Posted on 08/30/2006 10:36:50 PM PDT by Fred Nerks
I wish I had the skills to make a graphical version of this timeline - perhaps using Flash, showing a world map, and with a moving time, from 1968 to the present, with a fire flashing up on each spot, in proportion to the number of dead, at the time of each incident. The world wide, non-stop nature of this would become visible to more people. For extra credit, finish with a grand summation screen that shows all the incidents at once, or something.
Sweet Jebus NO!!!!
You forgot the BIG ONE. Also in 1968, PALESTINIAN Sirhan-Sirhan murdered Senator and presumptive President-elect Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles.
Hitler, had plans for the world, and look what happened to him....
BTTT
Thanks Fred.
Bookmarked
I absolutely believe that too.
What an excellent discussion. Can you say Profile. Can you say, close the borders, all 2,000 miles of them. Can you say stop Muslim immigration.
I almost lost a mouthful of lunch when I saw that picture.
So what is the answer? It seems inevitable since we can't ban muslims and mosques are going up everywhere. Glad I'm getting old I guess.
Wow---this is the Religion of the INSANE, IGNORANT, GULLIBLE and STUPID.
Bump for later
Bump for later reading.
Then they don't have that ability.
Nice timeline, Fred. While this is a great account of Islam's most recent history, it is just as important to note that this is the norm and not the exception. What's perhaps most disgusting about the Left and their excuses for Muslim anger...including their anger at Israel, is that they have no historical perspective about these so-called Muslim grievances.
Islam's anger with the West didn't just start in the last century...and it certainly didn't have anything to do with oil, or even Israel for that matter. From its founding, Islam has been an expansionist ideology. For all the whining we hear about the humiliation that Muslims have suffered over their deconstructed terroritories--especially with regards to the Ottoman Empire, it was Muslims who were most responsible for their loss of so-called soverignty.
The Ottoman empire was already crumbling because of tribal warfare...but to make things worse, it was the Ottoman Turks who decided to side with Germany in WWI. What eventually became of this Muslim empire was no different than what became of the empires of Germany and Austria/Hungary, as these territories were also carved up because of their aggression. To the victors goes the spoils...something that Islam had been intimately familiar with for centuries.
While the League of Nations and the victors of WWI did take special interest in the failing Ottoman Empire...instituting mandates to be governed by Britain and France, the Muslims of this region have no one to blame but themselves. This was a group of people who were engaged in the worst holocaust against indigenous people outside of that which occurred in Germany during WWII (surprise...many Muslims sided with Hitler).
From the Christian Assyrians to the Armenians to the Greeks, Slavs and Jews...Muslims had been ethnically cleansing Asia Minor of non-Muslims for centuries. As this threat encroached further into the "soft underbelly of Europe," the victors of WWI decided it was finally time to put a stop to this 2nd Jihad, which had not only killed millions of people, but was continuing to threaten Europe...again. And I say again because this had been a theme with Islam as they have continually threatened Europe over the centuries.
Yes, Muslims can bitch and moan, and play the perpetual victim of so-called European and American colonization--and Leftists can defend them and help make excuses for their hatred and anger; but remember that it was Islam who initiated this reaction by their own aggressions that went unchecked for centuries. This was a religion, that within its first 100 years, conquered more land and people than the Romans did in their storied history.
Amazingly, liberals seem to have a short historical memory when it comes to Muslim aggression and retribution. It wasn't long after the death of Mohammad (632AD) that the first Caliphates stated as their goal "to conquer the world in the name of Islam." And so began a long series of Conquests as Muslims marched through Christian lands, laying seige to previous held territories. From the multiple seiges of Byzantine (670, 717-718) to the eventual sacking in 1453, Islam has been an expansionist regime...reaching as far as Spain and S. France as early as 732AD.
At its peak (16th Century) the Ottoman Empire had conquered all of Asia Minor, the Mid-East, North Africa, the Balkan Peninsula and parts of Russia. Looking to expand further, they again invaded portions of Europe, trying to conquer Vienna before being stopped in 1683. Contrary to Muslim and liberal revisionism, the Crusades were a reaction to Muslim aggression into previously held Christian territories--most specifically, their occupation of the Holy Lands and the attacks on the Byzantine Empire. As Pope Urban II declared, "the goal of the Crusades was to liberate the land formerly held by the Christians...and the liberation of oppressed Christians in the MidEast."
While WWI and its aftermath may have brought a temporary cessation to some of this Muslim aggression, it was only a couple decades later that many Muslims were again siding with Hitler and the Axis Powers. The same Anti-Semitism that is prevelant today, was rampant back then as Muslims joined with Hitler to form their own Muslim brigades to exterminate Jews, Gypsys, Slavs, etc...especially within the Balkans. Ironically, just as the aftermath of WWI and the League of Nations saw new allignments within Europe and the MidEast, WWII and the United Nations would see more of the same.
Which brings us to the ultimate hypocrisy with regards to Islam...and those liberals (especially of the European variety) who blame America for all the ME's problems: The MidEast is...and always has been, a creation of Europe. From the League of Nations and Britian and France's Mandates...to the Balfour Declaration, Peel and San Remo, to the UN and various partition plans, Europe has always been the primary architect for Mid-East reorganization.
Perhaps even more ironic is that for all the abuse America takes from these ingrates, it was America who led the way in pressuring Europe to recognize Arab independence after WWII. While this took time, it was specifically American political pressure which forced the major European powers to relinquish their colonial holdings.
From the Muslim secessionist movement in India (Pakistan) to financial and military aid during the Cold War and support in the Gulf War, Americans have stood with Muslims and defended them against aggressor nations and persons. In our own naivety and ignorance, we have even supported Muslims against Christians, whether it was the Muslim secessionist movement in Kosovo and the Balkans or still lending support to countries like Indonesia/E. Timor, were Christians were being murdered by the thousands.
The sad truth is, Muslims not only have a problem living with non-Muslims--they have a problem living amongst themselves. The number-one killer of Muslims, are Muslims...and Saddam was right up there at the top. The very reason for the creation of some of these artifical boundaries in the Mid-East, was to help protect Muslims from other Muslims (i.e the Sunnis and Shi'ites).
From a historical perspective, America has a very short history with the Mid-East. And on many of those occasions, this relationship was one of support--whether it was our leadership in their independence, support for them against Soviet encroachment and aggression...or even against other Muslims like Saddam. Yet, today, we are not only called the Great Satan by these same people, we are blamed for the origins of much of these problems by those who were the original architects--Europe.
The sad truth is, Muslims not only have a problem living with non-Muslims--they have a problem living amongst themselves. The number-one killer of Muslims, are Muslims...
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Your certainly have great knowledge of the history of islam - the above statement from your very comprehensive comment stands out - our best hope would seem to be, if democracy does not take root after all our valiant efforts to persuade them to follow it, that they go right on killing each other.
Meanwhile, I want every mohammadan OUT OF MY COUNTRY!
Wow---this is the Religion of the INSANE, IGNORANT, GULLIBLE and STUPID.
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Professor Eidelberg reviews THE SWORD OF THE PROPHET:
THE SWORD OF THE PROPHET:
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam
by Serge Trifkovic
(Boston: Regina Orthodox Press, 2002)
Reviewed by Paul Eidelberg
In her extraordinary work, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide, Bat Ye'or avoids discussing Islam per se. She lets Islam's thirteen-century record of plunder, rape, and genocide discredit that religion. One would hardly know of such barbarism reading the doyan of Islamic scholars, Bernard Lewis. Judging from his book What Went Wrong? (2002), nothing is intrinsically wrong with the religion that enthralls 1.2 billion people. And Lewis, unlike John Esposito, is not known as an apologist of Islam.
Enter Serge Trifkovic, a man of extraordinary intellectual courage. His The Sword of the Prophet departs from the moral "neutrality" of academia and, in six lucid and well-documented chapters, provides a "Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam." Citing the Kuran and the voluminous Hadiths—the Traditions of what Muhammad said and did—Dr. Trifkovic exposes Islam's prophet as cruel, ignorant, and lascivious. He examines Islam's fatalistic theology; reviews this religion's devastation of other civilizations; warns of the Muslims' insidious penetration of America and Europe; criticizes U.S. appeasement of Saudi Arabia and other Islamic regimes; and goes to the heart of what must be done to prevent Islam's global ascendancy.
Chapter 1, "Muhammad," portrays a simple preacher who became a fanatical warlord in the process of conquering Mecca and Medina. After slaughtering Arab tribesmen and looting their camels, the prophet and his followers kidnapped their women and staged an orgy of rape. One Hadith explains:
We desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, but at the same time we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have sexual intercourse with them but by observing 'azl [coitus interruptus]. But we said: We are doing an act whereas Allah's Messenger is amongst us; why not ask him? So we asked Allah's Messenger … and he said: It does not matter if you do not do it, for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born.
To the men of one Jewish tribe, Muhammad offered the choice of conversion to Islam or death. Upon their refusal, up to 900 were decapitated in front of their women and children. "Truly the judgment of Allah was pronounced on high," was Muhammad's comment. The women were subsequently raped. Trifkovic comments: "That Muhammad's actions and words, as immortalized in the Kuran and recorded in the Traditions, are frankly shocking by the standards of our time—and punishable by it laws, that range from war crimes and murder to rape and child molestation—almost goes without saying." Trifkovik is aware of the cultural and historical relativism that would prompt Western intellectuals to say, "we must not extend the judgmental yardstick of our own culture to the members of other cultures who have lived in other eras." He counters this relativism by pointing out that "even in the context of seventh century Arabia, Muhammad had to resort to divine revelations as a means of suppressing the prevalent moral code of his own milieu."
Muhammad repeatedly invoked Allah as a deus ex machina, professing revelations to justify the prophet's political and personal needs. "Nowhere was this more obvious than when it came to his exaggerated sensuality." Trifkovic cites Ibn Warraq, author of Why I am Not a Muslim (1995), who asks whether Muhammad was a "known fraud, or did he sincerely believe that all his 'revelations' that constitute the Kuran were direct communications from God?" Warraq does not see how this can possibly matter to our moral judgment of Muhammad's character. "Certain racists sincerely believe that Jews should be exterminated. How does their sincerity affect our moral judgment of their beliefs?"
Trifkovic adds: "On the Prophet's own admission, Islam stands or falls with the person of Muhammad, a deeply flawed man by the standards of his own society, as well as those of the Old and New Testaments … and even by the law of which he claimed to be the divinely appointed medium and custodian. The problem of Islam, and the problem of the rest of the world with Islam, … is the religion's claim that the words and acts of its prophet provide the universally valid standard of morality as such, for all time and all men."
Our author sums up his assessment of Muhammad with the words of Sir William Muir (1819-1905), one of the world's greatest orientalists: "the sword of Muhammad and the Qur'an are the most fatal enemies of civilization, liberty, and truth which the world has yet known." No academician today would dare such a judgment. Even the outspoken Daniel Pipes feels compelled to distinguish Islam from "Islamism" and say Islam is compatible with democracy!
Chapter 2, "The Teaching," portrays Allah as very different from the God of the Bible. Allah is absolutely transcendent. He is pure will without personality. Islam offers an "empty and barren concept of deity." (Avraham Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine, regarded Islam's monotheism as barren and devoid of joy and life.) "One consequence of Allah's absolute transcendence and lordship," says Trifkovic, "is the impossibility of free will." Sinners are as predestined as virtuous believers. Whereas sinners will "fill up the burning regions of Hell," the virtuous believers will dwell in Paradise where, according to one Muslim commentator, "The men … have sexual relations not only with the women ... but also with serving boys… In Paradise a believer's penis is eternally erect."
Given its fatalism, Islam is theologically incompatible with democracy, whose cardinal principle is freedom. The root of freedom is man's creation in the image of God—the God of Abraham. Abraham can argue and plead with God, as did Moses, because the God of the Jews is a personal God, immanent as well as transcendent. In contrast, the Muslim prostrates himself before Allah as a slave before a master. Trivkovic rightly states that it is more pertinent to compare Islam with totalitarian communism—despite its atheism—than with Judaism or Christianity. He could have pointed out that human dignity is not a normative principle of Islam if only because Islamic theology cannot abide the Jewish conception of man's creation in the image of God.
Turning to the Kuran, Trifkovic, like other critics, reveals Muhammad's distorted account of the various narratives of the Five Books of Moses. (Muhammad was ignorant of the books of the prophets). Noting that the Kuran underwent revision during Muhammad's tribulations and triumphs in Mecca and Medina, Trifkovic states that Islam's holy book "looks, feels, and sounds like a construct entirely human in origin and intent, clear in its earthly sources of inspiration and the fulfillment of the daily needs, personal and political, of its author."
"Of all major religions known to man," writes Trifkovic, "the teaching of Islam makes it the least amenable to dialogue with other faiths." Nevertheless, he informs us that President George W. Bush has internalized the ecumenical views of his adviser on Islam, Professor David Forte, a conservative Catholic who believes that Christianity and Islam can together foster family values. Forte, who is not an Islamic scholar, contends that Islamic terrorists are heretics or not authentic Muslims. He seems to have reinforced Mr. Bush's naïve belief that all religions are peace-loving, and that a religious person cannot possibly be a terrorist, i.e., evil. Trivkovic comments: "Their faulty understanding of Islamic theology leads them to imagine that 'Allah' is more or less interchangeable with the 'God' of the monotheists." Their ecumenism is intended to counter the globalization of secularism.
Chapter 3,"Jihad Without End," demonstrates that the goal of Islamic jihad is world conquest, and that willingness of Muslims to sacrifice their lives to this end "is neither extreme nor even remarkable from the standpoint of traditional Islam." The notion of "inner" jihad—of one's personal fight against his ego and sinful desires—came into being only after the Islamic Empire had been established. Of its countless jihads against unbelievers, Trifkovic emphasizes Islam's massacres in India, which "are unparalleled in history, bigger in sheer numbers than the Holocaust, or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks." Regarding the Turks, "being a Greek, Armenian, Serb, or indeed any other Christian in the Ottoman Empire meant living in daily fear of murder, rape, torture, kidnap of one's children, slavery, and genocide."
Trifkovic, a Christian who acknowledges the crimes committed against the Jews during the Crusades, nonetheless emphasizes Islam's crimes against Christian communities throughout the Middle East and North Africa. He deplores "politically correct" academics: "Thirteen centuries of religious discrimination, causing suffering and death of countless millions, have been covered by the myth of Islamic 'tolerance,' that is hurtful to the few descendants of the victims as it is useless as a means of appeasing latter-day jihadists."
This leads to Chapter 4, "The Fruits," which explodes the myth of Islam's "Golden Age." Our author correctly notes that the medieval philosophers al-Farabi and Avicenna, both Persian, "belong to 'Islam' just as much as Voltaire belongs to 'Christianity.'" (Muhsin Mahdi has shown that Farabi, to avoid being executed, crafted his work on Plato and Aristotle in an esoteric style. On the surface he appears as a devout Muslim; but a close reading reveals him as a disciple of Greek philosophy.) Contrary to its apologists, the Muslim Empire inherited the knowledge and skills of Greece, Persia, and India (including what are still mistakenly known as "Arabic" numbers.) "Whatever flourished," writes Trifkovic, "it was not by reason of Islam, it was in spite of Islam." Thus, in 1993, the supreme religious authority of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, issued an edict, declaring that the world is flat: anyone of the round persuasion does not believe in God and should be punished."
The chapter concludes with these words of Alexis de Tocqueville:
I studied the Kuran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.
Islamic decadence is rooted in its impersonal and empty monotheism. In contrast, Hebraic monotheism, as may be seen in the Biblical account of creation, seeks to probe the unity underlying the totality of existence—of man and the universe. Moreover, the creativity for which Jews are famous, especially in the sciences, is rooted in the Genesis conception of man's creation in God's image—the divine source of human creativity as well as the intellectual basis of Jewish faith. (In this latter respect, Judaism also differs from Christianity,)
Returning to Trivkovic, Chapter 5, "Western Appeasement," focuses on Washington's appeasement of Muslims in Bosnia, which has become a safe haven and transit for Arab terrorists. Israeli intelligence conveyed to the American State Department that "about 6,000 fighters in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, and Macedonia are ready to do Bin Laden's bidding, and that a nucleus of Bin Laden followers in the Balkans could balloon into an army of about 40,000 men." Also, some 2,000 to 10,000 Muslim migrants are arriving in Bosnia every month.
Trivkovic reveals how the State Department, while accusing Russian forces in Muslim Chechnya of "human rights" violations, exempts from human rights requirements such predominantly Muslim countries as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. (This hypocrisy is even more obscene in Washington's appeasement of the Arab Palestinians.) But our author's most dire warnings concern Washington's appeasement of Saudi Arabia. This totalitarian regime, linked to American corporations willing to sacrifice their country's interests to Mammon¸ is the financier of global terrorism.
Chapter 6, "Jihad's Fifth Column," surveys the incredibly rapid growth of the Muslim population in the West. Thanks to Saudi Arabia, thousands of mosques have sprung up throughout the U.S. and Europe. Their predominant message? Islam is the wave of the future. Despite Islam's openly declared objectives, the West refrains from restricting Muslim immigration and from enforcing the laws against Muslims who exploit democratic values to advance Islam's totalitarian ends.
Allied with these Muslims are postmodern liberals. These liberals are motivated by a hatred of Western civilization, primarily its biblical roots. Their pro-Muslim attitude—most pronounced in their support of the Palestinians—evinces an anti-Jewish animus. Academia is the seedbed of this unholy alliance of believers and atheists.
"Islam," Trivkovic concludes, "is a collective psychosis seeking to become global, and any attempt to compromise with such madness is to become part of the madness oneself." But what most threatens the West, says our author, is not Islam so much as the West's own "loss of Faith, and … the arrogant doctrine—rampant in 'the West' for three centuries now—that man can solve the dilemma of his existence by his unaided intellect alone. If that loss is not reversed, the game is over anyway—proving that where God retreats, Allah advances."
"The Sword of the Prophet" is indispensable reading.
It seems inevitable since we can't ban muslims and mosques are going up everywhere.
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ONLY DEATH AND TAXES ARE INEVITABLE!
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