Posted on 04/04/2011 8:57:53 AM PDT by reaganaut1
... [P]ervasive negative attitudes toward Islam go far deeper into the American psyche even than these manifestations suggest, for contempt toward the religion of Mohammed is a foundational pillar of Western civilization. That it is unacknowledged only makes it more pernicious.
European Christian imagination jelled — as European, as Christian, and as imagination — around the mythic 732 triumph of Charles Martel over “infidel’’ Muslim forces in a battle near Poitiers, France. That may seem like an eternity ago and a world away, but still-powerful attitudes that show up in suspicions of widespread Muslim “radicalization’’ were generated then. In epoch-shaping chansons de geste celebrating Charles Martel, Islam was portrayed as nothing less than the anti-Christ. So resonant was its defeat, that Charles Martel was empowered as the effective founder of cohesive European social structures, with his lineage (through his grandson Charlemagne) extending even to present-day royalty.
Edward Gibbon famously shuddered at the thought that, but for Charles Martel, the Koran would be taught to the “circumcised’’ at Oxford instead of the New Testament. (It seems not to have occurred to Gibbon that, had the Poitiers battle gone the other way, Oxford, which dates to 1167, might have been founded years earlier — by, say, disciples of the great Muslim scholar Avicenna, who died in 1037.) From early on, Western civilization understood itself positively against the negative foil of Islam, a polarity that was institutionalized during the decisive centuries of the Crusades. That Christendom failed to liberate the Holy Land from infidel control only made permanent the fear and hatred of Islam.
Meanwhile, as is always true of bigotry, Europeans knew very little about actual Muslims.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
In this case it isn’t bigotry. Call it “postjudice” (instead of PREjudice). We are wary of Muslims because of their record of murder and mayhem.
Excellent!
I’ll bet that neither James Carroll nor anyone else on the staff of the Boston Globe ever took course on “Junkyard Dog 101” while in college. However, even these elite progressives might react properly if one night they found themselves dropped inside the fence of “Bubba’s U-Pull-It Automotive Salvage Lot”.
If Bubba’s canine security associates were placed inside the apartment of James Carroll and a loaded shotgun placed in James’ hands, he would probably forget his membership in PETA and his lifelong belief the “violence never solves anything”!
Any takers on that bet?
Same principle, James!
He may be gone but you can still ping him...
They aren’t blind. The Left THINKS ISLAM AND IT are on the same side.
The Boston Globe in general, and James Carroll specifically, have no problem with anti-Catholic and anti-Christian bigotry. They embrace it and propagate it, in fact.
The ruling class Socialists/apologists/Soros/Obama lovers write these articles to show their intellect of history and try to spin their best pseudo-social science/psychobabble that somehow Christians and Jews hate Islam because of post-Crusades and colonial leftover feelings and attitudes...
The readers understand that there is a death cult that wants to take over their lives and kill or convert them, to the word of their pedophile prophet, the faculty lounge, tenured, unionized novelist loves to pontificate the “bias” of the West, while ignoring the obvious assault on our way of life.
He is merely another suicidal, delusional Liberal who prefers self-genocide.
The readers get it, but his fat checks keep coming to produce this drivel.
I’d be happy to take that bet. (Can I videotape the proceedings for PPV?)
Even in the liberal haven of Boston, this article is drawing unrelenting ridicule.
I believe there is a line about not being able to fool all of the people all of the time which applies.
Ottoman Empire. Saudi Kingdom. Saddam Hussein. Iran. Phillipines. Indonesia. The list is endless, but the groveller welcomes his wife burqua and dhimmitude.
It's going to be really funny to see all the feminists forced to wear burkas and be forced to pray 5 times a day... San Francisco will be the Mecca of the West...
Great read.
Easy.
Muslim behavior in the last 1200 years.
Of course, I've given up arguing the point with anyone who has not read at least half of the following books :
The Closed Circle, David Pryce Jones.
Jihad in the West, Paul Fregosi.
What went Wrong?, Bernard Lewis.
From Time Immemorial, Joan Peters.
Unholy Terror, John R. Schindler.
Alms for Jihad,J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins
Moslems declared war on America twice during the 1990's and are still at war with us.
It was a great reward for reading that far in.
Oh that went well, all that stolen knowledge with which the muslims couldn't do a thing. No innovation, no original scientific advanceent of any kind.
Check out the following list of muslim recipients (while living in an Islamic State) of the Nobel Prizes in Math, Science, Medicine...
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Refute that Achmed!
Modern people know sh*t about history - e tthe auhtor posits their “bigotry” is due to obscure European battles in 732.
What a goof.
“Europeans knew very little about actual Muslims.”
Their dislike of Islam would be much greater if they actually did.
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