1. Your point about rise of powers is well-noted. It is certainly pertinent in my view, but relating to nation-state level, not a higher level. Europe, India, and even Russia has had a long and checkered relation with Muslim empires. The memories are not to be easily forgotten or ignored. In this context, unless there are certain assurances, there would be great resistance to collective rise of Islamic world. I hope that you can appreciate the nervousness such a prospect might cause especially when viewed in context of today's perception of Muslims. You might see my assertions as fundamentally flawed, but I think it is a matter of perspective.
You assertions are not flawed, which implies an undisputed or at least non-credibly disputable truth, which really does not exist.
You are correct, or at least implied, that relationships inevitably produces perspectives and in the absence of mind readers, perceptions based upon perspectives, no matter how incomplete those perceptions may be, are all that we have, and actions and their consequences are products of those relationships.
At one point in Chemistry, if you do not speak German, you can expect to be excluded from that science. Not because the country called Germany or Germans themselves somehow managed to legally dominated Chemistry, but because there were so many outstanding German chemists contributed so significantly to that science that the culture in that science pulled its participants into learning/speaking German -- if one wants to learn and contribute to Chemistry in any significant way.
Go back further several hundred or even a thousand yrs. From 8th to 14th century, the Arabs so dominated science that Jews, Christians, and Persians had to learn Arabic and that propelled Arabic science to the fore for those centuries. Astronomy, physics, mathematics, medicine, and optics -- all had to by intellectual necessities be learned and written in Arabic.
But then the Muslims rejected Greek philosophy because Greek thoughts contradicted many perspectives and perceptions dictated by the Quran to believers. Rejection is a component of relationships, no matter how brief that relationship, even if the briefness is virtual and not physical.
For example, I reject communism not because Marxism was the only exposure I had but because I actually do have physical ties to Marxism and its political expression -- communism -- via my background as a child and an adult. Compare to today with the Soviet Union gone, very few in the West in the post Berlin Wall generation have any physical ties to Marxism and communism but they do have intellectual relationships with them via academia. Some are abhorred by Marxism and communism. Some are attracted to them. At one point in history, if you want to be taken seriously in the political science arena of Marxism, you better know how to speak Russian. Or Chinese for the Asians.
Is that rejection of Greek philosophy by the Muslims a part of that checkered past ? You bet. The consequences of that rejection are intellectually profound and continues to this day. Rejection is possible by the charge that an idea is 'un-Islamic' or have no basis in the Quran and the hadiths. Rejection is inevitable as long as one holds an idea to be undisputable and that idea is that the Quran contains all that one needs for life.
If the counter-argument is that the Quran is supposed to contains all the
MORAL things for life, and not to be used for scientific discourses, then the counter-argument is shortsighted. Scientific thoughts, discoveries, and inventions do produces moral consequences. Tough moral choices are abundant for the consumers of science.
Take premarital sex, for example. Premarital sex exists for as long as there are moralities that say do constrains yourself, but it is largely frowned upon even by non-believers, at least because of the consequence -- pregnancy -- that is burdened only by one side -- the woman. Science then explained to us the details of the processes of conception and pregnancy, which inevitably gave us the means on how to prevent those processes in the first place, from the condom to the pill. The morality of premarital sex is now changed, probably forever.
Science do produces moral consequences and by that intrudes into the moral arena long dominated by religionists of all religions. As long as the Muslims continues to cling on to the idea that the Quran contains
EVERYTHING MORALLY necessary, whether one is a Muslim or not, rejection based upon the Quran is equally inevitable as how science inevitably introduces moral quandaries.
This is not about nation-state relationships but about cultural ones.
