Seeing the Ottoman Empire as pivotal in shaping the Western world, this history casts developments such as the Reconquista, the Inquisition, the Reformation, and exploration of the New World as responses to rising Islamic power. . . . European rulers obsessively feared Muslim expansion; Mikhail traces the influence of this paranoia on the Islamophobia that continues to inform American politics.” —The New Yorker
Typical lib author. Believe only if you have degrees in eddikashun, social just-us, or studies.
Guess the libs haven’t found about all those wars against the religion of peace during those times.
Change the word ‘fear’ for ‘awareness’ and you have it.
Two very different words.
Gee....why would the Spanish not like Islam. You would think they had been fighting the Muslims for hundreds of years to liberate their country. Or something.
I guess the brutal islamic 300 year occupation of Spain had nothing to do with it.
Christopher Columbus ought be allowed to speak for himself on this. Does the author have anything of substance from Columbus’s writings? The assumption may be correct. After all, Muslims have historically and often trashed human progress. They still do. But let’s keep the facts at hand rather than speculate.
This authors knowledge of history is non existent
For example
Franco-Ottoman alliance
The Franco-Ottoman alliance, also Franco-Turkish alliance, was an alliance established in 1536 between the King of France Francis I and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Suleiman I. The strategic and sometimes tactical alliance was one of the most important foreign alliances of France, and was particularly influential during the Italian Wars. The Franco-Ottoman military alliance reached its peak around 1553 during the reign Henry II of France.[1][2]
Seeing the Ottoman Empire as pivotal in shaping the Western world, this history casts developments such as the Reconquista, the Inquisition, the Reformation, and exploration of the New World as responses to rising Islamic power. . . . European rulers obsessively feared Muslim expansion; Mikhail traces the influence of this paranoia on the Islamophobia that continues to inform American politics.” —The New Yorker
This is an attempt at re-writing history.
The article is utter, total BS.
Columbus, as you’ll recall, was trying to find a trade route to the west indies which was... wait for it... ISLAMIC AT THE TIME.
Paranoia? Really? Funny how this “paranoia” gripped Hindus and Buddhists in Asia also. Sub-Saharan Africa too. Maybe the evil Europeans convinced other non-Muslims that having your head chopped off with a scimitar was not such a fun thing. Bigots. Sarc
I wonder if this is part of the reason Columbus feared the muzzies:
Italy (again)
A partial conquest of the Italian peninsula by Islamic colonization (with the symbiotic fictions of “golden ages” and “flourishing” of tolerance and diversity) began in 827 AD in Sicily. The city of Palermo was taken in 831 AD and, by the occupiers’ own estimates, roughly 67,000 Indigenous Peoples were carted off to slavery.
From their foothold in Sicily, the Muslims were able to attack both the island and the mainland. They sacked Brindisi in 839, Messina in 842, Bari in 847, Naples in 1850, and Syracuse in 878. In 846, they sacked Rome and plundered the Basilica of St. Peter (the Leonine Wall which encircles Vatican City was built shortly thereafter to repel further Muslim attacks). During all these occupations, the colonizing Muslims carried out the usual systemic burning of villages, destruction of churches, and enslavement, rape, and massacre of the Indigenous Peoples.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4002514/posts
I fear Islamist
People don’t like Columbus because he brought Catholicism to the western world.
“after the Ottoman Empire’s capture of Constantinople in 1453.”
...Europeans needed to find new trade routes, since the old Silk Road now had a hostile power controlling and taxing it.
So the Age of Exploration began, and into it, stepped Columbus.
So Islam did provide some impetus.
The Turks just subdued all Balkans, and shortly thereafter they were at the gates of Wien. Killing and taking slaves.
He definitely got the slave thing from Muslims.
The Balkans were finally freed by 1912, the Anatolia was never freed.
When I want intellectual scholarship, Free Republic is the place to look. I often spend more time reading the comments than the actual article and am seldom disappointed.
He’s nuts Columbia had Moslems on his ships