That’s the standard deflection, but it doesn’t hold up.
The long decline in the Islamic world was already well underway centuries before European colonialism. The Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258, the shift toward madrasa-focused religious education, the resistance to sustained rational inquiry after figures like Al-Ghazali, and centuries of relative stagnation under later empires all happened while Europe was still recovering from its own dark ages and then surging ahead.
Colonialism disrupted many societies — yet post-colonial East Asia, parts of India, and others managed rapid catch-up and surpassing once they adopted the institutions and mindset of modernity. Many Muslim-majority countries, despite oil wealth, foreign aid, and independence, have not shown the same trajectory on average.
“Irregular development” is true everywhere. The question is why one civilization that once led in key fields for a few centuries then largely fell behind for the next 700 years, and why that pattern continues in governance, education, innovation metrics, and social attitudes today.
“Islam isn’t uniform” is also true in practice — there are secular Muslims, reformers, and varying interpretations. But the religion isn’t infinitely malleable. Its foundational texts (Quran and Hadith) and classical Sharia framework contain explicit positions on law, apostasy, gender roles, religious supremacy, and governance that many contemporary Muslim societies still reference or poll positively on. That’s why we see consistent patterns across very different countries and cultures when Islamic doctrine is given political weight.
You can’t keep blaming external factors forever while the internal doctrinal and cultural elements remain unexamined. Other civilizations adapted and reformed. The data on outcomes keeps testing the claim — and the results are what they are.
History is stubborn. So is measurable reality.