Lest we forget

[Thorne]

That's fair, but you still have to give evolution time to work. I mean, you have to...Not devolved but froze.

It seems to me that evolution HAS worked over the last thousand or so years: their culture has frozen, as you say, or gone backwards. Our culture has advanced. But cultural evolution and biological evolution work under different rules. And I believe cultural evolution works a lot faster.

If history teaches us anything it's that whenever people become chauvinist about their culture it stops evolving and in time becomes obsolete. Let's try to avoid that ok?

My point exactly. One facet of the extremist Islamic beliefs seems to be that change is bad. Therefore, no progress.
I'm not an historian, so maybe my facts are off a bit, but I think one can safely say that the beginning of the fall of Arab culture began with the rise of Mohammadism. Once again faith degenerated into religion and the common man suffers while the priests/medicine men/Imams/what-have-you flourish.