When Western Christendom was besieged, and keenly felt besieged, by the forces of Islam, it was natural for Christians to fantasize about a powerful Christian ally. For there were Muslim raids up and down the coasts of Western Europe as far as Ireland and even, in one case, as far as Iceland. In those raids the Muslims seized booty, and also seized for future enslavement Christian men, women, and children (google "Jihad Watch" and "Thomas Pellow" for the case of one Cornishman who was seized and taken back to Morocco, written about in Giles Milton's White Gold).
The ally about whom the Christians fantasized was on the other side of the Muslims. He could be called upon to help. He would help rescue the Christians in Western Christendom by allying with them and attacking the Muslims who continued to maraud and to murder whenever they could.
This allied kingdom was called the Kingdom of Prester John. He, this fantastic yet hope-giving figure of Prester John, was in the imagination of Western Christians powerful and good, though he lived and ruled over a distant land, a land beyond the Muslims. At first, Western Christians located this land of their imaginings in India; later, in those same imaginings, they moved the Land of Prester John to Ethiopia. This was the Christian kingdom -- and it was a Christian kingdom -- that would come to rescue them.
It's a curious story in the history of the West, and a highly revealing one. Ordinarily the story of Prester John is told without any notice being taken of the clear fear-of-Islam promptings behind it.
Modern Ethiopia, though still Christian, is suffering from an internal Muslim threat -- the threat of demographic conquest. The Muslims are simply doing what they do elsewhere, which is outbreeding the Christians. Talk to any Christian Ethiopian -- say, that nice exchange student in town -- and you will discover the anxiety they feel, and how happy they are to find Americans as alarmed by the steady encroachments of Islam as they are. And if a few words can be dropped to show some familiarity -- "Dergue," "Mengistu," "Haile Selassie," "the Abuna," "Danakil," "Adowa," and suchlike -- all kinds of information will spill forth when the dam breaks, information that will enlighten you. I've tried this out myself, using the "Books on Africa" section of a bookstore in a campus town, as the best place for setting up such "accidental" and useful encounters.
Right now Ethiopia suffers from the Muslim threat to its east, and also one, unrecognized outside Ethiopia, to its north, from the malevolent Arabs of Sudan, who are pushing pushing pushing. And behind them, hidden from view, are the Arabs of Egypt, who are hell-bent on stopping the people of Ethiopia from diverting and using for their own purposes some of the headwaters of the Nile. Yet Ethiopia has endured famine, the result of drought, many times in recent decades. For the Egyptians are protecting the Sudan, as best they can, and they support the Sudan in its efforts to drive out, or greatly diminish the numbers, of black Africans -- whether they are the Christians and animists who by the millions have been murdered (or caused to starve to death) in the south, or the black African Muslims in Darfur.
Why? Not only in order to more thoroughly islamize, and then arabize, the Sudan -- an artificial construct where, a century ago, most of the population was non-Arab, save for a small part of the north -- but also to proceed southward to Ethiopia, so that that bastion of Christianity, as it was always seen, can be islamized too, and its non-Arab Muslims forced to become more obedient to the dictates of Egypt. And the dictates include those about diverting the headwaters of the Nile, that the selfish and overbreeding Egyptians think they can permanently control, permanently treat as their private property.
Now, in a reversal of the Middle Ages, it is Western Christendom, or rather its modern successors, the Infidel nation-states of Western Europe and North America, that must now come to the rescue of what, a thousand years ago, was seen as the mythical kingdom ruled by Prester John that would come to the rescue by attacking the marauding Muslims from the other side.
A fantastic story, then, and now.
Full name: Prester John McCain?
Also do not forget the Spanish version of Prester John, El Cid.
credit man,
Sen.McCain is the 21st century western version of both Prester John and El Cid. I had heard his acceptance speech last Thursday night. He combines both the serious and folksy in speech with the need to put "country first". Gov. Palin is the female version of Ronald Reagan.
Hugh,
I'm so glad you have brought this up again, Ethiopia has been struggling alone year after year against a Jihad that has been going on for centuries and no one in the West seems to give a damn. The only things people here seem to know Ethiopia for are the famines of the 70s and 80s, Olypic long distance runners, and, thanks to the Rastafarians and reggae, Haile Selassie I. If the West (Christendom) doesn't help, Ethiopia WILL be destroyed and one of the ancient cultures of the world will be destroyed with it.
Ethiopia is the home of Humanity, we are all Ethiopians at our core. The West must not let the evil of Islamic hegemony destroy the Garden of Eden.
Also do not forget the Spanish version of Prester John, El Cid.
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at September 9, 2008 8:20 AM
You mean Charlton Heston, right?
I've heard that when the Mongols were attacking muslims, they were thought to be the people of Prester John.
i don't think we should compare our "heros" with a preacher who didn't exist. Charles (Karl) Martel would be better.
mccain is a dhimmi anyway. and oboma wants us to be under the control UN. Global Poverty Act, look it up.
Egypt featured in interesting segment today on Foreign Correspondent, a current affairs program on Australia's ABC.
The segment featured Copts generously helping Egyptian society by doing jobs considered unclean by Muslims, a young Copt girl disappearing and winding up married to a Muslim (a romantic entanglement quite common to the region, explain authorities), her father taking advantage of several days free accommodation with the police while inquiring after her, and a number of rather careless converts from Islam losing their ID cards (without which they become nonpersons in the eyes of the state).
Egypt apparently has an attractive state-sponsored health plan for nonpersons covering dental treatment, manicures and certain aspects of gynecology:
(Reporter Evan) Williams asks,
“If I am a Muslim and I convert to Christianity, what happens to me?”
Abdel-Razak: “You don’t get an ID card. That fact does not get recognised by the state… If you can’t get an ID card, which is the case now for the past three, four years, you can’t do anything. You can’t get your education, you can’t get a drivers’ licence, you can’t get your passport, I mean your ID is - basically controls every aspect of your daily life in Egypt.”
Williams relates the story of what happened to a woman when she stopped being a Muslim. “ Her friend who was a Christian was regularly taken in by the National Security Secret Service, a very powerful organisation here in Egypt. She was warned to stop being a Christian, to go back to Islam, because they said to her we can take out your teeth one by one and we can take out your fingernails, plus your three daughters won’t remain virgins if you don’t return to Islam.”
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2008/s2354596.htm
tanstaafl,
It was not only a movie that the late Charlston Heston stared but also El Cid was a historic figure.
Hugh, are you familiar with the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore? It has a very nice collection of Ethiopian Christian art, the best of any art museum that I've visited.
theygottago,
Sen.McCain's stature went up bigtime now that he has conservitive Gov.Sarah Palin on the ticket.
Apart from vain imaginings which give comfort during the dark night of the soul, what has defeated jihadis bent on destroying us ?
The US marines and their valiant leadership.
As they were being killed or captured at a rate of 1500 jihadis per month (in Iraq, Hugh), the tipping point was reached where there were more being killed or captured than could be replaced and the slide of the jihadis to death and attrition began and accelerated.
One doesnt defeat this kind of enemy by jawing them to death.
The best jihadi is a dead one.
One good current sign is that they are trying now to jaw us to death.
But they are neither harmless nor inconsequential. They must be confronted and beaten.
I am guessing that Palin is the only candidate for high office who understands, at a gut level, that Islam is a growing menace rather than a religion of peace. Based on the history of vice presidents in the U.S., there is a fair chance that Palin will one day succeed to the presidency, either by succession or by election in a future election cycle.
Bigfoot: The mothers of Chinghiz, Huleku, and Khubilai were all Nestorian Christians. Many Mongol tribes remained Christian well into the 1300's, too. It is also significant that the Mongols massacred the Muslims of Baghdad only after locking the non-Muslims in their ghettos--a feasible task given the residential segregation practiced in the lands of Islam.
"Walters Art Gallery"
I used to live in Baltimore when my father was in the army and worked at Fort Detrick. I was too young then to know about museums. Later, I found out about the Irish art at Walters. You've just told me about the Ethiopian art. I should tell the Abuna. No, he probably knows already. Here's hoping no one demands it back, the way they have demanded back that obelisk from Italy that is now on its return trip, after a long stay abroad, to Axum.
This all boils down to OIL. Take away our dependence on Mid East oil, stop the jizya to prop up Mid Eastern states in exchange for oil, and wean ourselves off the oil tit domestically, and the islamization of Africa and Ethiopia will dry up. Cut off their funding for Jihad, and the mythical kingdom of Prester John rules from the great beyond. This applies to islamization of Europe and other parts of the world at risk. Take away their oil.
tanstaafl,
It was not only a movie that the late Charlston Heston stared but also El Cid was a historic figure.
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at September 9, 2008 9:18 AM
I know bigcat - I was just teasing. I'm not all that positive that the Cid was a historic figure, he certainly was a literary one. Historical in the sense that Homer's Illiad was history. Nevertheless, El Cid provides us with a sense of the qualities of Western nobility at the time.
Big difference with what was expected out of a Muslim.
Tanstaafl, the Cid was most definately a historical figure, his Spanish name was Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar (b. 1043 d. 1099), the son of a petty Castillian noble. However, he is necessarly someone we should look to for guidance in current situation as his patchy career included times as a mercenary for Muslim leaders against other Christian Spaniards.
Contempory sources alternate between praising him as a hero and painting him as a villain, and though he was a great tactician and won many battles for Christian Spain, he was also exiled twice from the court of Alfonso VI of Leon.
He was essentially out for himself and using his own private army he eventually took Valencia as his own fifedom. His importance in the messy business of the Reconquest of Spain was that he showed the Christians that the Almoravids were not unbeatable.
Thanks for the shoutout for the Walters in Baltimore. It is a true gem with wonderful Roman and Medieval European collections as well. I visit it often to be reminded that I am an heir to the great culture of the West. A relatively small museum, it can be viewed in a single (long) afternoon and is convenient to good restaurants and taverns! Most of its many treasures would be viewed as worthless junk by Jihadists.
That should read:
"...Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar (b. 1043 d. 1099), the son of a petty Castillian noble. However, he is not necessarly someone we should look to for guidance in the current situation..."
I used to read John Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir) when I was a nipper. I think I have seen other oblique references to the islamic threat in his writings.
The "companions of the rosy hours" figured in one of his books.
And there was a character named Peter Cornelius, a Dutchman, warning Richard Hannay about trouble brewing in "Stamboul".
But I always assumed Prester John was all about South Africa, due to the pre-occupation with Blauwildebeestfontein.
If you google 'Hospital By the River' and 'Catherine Hamlin' and 'Roger Hamlin' you should find a book recounting the story of two Christian doctors - one a New Zealander, one an Australian - who founded - in Addis Ababa - a hospital devoted to the repair of childbirth injury, namely, fistula.
http://www.amazon.com/Hospital-River-Story-Hope/dp/0825460719/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1220996845&sr=11-1
They originally came to Ethiopia to work at a hospital for women (and institute for training nurses) started - with the patronage of Ethiopian royalty - by one of the redoubtable Pankhurst women who finished up dying in Ethiopia and receiving a state funeral in honour of her achievements for the country. You could say that Pankhurst's work laid the foundation for, or gave birth to, what the Hamlins then did.
The book is a great read and provides some interesting insights into Ethiopian society and recent history (including hair-raising stories about the awful Mengistu years, which the Hamlins endured and survived) along the way.
This is the official site of the charity set up by the Hamlins
http://www.fistulatrust.org/
and if you explore you will find out how to support the hospital which, among other things, trains native Ethiopian nurses, midwives, obstetricians and gynecologists to international standards, and is hard at work on an education/ prevention campaign aimed, among other things, at persuading people to marry off their daughters at 17 or 18 rather than at 12 or 13 (I'd guess they will have better luck with the Christians than with the Muslims!).
Women who attend the hospital are taught to read and write during their stay. The hospital does not proselytize as such - all women suffering from fistula are admitted regardless of creed - but I think a Muslim patient who asked questions about Christianity would receive answers.
I don't know whether 'the hospital by the river' is campaigning against FGM but I wouldn't be surprised (again, I'd hazard the guess that the Christian population will prove more receptive to change than the Muslim).
The Bible Society is also very active in Ethiopia - among other things, translating the Bible into languages used by the Islamised tribes. Support for such activity should be lavish and unstinting - if large numbers of Muslims in Ethiopia truly become Christians, the demographic issue ceases to be a problem.
World Vision, I understand, has been engaged in projects such as droughtproofing through reafforestation.
I commend to ordinary citizens these three organisations, as ways of strengthening civil society in Ethiopia.
Others here may know of others.
PS Besides being, according to palaeontologists, the place where ancestral humans come from (as pointed out by someone above), Ethiopia is also a major genetic diversity hotspot for ...coffee!
It should be possible to discover suppliers of Ethiopian coffee who pay the farmers a decent cut of the profits; purchasing such coffee (as also, purchasing coffee from East Timor) is one small way that the ordinary citizen can encourage a society which is under siege from the Jihad.
Free Gutenberg online copy of John Buchan's "Prester John" here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/prsjn10.txt
This all boils down to OIL.
No it doesn't. It boils down to stupidity. We're not giving Egypt money for their oil. Since its Arabization Egypt hasn't managed to produce a single thing of any value in any way, shape, or form, except Nonie Darwish, Bat Ye'or, Mark Gabriel, Raymond Ibrahim, Sandmonkey, and a hell of an education on (along with Sudan) Islam for Winston Churchill. We're not buyng anything from them. They're getting jizya money from us. 30 billion a year for those Copt-killing monsters.
If McCain's elected, and if he keeps his promises, that should stop. He doesn't want 'to send our money overseas to people who don't like us very much.' That's Egypt. McCain will hopefully be the beginning of US economic isolationism from the Muslim world. Cut off the infidel dollars and every Muslim nation with the exception of Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Iran will immediately cannibalize. And then so will the rest when the Japanese water vapor car, whose prototype is complete and which is being created by the best manufacturers (Japanese ones, thank God!), but only if we cut off the jizya.
It's tragic what's happened to Kenya and Nigeria. I don't know any Ethiopians, but I used to live with a Nigerian Ibo girl and I go to school with a couple of Kenyan Luos. Hugh's right. They're scared. My Nigerian friend had horrible stories to tell about how she and her mother and sister feared abduction when her father died after witnessing the fates of widowed Christian families. That was when they came to America. She's brilliant. We're lucky to have her. It wasn't until last week when I started talking to these 2 Kenyan Luos that I realized that I actually wasn't alone in my hatred/fear of Islam here at Indiana Third Reich Universitystan. Surprisingly, they feel the same way about Muslims in Rome as I do. Who would have it would have occurred to them to care?
I think that some in Europe are looking to the US to be the "Kingdom of Prester John", that is, to be their saviours in this fight. And it is beginning to look more and more like the US will be fighting all alone soon.
Unfortunately, we (the US) are not in any position to save Europe. It will take everything we have just to save ourselves. Let me be frank: America's survival in this conflict is not a foregone conclusion. IF we are willing to do what is necessary, then we CAN survive, but so far it appears that we are not willing.
At any rate, even if we do have what it takes to survive, saving Europe is utterly beyond our power. Theoretically, Europe could still wake up and save itself, but they are a lot closer to the point of no return than we are, and have shown themselves to be even less willing to act than are the American public.
In response to all the comments above regarding Gov. Palin: so far I have heard nothing from her to make me think she understands the situation any better than any other politician. Regardless of the results of this election, our government's policy on the stealth jihad will not change any time soon.
I view Gov.Sarah Palin as part of a new generation of GOP polititions who are much more conservitive, but go for and expect reform in the areas they lead. Be it in Alaska for Gov.Palin, taking on an entranched good old boys network in Alaska or the leadership shown by another new generation GOPer governor, Bobby Jindal of Louisannia who took charged in the safe evacuation of thousands of citizens in endanger zones in both New Orleans and its suburbs before the coming of hurricane Gustav. These young Republicans will herald a era of reform for the GOP, getting it back to its true conservitive self expressed under Ronald Reagan.