Islam was the catalyst of change in the 7th century, I don't see how that could be denied. Yes, it was predominately Arabs that brought it outside the Peninsula but the scholarly achievements weren't Arab achievements, because, again, many of the scholars weren't Arabs. Heck, the most important book in Sunni Islam after the Qur'an was compiled by al-Bukhari, a non-Arab from Bukhara in modern-day Afghanistan.

If you look into it, Islamic scholarship didn't really kick off until the Abbasid Dynasty was established. Non-Arabs played a large role in allowing the Abbasids to come into power in the first place.

The jizya (tax on non-Muslims) was a higher fee than the zakat (religious tax on Muslims). As more and more non-Arabs started to embrace Islam, the Umayyads were getting less and less tax revenue because the new Muslims were playing zakat instead of jizya.

As such, they stated (against the laws of Islam) that non-Arab converts to Islam still need to pay the same amount as they were paying before they embraced Islam. Naturally, this led to a lot of resentment amongst the new non-Arab Muslims who would later support the Abbasid rebellion against the Umayyads.

The Abbasids would go on to employ many non-Arabs, especially Persians, into high positions in government.

I'm pretty sure what you're trying to say is religion has no place in the 21st century.

Also fun fact, the early days of Islam saw huge steps forward for women's rights, more so than pretty much any other culture at the time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_feminism#Early_reforms_...). I'm curious why you Mohammed was a misogynist and what that has to do with Islam?

"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(Interesting that your only other comment on this profile was a suggestion to someone else to read the guidelines.)