| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Dhimmi Watch | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog | Raymond Ibrahim | Robert Spencer |  |
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The keenest and most aware, in every part of the Western world, are now engaged in one vast, but not collective, History Lesson. Those in this class are necessarily a class of autodidacts, given the failure of our governments to instruct us, and given the near-total monopoly over academic departments and courses on Islam by those engaged not so much in instruction as in apologetics.
Muslims and non-Muslims are conducting that apologetics. In 1970, Muslims constituted 3% of the members of the Middle East Studies Association, or MESA. Now they make up over 60% of the membership of what is known here as MESA Nostra. And they are assisted by non-Muslims who are eager not to offend Muslim colleagues, on whom they may depend for advancement and favors -- summer grants, book blurbs, light teaching loads, not to mention how unpleasant departmental meetings can be made by resentful Muslims, aware that a colleague may be guilty of presenting students with something like the truth about the teachings of Islam and about Jihad, and the treatment of non-Muslims under Muslim rule.
Of course, some of those non-Muslims may well have been attracted to their field in the first place by something in their own mental makeup that made Islam, or the Arabs, appealing to them. That is also true for those in the State Department who man the Middle Eastern desks. These self-selected students of the subject are unlikely to be the best guides. Furthermore, there is so much Arab money around to endow chairs, or even whole centers -- such as the two carefully placed at Georgetown, the better to influence government policymakers and the national media: Esposito's fiefdom, the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (a farcical undertaking, by Esposito, Voll and Haddad, that deserves a book-length study of its own) and Michael Hudson's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. The rich Lebanese contractor who first got Esposito on his way has had his initial funds supplemented by the Saudis and others; the Kuwaitis appear to have been the major donors, early on, to Hudson's undertaking. One center is in charge of misleading Infidels about Islam; the other handles the "Palestinian" matter. Their portfolios overlap, of course.
So here we are, now rediscovering the history of India, even if we are not Indians, and perhaps learning more about it, reading more sympathetically about what Muslim rule did to India, than many Indians who, to prove their lack of parochialism, their freedom from "communalism," overlook the real history, and continuing menace, of Islam in India. Here we are, even those who until a few years ago hardly knew about the Ottomans in Europe, realizing why the Serbs need to be protected from Muslim demands, either by "Bosnians" or by Albanians. Here we are, even those who up until recently had no real understanding of why the Arabs seemed incapable of making any kind of peace or accepting one Israeli compromise and surrender after another of Jewish claims, legal, moral, and historic, but always wanted more. Of course, according to Islam, they must always want more -- as we have learned by teaching ourselves about the Treaty of Al Hudaibiyya, learning, since no one in the press chooses to mention, the basis for all Muslim treaties with Infidels.
And here we are, learning not the Arab or Eurabian version of French rule in North Africa, but the real version. Here we are, learning who it was who stamped out slavery in the Maghreb (the French), and gave freedom from legalized Muslim oppression (1871, la loi Cremieux) to various communities of non-Muslims. We are learning who stamped out the African slave trade conducted by the Arabs in East Africa (the British), and who prevented the Arab tribes from constant mutual slaughter, which is why those "Trucial" states were given their names -- one hudna or truce after another. Here we are, learning about the Seljuk and the Ottoman Turks.
Oh, we are not experts. We can't compete with Schacht and Snouck Hurgronje and St. Clair Tisdall. But we can read Schacht and Snouck Hurgronje and St. Clair Tisdall and Arthur Jeffery and Tor Andrae and Henri Lammens. For that matter, some of us can even read Noldeke and Ignaz Goldziher. We can compare these scholars with what passes for "experts" from Esposito to Olivier Roy, from Khaled Abou el Fadl to Mark LaVine and so many others who have managed to first creep into, and then to slither upwards from rung to slippery rung, in that academic game of snakes-and-ladders with which some are long familiar.
Here we are, all over the world, the unsung History Boys.
And we are learning a lot. And passing it on. And we no longer accept the false authority of those whom, we realize, have been falsely instructing us on the nature of Islam. We have the real authorities to go to -- that Schacht, that Snouck Hurgronje, that St. Clair Tisdall, that Jeffery, and the hundreds of others, from many different countries, who saw Islam steadily and whole, and whose work, preserved in books and articles, can no longer be hidden from view.
Posted by Hugh at June 10, 2008 9:07 AM
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The Serb blog is running a post (with the video) of "Stolen Kosovo" a documentary censored in the Czech Republic: Suffering of Kosovo Serbs Cannot be Shown on National TV.
http://serbblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/brave-czechs-brave-film-stolen-kosovo.html
Posted by: LazarOfSerbia![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 10, 2008 9:14 AM
'So here we are, now rediscovering the history of India...'
despite the execrable William Dalrymple, who regularly soils UK newspapers with his wondrous fantasy tales of those wonderful Mughals.
Posted by: Dane at June 10, 2008 9:31 AM
Hugh, add yourself and Robert to the list of those who are broadening our horizons and telling us the truth of Islam. The service you perform is invaluable. Thank you.
Posted by: PMK at June 10, 2008 9:48 AM
"the execrable William Dalrymple..."
-- from a posting just above
That would be the man who has entered history -- just google -- as "Okkidental Dalrymple" -- named as such (by me) for his mispronunciation of the word "Occident" in the famous London debate between two teams of three, "Okkidental" Dalrymple and two other apologists for Islam (one was Tariq Ramadan), against Ibn Warraq, Douglas Murray, and David Aronovitch.
You can still listen to the debate, and to "Okkidental" Dalrymple's performance, including his immortal pronunciation, on the web.
But even before that telling aural display, I thought he, not-yet-Okkidental Dalyrymple, deserved a tribute:
Fitzgerald: A tribute to William Dalrymple
Very early on Christmas morning I happened to tune in the BBC World Service. I thought there might be something, perhaps King's College Choir, or the aptly-named Raniero Cantalamessa in Rome, or perhaps someone musing on the fate of Christians in Iraq, other than that moral idiot and historical nitwit, the current Archbishop of Canterbury.
But that would have been a different BBC. This BBC, the BBC of John Simpson and Judy Swallow and Robin Lustig and Barbara Plett of the ready tear for Arafat, is a very different BBC from that of Huw Weldon. And it lived up to my grim expectations. It did not disappoint.
For on the air was someone telling mournfully about "the Wall." And of course I knew which wall he was talking about. He did not mean the Wall of John Hersey, not the Great Wall of China, not the wall being built by Saudi Arabia for many hundreds of miles right through the desert, though no one threatens Saudi Arabia or its inhabitants with their total destruction, nor any other wall being built or being contemplated. No, this "wall" was the wall being built by the Israelis, as a modest measure forced upon them out of desperation as a way to prevent homicide bombers from easily entering their cities, to there set themselves off on busses, in restaurants, and at Passover celebrations. And this "wall," the smooth speaker said, was built right through the usual "uprooted and destroyed" olive groves -- a staple of "Palestinian" propaganda, those "uprooted olive groves," and so important to their propaganda machine that they have been caught uprooting their own olive trees, for the world press to come and cover and bewail.
There was not a hint in this lachrymose tale by this teller of tales of any indication as to why the Israelis might have felt it necessary to build such a wall. There was not a hint of the endless terrorism to which Israel's Jews have been subject, a terrorism of which only now is the rest of the Infidel world is getting a small taste, and which the people of England will be getting a larger and larger taste. There was not a hint as to whether or not this wall was justified in its building. Nor was there any mention made of the fact that it is being built through territory to which Israel has a very large historic, legal, and moral claim. The drawback of this wall is that it appears to lessen this claim. It appears to recognize, although there is no need to do so, the armistice lines of 1948 rather than those of June 1967 as the ones that must prevail.
And the speaker went on. He went on about the travails of the Christians of Bethlehem, with no hint of understanding that the Christian population of Bethlehem, some 80% of the total in 1948, has gone down and down not when under Israel's control, but when it has been under the control of the Arabs. Never has the situation been more grave than now, under the "Palestinian Authority." Local Christians seldom speak out. They are fearful. The Christian Arab strategy, long ago internalized, has been to never complain, and always to parrot the Muslim line, to do the bidding of the Muslims, to be good "Palestinians" always, and therefore always, even when it is absurd and seen by all sensible people to be absurd, to blame -- with no evidence and no logic -- the Israelis, that is, the Jews. To swallow this, one would have to ignore the entire history of Islam, the history of conquest and subjugation of Christians in wide areas of the Middle East and North Africa, and what became of those Christians, and what are the rules, set down clearly in the Shari'a, for the treatment of Christians as dhimmis. The speaker apparently thought he did not have to take note of that. He was under no obligation, he must have thought, to have read or at least to know the contents of The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam or a thousand other possible articles and books that formed the basis for that magisterial study of a major subject in world history. None of that mattered. He longed to go back, to go back one day to see the "Christians of Bethlehem" unoccupied (but they haven't been "occupied" -- even if one were to accept that meretricious and inaccurate word, which I do not -- for more than ten years, but have been under the total control of the "Palestinian Authority").
One longed to ask him what he thought would have happened to the "Christians of Bethlehem" if the Israelis had had the intelligence to insist on retaining Bethlehem as part of Israel, and never surrendered it to the "Palestinian Authority." He could look around at how the Arab Christians have fared in what is Israel, Israel diminished, Israel dimidiated within the 1949 armistice lines (the Arabs refused to recognize them, as they were once offered, as permanent borders; that offer does not remain open forever, to be accepted whenever the Arabs feel like it).
Well, how have they fared?
Can they worship freely? Are they subject to harassment, persecution, even murder as the Christians of Gaza and the West Bank have been, despite their best efforts to further the "Palestinian" cause? Does this speaker know about this? Does he think it relevant to his teary tale?
And who was this speaker, anyway? I waited to the end, enduring the nonsense of it all just to find out. It turned out to be William Dalrymple. Ah, of course. William Dalrymple, described here long ago, quite accurately, as an up-market Barbara Cartland, whose tales of trans-racial passion at the Mughal Court, or at this or that princely court in the time of the Mughals, has it all: star-crossed lovers, and of course the Splendor That Was India, or rather the India of the Muslim rulers who lived off of their Hindu subjects, the subjects who were killed by the Muslims in numbers without any historical parallel. (The historian K. S. Lal and others estimate that 60-70 million Hindus were killed by the Muslim conquerors and masters). Now a love of luxe, and of luxe combined with heaving breasts, is the kind of thing that the Barbara-Cartlands of this world love, including even the plausible sort who put in a bit more history and a little less of the Romance-novelette lord or duke or Arab prince (see "The Sheik"), who picks up the girl in her swoon at the very end (the promise of sex has always been just beyond what Nabokov calls "the skyline of the page") -- that is, William Dalrymple. He's as vulgar and stupid as they come, behind the plummy voice and the pretense of being a historian.
And what is funniest about the Dalrymples and their admirers is that these are the same people who find nothing wrong with the late Edward Said's complaint about Jane Austen in Mansfield Park, the complaint that she does not specify that a main character lives off his revenues from his West Indian plantation, a plantation with slaves.
But here is Dalrymple singing the tale of Mughal India, and its luxe and volupte if not its calme, all of it based on the ruthless enslavement and oppression of the Hindu masses by their cruel Muslim masters. (Of course, there were a few exceptions, such as syncretistic Akbar, his memory revered by Hindus for his temporarily lifting the Jizyah, and his memory despised by the Muslims, for his softness toward Hindus.)
If anyone should be complained about, it is not that subtle miniaturist Jane Austen, who after all was not singing the praises of slaveowning in the West Indies, whereas William Dalrymple has written endlessly about, made his heaving-breast passionate high-toned nonsense out of, nothing but a slave-state.
With his marks -- so inapposite, and yet so typical of the current BBC with its current management and current personnel -- on the hideous Israelis and the woes of the "Palestinian" Christians, William Dalrymple simply showed he was all of a piece. His love-affair with the Muslims of India, his love affair with the Muslim Arabs, his complete indifference to the plight of the Jews in Israel trying, desperately, simply to defend themselves against terrorists and doing the absolute minimum they can -- all this goes together. What does Dalrymple think any other country -- Great Britain for example -- would do if it faced the same kind of endless torment and threats and attempts on the lives of its citizens and of the state, that Israel does as it confronts what it has so far failed to name, and even to recognize, as a Lesser Jihad?
He, William Dalrymple, singer of The Wonder of Mughal India, so far coheres. He coheres, and he nauseates.
[Posted by Hugh at December 26, 2006]
Posted by: Hugh
at June 10, 2008 9:49 AM
A little more on "Okkidental" Dalrymple:
William Dalrymple, Received Pronunciation, and "Okkident"
A debate was held in London last year between two sets of opponents. Arguing on behalf of the proposition that We Should Not Be Reluctant to Assert the Superiority of Western Values were Ibn Warraq, Douglas Murray, and David Aronovich. Arguing against that proposition were William Dalrymple, Charles Glass, and Tariq Ramadan.
If you wish to hear the whole debate, or to re-hear it, you can click on this link -- Here it is in mp3.
Right now you might want simply to listen to William Dalrymple, quoting, and misunderstanding, and misapplying, a statement by the historian of the Crusades Stephen Runciman. Fifty-one minutes and 31 seconds (51:31) into the debate, Dalrymple quotes Runciman on the interaction and fusion and so on "between Okkident and Orient." You heard right. Okkident.
As the Italians say: Accidenti.
Posted by: Hugh at June 10, 2008 10:09 AM
Hugh, keep up the pressure. Thank God for you and Robert.
Posted by: hasvfidra at June 10, 2008 10:41 AM
Readers who want to learn more about the dismantling of Middle Eastern Studies in United States universities should read Martin Kramer's book, Ivory Towers on Sand. If it weren't for bloggers, the unsung history boys, and some private institutions (untainted by Middle Eastern grants) we would be virtually in the dark about that entire region.
Posted by: Chris at June 10, 2008 10:56 AM
And here we are.....
Hugh, you could add to the list:
And here we are, those who over the past few years have progressed from thinking the problem was ISLAMIC TERRORISM to thinking it was ISLAMIC EXTREMISM to thinking it was POLITICAL ISLAM to finally realizing it is......Islam.
Posted by: ed at June 10, 2008 11:36 AM
This reminds me of the Robin Williams film "The Dead Poets Society". Should we who in the dead of night read real history call ourselves "The Dead Historians Society"?
It has a nice conspiratorial sound to it. Someday we may be drowned out by hysterical propaganda of history revisionists trying to placate the rapacious advances of the Islam cult, and we may be forced to meet in caves in the dead of night, as a 'history underground', when truth is silenced by bureaucratic trivialists and replaced with nonsense. That was the gist of the movie.
Posted by: Battle_of_Tours at June 10, 2008 12:07 PM
As long as the leftovers from the Sixties remain in control of American universities, there will be no substantial effort to present Islam and Islamic history truthfully and unadorned. Maybe after these largely clueless baby boomers retire things can be turned around, but not until then. Meanwhile, college students are being fed soothing pap about Mohammedanism, just as they are being snookered on a hell of a lot of other subjects.
The good news here is that there is resistance building among college students across America. The recent Dartmouth case where an English teacher was directly challenged in class by many students when she presented gobbledygook masquerading as truth is a good example of what is beginning to occur. And hell, if it can happen at super-liberal Dartmouth, it can happen anywhere. Oh, by the way, this particular English teacher has left Dartmouth but is now suing for negligent infliction of emotional distress or some such nonsense .
In any case, I think there's only so much soothing misinformation that can be presented about Islam until Americans, who as a people have good built-in crap detectors, begin to reject it. Many students have taken note of the fact that Christianity and Christians are regularly exposed to ridicule by academics but Islam and Muslims get a pass, even though suicide bombings don't seem to be carried out by Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians or Baptists very often. I think academics are shooting themselves in their collective foot here, just as Muslims do every day of the week. Perhaps I'm a little too optimistic but I really do think truth will win out in the end.
Posted by: Wellington at June 10, 2008 1:48 PM
I had the goodfortune to study Muslim history in school back in the mid-80's. Back then, at least where I went to school, "jihad" was counted as one of the five pillars of Islam, a duty of all Muslims, and defined in no uncertain terms as warfare to either spread Islam [as in its initial conquests from Spain and Morrocco to afghanistan and India, as far south as Central Africa and as far north as what was then the southern USSR-- given as THE example of jihad] or war defending Islam-- which includes attempts to conquer areas once ruled by Islam.
Admittedly it was not PC [I'd never heard the term back then] but I learned the history and very basic theology of Islam. That's enough!
Posted by: MosheC at June 10, 2008 2:46 PM
Hugh-
Thanks for more intelligent comments about India and Mr. Dalrymple. Keep up the good work.
Blue
Posted by: Blue at June 10, 2008 5:00 PM
In any case, I think there's only so much soothing misinformation that can be presented about Islam until Americans, who as a people have good built-in crap detectors, begin to reject it.
Wellington,
You're right. A picture is worth a thousand words. In the beginning we listen to the words of comfort that say Islam is good and close our eyes to the truth. In the end, no matter how many soothing words have been said about Islam, our own eyes don't lie. We look and see what Islam offers and what Muslims have wrought wherever they have gone.
The American people are generally light years ahead of their leaders, because our crap detector rarely fails us. Our leaders have to disable theirs in order to succeed in politics.
at June 10, 2008 10:47 PM
Wellington,
Could you provide a link to more informaiton about that case. re. the English teacher at Darmouth?
Posted by: angloirishslav at June 10, 2008 11:36 PM
We must always separate the ideology from the individual. There were decent, honorable, Nazis and Communists. It is the ideology we attack, not the adherents. Moslems, especially the less educated, poorer ones, are extremely hospitable to strangers. They do not understand the full import of their ideology. Islam is a vicious, elitist, cruel ideology. Its adherents vary greatly in their understanding and implementation of this ideology. We must always separate the two.
Posted by: demolay at June 11, 2008 11:59 AM
Hello Hugh! Long time no speak to! Yep, this is the original saoirse, I noticed some "spailpin" was using the same name but couldn't spell it correctly!, ach y fi! how standards have lowered here in Albion these days!
Anyway, glad to see you're alive and well and posting such good stuff still, how's the Kundalini, and are you still reading Myles Na gCopaleen?, I certainly hope so, I can't tell you how impressed I was those few years ago when I saw you spell the great man's name right, "as gaeilge".
I haven't posted for a while meself, what with illness and some travelling, but I've checked in from time to time to keep abreast of things.
These are interesting times aren't they?, what do you think of the Italians, or more specifically, the Lega Nord, bulldozing a mosque and naming a square "Oriana Fallaci Square" maybe there's hope for us poor old eurabians yet, eh?
Anyway, hope to elicit a response from you, your posts are, as always, erudite and educational, the road goes ever on, eh?
Posted by: saoirse at June 11, 2008 4:38 PM
saoirse - hi, I remember you. Nice to hear from you again.
I love your nic. Irish Gaelic word for 'Freedom'. Hope you don't mind my translating it for those who don't have the Gaelic, or don't have a Gaelic dictionary handy. I don't even have a couple of words yet but I was born under a good Irish name and one of my life's ambitions is to learn Gaelic in honour of my paternal great-great-grandfather who came from County Tyrone.
I've been spending every spare moment reading the archives at this site - alas for my poor housework! - and one thing I've noticed is that, curiously enough, there are very few stories, about either military jihad or stealth jihad, coming in from Eire. Not sure why. Not enough Mohammedans settled there yet, or is it that the Irish are keeping such a sharp eye on the ones they've got, that they're [the Muslims, I mean] lying low? Or is it just that the stories about Mohammedan activity in Ireland, are not making it beyond the local press? Is anything happening in the Irish universities - 'Islamic Study Centres' and suchlike?
There *was* one story I recall about a Kelly who had betrayed all his Irish ancestors by converting to Islam. I hope a banshee is bothering him.
at June 12, 2008 12:01 AM
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