Ken, this would work much better if you were able to remember details of a discussion.
This all started when you made some laughably ignorant comments about inherent characteristics of Islam as a religion.
I countered by saying that you were conflating broader characteristics regarding the Middle East with Islam.
When you make comments like " The Middle East was a place of lunatics before any of this. Consider, e.g., Assyria. Lunatics. Islam did not create the lunacy. Islam arose from the lunacy and reinforced it." you are conceding my basic point.
If you agree to do so, we can then go and consider the Indian subcontinent and Indonesia (home to 80% of the world's Muslims and a much better place to consider the role of Islam in society than the Middle East.
Before doing so, lets examine some more of the gems of wisdom that you dispensed.
You criticize me for listing "ridiculous factors". To start with, this was a direct response to your own comment "What meteor hit the Middle East?"
I gave you five very big ones...
One of the (several) undergraduate degrees that I have is in history (I specifically focused in the Ottoman Empire)
Please trust me when I say that all of these events are considered as being quite significant.
As to some of your other pearls of wisdom
1. Yes, World War I and World War II devastated Europe. England, France, and Germany were destroyed as world powers.
How does that in any way negate my claim that the Mongol invasion had a similar impact on the Abbasid caliphate.
If anything, by claiming that major wars can devastate a region, you are supporting my main point.
Oh, BTW, while the Mongols did invade Europe, their impact was limited to Russia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, and Turkey.
he first three were pretty much backwaters for the next 500 years.
2. The Ottoman's had a highly effective navies that operated in both the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. The issue here is not that the Ottoman's could not trade with India and China, rather, they lost their ability to extract monopolistic rents
3. There's plenty of good material out there discussion the Spanish price revolution
Here's one of the first sentences from wikipedia "The Spanish Price Revolution is overwhelmingly the most prolonged and influential occurrence of rampant inflation in modern history."
5. With respect to the curse of oil, wikipedia once again has a decent enough treatment
https://en.wikipedia.../Resource_curse
These aren't minor little things that I identified.