Frankly, I have read the Muslim “holy books” (OK, in several translations, because I do not read Arabic) and done as much reading as I could stomach on the life of Mohamed, the Butcher of Medina, and I can find nothing of worth in Islam at all. Any morality in the life and teachings of Mohamed, the Butcher of Medina, is either lifted from elsewhere or twisted into a vile perversion and in any case is overwhelmed by the 70+% of Islam’s “holy books” that is simple, plain hate speech and incitement to abuse of “unbelievers”.
And Islam’s “contributions” to civilization? A big fat zero with the rim kicked off. Algebra? Nu-uh. Been known and used for millennia before Islam and the form reintroduced with so-called “Arabic numbers” was stolen from the same place the Muslims stole their maths: India–and BTW, Muslims castrated the maths they stole from the Hindu mathematicians, because negative numbers were “theologically” repugnant to them. Typical.
And so it has gone with all the great Islamic “contributions” to civilization. Omar Khayyam’s “Rubaiyat”–among the very the best of Islamic lit to come to the West–is a. full of things that would get poor Omar killed by genuinely devout Muslims and b. just so-so as literature. Western lit is FULL to overflowing of much better stuff. In fact, so full of “much better stuff” is Western lit that Averroes, the greatest of Islam’s “scientists” (though the term didn’t exist then, really) wrote his greatest work as nothing more than a commentary on… Aristotle.
Whoopee! Nothing original, just a glorified study guide.
And that is the BEST of what Islam has had to offer: mediocre literature that is not very Islamic at all, stolen philosophy and technology, and rehashing of the great thought of WESTERN thinkers.
Everything else? Pretty much either worthless or of highly NEGATIVE “value”.
And contrast so-called “Christian” acts of barbarity with Muslim barbarity. FACT: People who claim to be Christians and who commit mass murder, rape, pillage, slaving, etc., CLAIMING to do so in the cause of the Christ are liars, for all these things are diametrically opposed to the life and teachings of The Nazarene.
OTOH, FACT: Muslims who commit mass murder, rape, pillage, slaving, etc., claiming to do so in the service of Mohamed’s cult of hate are smack dab in the middle of Islam’s teachings, for these things are central (over 70% of Islam’s so-called “holy books” deal with exhorting Muslims to do such things or providing permission to do such things) to Islam. In fact, both “holy lies” (al taqiyah, deceiving the unbeliever) and mass murder are central to Mohamed’s–the Butcher of Medina–first “great” victory: the mass murder under a flag of truce of ~900 of the Banu Quraiza Jews at Yathrib (now known as Medina), followed by the pillaging of their goods and the rape and enslavement of their families.
If Mohamed were alive today and just starting out, he would be seen by those with eyes to see and ears to hear as several orders of magnitude more evil than Jim Jones and his words as more toxic than the Jonestown Koolaid.
So, there you have it: all the respect for Islam I can muster.