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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   917 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 10, 2025

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Early Christian writers talked about treating their women and slaves better than the pagans- and in ancient Rome this was not an all-important value you could expect them to lie about. Anthropologists today note the effects of Christianization in the third world.

Islamic societies were the most advanced in the world for centuries. Look into the Islamic Golden Age. The civilization that built the Alhambra and founded the first universities in the world, institutions which directly inspired the Europeans who founded the oldest centers of higher learning in Europe.

These Islamic societies were not majority Islamic- Islam degrades HBD capital over the long term by encouraging cousin marriage. As a scientific racist I'd expect you to pay attention to that.

These Islamic societies were not majority Islamic- Islam degrades HBD capital over the long term by encouraging cousin marriage. As a scientific racist I'd expect you to pay attention to that.

Doesn't pass the sniff test since the great men of the Islamic golden age were, as far as I know, all Muslims. Any hard evidence for this position?

These Islamic societies were not majority Islamic

This would be highly surprising if true; I’ve seen persuasive evidence that the elites of these societies were not majority Arab, but my understanding is that Islamization was extremely thorough and brutal — hence the flight of the Zoroastrian dissident population all the way to India, where they persist as Parsees to this day.

As for the cousin marriage thing, clearly many forms of Christianity also failed to effectively stamp out the practice (hence the discussion around the so-called Hajnal Line) so this seems far from dispositive regarding the superiority of one over the other.

Islamization was thorough, it probably wasn't quick, the middle east was highly religiously diverse within living memory- preferential immigration policies for middle eastern Christians and different fertility rates are what drove the Christian population from an actual majority in Lebanon, near parity in the rest of the levant, and large minorities in Iraq and Egypt to their current pitiful state. The Ottoman Empire had much larger Christian populations than would be expected based on present day territory.

There is also a vast difference in cousin marriage rates between Christian and Muslim Arabs, to say nothing of non-Hajnal Christian societies like Ireland, Iberia, Slavic lands etc and Islamic societies. The real effect of the Hajnal line was raising the female age at marriage very early.

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