Raymond Ibrahim:
The full magnitude of the modern West’s ignorance of its own past recently struck via RaymondIbrahim.comme while rereading some early history books concerning the centuries-long jihad on Europe. The historical narrative being disseminated today simply bears very little resemblance to reality.
Consider some facts for a moment:
A mere decade after the birth of Islam in the 7th century, the jihad burst out of Arabia. Leaving aside all the thousands of miles of ancient lands and civilizations that were permanently conquered, today casually called the “Islamic world”—including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and parts of India and China—much of Europe was also, at one time or another, conquered by the sword of Islam.
Among other nations and territories that were attacked and/or came under Muslim domination are (to give them their modern names in no particular order): Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Sicily, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Albania, Serbia, Armenia, Georgia, Crete, Cyprus, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Belarus, Malta, Sardinia, Moldova, Slovakia, and Montenegro.
In 846 Rome was sacked and the Vatican defiled by Muslim Arab raiders; some 600 years later, in 1453, Christendom’s other great basilica, Holy Wisdom (or Hagia Sophia) was conquered by Muslim Turks, permanently.
The few European regions that escaped direct Islamic occupation due to their northwest remoteness include Great Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany. That, of course, does not mean that they were not attacked by Islam. Indeed, in the furthest northwest of Europe, in Iceland, Christians used to pray that God save them from the “terror of the Turk.” These fears were not unfounded since as late as 1627 Muslim corsairs raided the Christian island seizing four hundred captives, selling them in the slave markets of Algiers.
Nor did America escape. A few years after the formation of the United States, in 1800, American trading ships in the Mediterranean were plundered and their sailors enslaved by Muslim corsairs. The ambassador of Tripoli explained to Thomas Jefferson that it was a Muslim’s “right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to enslave as many as they could take as prisoners.”
In short, for roughly one millennium—punctuated by a Crusader-rebuttal that the modern West is obsessed with demonizing—Islam daily posed an existential threat to Christian Europe and by extension Western civilization.
And therein lies the rub: Today, whether as taught in high school or graduate school, whether as portrayed by Hollywood or the news media, the predominant historic narrative is that Muslims are the historic “victims” of “intolerant” Western Christians. That’s exactly what a TV personality recently told me live on Fox News.
So here we are, paying the price of being an ahistorical society: A few years after the Islamic strikes of 9/11—merely the latest in the centuries-long, continents-wide jihad on the West—Americans elected a man with a Muslim name and heritage for president, who openly empowers the same ideology that their ancestors lived in mortal fear of, even as they sit by and watch to their future detriment.
In the spring of 2013, the National Endowment for the Humanities, in conjunction with the American Library Association (long the bane of librarians all across the nation) issued millions of $$ grant money to libraries all across the U.S. for a program called
. The program consists of over 30 books, multiple DVDs and other materials to be placed in school and public libraries, designed to “correct” the opinion that most Americans have of Islam.
Along with the grant for the cost of books, and other local events that hire “scholars” to re-educate the American public and American school children, was a year long FREE access to the Oxford Islamic Studies Online, the editor of which is John L. Esposito, a radical Islamist apologist and close personal friend of Sami al Arian, convicted Florida State University professor who was illegally funding Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Two of the books have made their way into high school classes, all aimed at freshmen. A Country of Men contains writings that can be considered nothing more than written pornography although the ALA has determined is it “age-appropriate” for 12 year old students. The book portrays Gaddafi as a person of the people, someone to be admired. Persepolis, the other book, is in cartoon form (isn’t that fun?) and shows cartoon drawings of people being tortured with hot irons, being u*inated on, and explains how the American CIA taught the Iranian rebels of the late ’70’s how to torture people. Again, the ALA classifies this book as age-appropriate for 12 year old children.
Children are forced to read these books in class, and it is explained to them that the whole concept of “radical” Islam is just a fallacy, created by bigots and racists. The program has the explicit approval of CAIR and ISNA, as our president congratulated ISNA on its 30th annual convention in the U.S.
But if you’re a high school football player who raises a finger toward God when he makes a touch down, or a teacher who wears a small gold crucifix around her neck in the class room, you will be demonized, the ACLU and other groups will sue the school district, costing taxpayers money that should be dedicated to public education.
If anyone thinks that the indoctrination is not in full force, check the headlines of local news outlets how students are told to eat only halal foods during Ramadan, wear Islamic clothing, including the hajib, are taking to mosques to learn about the Qur’an, and are told that radical Islam does not exist.
Thanks Curt, for linking this.
I would have missed it.
@retire05:
Islam is a satanic death cult. Any honest reading of the unholy quran, the hadith, and the history of the forcible spread of this evil religion shows clearly the nature of the system.
No other religion demands submission of unbelievers, or death.
No other religion declares an eternity of carnality with 72 eternal virgins for dying while killing unbelievers.
No other religion explicitly says that the word of a woman is worth only half of a man in court.
No other religion tells its followers that it is their duty to lie to unbelievers to gain advantage over them.
No other religion has a founder who engaged in pedophilia – marrying a 6 year old and then molesting her when she was 9 years old.
No other religion had a founder that literally called for his followers to kill people who criticized him.
No other religion has a “holy” book arranged not in chronological order, but based on the length of the chapters – only islam does that.
No other religion insists that anyone following other “accepted” religions ‘of the book’ must limit their buildings, clothing and daily lives to be subservient to the islamic overlords.
Wow – did you actually remove the post I wrote on the satanic death cult of islam?
I see. So making simple, verified statements about the evil inherent in islam throughout history causes the postings to disappear.
It is your blog, I suppose, so you can run it how you see fit.
I will never choose dhimmitude.
The most Surreal and Suicidal: Modern Western Histories of Islam in RECENT time has been Obama’s narrative (and ARMS gifts) about a large ”moderate” alliance of Syrian rebels against Assad in Syria…..
SEE:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/10/11/205172/more-syria-rebel-groups-leave.html
Louay Meqdad is a spokesman for the moderate Free Syrian Army.
The article above quotes him sounding like the al Qaeda leaders of Iraq and Afghanistan (the world-leaders) back a few years ago:
It was Zarkawi and Zawahiri before writing letters back and forth about how now was the time to unite and kill the infidel (ok, oust Assad) because LATER they could clean house of any who worked with them in that goal but were not pure enough to live alongside. See The Al Qaeda Reader available at Amazon or bookstores.
Interesting that our ”moderate” used that same tack.
I wonder how he thought the divvying up might go AFTER Assad was gone?
This last weekend, Oct 12,13, 2013, these ”moderates” were reassured ”that the Obama administration would keep supporting and delivering aid to” them.
Problem is Obama cannot even get arms shipments past ISIS (the Syria Iraq al Qaida group that makes al Qaeda offshoot al Nusra look moderate!) because that powerful group controls key border crossings.