Excellent article. Thanks for posting it. A simple synopsis of the past history in-relation to islam. I tend to agree with his conclusions as we have a tendency to rewrite our histories, heritages, and then we forget. Even now you a whole generation wanting to believe the Holocaust didn't happen and those few old Jews who still live with numbers tattooed on their wrists grow too old to tell their story. As we watch Eurabia fall from its enlightenment they have doomed their children to repeat it.
There is no middle ground with Muslims, just burial grounds.
This should be required reading for EVERY liberal, leftist, globalist and multiculturalist. Muslims have overrun Europe, with the willing aid of the EU which has tried to erase the borders of the European nations, a necessary step to aid the Muslims moving in and reclaiming Europe. How many times will westerners have to battle the hatred, slavery, oppression and murder of the Islamists before er understand that these people are dangerous murdering cultists??
Excellent article! Much of this nonsense about the glorious days of Muslim Spain came from the Spanish historian America Castro, who was a "progre" ("progressive," i.e. leftist) who, for various reasons, wanted to attack Spain's conception of its past. Needless to say, his views were eagerly accepted by other progres in the academic world, both in Spain and the US and other countries.
The result was a bizarre view that gave Islam credit for Spanish culture. This ignores the fact that prior to the Islamic invasion, Spain was a seat of learning; recall, for example, the great bishop St. Isidore of Sevilla's compendium of all human knowledge, the Etymologiae, written in Latin in Sevilla about 100 years before the Islamic invasion (in fact, before the birth of Islam). It drew on Aristotle and other classical sources and was a wildly popular book that was still in use in the 15th century.
Spain had been Rome's crowning jewel of a colony, and many poets, scholars and emperors came from Spain. With the fall of Rome and the Visigothic invasions, all of the Roman empire suffered. Spain was conquered by the Visigoths, who were not a very learned people and were also not Catholic but Arian (a heresy that was supposedly one of the things that Mohammed drew upon for his own "religion"). Even so, the Spanish bishops eventually succeeded in converting the Visigothic kings to orthodox Christianity, and Spain began to become more influential in the new post-Roman world. It was the seat of many Church councils and educational undertakings.
All of this stopped when the Muslims invaded. Some of them later, although regarded as heretical by other more orthodox Muslims, took an interest in the learning that had been assembled by Spanish Christians and Jews prior to the invasion. Interestingly enough, and not mentioned in the article, is that every time particular Muslim rulers or groups became more "moderate," they were then overrun by more "orthodox" Muslims from the ME. Sound familiar?
The Muslims got into Spain at the invitation of one of the warring Visigothic kings, who thought they would help him defeat his rival. Zapatero is doing the same thing. He is using Islam to attempt to defeat his rival, which is essentially all non-leftist Spain. The result is going to be exactly the same as it was in the 8th century. Conquest.
Outstanding article! Thanks for posting.
An Orson Scott Card column from a few months ago hit it square on the head. To paraphrase: any society that compels its members to follow a particular religion (on pain of death, imprisionment, exile, or other legal penalty) cannot claim to have any true believers in the religion, for without free exercise, who can say that they follow the path out of faith rather than simple self-interest?
Dhimmi bump!
Bump for later read.
fjordman BUMP!