Up and down the coasts of Europe one can find ruins, the remnants of ancient watchtowers and fortifications. One is seldom provided with any explanation; when something is written very occasionally in a guidebook, there is mention of "invaders."
Who were these “invaders”?
The history of Muslim raiders, up and down those European coasts, the pillaging and razing of villages and towns, the murders, the vandalism, the seizure and enslavement of, over time, at least a million people from Western Europe, with the raiders even getting as far as Ireland and, in one celebrated case, Iceland, is hardly known to the Western world.
Giles Milton's book White Gold focuses on one Cornishman, Thomas Pellow, who was seized and brought back to Morocco in the mid-18th century. There the vast palace complex of Moulay Ismail, which Western tourists come to admire, was built on the sites of, and making use of the stone taken from, the prior non-Muslim structures.
So many of the so-called "wonders of Muslim architecture" were built in this way, including the celebrated Omayyad Mosque in Damascus, which is on the site of, and makes use of, the St. John the Baptist Church that was previously on the same site. And who do you think built the Taj Mahal? Muslim soldiers, or enslaved Hindus?
When you begin, as many Infidels have, to study Islam, and then extend your study beyond the texts, and then add the behavior of Muslims today, and then go still further and begin to study the history of Islamic conquest, and the Islamic exaggerated claims to achievement, and the Islamic treatment of all non-Muslims subjugated by Muslims and Muslim rule, all sorts of the dark past become necessarily illuminated.
How many of us, a few years ago, had any idea about when the Turks arrived in Byzantium, or why Constantinople fell, or when? Who knew about the Seljuk Turks, or the Ottomans? Who was aware of where Aramaic was spoken, or that the Maronites were a non-Arab people living in present-day Lebanon long before the Arab Muslims arrived?
Who knew, even -- why Tom Friedman has just in the last week or two discovered -- that there are Sunni and Shi'a Muslims, and that the difference is not a minor one, and did not originate with the Americans clumsily undoing all that splendid harmony that naturally reigned in Iraq just a few pre-Saddam years ago? This is all nonsense, of course, but it is predictable nonsense.
It is wonderful, isn't it, to begin to study the history of the Middle East, and the history of Byzantium, and the history of Europe, all because it now has an immediacy and a significance that we who were not history-haunted did not previously ascribe to it all.
But now that we are menaced by those who are haunted not so much by history as their own crazed version of history, we are forced to study -- and we are forced to be quick studies.
It's going to school, setting yourself to school, all over again.
It's going to school, setting yourself to school, all over again.
5 comments:
I hate to be a wet blanket but no, Hugh, for me it is most definitely NOT "fun". At this stage of my life fun is learning about and buying and selling antiques and collectibles and the ongoing delight of the history and whimsy I learn along the way. This is how I wanted to spend my retirement, not having to devote a disproportionate amount of my time learning the history and tenets of a primitive, vicious, vacuous, savage religion I never cared about before 9/11/01 and don't realy care about now. I find no delight in any form from Islam. For 15 years I investigated cults with a specialty in occult groups and some of it was quite fascinating. But at the time many things were departing from my life and others were yet to arrive and my studies provided an interesting way to deal with devastating personal upheavals. When this became no longer a productive area of pursuit I was more than happy to let it go.
Perhaps this constant intrusion of the Need to Learn About Islam will become easier to bear in a sense when the threat from Islamism becomes so acute that it can no longer be ignored. Because then what I've learned will be useful to me and to some poeople who are willing to face the truth. As things stand, most people don't bother to learn the most rudimentary facts (try asking people what an Ahmadinejad is) but because I am "awake" I will be better able to deal with the situation these oblivious fools are helping to make virtually inevitable.
It is better than ignorance. That's about the best I can say for it.
RRA,
I'm with you. It's not fun. However, I think what we saw here is a rare instance of Hugh Fitzgerald trying to be funny.
And, I agree, none of this would be nearly as painful if our government actually recognized the problem.
Nice find, Pastorius. Best
Pastorius,
I agree. Have you ever heard the old saying those that don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it?
Post a Comment