Victor Davis Hansen’s book, Carnage and Culture, shows explicitly why Western civilization has been superior to all other world cultures for two and a half thousand years. This page shows just how superior Euro-American culture is by comparing Euro-American achievements to those of the Islamic world (including Europeanized Turkey).

The Western way of war is so lethal precisely because it is so amoral– shackled rarely by concerns of ritual, tradition, religion, or ethics, by anything other than military necessity.
…Western armies often fight with and for a sense of legal freedom. They are frequently products of civic militarism or constitutional governments and thus are overseen by those outside religion and the military itself. The rare word “citizen” exists in the European vocabularies.
…Because free inquiry and rationalism are Western trademarks, European armies have marched to war with weapons either superior or equal to their adversaries, and have often been supplied far more lavishly through the Western marriage of capitalism, finance, and sophisticated logistics.
…Western capitalists and scientists alike have been singularly pragmatic and utilitarian, with little to fear from religious fundamentalists, state censors, or stern cultural conservatives. [pages 21-22]

The history of medieval Europe shows that Christian religious dogma and censorship held back Judeo-Christian progress just as Islam held back the progress of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa. Women who used natural healing methods such as herbal concoctions risked being accused of witchcraft, and the Inquisition pursued Galileo for daring to “invade Heaven” with his telescope. Fortunately, the Church lost much of its influence in the seventeenth century although we are still fighting with troglodytes who insist on teaching creationism and “intelligent design” in our schools. If God wanted us to believe that He created the world in six days, He would not have filled the world with fossil evidence to the contrary plus mixtures of lead and uranium that prove the world to be more than four billion years old.

Even parts of medieval Europe were, however, far more progressive than their Christian neighbors and the Islamic world. While one could be burned at the stake for even reading the wrong book in certain parts of Europe, Poland enacted absolute freedom of the press in 1539 (Zamoyski, The Polish Way, p. 117). Poland also enjoyed almost-absolute freedom of religion and, when reactionary Catholic clergy attempted to conduct Inquisitions and burn “heretics” at the stake, they found themselves facing the sabres of Catholic Polish noblemen who would not put up with this sort of thing for an instant.

Islam’s last major victory over Christian Europe came in 1453, when the Ottoman Empire conquered the decaying Byzantine Empire. Shortly afterward, though, the Ottoman Empire instituted an office known as the Sheikh al-Islam, whose function was to make sure that everything was done in accordance with Islamic law. Islam’s reactionary effects were such that the Ottoman Empire, the most advanced Muslim-majority nation in the world, did not allow introduction of the printing press until the early 18th century for fear that it would be used to spread “unacceptable” ideas.

As a result, the Ottoman Empire fell behind its European counterparts in terms of technological progress. The Battle of Lepanto (1572), while not a totally one-sided massacre, was a disaster for Ottoman military power. The Battle of Vienna (1683) was another such disaster and the Turks never again posed a serious threat to Christian Europe. Russian armies commanded by Suvorov routinely made mincemeat of ferocious Turkish Janissaries who still focused on individual prowess in battle as opposed to military organization and teamwork. In the nineteenth century, the Turks finally realized that they had a serious problem and brought in Prussian advisors to help them modernize their country. Helmuth von Moltke, who was later victor over the Austrians and French, spent considerable time in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans managed to advance far enough to give the British and ANZACs considerable trouble at Gallipoli in 1915.

The rest of the Islamic world performed even worse. During medieval times, Arab science was probably superior to European science. Arab doctors used scientific medicine instead of ascribing illnesses to evil spirits, the will of God, and so on as European “doctors” did. Europe, in fact, may have even forgotten aspects of Roman medicine like sterilizing surgical instruments. (Archaeologists have unearthed Roman medical kits with braziers that were apparently meant for this purpose.) The Arab world may have been cleaner as well, noting that it was standard practice in Europe to throw raw sewage into the streets and allow rats to run freely through homes, shops, and so on. This, however, began to change in the 15th or 16th century. The Islamic world remained static while the Judeo-Christian world pushed on ahead.

Why did this happen, especially because Muslims claim to worship the same God whom Jews and Christians worship? The roots may lie in the characteristics of pre-Christian Europe and the superiority of the Greco-Roman gods to those of pre-Islamic Africa, Arabia, and Central Asia. The Egyptians, Persians, Babylonians, and so on worshipped obscure Big-Daddy-That-Sits-In-Sky deities that were far out of touch with mere mortals. They might, at most, deliver good or bad harvests according to their pleasure or displeasure with mortal conduct. Mortals might bow to them, pray to them, and offer them sacrifices but they could never interact with them. Myths and legends consisted primarily of gods interacting with other gods, and the progress of the soul in the afterlife.

The Greeks, however, created their gods in their own images. Even the all-mighty Zeus or Jupiter could become enraged or cheat on his wife, while the war god Ares/Mars could be humiliated by being caught in bed with Aphrodite/Venus. The object of these stories was not, however, to ridicule the gods but rather to teach parables of human behavior; a practice that Jesus adopted later for the purpose of creating the Christian religion. The Greco-Roman gods were, unlike the half-human-half-animal creatures that Easterners and Egyptians worshipped, role models for human occupations and human behavior. They were also teachers who frequently adopted human form and interacted with mortals, or gave advice to mortals. They rarely gave mortals anything outright but often taught them what they needed to know to achieve their goals. This fostered a culture of innovation and self-reliance that did not prevail anywhere else.

The utility of the Greco-Roman gods as teachers and role models was, in fact, too important to be pushed aside for monotheism. Since Christians could have only one God, they converted the Roman gods into patron saints of various occupations. Athena/Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and justifiable warfare, still survives as the symbol of Union College and her shield is on the arms of the U.S. Military Academy. The eagle, once the sacred bird of Zeus/Jupiter, figures prominently on the coats of arms of many nations such as the United States and Poland, and formerly of Austria, Germany, and Russia. In summary, although no one believes in the actual divinity of the Greco-Roman gods, they still play major roles in our culture. They symbolize free inquiry and rationalism as opposed to passive superstition and mindless dogma.

Some valuable clues may also be found by comparing the popular stories and legends of Europe to those of the Middle East and Central Asia. Greek mythology is full of stories in which a hero must find an innovative way to solve a problem instead of relying on his strength or sheer good luck. Hercules had to figure out how to kill a lion with an impenetrable hide along with a hydra that grew two new heads for every one he cut off. Later, he diverted a river through the Augean Stables to clean out the accumulated manure. It is very significant that Alexander the Great regarded Hercules as a role model and the stories about Hercules may have even taught Alexander how to solve seemingly-unsolvable problems. Alexander may have remembered Hercules’ alteration of geography when he had his engineers build an isthmus to the island fortress of Tyre. Furthermore, he did not consider himself at the gods’ mercy either. When a lunar eclipse frightened his men on the eve of battle, he simply interpreted it as meaning that the Persian Empire would be eclipsed by the Macedonians. There wasn’t much that the fire-worshipping Darius, the king of what is now Iran, could do against that kind of thought process.

The hero Odysseus (Ulysses) also was known for his craftiness and innovation, and Theseus was known for his wisdom. These heroes may be compared to Aladdin, a lazy boy who finds a magical lamp with a genie that grants him enormous riches. Instead of having to earn his fortune, he simply gets lucky like someone who wins the lottery, or like the Arabs who found themselves sitting atop huge oil deposits. Aladdin does have to deal with an evil sorcerer but he (or his wife) use poison, a cowardly and treacherous method by Euro-American standards, to dispose of him. Perhaps the most resourceful Arab hero in the Arabian Nights is a fisherman who finds another genie who has sworn to kill whomever releases him. The hero tricks the very gullible genie into going back into the bottle, much as B’rer Rabbit persuaded B’rer Fox to throw him to safety in a briar patch, and then replaces the stopper with the Seal of Soloman.

While Odysseus uses innovative trickery to achieve his goals, the heroes of the Arabian Nights rely more on what we would call treachery. Aladdin’s and the fisherman’s treachery were certainly justified, reasonable, and necessary in the face of the sorcerer’s and genie’s own dishonorable actions but the key point is that stories and legends teach behavior, attitudes, and values. A culture’s stories and legends reflect its values and core beliefs. Those of the Arabian Nights, while entertaining, are hardly complimentary to the Islamic world.

We have actually tabulated the major achievements of the Euro-American world and the Islamic world and posted them side by side for comparison. The record of scientific, medical, and military inventions, along with the production of great works of literature, is totally lopsided in favor of the Judeo-Christian world. The Islamic world has, in fact, invented or created almost nothing of importance since Arabic numerals (which were invented before Islam existed). Every disease (smallpox, typhus, cholera, polio, bacterial infections) that has been eradicated has fallen to Judeo-Christian and not Islamic science. Innovations like steam engines, electricity, and nuclear power that have lifeted backbreaking labor from human backs and shoulders are all the products of Judeo-Christian science. Every significant military innovation since the invention of gunpowder has come from Judeo-Christian sources.

The problem is not one of population ratio because there are probably as many Muslims in the world as there are Jews and Christians combined. Nonetheless, we could find no one from the Islamic world among the Nobel laureates in medicine, literature, physics, or chemistry. This is not to say that Arabs and Muslims have not earned Nobel Prizes in these fields but they all seem to be Arab-Americans or Arab-Europeans; in other words, they are part of our Euro-American world and not part of the Islamic world. We even doubt that the only problem is that the Islamic world relegates half its population (the female half) to more-or-less-chattel status while women such as Marie Sklowdowska Curie and her daughter were earning Nobel Prizes in the early part of the 20th century. There are far more than half a billion males in the Islamic world and, if their societies fostered innovative thinking, at least some of them would be represented. Israel, with its six million or so people, certainly is.

They cannot blame the Evil White Man either, because the Islamic world produced few scientific achievements while solidly under Islamic control. Remember that the Ottoman Empire had to bring in Prussian advisors to make it halfway competitive with Europe, and it denied itself the printing press by its own choice. Poverty is not an excuse either because many Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia are making fortunes from oil while Europeanized Japan, which is poor in natural resources, is a veritable center of scientific and industrial advancement. China, while still a dictatorship, is probably turning out more engineers and scientists than Europe, Japan, and North America combined.

Japan, in fact, has a valuable lesson to teach the Islamic world if the latter is willing to learn. After Tokugawa Ieyasu’s victories in Japan’s civil wars, he had himself made Shogun and then cut Japan off from almost all intercourse with the West. While Ieyasu was a very intelligent and progressive man for his times, he failed to realize how technological advancement might put his country at risk in the far future. When Commodore Perry forced his way into Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, his cannon-armed warship discovered a country without steam power or modern weapons. The samurai still relied on swords and bows, and the only firearms in the country were primitive matchlock arquebuses that the Portuguese had taught the Japanese how to make more than 250 years ago.

The Japanese realized that the Europeans would dominate and exploit them if this did not change, and they made deliberate efforts to transform their society and culture. While certain aspects of Japanese society like respect for elders and teachers could be retained, the Shogun and his feudal retainers had to go and they did, after some violence. Japanese scrambled to learn about steam engines, railroads, machine guns, and ironclad warships. They learned so well that they could win a war against Russia in 1905, when many living Japanese could still remember life in a closed and isolated society under the Shogun.

The Shogun had to go and the imams and mullahs and mahdis have to go as well. This kind of change will doubtlessly be traumatic for the Islamic world but it is a choice that Muslims must make if they do not want to continue to live in backward societies that are characterized by ignorance, superstition, religious intolerance, poverty, oppression, and violence.