Posted on 03/20/2005 1:44:20 PM PST by quidnunc
At the Jamal Islamiya mosque in this seaside town, a Muslim lament of historic proportions is proclaimed in large letters on a framed poster: "In 1492, we lost everything."
For the mosque's leader, and much of the Muslim world, the year marks the traumatic conclusion of Islam's golden age, a time remembered like a collective wound.
It's a period when the last piece of Muslim-held territory in Spain fell to Catholic monarchs, ending almost 800 years of Moorish rule on the Iberian peninsula.
Centuries when poetry, science and architecture flourished under Islamic caliphs expired with bonfires of Arabic manuscripts, mass expulsion and extermination in the Inquisition.
To the east, the Muslim empire of the Ottomans would reign for another four centuries. But many would trace its long decline to the fall of Al Andalus, the Moorish name for Andalusia.
The result is a yearning that today makes Spain, more than any other European country, a battleground in the name of Islam.
"They stole 500 years of history from us," says Omar Checa Garcia, who heads the Jamal Islamiya mosque and cultural centre. "We want it back, but we don't want revenge."
Others are not so accommodating. Osama bin Laden uses what he calls the "tragedy of Al Andalus" as a rallying cry for his deadly brand of Islamic jihad against "the crusaders and Jews."
After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahiri, drew a parallel between the loss of the Iberian peninsula and the struggle of Palestinians.
"We will not accept that the tragedy of Al Andalus be repeated in Palestine," he said.
The taped sermons of some militant Islamic clerics admonish followers with the legend of "The Moor's Sigh."
Having surrendered Granada to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Catholic monarchs of Castile and Aragon, a tearful Sultan Boabdil was scolded by his mother: "You weep like a woman for what you could not hold as a man."
-snip-
Huh?
Push'em baCK, PUSH'EM BACK! Waaaaay BACK!
Only God can save Spain now. What Franco saved from the communists is being handed to the Moors. Seven centuries of Christian blood, wasted by ingrates!
God have mercy! May He send a King Pelayo, a Cid, a Don John, an Isabella, a Santiago, somebody to save Spain from the Moslems, and from the Spanish who know no loyalty except to themselves.
Viva Espana! Viva Cristo Rey!
Algeciras, the main point for ferry travel to North Africa in Spain, now resembles Mecca according to a Spanish freind who once owned property there.
I hate it too whenever somebody steals 500 years from me.
Since a good portion of Muslims prefer to live in the year 1100, losing 500 years is not all that much.
Gee, his tone suggests that these were bad things. I beg to disagree.
"Viva Cristo Rey!"
SI!
Thank God for Aragon, Castille, el Cid, and the determination to make Spain catholic.
Jews and Christians fared better under the Muslims than Jews and Muslims fared under the Christians.
As a general statement, that's absolutely wrong!
Just because Muslims at one time and in one place were less brutal than Christians in another time and another place does not negate the overall effect of Islams 1400-year war against other religions. .Jews and Christians fared better under the Muslims than Jews and Muslims fared under the Christians.
I was referring to Spain during the period mentioned.
Moorish Spain was a backwater of the Islamic world and unrepresentative of the Islamic culture of the time.
The fact is that in both the Islamic and Christian worlds of that time, the beliefs and personality of the ruler largely determined how members of other religions were treated.
France in fifty years : the Islamic Republic of Eastern Andalusia.
No, as a general statement its absolutely correct. Up until the Enlightenment, Jews were always treated better in Islamic countries than Christian ones. Even since the Enlightenment, Jews have only been treated better in the Anglo world. Outside England/US/Canada/Australia, Muslims have generally treated Jews better. Obviously, since the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel, the situation has reversed itself. But, yes, generally, Muslims treated their Jews much better.
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