Do you think it's also a knocking down of Western achievements?  How many times do we hear something like, "well, it's not only the Greek and Romans who were important"?I may be completely wrong, but in my class we are discussing Europe in the 1400s and what motivated exploration. Seems most of them are placing too much emphasis on the Muslims.  I pointed out that the internal wars and competitions in Europe were more an issue than Islam.  Yes, Muslims blocked and taxed trade routes to the east and that's an important issue, but I think some are placing too much emphasis on that.

The overemphasis on external and extraneous factors in current historiography is a result of the Post-Structuralism.  It says that everything is impacted by everything else.  You are essentially correct in your analysis of medieval society.  The Muslims had an influence on wider geopolitics but what mainly concerned rulers in late medieval Europe except for Spain were dynastic and regional squabbles, not what the Muslims were doing in Outremer.  One of the goals of the post-modernists and post-structuralists is a denial that society exists independently of everything else.  That is the root of multiculturalism.  If all cultures are equal how can we be justified in defending or imposing our culture on those that live among us?You should really read some Foucault.  I would recommend the Foucault Reader by Paul Rabinow and A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds by Peggy Kamuf; if you can get through them both they are real eye-openers in the way these types of people think.  Foucault and Derrida are two of the biggest recent influencers of post-modern thought.  I plowed through both for my paper on Post-Modernism in contemporary historiography and let me tell you I have only read few books that were more obscure and indirect.  It is almost like they talk in code.