WANNA COME ALONG?
Posted on 10/11/2002 3:07:08 PM PDT by Jacob Kell
In anticipation of Columbus Day, I've been educating myself on the Muslims who discovered America.
You mean you didn't know that Muslims were in America before Columbus?
You didn't know Muslim navigators took Columbus by the hand and led him to a little island in the Bahamas known as Guanahani, a settlement of Islamic Mandinkas from Africa?
You hadn't heard about the Muslims from both Spain and West Africa who sailed to America at least five centuries before Columbus?
Yes, this is the new uni-cultural rage with the U.S. Muslim community. There are seminars in major cities and mosques all over the United States this week explaining how Muslims discovered America. That's how they are going to be celebrating Columbus Day.
Sure, it's funny, in its own perverse way. But it ought to serve as a warning to Americans who, despite being at war with Islamism, continue, naively, to think of Islam as just one of the three great monotheistic faiths – no more threatening to Western civilization than Christianity and Judaism, the very building blocks of that civilization.
Real Americans understand the contributions of Christopher Columbus. They understand his contributions to the founding of America – regardless of whether he was the first European to reach the New World or not.
Real Americans don't try to disparage Columbus' real contributions to the founding of America.
Real Americans don't attempt to co-opt a national holiday commemorating an American historical hero by offering unsubstantiated, self-serving conjecture about the role their own ethnic and religious group played in the founding.
I'm not saying Islam played no role in the discovery of America, by the way. In fact, I think it's quite clear from the historical record that Islam played a profound role.
In 1492, when Columbus set sail from Spain, he was hoping to find a sea route to India and the Orient. His trip was sponsored by the Spanish throne, which had just succeeded in ousting the Muslim invaders from Granada, the last Moorish stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula. Islam had developed a foothold in Spain 600 years earlier.
Though Islam had been defeated in Spain, it still controlled the crossroads to the East. Caravans headed from Europe to India to trade would be forced to pay tribute or face attack at the hands of Muslims. Thus, a sea route, bypassing the traditional land routes, would mean new trade between East and West.
Thus, in a very real way, Columbus' venture west was a direct result of the conflict raging still in the 15th century between the Christian world and the Islamic world.
It is this conflict, by the way, that, more than any other factor, defines world history between the 8th century and the 21st. Americans have little concept of that history. Even Europeans have lost their collective memory of the conquest they faced during that time period. Yet, one cannot comprehend the significance of the terror America faces today without this historical background.
This terror war we find ourselves fighting is not a relatively fleeting conflict. It's not one that will be over when Osama bin Laden is dead. It's not one that will be over after the U.S. invades Iraq. It's not one that will be over if and when a Palestinian state is created. This is a long-term struggle. It's a conflict that has raged for more than 1,200 years. America is just getting a taste of what the rest of the world has been experiencing since the time of Muhammad.
Little did Columbus know when he set sail in 1492 to find a sea route to the East, that he would discover a New World – one free of the conflicts of the old world, one free of the entanglements, one that would be the destination of freedom-seeking people for the next 500 years. He also could not have foreseen how the same conflict he was attempting to escape would come home to this New World 509 years later in a most dramatic and tragic way – on Sept. 11, 2001.
We can't escape history. We can't rewrite it. We can only learn from it.
Thank you, Christopher Columbus. And happy Columbus Day, America.
WANNA COME ALONG?
Now, did the Moslems discover America? Columbus worked for awhile in the employee of Rene of Anjou. His granddaughter was Isabella of Spain. He had other intesting inlaws and descendants.
Rene's most remarkable achievement, however, was in the wool business. His ships were in a massive and regular business of transporting wool from Europe to Turkey where it was woven into rugs. He carted rugs back to Europe. Somewhere along the line Rene began to live like an Eastern pasha. He had two wives, although at different times in his life, and he had at least 3 concubines/mistresses that we know of. He was also the Cardinal of Beauvais. If anyone in the world had a chance to take advantage of a Moslem discovery regarding the existence of the Americas, this is the guy. In any case, his descendants and employees did their own voyages of discovery, one as early as 1486 according to the recently opened records in the possession of the La Garde family in Madrid.
At this date it would be very, very difficult to differentiate information this group obtained from Eastern sources from their own independently developed information.
In the end several of his grandsons and greatgrandsons stirred the pot of world history by initiating the Protestant movement in France and in German states that they controlled. One of them founded Protestantism in England!
I've said it before and I'll say it till my dying breath - so what! It isn't who has visited or who has been blown over, it is the person who started the conquest that counts in history.
It is a pretty solid fact that Erik the Red, his son Leif Erikson and their friend Bjarni Herjólfsson led a Norwegian/Icelandic exploration & settlement of Greenland and the Canadian Maritimes around 1000 AD. The Greenland settlements lasted for several centuries.
Phoenician writings have been found in the US Midwest and Norse Runes in Minnesota. Ancient Chinese may have landed on the west coasts of North and South America. So What!
Columbus wasn't a flash-in-the-pan. He was followed by all of the European explorers to the end that countries from Sweden to Portugal had American colonies. Hint none known or detectable from Islamic countries!
Probably something along the same lines as the head of an al-fuqra-like foundation who hangs out with the dregs of leftwing droolers, bragging about how they're buying schools and converting to madrassas, and no doubt recruiting terrorist spawn for dear life:
As an Arabic word, "America" pronounced like "amreeka" would be saying "Your Command!" -- a strange name for a society that says "In God We Trust" on coins and says it is "One nation under God" when claiming allegiance of its people. It almost seems to imply that America has some hitherto unknown religious purpose.
With such knowledge, a fleet of Moorish vessels could have easily traversed the Atlantic to the New World with just as much navigational knowledge as Columbus did in 1492.
It may have been algore in his bearded period. Didn't you know that he also invented time travel?
Lewis also points out that Ottoman ships were "Mediterranean-style galleys" as contrasted with Portugese and Spanish carracks (such as the Santa Maria) and galleons, "built for the Atlantic, and therefore bigger, heavier...and more maneuverable."
Given that mindset, and the nature of the Ottoman navy, why would they want to explore lands further West?
(you)It may have been algore in his bearded period. Didn't you know that he also invented time travel?
Well that's why I come here to FR. It's the only place I can get information I can trust. Thanks for the update fellow Freeper.
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