lpetrich

Sphinx Wui:
Those differences among the schools of thoughts were recognized inside the Islamic state but you will find areas with big cities, agricultural background and civilizations beside rivers stick to the nice descent reasonable schools of thoughts while harsh Bedouin areas stick to the harsh ones.

Another factor in determining the development of a school of thought is the historical period where the founder of it lived and if it was peaceful prosperous period you will find his school of thought easy going but if it is a harsh period and full of wars you will find the strict closed minded militant opinions.

That's certainly an interesting correlation. I'm reminded of how Communists have usually taken over in war-torn areas.

The Soviets took over in WWI, overthrowing Kerensky's Provisional Government, which had taken over from the Tsars' crumbling regime.

The Red Chinese, North Koreans, and Eastern European Communsts took over at the end of WWII and shortly afterward, with some being helped by the Soviets and some, like China's and Yugoslavia's, emerging victorious in civil wars.

Conversely, Soviet and Eastern European Communism fell after a long period of relative peace, with the worst strife being the suppression of challenges to the Soviet empire -- and usually peaceful ones.

And China has also moved away from Maoist orthodoxy during a period of peace.

sphinx wui

There is continuous dialogue between human beings and their enviroment.for example Afghanistan failed to this day to form effective central government while Egypt had it thousands years ago, the answer is the geography. With geography like Afghanistan with all those mountainous areas, central government is near Impossible and rebellion against it is very easy but in the Egyptian case, the simple geography with the Nile is the source of life, central government became a necessity to regulate irrigation and water distribution and rebellion became near impossible and undesirable!!(Unfortunately)

We used to call Egyptian Islam “the wet Islam” “the smiling Islam” while we called Islam in areas such as Saudia Arabia “the dry Islam” “the gloom face Islam”

There is a very interesting book about this relation between human beings and their environment written by an Egyptian geography professor called Gamal Hemdan and I put a link to a page about him. His book called “the Character of Egypt” and he studied extensively how the geography and the location of Egypt affect the Egyptian character.

http://www.sis.gov.eg/egyptinf/culture/html/hemdan.htm

If you review the links that I put about Ibn Arabi, you can also understand the relation between him and his descent civilized surroundings in medieval spain and how it shaped his opinions.