse the Muslims who do follow the Koran word for word?  Are you denying they exist? Because that's what you are trying to insist.

Do not project your failure to realise that mistake on to me.

Your the one waving his edgy dick about how you don't give a fuck in public, not me. Why bring it up if you don't want people to comment on it?

This is the question that should be asked, rather than focusing on a xenophobic view as OP has.

There's nothing wrong with what the OP posted. As you can see our members have actually answered the OP's question. This does not make him a xenophobe. Many people who feel this way have valid reasons for feeling this way it's not all roses and sunshine coming out of the middle east. I think he(or she) feels frustrated because there are immigrants that bring their ill belief systems with them. The same problems people are running from often follow people where ever they go.  Not addressing the issue just because you want to call people a xenophobe is actually counter productive.

Plenty of people here have given good examples of good things that came from Muslims albeit not from Islam it's self. 

[pr126]

I have noticed that quite a few posters rush in to "soften the blow" for the image of Islam, which I am sure they would not do for Christianity.

There is also the usual tu quoque any time Islam is the subject. No way one can discuss Islam without invoking Christianity.

Thankfully, the race card is no longer used here, (although it is everywhere else) but still the labels islamophobe, hater, more recently xenophobe is used to try and shut down any negative discussion on Islam.

I may attack modern Islam a lot, but I will give credit where and when it's due.

The modern Islam some people see is in fact the original Islam as per dictates of the Islamic scriptures.
ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban etc. are pure original Islam as it was  practiced by the "prophet" Muhammad.

Any reprehensible act they do such murder, crucifixion, beheading, cutting off limbs, burning alive, slavery, rape can be found in the Quran.

Whenever there is any acceptable thing done by Muslims it is despite Islam, not because of it.

[Munch]

The great problem with theocracy, is its hard to separate the people from the religion, and the accomplishments of the people being just that by itself instead of being 'an accomplishment of the religion'

[josephpalazzo]

I have noticed that quite a few posters rush in to "soften the blow" for the image of Islam, which I am sure they would not do for Christianity.

Let's call them by their proper name: Islamic apologists.

If they were Christian apologists, they would be run out of this forum.

[trdsf]

I have noticed that quite a few posters rush in to "soften the blow" for the image of Islam, which I am sure they would not do for Christianity.

No apologia for Islam here.  Just a respect for historical fact, as best we know.  Same as I would have to credit Christianity with being the inspiration/source for towering works of art like Bach's St Matthew's Passion.  The historical fact is that the Islamic world, at one time, was the center of scientific and mathematical work.  They have abdicated that since, but that doesn't change history.

[josephpalazzo]

No apologia for Islam here.  Just a respect for historical fact, as best we know.  Same as I would have to credit Christianity with being the inspiration/source for towering works of art like Bach's St Matthew's Passion.  The historical fact is that the Islamic world, at one time, was the center of scientific and mathematical work.  They have abdicated that since, but that doesn't change history.

This

[Hijiri Byakuren]

There is also a possibility that your sources are inaccurate?

I don't think the Byzantines had any great love for the people invading them, so I'm not exactly worried about bias here.

[josephpalazzo]

I don't think the Byzantines had any great love for the people invading them, so I'm not exactly worried about bias here.

People often forget that armies in the past were often made of mercenaries, people of different tribes, people of different faith, and so on - pretty much like the US army used warriors from different tribes to fight in the ole West. History is rarely black and white, but a multitude of shades of grey.

[Baruch]

I don't think the Byzantines had any great love for the people invading them, so I'm not exactly worried about bias here.

The Byzantines were Christian, who had eliminated secular study and philosophy from Alexandria to Athens.  Scholars had to flee to Persia to escape persecution.  In the end only the seminary in Constantinople was left.  The West was even more ruined, with only Irish monks to bring literacy back from W to E.  The Persians were Zoroastrian.  And I have known one Zoroastrian.  They are even more losers in history than Jews, since they have never made it back.

[josephpalazzo]

Who said "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it"?

[spoiler] It's a rhetorical question[/spoiler]