You had that almost right, you know. Up until the sarcasm. The scholarship was the result of the de-facto monopoly on resources and censorship, and the monopoly was the result of state-supported violence. What's there to dispute? My glib delivery of the facts? I do apologise ever so profusely.
I realize that everyone is busy congratulating themselves about dispelling the misconceptions about the dreadful dung ages and all, but let's not allow the sentiment to get in the way of history, shall we?
Yes. And prior to state Christianity, that wasn't the case. The old system collapsed and the system that replaced it - and which Christianity had a big impact on - wasn't anything to get excited about, in the most polite and objective terms possible...at least until the 13th c., generously.
It might be helpful to look at it, indeed. I did and my conclusion is as I stated it. I think you're trying to make a distinction between Church-directed violence and state-directed but religiously-tinged violence, and I don't see why you should be attempting this. They're hardly separable at that point.
It's not my fault that your apologetics get in the way of your history, you know. No need to be this angry.
I meant nothing creepy at all. Spiritual mentorship was a big part of Muslim education for gentlemen and royalty and even common people. There were serious political struggles between religious schools of thought. There's nothing nefarious meant, other than to say that by aligning with such and such teacher (and often that happened early in life and education, though some exceptions have notably changed their views significantly as years went on), a Muslim prince strongly signaled whose ideas would dominate. And that had political fallout.
Sorry for the sarcasm, you aren't the first person toting the whole "the church stifled science through burning" baggage on this thread, the last one having been warned for insulting religion. I'm not angry, I'm just amused that there are still people here who think that the church killed/stifled science, despite the fact that such is totally unsupported and indefensible.
That said, no, you are still blaming religions for monopolizing education (not to mention your crazy assumption that they did so by force), rather than crediting them for reestablishing it where there was none to be had, so you are in the wrong. To put it bluntly, when the Roman Empire fell there wasn't any formal education to be had unless you were very rich, and the church came into this situation as the only large, wealthy, literate organization with any desire to educate anyone on anything, so of course they were able to monopolize education. There wasn't competition to begin with, they didn't strangle it.
Prior to state sanctioned Christianity, in most places (the Frankish, Gothic, and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms) there was nothing. In Byzantium, secular education declined under the church, but there wasn't a deliberate murderous attempt to kill it, it declined because of external political and economic factors that the church was better equipped to deal with more than anything else.
To the bold, no, I am not attempting to make a destinction, I am telling you that secular learned persons did not face opposition from either source on the basis of their learning. Some of them faced opposition for other reasons, personal grudges were popular in all walks of life, church or otherwise, but there simply aren't the large number of cases that you are imagining of the church burning people at the stake for attempting to learn from other sources. They burned plenty of people for heresy, and more than a few because of corruption and misunderstandings, but seeking intellectual knowledge was never opposed.
Do note that I'm not claiming that the dark ages weren't an intellectually poor time, just that, between the total collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and it's replacement with warlike semi-civilized states, plus the associated decline in economy, standards of living, and international trade and travel, the church is an unlikely culprit for the decline in secular education.
I still say that insinuating that the mentor had de facto control over the policies of Islamic rulers is wrong. I would say that Islamic leaders were not any more likely to be influenced in policies of state by their spiritual mentors than by any others of their advisers and associates.