by Fjordman
I should thank the pro-Israeli, Islam-critical blog Document for bringing this to my attention. The two Norwegian essays cited here were written by Ole Jørgen Benedictow, a professor emeritus at the University of Oslo specializing in the history of the Middle Ages. The translations were made by me, and the shorter excerpts should capture the spirit of the texts.
Benedictow, as an expert in the field, has tried to influence the public debate on issues related to Islam vs. Europe in the Middle Ages, but has repeatedly experienced being rebuffed in favor of young Marxists with little knowledge of the period. He is annoyed by the fact that people who know very little about this era and its complexities have easy access to the mass media and can spread falsehoods virtually unchallenged. “Revolutionary Socialists” — that is, Communists — have no problem promoting their propaganda in major newspapers despite representing a totalitarian ideology that caused the deaths of tens of millions of people — 100 million if you believe The Black Book of Communism — during the twentieth century alone.
For some reason, allegedly “anti-imperialist” Marxists in the Western world just love brutal, aggressive and oppressive imperialism — as long as it comes in an Islamic shape. There is no hint of an understanding of why the Spanish and Portuguese fought so many centuries for their liberation, nor of the plight of the Balkan Christians or those who suffered under Muslim rule elsewhere in the world, for example following the extremely bloody Islamic conquest of India. Islamic advances must be celebrated; the West demonized and ridiculed. European medieval peoples are invariable portrayed as barbarians with no culture of their own.
Yet the Middle Ages represented a creative growth period where we find the seeds of a new civilization — the European one — which replaced that of Greco-Roman Antiquity but also carried with it a number of Classical elements, albeit often in a somewhat altered form.
The French professor of medieval history Sylvain Gouguenheim has published a book titled Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel: Les Racines Grecques de l’Europe (Aristotle at Mont Saint-Michel: The Greek Roots of Europe), triggered by a recommendation from the European Union that schoolbooks should give a positive rendering of Islam’s part in the European heritage. Europe, he says, “became aware of the Greek texts because it went hunting for them, not because they were brought to them.” He attacks the thesis advanced by historians such as Edward Said of an enlightened, refined and spiritual Islam against a brutal and ethnocentric West. Apart from a tiny handful of freethinkers, the scholars of the Islamic Middle East retained from the ancient Greeks only what they considered to be compatible with the Koran.
The Western Church and its monks contributed to the preservation of many Classical texts. In addition to this, professional scribes could sometimes be found outside of the monasteries, catering to kings and nobles. A hallmark of the Western peoples was respect, even admiration, for different cultures and a willingness to seek out creative impulses from other civilizations. Muslims have historically exhibited little creativity in important forms of artistic expression such as painting or sculpture. In Benedictow’s view, “no cultural sphere with more than a billion people contributes so little to the development of science or the arts in our time.”
The Ottomans used a centralized power structure to extract a large proportion of the resources of the empire to use for military aggression, but they were successfully rebuffed by European states. The problem with an overly centralized power structure with high tax rates is that over time it will lead to economic and technological stagnation. Successful innovation requires some degree of decentralization, which could be found in regions of Western Europe with many free cities, from northern Italy via the Netherlands and Flanders in the Low Countries to England and northern Germany. This is where we encounter the development of capitalism.
Respected scholar Joseph Schacht states in An Introduction to Islamic Law that “The concept of corporation does not exist in Islamic law.” In addition to this, “There is also no freedom of association.” This legal defect had serious implications for Islamic societies, not least in the sphere of economic development, as Timor Kuran has made clear. The economic growth and social developments of modern Europe partly had medieval roots, as Avner Greif and others have shown. By contrast, Islamic culture was based on a very different mental outlook.
As the ex-Muslim Wafa Sultan says in her excellent book A God Who Hates, the raids Muhammad and his companions carried out, which amounted to at least twenty-seven if you believe Islamic sources, occupy a major part of his biography. They were intended to acquire booty and to inflict harm upon rival tribes in order to deprive them of their ability to resist Islam. A philosophy of raiding “has rooted itself firmly in the Muslim mind. Bedouins feared raiding on the one hand, and relied on it as a means of livelihood on the other. Then Islam came along and canonized it. Muslims in the twenty-first century still fear they may be raided by others and live every second of their lives preparing to raid someone else. The philosophy of raiding rules their lives, the way they behave, their relationships, and their decisions.”
According to Benedictow, “Like other great conquering peoples, from Romans to Mongols, the Arab-Muslim conquerors took over landed property and political control and established a tax regime that benefitted the small, but superior warrior elite. For many centuries this was the essence of the Arab-Muslim presence, the imperialist exploitation model. But since Muslims didn’t pay taxes there was also no great urge to do Muslim missionary activity. This is among Western, pro-Islamic left-wing political ideologues, social anthropologists and historians of religion characterized as tolerance. As long as this remained the case, however, the culture of Antiquity could continue to exist, now as a strong undercurrent that allowed for continued work on the Classical texts, translations and commentaries included. The ability of Classical civilization to nourish human ingenuity lived on. Many of those who contributed were Christians and Jews or converts to Islam; rather few were Arabs. As the Muslim religious oppression increased and permeated society and intolerance grew, these Classical civilizational elements withered away. What is actually the case is that the Arab-Muslim conquest of Eastern Roman lands led to the destruction of the civilization of Classical Antiquity. Claiming that the Arab-Muslim conquest saved it is backwards to say the least.”
Always fantastic to read an essay from Fjordman. I am happy to see the he continues to batter away at one of our uniquely Western myths - that Islam "saved" the knowledge of the Classical World. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It's like that old canard that Arabs invented the zero. The truth is that the zero is the invention of our Hindu brothers and sisters.
Excellent entry; we need more historical essays like this. Excellent as always, Fjordman.
As for this:
As the ex-Muslim Wafa Sultan says in her excellent book A God Who Hates, the raids Muhammad and his companions carried out, which amounted to at least twenty-seven if you believe Islamic sources, occupy a major part of his biography. They were intended to acquire booty and to inflict harm upon rival tribes in order to deprive them of their ability to resist Islam. A philosophy of raiding “has rooted itself firmly in the Muslim mind. Bedouins feared raiding on the one hand, and relied on it as a means of livelihood on the other. Then Islam came along and canonized it.**** Muslims in the twenty-first century still fear they may be raided by others and live every second of their lives preparing to raid someone else. The philosophy of raiding rules their lives, the way they behave, their relationships, and their decisions.” *****
Interestingly enough, this also describes World of Warcraft characters.
Enemy soldiers, all of them, indeed.
Considering the Arabs took over an empire that was largely Greek and highly advanced, scandalously little of culture has been allowed to survive.
I consider the Arabs to be the great destroyers of ancient knowledge, science and culture. Not the saviors. Certainly some Muslims could see and recognize a good thing: Ibn al-Haitham or Alhazen (965-1040) comes to mind, a giant among scientists and preservers of knowledge. But of course most of his writings were soon judged to be against the teachings of the Quran and accordingly burned.
The affinity of Marxists and Moslems is fascinating, but dangerous. The ideal of socialist Islam is culminated in the form of Barack Hussein Obama in the White House, with news entertainers in power today actively enforcing self-censorship by making heavy use of the perjorative birhter to the extent that there was no and still is no move to investigate his qualification to run for president. It may as well be illegal to question where Obama was born.
Both ideologies, communism mand Islam, are constantly endorsed at our universities, that endorsement then flowing into our airwaves, court rooms, class rooms and legislatures in the absence of any reason for either to be tolerated.
What we call the Dark Ages today is indeed a hole in history, much in the way our present day consciousness is ahistorical.
One thing that can be said for the Marxists - while economic knowledge floundered, given the theories the Marxists insisted on putting into practice - scientific knowledge was just fine, given the advances that the Soviets made in the period. Although arguably, had the Soviet Revolution never happened and the Tsars continued to this day, I daresay Russia would have been a country as prosperous as the rest of the West.
With the Muslims, nothing comparable ever happened. All the cultures that they overran were more advanced than they were, and yet, they never managed to even match, let alone improve upon them.
Jihad Watch commented on my research into this issue here:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/07/hyping-islam-s-role-in-the-history-of-science.html
Mange tusen takker til deg, Fjordman (Min mor, Gudsrests henne, var fra "Norse Dakota").
"Young Marxists" = "Young obscurantists becoming middle-aged nihilists"
You have exposed a very serious problem in Western discourse. The Islamic challenge is, for the West, a rash on skin, the Marxist "March through the Institutions" is an internal parasite that is rapidly killing its host--and itself with it.
The Marxists have never been good at anything but misleading PR, making war, state terror, making idols of worthless bullies, and keeping themselves in power. After all, they made a poor country out of a region inhabited by Protestant Germans, and made the Ukraine a net importer of grain. Their bullying tactics, evident in academic and cultural circles, get covered over at their pretense to intellectual "rigor" [mortis?]; their pretense to clear-headedness is, in fact, utter gullibility towards the enemy of their own enemy.
Noting what Benedictow said, maybe the Marxists see in the Muslims an image of themselves--an elite crew of vicious looters armed with unassailable dogma.
'You owe us a debt of gratitude because Islam is the basis of Western civilisation'.
This sort of statement is usually backed up by revisionist arguments that Muslims invented everything and were responsible for the Renaissance (Sheikh Speare was a Muslim playwright etc).
In some ways this is a rather pathetic quest for significance. Muslim culture has been moribund for the past 600 years, whereas the West has forged ahead. Muslims now want a stake in the success story by claiming they were somehow responsible for the West's development.
See Taqiyya tactic number 10 for links.
The Muslim efflorescence, like the financial underpinning for the Muslim military campaigns, depended on the wealth expropriated from, and on the continuing economic exploitation of, conquered non-Muslim populations. One thing about the historical record is noteworthy; the various golden ages of Islamic civilization always occur early in the first few centuries in which a new territory is occupied. Wherever the various Muslim vanguards invaded, the vast majority of the population was non-Muslim. It would take many years for this population to be converted and assimilated. These non-Muslims or recent converts are the ones who carried on the work which many historians are prone to attribute to "Islamic" civilization. Thus, a distinction must be drawn between the so-called high Islamic civilization and the religion of Islam. Eventually as the process of Islamization proceeds the non-Islamic component of the population becomes a small minority and stagnation sets in. This process is evident in the first centuries of the Arab conquests where the process of Arabization and conversion to Islam took a few centuries to complete; this was the "Arab" golden age, a product of unconverted or recently converted Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians. In Spain the golden age lasted longer, perhaps because the process of Islamization was never as complete in Moorish Spain as in the Arab East.
It is remarkable how closely this pattern was repeated in the subsequent expansions of Islam as a consequence of the Turkish and Mogul conquests. The initial splendors of the Seljuk and Ottoman empires were the result of unconverted or recently converted subjects. When the Islamization of the newly conquered territories was complete intellectual stagnation once again set in. Similarly, an initial flowering as an extension of the ancient Hindu culture followed the Mogul conquest of India.
Jonathan David Carson, thanks for that link. I've bookmarked it.
A wonderful article! Almost every time I read articles on JW I come away with a little nugget of gold. Today's is:
'But since Muslims didn’t pay taxes there was also no great urge to do Muslim missionary activity. This is among Western, pro-Islamic left-wing political ideologues, social anthropologists and historians of religion characterized as tolerance.'
Yes, of course you can be 'tolerant' for as long as the dhimmi is handing over the cash.
More of this, please!
An excellent article.
It is sad today that so many Western people are unaware of their own history. Further, the politically correct propaganda of "Ancient Islamic World as Source of All Science, Technology, Ideas for the West" is offered as the only viable answer to the missing history in these folks minds. This article offers several alternative, and much more rigorously researched, scholarly views to this time in European history (another I can recommend: "Barbarians to Angels", P.Wells, 2008). If we are to win the war of ideas, its time these other views are made more available to the general public. Islam has really invented nothing unique, except for new methods to extinguish human creativity.
Excellent article, Fjordman.
"What is actually the case is that the Arab-Muslim conquest of Eastern Roman lands led to the destruction of the civilization of Classical Antiquity. Claiming that the Arab-Muslim conquest saved it is backwards to say the least.”
.................................
Very, very true.
Also, the biggest single infusion of Greek knowledge into the West was when refugees from fallen Byzantium—especially scholars with as many manuscripts as they were able to save—flooded into Europe after the Muslim hordes had overrun Constantinople in 1453.
I've long said that all it would take for Islam to have another "golden age" would be for them to flood the civilized West, and garner what they could of her wealth and knowledge until enough of her educated and hard working citizens had fled, been murdered, converted to Islam, or been crushed under dhimmitude.
Then Islam would sink again to its natural level.
All you have to do to see just what that looks like is to consider societies lacking in any mitigating influence besides Islam—a large population of Infidels, left-over colonial laws or customs, the presence of hopeful, "nation-building" Westerners, or some strongman who is willing to suppress Islam to a greater or lesser extent such as Attaturk or Ben Ali.
Examples of "pure" Islamic societies? Yemen, Somalia, or Afghanistan under the Taliban. Utter Hell-holes, every one of them. Backward, poverty-stricken, insanely violent. Also, profoundly ignorant and stagnant.
Other places fast Islamizing include Indonesia, Lebanon under Hizb'allah, and Pakistan—which are becoming more violent and less tolerant by the day.
As for the Mahgreb and the Levant after the current "unrest"? We will have to see. I imagine we will see much the pattern, though.
Exactly! I believe that such phenomena account for the constant projection of sinister motives against others who are themselves Muslims extremists' would-be victims.
Fjordman, thank you once again for your article. Your work is always enlightening.
Ah it hurts to see so many people spew out 'facts' they have absolutly no knowledge of. Prof. Benedictow can make such statements, doesn't mean he's right and i hope i'm allowed to do so after my degree too. But come on you people are just hoping to get a quick anti islam fix from someone with a brain.
Oh, be quiet, and go finish preparing for your next raid.
I wish all the Marxists and Islamists in the west would just get on the first plane or ship and go to Egypt or Libya or Iran or Saudi Arabia or any of the OIC countries to live and spout their rhetoric. Why are we forced to listen to this garbage coming out of the MSM?
"Muslims in the twenty-first century still fear they may be raided by others and live every second of their lives preparing to raid someone else. The philosophy of raiding rules their lives, the way they behave, their relationships, and their decisions.”
My Momma, bless her dear departed soul, always told me that "If someone doesn't trust you then it is because they don't trust themselves". In other words, if they are pirates, crooks and thieves, then they suspect the same of you.
I guess we can view Muslims in the same light.
Hahaha, so according to your mothers 'wisdom':
You don't trust muslims so that means you don't trust yourself.
Next raid is thursday anyone want to join?
Trying to get me some camels. For me and my 78 wives.
Something else that has bothered me for a long time is the notion that the Arab world was responsible for preserving much of ancient literature, while the Christian culture of Western Europe were responsible for destroying it. The climate of Western Europe was cold, damp, moldy and dark in the winter months while most buildings were made with timber and heated in the winter by open-hearth fires and lighted by open flames from candles and lamps. If you think about it for a moment, you would realize that the “shelf life” for a book in medieval Europe was probably very short.
Contrast this situation with the dry climate and living conditions of the desert Arab lands were a book could easily last on a shelf for centuries with no degradation in its condition.
The labor devoted to reproducing books that was undertaken by the monks of the Christian Church has no equivalent that I know of in Islamic cultural history. Can anyone reading this post think of any example? The truth is that the Muslims appear to have simply been “collectors” of the books and scrolls from the peoples they conquered rather than the “perseveres” they are credited with being.
Rather it was the Christian Church that seems to have been devoted to an extraordinary level of effort to preserve, via a unending process of reproduction and against very harsh conditions, what literature it still had.
Only if it's a raid on Stormwind. Human bastards.
Otherwise, take your Sharia and shit and whatever it is you're trying to defend to Saudi Arabia.
While we're at it, let's not forget the contributions the Eastern churches made to keeping the Hellenic heritage alive. Much "Arabic" learning was originally translated from Greek into Syriac, and then into Arabic.
Have you seen the Irish animated film for children, "The Secret of Kells"?
The best part of the film is the final ten minutes, at the climax of which there is a hypnotically beautiful visual riff on the gloriously illuminated 'Chi Rho' page of the Book of Kells: "the book that turns darkness into light".
Watch it and then read Tom Cahill's "How the Irish Saved Civilisation" (strictly speaking, 'how the Irish saved *western latin* civilisation').
From Cahill's book, a poem, and then a couple of striking passages.
St Manchan of Offaly, converted by St Patrick.
From “How the Irish Saved [Western Latin] Civilisation”, by Tom Cahill.
pp. 152-55.
"Grant me, sweet Christ the grace to find –
Son of the Living God –
A small hut in a lonesome spot
To make it my abode.
"A little pool, but very clear
To stand beside the place
Where all men’s sins are washed away
By sanctifying grace.
"A pleasant woodland all about
To shield it from the wind
And make a home for singing birds
Before it and behind.
"A southern aspect for the heat,
A stream along its foot
A smooth green lawn with rich top soil
Propitious to all fruit.
"My choice of men to live with me
And pray to God as well.
Quiet men of humble mind
Their number I shall tell.
"Four files of three or three of four
To give the psalter forth
Six to pray by the south church wall
And six along the north.
"Two by two my dozen friends –
To tell the number right –
Praying with me to move the King
Who gives the sun its light.
"A lovely church, a home for God
Bedecked with linen fine
**Where over the white Gospel page
The Gospel candles shine** {my emphasis - dda}
'A little house where all may dwell
And body’s care be sought
Where none shows lust or arrogance
None thinks an evil thought.
'And all I ask for housekeeping
I get and pay no fees ,
Leeks from the garden, poultry, game
Salmon and trout and bees.
'My share of clothing and of food
From the King of fairest face,
And I to sit at times alone
And pray in every place."
(And so, I would argue, the ‘gift of the Jews’, mediated through Yeshua of Nazareth, who in another Irish poem is seen as the ard ri, the ‘High King of Heaven’, inhabited and transfigured Irish culture - dda).
Cahill writes:
“The change in tone and content from the bloodletting of the Tain (pagan Irish epic - dda) to the quiet delights of the Hermit’s Song, is worthy of consideration.
"Humour is abundant in both literatures [pre-Christian and also Christian Irish] but the harsh humour of the mythological cycle has been transmuted into a kind of self-deprecatory, monastic mirth.
"And even though the gentle rhythm of self-deprecation [that is, humility - dda] cannot entirely suppress the clang of heroic egotism (for the poet surely thinks quite highly of himself) the characteristic size of men and their possessions has decreased; everything about Chuchulainn was outsized; everything about the hermit is endearingly small.
"Whereas the colours of the Tain were gleaming metals and inconstant shadows,
"**the world of the hermit shines with a light that bathes each object, so that all items stand out distinctly and substantially in their own rich colours, like miniature pictures in an early Gospel book.** {my emphasis - dda}.
"Brightness is the central experience here [the Shekhinah – the weight of glory, kabod - dda], and such concepts as clarity, cleanliness, illumination, and fairness suffuse the poem.”
From the chapter - 'A solid world of light: Holy Ireland':
“At the centre of this new Irish universe, the Gospel candles shine on the ‘white gospel page’…
"Like the Jews before them, the Irish enshrined literacy as their central religious act.
"In a land where literacy had previously been unknown, in a world where the old literate civilizations were sinking fast beneath successive waves of barbarism,
"the white Gospel page, shining in all the little oratories of Ireland, acted as a pledge: the lonely darkness had been turned into light, and the lonely virtue of courage, sustained through all the centuries, had been transformed into hope.”