Posted on 08/16/2004 12:19:32 AM PDT by Murtyo
Back in the 1930s, when white men were preparing for another round of mutual slaughter, few of them paid any attention to the Muslim world. They assumed it to be a backward region that history had long since passed by.
One man saw it differently. The great Catholic polemicist Hilaire Belloc, an Englishman of French ancestry, remembered Islam's past and predicted, in his book THE GREAT HERESIES, that it would one day challenge the West again. As late as 1683 its armies had threatened to conquer Europe, penetrating all the way to Vienna; Belloc believed that a great Islamic revival, even in the twentieth century, was altogether possible.
Belloc saw Islam not as an alien religion, but in its origins as a Christian heresy, adopting and adapting certain Christian doctrines (monotheism, the immortality of the soul, final judgment) and rejecting others (original sin, the Incarnation and divinity of Christ, the sacraments). Its simple, rational creed had a powerful appeal to Arabs who had known only the arbitrary gods of grim pagan religions. It swept the Arab world, then made converts -- and conquests -- far beyond Arabia.
Islam was a militant religion from the start. Mohammed himself conquered the entire Arabian Peninsula in just a few years. The new faith was torn by violent internal divisions even as it continued to spread. But spread it did, with incredible rapidity.
Christians had good reason to fear Islam, which soon conquered Spain and held it for centuries. But because Islam has little attraction for Christians, the West has generally failed to grasp its appeal for others, its profound and permanent hold on the minds of believers. Unlike the Christian West, the Muslim world has never had crises of faith like the Reformation and the Enlightenment.
Islam is a simple religion, easily understood by ordinary people. Its commandments are rigorous but few. When it conquered, its subjugated people often felt more liberated than enslaved, because it often replaced burdensome old bureaucratic governments with relatively undemanding regimes -- and low taxes. As long as its authority was respected, Islamic rule was comparatively libertarian. It offered millions relief from their traditional oppression; for example, no Muslim could be a slave.
Belloc distinguishes sharply between Islam and such barbarous conquerors as the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan. The Mongols were purely destructive; they were known for slaughtering whole cities and making huge pyramids of severed heads.
Such savagery was alien to the Muslims. Where they conquered, daily life usually went on much as before and culture thrived. In many respects the Muslim world was far more civilized than Christian Europe for centuries. The West hated and dreaded Islam, but nobody would have thought of calling it backward.
That contemptuous image came much later, when modern Europe's science, technology, and -- above all -- weaponry had eclipsed those of the Arabs. We are apt to forget how recently this development occurred; and, as Belloc warned, it is not irreversible.
Man, especially irreligious man, is apt to equate power and progress. Many of those who say America is "the greatest country on earth" really mean only that America has fantastic military might, capable of annihilating any other country -- and some of them, at the moment, are in the mood to do some annihilating. To the pious Muslim this attitude seems crass and barbaric. He may conclude from it that the decadent West understands only one thing: force.
And would he be far wrong? Belloc admitted that the idea of a new Muslim challenge to the West seemed "fantastic," but only because the West was "blinded" by "the immediate past." Taking a longer view, he saw Islam, though inferior in material power, as having a great advantage: its religious faith was still strong, while the West was losing its religion and consequently its morale. He thought it entirely possible that Islam would catch up technologically, while he doubted that the West would undergo a spiritual revival.
Are we seeing the beginning of the fulfillment of Belloc's prophecy? If so, the current uproar over Islamic terrorism may turn out to be a mere superficial symptom of a much larger historical drama. The West is still strong, but it is dying. Islam is still weak, but it is growing. Never mind the terrorists; check the birthrates.
Copyright (c) 2001 by the Griffin Internet Syndicate, www.griffnews.com. All rights reserved.
One glaring problem here...the latter Mongol hordes *were* Muslims.
Most especially one can look at Tamerlane who could fairly be called a fanatical Islamic "crusader".
"The Mongols were purely destructive; they were known for slaughtering whole cities and making huge pyramids of severed heads. Such savagery was alien to the Muslims. Where they conquered, daily life usually went on much as before and culture thrived."
Nonsense. Mohammed and his followers were known to take the heads of defeated enemies from time to time (and we see the same today) and then split the wives and daughters of their vanquished foes among themsevles.
Tamerlane, more properly Timur Lenk, or Timur the Lame was indeed Muslim, having adopted the religion to make his rule a bit more acceptable to the Muslim states he subjugated in central asia.
Timur was essentially a terrorist as he would ruthlessly exterminate entire cities, ususally allowing a very fuew to live, maimed and sent off to nearby settlements to spread the fear. But he never made much attempt to hold territory or to rule it. It's hard to fathom what drove the man, but you have to conclude that he was a bloody minded maniac for starters.
The earlier, and far more successful, Mongols (Genghis Khan and his sons, for example) were by and large animists or Buddhists.
A really good book about these people is "Warriors of the Steppes" - can't remember the author's name...
Technology as far the the murder cult is concerned is the Nuclear Bomb, and a Chinese delivery system. That's it.
Very interetsing article...Thanks for posting!
Where they conquered, daily life usually went on much as before and culture thrived. In many respects the Muslim world was far more civilized than Christian Europe for centuries.
Interestingly enough, Tamerlane got his full name from a accident (riding?) that left him lame. To accomplish what he did, as a 'lame' person, in his time as is nothing short of fantastic.
For some TUI (totally useless information) Tamerlane named one of his sons after the chess piece the rook. He also said their were only two activities worthy of a warrior, "Hunting and chess."
Finally, Belloc sounds a bit like an apologist for ISLAM and not an accurate historian.
RileyD, nwJ
The most violent Muslims are the Saudi Wahhabis and they are far from inferior in material power. They've made trillions of dollars off oil in an historically short time.. And they, like every other Muslim OPEC country, have managed to squander it all in vain endeavors.
Not one Muslim OPEC country has established a single credible university, they send their young to Western countries for higher education. No Muslim country has a single world-class medical center, even the vastly wealthy Saudis princes come to Western hospitals. There appears to be no interest in any technological field besides making Iranian nuclear bombs to blast Israel, and no attempt at all in the medical sciences.
I see no proof at all that Islam can catch up technologically; for example, the Iranians buy Western technology to try to make those fearsome bombs, and the Muslim OPEC countries would lose their oil producing capacities without Western help.
The West has weakened spiritually, Europe's pretty bad and Britain has their national church going pro-gay. But there is hope. There are sparks of evangelicals across Europe and Britain and other Western spawned countries. Belloc was pro-Arab and a pessimist toward Western Christianity. I wouldn't call him a prophet, he was more like a misanthrope.
Tamerlane was centuries later than Ghengis Khan, so he was neither the son or the grandson... Tamerlane did however claim descent from the Great Khan through the female line.
While the total area (and perhaps population) that Tamerlane conquered was indeed larger than the total area conquered by the Great Khan, Tamerlane never maintained an empire and the areas he conquered rapidly fell from his grasp. Thus, this total calculated conquered area was never under Tamerlane's control simultaneously.
The Great Khan still holds the record for the largest land empire ever assembled.
Islam is "libertarian"? What is Sobran smoking?
Timur the Lame had no real relation to Chinkis Khan. He fabricated a new family tree once he became ruler of Samarkhand. He did eventually marry two women descended from the Temujin.
Well after conquering Transoxiana, Tamerlane devastated Persia, devastated the Near East, almost destroyed the Ottoman Turks (for being too lenient to Christians), destroyed the Christian city of Smryna, ravaged India, and was on his way to attack China when he died on the way.
He wasn't related to Genghis - but he did marry a descendant of his.
He took his Islamic faith seriously though, calling himself the scourge of Allah.
Was the purpose of this one sided article to make Islam more acceptable to me? Anyone, who ever took the time to study Islam, realizes very early on, that it was spread with the sword. Covert or die! The methods still have not changed. From my standpoint it is a religion of cowards. They target the innocent, they hide in grave yards and holy places, they force their religious views on others by terror and force, they use children to do their fighting, they oppress women, they still engage in slave trade and they don’t have the guts to stand toe to toe with any military because they are cowards. If the roles were reversed and it were the Christians bombing innocent people, flying planes into Mecca or Istanbul, running slave trades, blowing up places of worship of other religions, oppressing women and using children to fight their battles, the outcry would be intolerable. It would be open season on anyone professing Christianity. Who are the real barbarians here? No doubt there can be a lot of finger pointing at “so called Christians”, but even the worst of “Christian “ hypocrites can’t be compared to the best of Islam zealots. “by their fruit you will know them…”
High school graduate, right? No college? Never read a word Belloc's written, right?
? The Mongols conquered much of Islam and the Ottoman Empire, and some of them may have been 'absorbed' into the Islamic cult, but the the Huns and Moslems were at war against each other. The Huns (Mongols) conquered and reconqured Baghdad and Persia, but it was an Egyptian army commanded by Marmeluke Sultan Kutuz who won the first victory against the Mongols.
NEW DELHI: A string of bomb blasts in Assam, a grenade attack and a militant-sponsored shutdown in Jammu and Kashmir marred Independence Day celebrations on Sunday.
At least 13 people, including six children, were killed and 21 injured when a powerful bomb ripped through a college ground in Assam's Dhemaji town, bordering Arunachal Pradesh.
The explosive, that blew up at around 9.45 am soon after the national flag was unfurled, was planted at the entrance of the ground.
A witness said that most of the bodies of the children were burnt beyond recognition. The dead included seven women who had come to watch the children participate in the march-past.
"The bomb exploded under the feet of the children. There is blood and human flesh all over the ground," said school teacher Jiban Saikia
Excerpted - click for full article ^
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