Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald, inspired by this Red-and-Blue politically correct celebration of the Battle of Trafalgar, peers into his crystal ball and sees, a mere 16 years hence, what the celebrations of the Battle of Lepanto will be like in the looming Eurabia:
The year: 2021. The occasion: the 450th anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, where the Turkish fleet under Ali, the captain pasha, was defeated by the naval forces of Venice and of Spain (commanded by Don John of Austria, natural brother to the great Philip II, King of Spain). This victory helped repulse the constant efforts by the Muslim Turks to penetrate even further and seize even more Infidel lands in Eastern and Central and Southern Europe.At the site of the engagement, the ships are all identical. Indeed, they all belong to the Eurabian fleet of a newly-expanded Eurabia, in which Turkey is the most populous member.
Of course, no one in his right mind would have wanted to label the ships with such words as "Turkish" or "European" (much less "Venetian"). "We are all Turks now," joked the French Foreign Minister, Ekmelledin Uzal, to his British counterpart, Manwar al-Oteiba. But of course, it would not do to label the sides "Turkey" and "Turkey."
Cornel West, Jr., son of the celebrated winner of two Nobel Prizes (one in literature and another for peace), was chosen to organize this event that holds so much significance for the world's peoples.
He was a natural choice. For, as president of the Eternal Peace and Dialogue-to-Death Foundation, which boasts 800,000 employees in 65 countries and is funded with the turned-over endowments of several self-extinguishing foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, the Soros Foundation, the Buffett Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Walton Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Olayan, Khashoggi, and Khaddafy Foundations, as well as the assets of three dozen slightly smaller foundations that had similarly disbanded, from all parts of the globe.
It was he, the brilliant son of an even more brilliant father, who finally hit upon the right way to label those ships that were to re-enact the Battle of Lepanto in a spirit not of celebrating a victory (what does "victory" mean, and what is "defeat," when we are all the children of the same god, and all of us indistinguishable one from the other, after all?).
At first, Cornel West, Jr., possibly remembering how the Battle of Trafalgar was re-enacted years ago, when his father was still a hard-working University Professor at Princeton and celebrated winner of the 2005 Lannan Prize for Services to Culture and Humanity, or Humanity and Culture, or something -- thought the two sides might indeed be labeled the "Blue Team" and the "Red Team," as had been done for the Trafalgar anniversary. But then it was pointed out that the painting would be costly, and besides, what with the ozone layer constantly thinning out into nothingness, more and more people seemed to be suffering from daltonism, which meant that millions of spectators watching the re-creation on television would have difficulty distinguishing one team from the other.
Then West had a brilliant idea. It was, like all brilliant ideas, so obvious -- and yet, no one had thought of it. It would make clear, utterly and transparently clear, what wars and bloodshed were really all about. They were about nothing at all. They had nothing to do with any discrete quarrels, any venomous ideologies, any attempts by one side or another to conquer one side, or another.
No, wars -- Man's Inhumanity to Man -- was all about The Other. Man, especially Western man, European man, or European man's mutated descendants in North America, who were consumed with the need to create, and then to mount a campaign against, The Other. It could be anything. It didn't matter. In the time of Lepanto, it was the terrible Turks, the malignant and the turbaned Turks, the Turks of "Mama li turchi" used to scare little Italian children.
And so it came to pass, that in 2021, in the re-created Battle of Lepanto, where Cervantes lost a hand (and later would lose his freedom to a renegade, a Christian-turned-Muslim slave-master named Venedikili Hasan Pasha, a future Beylerbey of Algiers), each side bore the exact same label -- a label that showed the futility of all warfare, of all distinctions, of all the silliness that Western man, especially, has inflicted on the otherwise naturally peaceful people in this naturally harmonious world (don't you find it getting just a little hot, and stuffy, and harder to breathe, in this wonderful still fossil-fuel-driven world of ours?).
And this is what the great son of the even greater father decided to do:
He labeled the ships of the Venetians, and the other European contributors to the fleet, "The Other." And then he labeled all the ships that represented the naval fleet of the Ottoman Turks with signs that read "The Other."
And that was that. The Battle of Lepanto. "The Other" vs. "The Other." For there is no "Other" now, in 2021. And in truth, there never really was "the Other" -- for "the Other" was simply a construct of the Western world, one which the peaceful non-Westerners made the terrible mistake of borrowing from them.
As Mustafa Schwartz-Weiss Kara-Akyol al-Padovi, the Italian Minister of Culture, noted, "yes, we are all Turks and Muslims now. We are all "The Other" now. Alhamdulillah, we are all friends, there will be no more war. There didn't have to be war in 1571. We could all have saved a lot of time, a lot of pain, if only the Venetians and the Spanish had understood then what everyone in Europe now understands."
Fruit drinks were sold. There was loukoum. There was iced Moroccan mint tea There were hubble-bubble pipes.
A splendid time was had by all.
And so it came to pass -- a Muslim peace: Peace means "the absence of enemies."
Love it.
Fifty years from now, this essay(along with other classics from Jihadwatch) will be in a collection of anti-dhimmi writings, published after we defeat Isalm.
The anthology's title will be, "How the West Won."
This prediction, of course, will only come true if the politically correct fools in Europe and America come to their senses and realize how dangerous a threat Islam is to the West.
moral equivalence to the Nth degree. tragically, the scenario is not hard to envision. it's items like the Trafalgar DE-enactment that make me despair for the future of this world. i don't even think we can chalk it up to insanity, this sort of cartoonish action is indicative of a conscious attempt to embrace the mindset of victimhood, moral equivalence, aversion to rigorous mental honesty, and truth in general too, for that matter.
and the french partici-panties were sulking because they were having their noses rubbed in history? are you kidding me? aren't fighter pilots required to be adults? besides, considering french military history, shouldn't they be used to losing by now? i think the only wars/battles/hostilities that the french won were the times they fought other french(so i guess that counts as a loss for them too).
i'm a bit disgusted with the Brits also, why do they encourage them so?
on the other hand, the french really can't help it, it's sort of like mental retardation; you can address the symptoms and help an individual maximize his potential, but you cannot "cure" the underlying condition.
the french are a morally dead, politically emasculated country, idealogically corrupt in their international efforts and spiritually diseased on the domestic front. they might have been a world power once, but today they are like the Alzhiemers-stricken WW1 veteran, rocking on the porch of the soldier's home, totally disconnected from the here-and-now, drooling as he dreams of his yesterdays, and wondering when the aide is going to come change his diaper, but still insisting he be addressed as "mon capitan".
france is in shambles. since they can't even run their own house, or be dealt with as adults by their immediate neighbors, please, please don't think that they have anything constructive to contribute to world events(in the current century).
they are a cancer infecting the free world.
well, off the chase the filthy lucre.
good thing i didn't get too vitriolic, wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.
Only mint tea? No more wine? F*@k!
tham wrote -....france is in shambles. since they can't even run their own house, or be dealt with as adults by their immediate neighbors, please, please don't think that they have anything constructive to contribute to world events(in the current century).
they are a cancer infecting the free world....
Gee T, how do you really feel about them? Seriously it is sad, like you should feel sorry for them, but you can't. They just seem to be determined to be assimilated into Islam.
Hugh-
2 minor improvements for your consideration:
1. Leponto will be depicted as a reactionary attempt to deny Turkish entry into the white Christian rich man's club of the time (i.e. Latin Christendom) thanks to its fear of "diversity" and all the "enriching" cross-cultural exchanges it allows, of the kind "vibrant" and "multi-colored" Bosnia showed was possible
2. Instead of the "Ford Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Gates Foundation", in 2021 it will be the Ford Waqf, the Packard Waqf, and the Gates Waqf for Monotheism and Unity of the Umma
Cornel West....
feh
nauseating poseur
"Other" than what? If I am "Other", and you are "Other", and everyone is "Other", not with relation to "the Other" but with relation to oneself, and being "Other" means being "Other, than oneself", then I am either I am not myself (which would make me psychotic, or nothing at all), or I am myself and "Other" than myself, namely, not myself, as is everybody else. But if the identity of every individual is defined as both being themselves and not being themselves, that is, being Other than themselves, then every individual will essentially be the same, namely, a contradiction.
But if everyone is a walking contradiction, or sleeping contradiction, it does not matter what kind of contradiction, then no one will be at all, in the sense that no one will actually be anything that one could talk about as being essentially the same thing, since everyone is both themselves and not themselves.
Hence, if everyone is "Other", no one actually is.
The end.
We have missed some other important celebrations.
1965 was the 400th anniversary of the Siege of Malta whose garrison held out against a massive Turkish onslaught such that it halted Muslim expansion in the Mediterraenean. During this battle queen Elizabeth I of England had said 'If the Turk should prevail against the Isle of Malta, it is uncertain what peril might follow the rest of Christendom'.
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September 12th 1983 was the 300th anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Vienna by the magnificent cavalry charge of Jan Sobieski's Polish Hussars which halted Turkish expansion on the mainland of Eastern Europe.
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August 12th 1987 was the tricentenary of the Battle of Mohacs in which a crushing Turkish defeat resulted in the submission of Transylvania to the Austrian Emperor Leopold I
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September 11th 1997 was the 300th anniversary of Prince Eugene of Savoy's annihilation of the Turkish army at Zenta which thwarted Sultan Mustapha's proposed invasion of Transylvania.
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
I'm puzzled.
The European elites, who are pushing to make Eurabia happen, are not dumb, I don't think. They are manipulators - of their people, of the Americans, the Arabs, the Israelis and, I would think, everyone they come into contact with.
So. Don't they realise that when Europe becomes Eurabia they lose everything? Their culture, their institutions (Islam is a bitch about pulverizing anything non-Islamic once they are dominant, surely they know that), their people, their positions - they become dhimmis!
So. Why are they doing this?
Those who forget their history will not have a future!
Skidd: "Why are they doing this?"
Their economies are in shambles. The Arabs hardly have an economy to speak of, but they have the billions and trillions from the oil: Undeserved wealth.
Europeans export enormous amounts of goods and services to Arab countries. That's why they keep sucking the Arabs. Who cares for a mere 5 million Israelis? They get a mere lipservice!
Hugh!
As an old songwriter used to say, "Son, if I had your holt, I'd let mine go."
Brilliant!
Rebecca
skidd -- why are they doing this? Simple: the PC West hates the West and yearns for some ideal Self (perhaps the Communistic paradise; perhaps some garbled post-Communistic "anti-globalization " & anti-American We-are-the-World paradise; perhaps some purified West schooled by the superior Islamic culture, or all of the above...)
JTF -- you probed accurately the psychologically incoherent mish-mash that lies beneath the PC West's childish dissatisfaction with the imperfection of life and shame at their own heritage, groping for some idealized Self that does not exist except after some anti-Western "revolution".
Another anniversary, only 27 years away: 2032, the 1300th anniversary of the Battle of Tours of 732, when a European coalition stood their ground and prevented the Spain-conquering Muslims from penetrating further into Europe. The famous Belgian historian Henri Pirenne (died 1935, before PC Leftism conquered the West) noted that, had we not won at Tours, all of Europe might be Muslim in his time.
"The famous Belgian historian Henri Pirenne (died 1935, before PC Leftism conquered the West) noted that, had we not won at Tours, all of Europe might be Muslim in his time."
--- from a posting above
And Pirenne, the author of "Muhammad and Charlemagne," argued that the Muslim conquests, especially of North Africa, caused a shift in the center of gravity of European civilization northward, away from the aggressive and continually attacking (at first by land, and later by coastal raids) Muslims.
This "Pirenne thesis" has itself been criticized by later historians, such as Robert Lopez, who do not attribute changes in European political, economic, and social life to the Muslim threat.
But the evidence is not conclusive.
At one time, the great historians of Europe had no trouble seeing Islam as a threat to European civlization. They did not exaggerate Muslim achievements. They knew that the Muslims themselves did not do most of the translating of those Greek texts that are given pride of place in any discussion of "Islamic civilzation" -- Jews and Christians, both in Spain, and in Baghdad, were the main translators. And the use of those books of Aristotle that were translated -- well, who did put those rediscovered texts to most use -- Muslim East or Christian Europe? The answer is: "Christian Europe."
Two things can be attributed to the Muslim threat.
The first is this: had not the Ottoman Turks seized Constantinople in 1453, and completed their conquest of the former lands of Byzantium, the way to the east would not have been so completely blocked. Why did Columbus seek a way to the East, to the Indies? He sought it because now the Muslim conquerors got in the way. In other words, Muslims helped produce the discovery of the New World by making Columbus's enterprise necessary.
The second is the Revival of Learning, an old-fashioned term -- but so is the term Renaissance, for which unromantic, chronologically-minded historians have substituted, and what's more forced their sometimes more imaginative and poetic graduate students to parrot the same phrase, the term "Early Modern" as in "Early Modern History" or "he's in Early Modern."
But that Revival of Learning, which one attributes to all the scholars, and the manuscripts and libraries they brought with them, who fled to Italy from the former Christian lands of Byzantium. And what were they fleeing? They were fleeing the conquering Muslims.
So that is what European civilization mostly owes to Islam. Fear of Islam, the hostility of Islam, the blocking of routes to the East by Islam, required that a new route to the Indies be sought. Fear of Islam, the hostility and aggression of Muslim conquerors, required the scholars of Byzantium, itself the inheritor of the Eastern Empire, to flee to the West, and to help in the redisovery of classical antiquity, its poets, its dramatists, its philosophers, its philologists, and all those who had made that their study in both the Eastern Empire and Byzantium.
So here's a thought. Let us think of the menace of Islam now as a challenge. It should make us rethink our own legacy, and what it means, and whether we are really quite to ready to pack it all in, or reduce it to the level of checkout counter magazines, Paris Hilton, Michael Jackson, e tutti quanti. Is that "Western civilization"? Are the politicians who rule us worthy of Lincoln, of Jefferson, of Washington? Are the "video artists" such as Bill Viola what we wish to encourage and celebrate as art? Are the scribblers of the age those who should be given fame and fortune, or have we lost the ability to distinguish the good from the bad writer?
Hugh,
One quibble with your post: in the same book you cite of Pirenne's, he argues that long before 1453 -- in fact, beginning in the 9th century (and increasing in severity with subsequent centuries) -- the Muslims effectively shut down the Mediterranean and changed it from what it had been for millennia before -- a vibrant, open, mediating commercial & cultural nexus between East and West -- and turned it into a "wall" (Pirenne's own term). Muslims turned it into a wall because, unable to conquer the West totally, they had no interest in setting up a permeable border between civilizations where fruitful exchange & dialogue could be cultivated. So much for Islamic "openness", "tolerance" and "cultural richness".
And the cultivation of Greek & Roman philosophy & science which Islam did embark upon was not, as you say, done out of the same love of learning and curiosity about the divine mystery of life (there is no mystery to the Muslim mind, only Truth and Enemies) practiced by Western Christians and Jews -- it was done essentially out of the instinctive awareness they had that there must be something powerful to exploit in all this non-Muslim culture of antiquity (and also perhaps something aesthetic to adorn the lives of the wealthier sultans and imams resting back in their paradisic laps of this-worldly luxury).
He sought it because now the Muslim conquerors got in the way. In other words, Muslims helped produce the discovery of the New World by making Columbus's enterprise necessary.
Posted by Hugh
But Hugh, muslims were already in the New World when Columbus arrived; in fact, muslims discovered the New World! Didn't you know?
If you don't believe that, how about the State Department diversicrats and revisionists of history who declared that many muslims accompanied Columbus on his maiden voyage to the New World and were among the very first settlers? I thought Ferdinand and Isabella were fed up to their eyeballs with muslims at that particular juncture in history, but maybe not.
Hugh: So here's a thought. Let us think of the menace of Islam now as a challenge. It should make us rethink our own legacy, and what it means, and whether we are really quite to ready to pack it all in, or reduce it to the level of checkout counter magazines, Paris Hilton, Michael Jackson, e tutti quanti. Is that "Western civilization"? Are the politicians who rule us worthy of Lincoln, of Jefferson, of Washington? Are the "video artists" such as Bill Viola what we wish to encourage and celebrate as art? Are the scribblers of the age those who should be given fame and fortune, or have we lost the ability to distinguish the good from the bad writer?
Popular culture is very democratic, and while usually down at the lowest common denominator, some good stuff rises up from the dross.
A few very good and an occasionally great movie leaks past the usual Hollywood impediments; ditto for television.
Most of what has ever been written is not very memorable, and we publish more now in one day that what was once published world-wide in a year. Now and again, a really good book, article, or essay gets out there. There are at least more than a thousand and possibly several thousands of Jackie Collinses for every Gabriel Garcia Marquez. For the 19th and 20th centuries, there are relatively few novels from each century that are really good enough to commend to posterity.
While there is a continuum from the Greeks and Romans directly down to us, there have been breaks. The Dark Ages were one. The Renaissance utterly changed the West, probably into something new. The elecronic revolution, first with radio, then television, and then 100 channels of television, and now computers and the internet is again turning us into something new.
Following Toynbee's thesis that civilizations mainly commit suicide, Islamic Civilization has already slashed its wrists, but will take few generations to completely bleed out, and in the meantime is creating a serious problem for us.
To state it simply, the West, or rather, what the West is currently becoming, has won. The Chinese and Indians adopting our views, remodelling them to fit local cultures, but in the long run, they are blending into the New West, the Post-Western Civilization that is being created. Islam is facing opposition not just from the West, but from India and China too. It's five billions of us vs. one billion of them.
Hello again.
In addition to the wall in the Mediterranean, this caused the first Crusaders to travel by land and not by sea, to ensure their safety. Sir Steven Runciman said this in book 1. This is why it took them 4 years to reach Israel.
Metaxy-- I wasn't endorsing the Pirenne thesis. I stated it summarily, and I haven't read Robert Lopez in a long time,, and there are many others -- Anne Riising, a Dane like Patrick Crone, and the historian of Islam Daniel Dennett, Jr. [isn't there another Daniel Dennett we have been hearing from, on a different matter?]-- whom I would have to read or re-read, many of them quite critical of Pirenne, with judgments hot and cold and laodicean.
What I said, perhaps too glancingly, was that when Pirenne was writing, a celebrated historian could, in fact, over negative views on the role of Islam, or at least a bit more brimstone and a little less treacle, and that perhaps one should go back, and look at such things as the Pirenne Thesis, rather than fall into line with the Eurabian rewriting of history that Robin Cook, and Jacques Chirac, and Dominique de Villepin, and even some in our State Department (that business about the "Muslims" in Columbus's crew, the criticism of which no one in the State Department has seen fit to discuss).
Too tired to go on with this tonight. But you know what I'm getting at.
Interesting, ibn Rushd, I think I remember that detail. Along with that, Pirenne writes about a kind of elite "island-hopping" Christian culture that rose up during the Crusades (with a long legacy after): Christian military societies (mostly the "Hospitallers") that established themselves were successively moved by Muslim forces eastward, from Acre (1291), then over the ensuing centuries, to Cyprus, to Rhodes, and finally to Malta (in the 16th century).
Well Hugh, I implicitly trust historians like Pirenne and Benoist-Mechin (and even Flaubert, who had better historiographic intuitions to lead him through mountains of dusty old texts than perhaps most of the accredited historians of the Middle East today) over the later revisionists who become suspect for being tainted with the PC Zeitgeist.
The ending was missing. The ending should be :-
"And Shias and Sunnis fought each other happily ever
after.".
My essay is of the 'shot his wod' variety. I've saved the reference.
Skidd,
You ask why the European leaders are doing this, why they are selling out the long-term futures of their nations.
It is because the overriding concern of politicians is to win the next election.
"implicitly trust historians like Pirenne and Benoist-Mechin..."
--- from a posting above
Surely one never "trusts" implicitly or otherwise a historian. Even a great historian may not have had access to all of the archives, all of the material, all of the means and methods and possibly languages that would have led him (or her) to see things differently, to follow different lines of inquiry. Some find that Burckhardt is wrong on this, or on that. But when Oswyn Murray re-edits an edition of Burckhardt we read it, we do not dismiss it.
We read historians of America, some with less, some with more faith. Bancroft, John Fiske, right up to what used to be, and should again be, the standard texts used in high school -- the Morison and Commager (2 volumes) that had no pictures, no graphs, just text. Views are modified by subsequent research -- but up to a point. The manic need to find something "new" now that the professional study of history has been made a matter of careers and grim careerism, well - you know what that has done, in the way of monographism, the cruel mistreatment of students who, knowing less and less, are presented with history courses that deal with narrower and narrower subjects, often the very subjects that the thrusting young acadmics are writing on, or planning to write on, and even the older faculty members may cease to care (the students know so little, and at this point, why try to make up for the years of non-education?), and in their fed-up-with-departmental-meetings-and-the-whole-crap-of-it close-to-retirement-with -the-office-in-the-library attitude, will not offer those students the alternative of history presented with allure, to at least get them interested.
Linking a real historian, Pirenne, with a quasi-journalist who was all his life fascinated with the "winners" or those he saw as on the way up --he wrote sympathetically of the German army you know when, and he had a bad war (from the moral point of view). Later he wrote several very bad books on various members of the Saudi royal family, beginning with Ibn Saud, then Saud, and Faisal, I think. He was full of enthusiasm for the House of Al-Saud, and his discussion of the "favors" done by Faisal to the Americans was worthy of Fred Dutton, or other Western propagandists for the Saudis. He can't be taken seriously, but Pirenne certainly can. You wouldn't write "such singers as Billie Hoildy and Britney Spears" would you?
Good one Hugh, and I would not offer Gabriel Garcia Marquez as one of the relatively few novelists really good enough to commend to posterity, either.
The novel is dead.
best, Rebecca
Hugh, nobody's perfect. I'm almost done reading Benoist-Mechin's book on ibn Seoud; certainly not everything in the book is "trustworthy", but I find he has that intuitive grasp that is one quality necessary for a historian. His overview of early Islamic expansion is refreshingly unromantic. And I don't think one should confuse his descriptive tone, in the manner of an adventure novel, of ibn Saud, with personal or cultural admiration. Frequent comments peppered throughout the book demonstrate that Benoist-Mechin is free of the illusions which most historians now labor under, concerning Muslim history and its personages.
"Hugh, nobody's perfect."
--- from a posting above
Who are you going to believe -- me, or Joe E. Brown?
Hugh, of course one would want to double-check the historiographical data that base certain claims & intepretations, particularly the broader more amorphous ones, such as that the Muslims began a process of turning the Mediterranean into a wall beginning in the 9th century.
Nevertheless, even a mountain of data by itself doesn't amount to an interpretation. The interpretation is always inferred from the data; data don't magically become interpretations by themselves, by the sheer act of someone pointing to them.
As you know too well, we can have a mountain of data indicating something essential about a connection between Islam and extremism, and in the face of this we have millions who stubbornly deny the best inference to be made.
Similarly, historians can dispute Pirenne until Kingdom Come -- that will not change the gap between data and synthetic interpretation, which in the end has to be grasped Gestalt fashion, not with a bang but with a leap.
An adequate addendum to Aldous Hugh Huxley's "Not So Brave New World"
In that time only Spain and the Vatican were interested in fighting the muslims, if France, England and the Netherlands had been interested the islamic menace was off forever.
But characters like Luther that said that the Catholic Church was more dangerous that turks, and Richelieu Cardinal, like more frech that catholic, was a traitor of the Christendom and pacted with the turks, like forever, France, such a friend of muslims.
Franze,
I wouldn't be surprised if one could find some "table talk" by Luther where he conceded grudging admiration for Muslims because they shared the same fanatically intransigant lust for purity, intolerance for the mystery of imperfection in this life, and absolute apodictic Truth as did he.
(make that "intransigent"...)