| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Jihad Watch | Robert Spencer | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog |  |
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Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald explains why no one should ever take Karen Armstrong seriously:
Karen Armstrong, long famous for her description of Muhammad as the consummate “peacemaker” who “brought together the warring tribes of Arabia,” has assumed the mantle, yet again, not of the Prophet, but of the Prophet’s defender. In an article in The Guardian she retells in her inimitable fashion the story of European Christendom’s relations with Islam and with Muslims. In her retelling, the Muslims are innocent victims, and more than innocent victims, likened again and again to the Jews. They are also the only people who provided, in that bright shining moment of European history known as Islamic Spain, the only real tolerance and humanity to be found anywhere in Europe before the modern era. It is a tough job, but Karen Armstrong proves equal to the task. And her real theme is not history, but that Europeans should feel ashamed themselves for showing any signs of wariness or suspicion about the millions of Muslims who now live in Europe, having come among the indigenous Infidels to settle, but not to settle down.It is curious to see how often in this article Karen Armstrong makes references to examples of historic mistreatment of the Jews. For in her previous books she has exhibited a palpable distaste for Israel, and has attempted on every occasion to pretend that the claims of the “three abrahamic faiths” to Jerusalem are identical in the importance that each attaches to the city (but as a city Jerusalem is not holy in Islam, and never was), and she is fond, in her discussion of “fundamentalisms”—always presented in the plural – to make reference to the one or two examples of what she calls “Jewish terrorism.” She fails to consider whether or not the assassination of Rabin by a Jewish political opponent, or the mental collapse of Dr. Baruch Goldstein which led him, acting entirely alone and on impulse, to wreak his solitary revenge on those whose victims Goldstein treated every day as a doctor, until he could no longer stand it, really can be compared to the thousands of planned acts, many of them fortunately foiled, and others not, that are part of the world-wide Jihad against completely innocent Infidels, within Muslim lands, and without.
Here is how she begins:
“In 1492, the year that is often said to inaugurate the modern era, three very important events happened in Spain. In January, the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella conquered the city of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Europe; later, Muslims were given the choice of conversion to Christianity or exile. In March, the Jews of Spain were also forced to choose between baptism and deportation. Finally, in August, Christopher Columbus, a Jewish convert to Catholicism and a protégé of Ferdinand and Isabella, crossed the Atlantic and discovered the West Indies. One of his objectives had been to find a new route to India, where Christians could establish a military base for another crusade against Islam As they sailed into the new world, western people carried a complex burden of prejudice that was central to their identity.”
This first paragraph is a scandal, consisting almost entirely of baseless assertions, incredible omissions, and complete fabrications. But it is not inexplicable. For Karen Armstrong history does not exist. It is putty in the hands of the person who writes about history. You use it to make a point, to do good as you see it. And whatever you need to twist or omit is justified by the purity of your intentions – and Karen Armstrong always has the purest of intentions. She knows that we in the “white Western world” (as some like to call it) fail to understand others. She knows of our deepneed to create “the Other” – a psychic need felt exclusively, and with great intensity, apparently, only by us, and never by anyone else. Though Western civilization, a product that was formed from the inheritance of both classical antiquity and and of Christianity (which itself has a strong Hebraic element, that it should be called Judeo-Christianity, a word about which some are still self-conscious), has far outstripped any rival in its achievements, collective and by individuals, in art and science, in political and economic thought, in social development, and has really never needed to create the “Other” (the entire business is a reason ideological fashion which is by this point getting long in the seminar and call-for-papers tooth). Indeed, it is Islam which, though Karen Armstrong does not see it, because she knows nothing about Islam (which doesn’t keep her from writing about it, endlessly), has the strongest claim to being based on the need of its Believers for “the Other.” It is in Islam that emphasis is placed constantly on the only division that matters: that between Believer (to whom all loyalty is owed by other Believers, and for whom all transgressions may be forgiven, except that of disloyalty to Islam) and the Unbeliever, or Infidel (who must be opposed, and subjugated if such an Infidel refuses to accept Islam or stands in the way of its spread). That Armstrong fails to see this is extraordinary; it is everywhere in Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira. But she is on a mission: to make us feel guilty about our treatment of Muslims in the past (hence the harping on the Crusades, and the failure to offer the context of those Crusades, or the difference between the Crusades and Jihad). She wants to evoke a guilt that need not exist at all, so that we will, today, be inhibited from responding to Muslim atrocities and the attitudes that promote such atrocities – this she cannot abide.
“In 1492, the year that is often said to inaugurate the modern era…” Who says that the year 1492 inaugurated the modern era? And what does the phrase “the modern era” mean in any case? The year 1492 was chosen by this lover of symmetries and “three monotheisms” (now said to be studying Buddhism as the latest stop in her Spiritual Search) because in that year, in Spain, Jews and Christians and Muslims each acted, or was acted upon, in ways that Karen Armstrong finds useful to both misstate, and exploit. She will not mention what happened before 1492. She will not tell us about the Muslim invasion and conquest of Spain, or about the 500 years of the Reconquista, nor will she tell us when the Jews first came to Spain, long before the Muslim invasion, even before the Visigoths arrived. She will not point out that the Jews were inoffensive victims, and unlike the Muslims, never invaded, never conquered, never held the Christians of Spain in thrall, never posed a threat to the body politic.
In 1492 “the Catholic monarchs conquered Granada, the “last Muslim stronghold in Europe.” What then should we call all those lands in southern and eastern Europe that the Ottomans were at that very moment busy conquering and seizing, including Constantinople, the richest, most populous, most important city in all of Christendom for 800 years (taken by the Turks on a Tuesday – May 29, 1453), and the Balkans (including the then-vast Serbian lands), and what are modern-day Albania, Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria, and they continued to press northward and westward, later seizing much of Hungary and threatening Vienna twice. Were these not parts of Europe, and was not a good deal of Europe, including what had been its most important city for a millennium, Constantinople, firmly in Muslim hands before Granada fell – and after?
But it would not do to remind readers that while the Muslim invaders and conquerors of Spain lost their last “stronghold” in Granada, other Muslim invaders and conquerors were busy at the other end of Europe, seizing lands and subjugating the native populations to the devshirme (the forced levy of Christian children) as well as to the jizyah (the tax on non-Muslims) and all the other disabilities that, wherever Muslims conquered, were imposed, as part of a clearly elaborated system, and not merely the whim a ruler, on all non-Muslims.
Now having begun with that year 1492, Armstrong has a bit of a problem. It was that year that Jews were forced to be baptized or to leave. But though Granada had fallen, nothing then happened to the Muslims. In fact, they were treated with the same gentleness that all the Mudejares (Spanish Muslims) who had been defeated, in successive campaigns, were always treated by the Christian victors.Henry Lea, the pioneering historian of the Inquisition, who was hardly looking for ways to exculpate Christianity, describes the generosity with which the defeated Muslims were treated in Granada, and after the prior victories:
“It was the Jews against whom was directed the growing intolerance of the fifteenth century and, in the massacres that occurred, there appears to have been no hostility manifested against the Mudéjares. When Alfonso de Borja, Archbishop of Valencia (afterwards Calixtus III), supported by Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, urged their [the Mudejars] expulsion on Juan II of Aragon, although he appointed a term for their exile, he reconsidered the matter and left them undisturbed. So when, in 1480, Isabella ordered the expulsion from Andalusia of all Jews who refused baptism and when, in 1486, Ferdinand did the same in Aragon, they both respected the old capitulations and left the Mudéjares alone. The time-honored policy was followed in the conquest of Granada, and nothing could be more liberal than the terms conceded to the cities and districts that surrendered. The final capitulation of the city of Granada was a solemn agreement, signed November 25, 1491, in which Ferdinand and Isabella, for themselves, for their son the Infante Juan and for all their successors, received the Moors of all places that should come into the agreement as vassals and natural subjects under the royal protection, and as such to be honored and respected. Religion, property, freedom to trade, laws and customs were all guaranteed, and even renegades from Christianity among them were not to be maltreated, while Christian women marrying Moors were free to choose their religion. For three years, those desiring expatriation were to be transported to Barbary at the royal expense, and refugees in Barbary were allowed to return. When, after the execution of this agreement, the Moors, with not unnatural distrust, wanted further guarantees, the sovereigns made a solemn declaration in which they swore by God that all Moors should have full liberty to work on their lands, or to go wherever they desired through the kingdoms, and to maintain their mosques and religious observances as heretofore, while those who desired to emigrate to Barbary could sell their property and depart."It was not until 1502, after difficulties ensued between Spanish authorities, including the famous Cardinal Ximenes (he of the Complutensian Polyglot), and the Muslims (Mudejares) that they were given the choice of expulsion or conversion. And a great many of them pretended to convert, and remained in Spain – far more Muslims were capable of engaging in dissimulation of their faith than were the hapless Jews, who were expelled, in 1492, virtually overnight. It was much later, in 1570, under Philip II, that the Muslims (“Moors”) who remained were finally expelled, having in the meantime risen in revolt.
But Armstrong manages to smugglein that first, rather ineffective expulsion of 1502: “later [i.e. in a different year altogether] Muslims were given the choice of Christianity or exile.” .She does not add, and may not know, that Muslims in Spain after the fall of Granada were not under any danger of expulsion, and it was only when they showed signs of refusing to integrate as asked (and it was assumed that over time they would share the Christian faith, though at first nothing was done to demand such a sign). She may not know, either, that Muslims in a Spain now everywhere ruled by Christians asked members of the ulema in North Africa (in present-day Morocco) to determine whether they might continue to live under non-Muslim rule, and were told that it was not licit, and it was important for them not to be ruled by non-Muslims, and they must, therefore, return to the Muslim-ruled lands of North Africa. Such details provide a rather different slant on what Karen Armstrong offers – she takes the real tragedy, the overnight expulsion of the hapless and inoffensive Jews, and attempts to make the reader think that the Muslims were equally inoffensive, equally harmless, and treated with equal ferocity, as the Jews. But they were not equally inoffensive, not equally harmless, and not treated with equal ferocity..
First comes the fall of Granada. Then, second in time, and certainly in Karen Armstrong’s indignation, came the expulsion of the Jews “In March, the Jews of Spain were also forced to choose between conversion and exile.” Note how that “also” is dropped in, as if the real event, the main event, was the nonexistent (in 1492) expulsion of the Moors, which she had taken care to slip into her discussion of the Fall of Granada, so that she could diminish the significance of the expulsion of the Jews. That afterthoughtish “also.”
But the Muslims were invaders and conquerors, who had been resisted for 500 years of the Reconquista, and were expelled merely across the Straits of Gibraltar from whence they had come, to live again among fellow Muslims, under Muslim rule. Armstrong never says that. Nor does she point out, as she would if she were trying to compare the quite different treatments of Jews and Muslims, that the Jews of Spain never invaded, never conquered, never represented a threat to the political or social order. And when they were expelled they were not to find refuge, like the Muslims, in lands ruled by co-religionists, but again, to be scattered, to Ottoman domains and to Christian ones, Salonika or Amsterdam, to be treated indifferently, or kindly, or with contumely, or worse.
Under Muslim rule, despite their sometimes horrendous treatment, as recorded by Maimonides in his “Epistle to the Yemen” (Maimonides fled Islamic Spain), the Jews managed to make important cultural contributions as translators (along with Christians), as physicians, and as poets (the name Judah Halevi comes to mind). They were perfecdtly willing to live in Spain under Christian rule. They did nothing to deserve their expulsion. But Karen Armstrong has sympathy for the Jews only insofar as that sympathy can be transferred to the real objects of her pity, the Muslims, and she will do nothing to cause readers to see the difference in the two cases, one of clear mistreatment, the second a matter of prudence. It took a full decade for the Spanish rulers and clergy, or some of them, to realize that the Muslims, though conquered, were not about to eventually mold into one faith (that faith being Christianity), and their signs of remaining insubmissive and therefore potentially subversive or rebellions could only disturbIt had taken 500 years for the Reconquista. Why should the Spanish Christians, now that they were militarily victorious everywhere, take a chance that the Muslims would not rise in revolt?
And such revolts took place in the sixteenth century, and led, in 1570, under Philip the Second, to a second and more thorough expuslon of those Muslims who had remained in Spain, and feigned outwardly to have accepted Christianity, but had quietly waited to rise in revolt. That is why the real expulsion of the Muslims (Moors) took place not in 1502, but in 1570, nearly 80 years since the fall of Granada which Armstrong appears to believe led ineluctably to the expulsion of the Moors. It did not.
Both Jews and Moors were expelled from Spain, but however determined Armstrong may be to convince us (most unconvincingly) that these were identical historical events, both prompted by the demonization of “the Other” ( a phenomenon which apparently results from the peculiar psychic deficiency of Christian Europe) they were not identical/ The phrase “the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors” comes trippingly off the tongue, but without more, remains an offense to history and the truth.
The third great event, after the conquest of the “last stronghold” of Islam in Europe, and the two “identical” expulsions of identically unthreatening Muslims and Jews, in that fateful 1492 was the voyage of Columbus: “In August, Christopher Columbus, a Jewish convert to Catholicism and a protege of Ferdinand and Isabella, crossed the Atlantic and discovered the West Indies.”Note how casually Armstrong drops in her astonishing remark: Columbus was a “a Jewish convert to Catholicism.” She treats it as a given, and finds no need to offer sources or evidence. But she must. For there is not a single authority on Columbus who has ever claimed this. Not Samuel Eliot Morison. Not Paolo Taviani. Not Salvador de Madariaga. Not all of the hundreds or thousands of scholars who have written about Columbus. What some have suggested or argued, is that Columbus came from a family of Genoese wool merchants, that Jews were prominent in that trade, that there is other evidence that his family originally had been Jewish but generations before had converted (and since, without conversions, and slaughter, the numbers of Jews in Europe would now be not a few million but 200 million, quite a few people must have converted over time). This was Salvador de Madariaga’s argument, and that of others. It convinced Indro Montanelli, the celebrated Italian journalist and popular historian, and he was by nature a skeptic. But that has nothing to do with Columbus himself.
Armstrong offers no authority for her statement. But why should she? Her purpose here is twofold. What better way to establish, in her vulgar, “some-my-best-friends-and-discoverers-of-the-New-World-are-Jewish” way, than to claim Columbus for the Jews (of course, assuming that people still honor Columbus for his deeds of derring-do, which would exclude the Ward Churchills of this world). At the same time, she can have this “Jewish” Columbus be depicted as part of a larger problem, for now he, that “Jewish convert to Catholicism,” has embraced the (non-existent) aggressive military plans of Ferdinand and Isabella. Columbus did not obtain royal support to find a new trading route to the east (now that the Muslim conquests in Byzantium have totally blocked the overland routes), or – as of course he would – along the way to spread the Gospel, but to find the best route to “India, where Christians could establish a military base for another crusade against Islam.”
Having been transformed into a “Jewish convert to Catholicism,” Columbus can more conveniently be depicted by Armstrong as a Pentagon Proto-Neo-Con, Jewish-but-also-Christian-fundamentalist, off on his voyage to “establish a military base” for “another crusade against Islam.” A regular Donald Rumsfeld, negotiating for American bases in Uzbekistan. And Kyrgyzstan.
“A military base for another crusade against Islam” – what can we say? Armstrong appears to believe that the Crusades, which were limited in space to the recapture of the Holy Land, and in time to 200 years (1090-1290, roughly) in fact were some kind of permanent impulse, just the way the unmentionable (in all of Armstrong’s copious published vaporings on Islam) Jihad remains a permant and central feature of Islamic teaching. But she is wrong. There was no ongoing effort in 1492 to embark on a new Crusade. Not a word about it, from Columbus, from Luis Santangel, from Los Reyes Catolicos themselves.
And had such a thought occurred to someone, what kind of sense would it have made, militarily, to try to attack from India? Europeans may not have known how far India was from Europe by sea, but they knew that it was very far from the Holy Land (in fact, Columbus thought it was much closer to Europe – that was his happy miscalculation). By 1492, the southeastern part of Europe itself had been for many decades under constant military assault by the powerful Ottoman armies. A few decades before, the first city of Christendom had fallen to the Ottoman Turks, to the Mulsims. How, with such constant dangers, could anyone even think of launching a new Crusade from India? How would tens of thousands of men be transported there, stationed there, and then transported again to the Holy Land? How would they make their way safely through the vast Muslim-controlled lands of Persia, of Mesopotamia, of Syria, in order to reach the Holy Land and fight the Saracens?
Armstrong’s nonsense perhaps has to do with some rude and indigestible bits of history that she dimly recalls, about the story of Prester John, the mythical Christian king of a mythical Christian kingdom, placed first, in European imaginations, in India, and later transferred to Ethiopia – a fable, designed to hearten European Christians who were always fearful of Muslim assaults, the Arab raiding parties by sea, up and down European coasts, and the Turkish land armies of the mighty Ottoman Sultan.
Her every word adds to the absurdity. There is no evidence for Armstrong’s assertions about Columbus himself, or about what motivated him. History is putty in her hands, we said earlier. But the word putty does not do her infantile approach to history justice. History is for Karen Armstrong not so much putty as Playdoh. She can roll it about, she can pull it apart, she can twist and turn it with the same delight exhibited by a two-year-old when too-too-solid block of Playdoh is finally softened up for use by grown-up hands. But the two-year-old is an innocent at play, and even if he leaves a momentary mess, he has done no real harm. Karen Armstrong is not innocent, and manages to do a great deal of harm, careless or premeditated harm, to history. Too many people read that she has written a few books, and assume, on the basis of nothing, that “she must know what she is talking about” – and some of the nonsense sticks. And perhaps an enraged professor or two bothers to dismiss her, but mostly – this is how the vast public, in debased democracies, learns its history today. It is hearsay as history – “Karen Armstrong says” or “John Esposito says.”
And that is only her first paragraph.
Posted by Robert at April 22, 2005 8:42 AM
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Karen Armstrong may be to Catholicism what Norman Finklestein is to Judaism/Israel/the Holocaust.
OT, but if anyone is curious as to what (Chomsky protege) Norman Finklestein is about, that gets alluded to in a recent FrontPageMag.com article, "DeNial at DePaul", which recently fired a professor for "talking back" to the usual rabble of Palestinianists, but continues to employ Finklestein the Holocaust denier on the grounds of free speech. It appears Finklestein's parents were survivors themselves and his mamma probably had serious survivor guilt.
Posted by: waterdragon52![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 22, 2005 9:03 AM
LOL - Hugh's dissection of that one paragraph is about 5 times its length!!
Karen Armstrong is a charlatan - she's got no qualifications to write about Islam or history. She just tells people what they want to hear.
Wasn't there some nonsense a few months ago about Columbus being a Muslim?
Posted by: Interested at April 22, 2005 9:06 AM
Hugh!
Excellent work!
It was the Christian Science Monitor's fawning over this charlatan that caused me to cancel my 25 year subscription.
How anyone can take this woman seriously, escapes me.
Thanks, as always, for the clarity!!
Rebecca
Posted by: rb at April 22, 2005 9:55 AM
A related dhimmi article from a Rabbi, Shmuley Boteach who, critisizing David Klinghoffer's opinion about the Muslim "nations", describing them as "poorer" and "less scientifically advanced" than the Judeo-Christian nations, says:
"As far as the backward condition of the Muslims nations, this is a fairly modern development. For more than five hundred years Islamic civilization was substantially more advanced than Christendom. Indeed, while Christianity sought to actively obliterate the Greek classical heritage, Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato were only preserved through the tireless efforts of Islamic and Jewish scholars. [...]
"Already in the 9th century, we see Muslim rulers prioritizing general education. Al-Mamun (Caliph of the Abbasid dynasty) established state-funded places of study, focusing on translations of Greek and other works of antiquity that predated the first European universities by more than 300 years. Moreover, the Abbasid Muslim Empire had an agricultural revolution in the 8th century that produced technological innovations the likes of which wouldn't been seen in the West until at least 1180.
"In the area of medical advancement, the 10th century Al-Razi of Baghdad wrote numerous medical books which included groundbreaking health treatments which western medicine could not match until the 18th century. And in terms of leadership, in the sixteenth century, the Muslim Sultan Akbar of India was known for his cross-cultural appointments to office, his enactment of laws embracing religious toleration and protection of women and children, not to mention the fact that he was one of the very first commanders to insist upon the proper treatment of captured enemy troops."
I don't know anything about that "tolerant" Sultan Akbar, or those "Muslim rulers prioritizing general education"; but those paragraphs sound to me as more dhimmi whitewashing...
at April 22, 2005 10:06 AM
Newsflash! Karen Armstrong's name has officially been changed to Koran Armstrong.
I would love to see a version of the reality tv show "Wife Swap" with Miss Armstrong swapping roles with an Iranian woman who's beaten by her husband because the Koran justifies it. Maybe then, just maybe, she will stop being an apologist for Islam and begin to denounce it. Then she might realize that the Koran is a Cliff's Notes version of the Torah and Bible written by a perverted schizophrenic bully with a learning disability.
Posted by: nuh at April 22, 2005 10:18 AM
Nuh:
'Koran Armstrong'- good one! How much can we get when we sell her off to marry some wip-cracking Mullah? Let me know, I want my share...
And Joel:
Rabbi Boteach is he a Rabbi for the Falistines and in which mosque is he hangin' out?
at April 22, 2005 10:26 AM
Here's what our friend Tariq Ramadan had to say on the BBC News Website re. the New Pope (focus on the last paragraph!):
"Tariq Ramadan is a Muslim theologian based in Geneva and Paris. He has been involved in inter-faith dialogue
It is really important to the Muslim community how the Pope deals with the intra community dialogue, how he deals with different views and trends within the Catholic Church, because this will give us an idea of how he will deal with other faiths. The perception is that he is not so interested in diversity, he wants a return to the fundamentals, to what he perceives as the essentials of Catholic teaching.
Another concern is that Pope Benedict XVI has a more narrow approach to the religious content of Western societies, that he wants to return to the centrality of Christianity in Europe.
We Muslims are building our presence in Europe and we are worried that the Pope will reduce what he sees as a struggle against secularism there to a struggle between Christianity and secularism. He may forget that there is a great legacy of spirituality coming from other religions and this could be a very dangerous reduction of our common roots and our common hopes."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4469809.stm
Posted by: disillusionised_german at April 22, 2005 10:28 AM
Good God! ANOTHER excellent one by Hugh. Truly his knowledge surpasses mine, me who thought my understanding of old European history was decent. (Ah well. On late 13th/early 14th century England and Scotland I still stand strong.)
Robert, tell me you're getting copies of these for an "essay page".
Geoff
Posted by: Geoff at April 22, 2005 10:32 AM
"We Muslims are building our presence in Europe" Can't say we noticed...
Posted by: Daffersd at April 22, 2005 11:31 AM
"He may forget that there is a great legacy of spirituality coming from other religions and this could be a very dangerous reduction of our common roots and our common hopes."
Translation: we're hoping to use Christianity to help kill off secularism in Europe; once that's done, we'll turn on the Christians and destroy them too.
at April 22, 2005 11:48 AM
BUFFER ZONE INVASION -
Two infidels were waiting alone in a room for the morning meeting to start. Infidel #1 suffered from premature baldness while in his twenties and decided back then that a shaved head looked much better than a clean top with furry sides. In fact, his head is religiously shaved every morning which gives him the appearance of Mr. Clean.
As the two chatted a middle-aged man with extreme girth, carrying styrofoamed coffee, entered the room. This man, named Islam, focused his beady eyes on the empty chair between the two heathen. The size of Islam's stomach prevented easy passage between the back of Mr. Clean's chair and the wall, so he decided to reach over the bald man in order to set down his coffee.
Upon lifting his arm, Infidel #2 noticed that Islam suffers from an extreme perspiration problem; his short-sleeved shirt being wet from the armpit down nearly to his belt line.
As Islam stretched over Mr. Clean, his loose-fitting shirt with fresh sweat draped and scaped the top of the bald man's head. Feeling his pristine head had been violated, Mr. Clean naturally jerked upwards and sent the coffee flying into the wall.
This reaction upset Islam and the two squared off, both questioning the other's behavior. By this time, the other members of group-infidel finally arrived.
For Islam, the cause of this reaction was conveniently forgotten whilst being quickly re-labled as an offense. An offense pondered while Islam glared at Mr. Clean, who now rubbed a napkin across his soiled head.
at April 22, 2005 12:07 PM
As usual, brilliant dissection Hugh!
I read parts of Armstrong's "Muhammad" for one of my articles (the one about the Qurayzah massacre). You don't have to go far before encountering howlers and omissions, but one really sticks out in my mind (though I cannot quite remember the chapter or page number).
In noting Muhammad's animosity towards all of the Jewish tribes in Medina, Armstrong suggests they must have said some pretty awful things to him. In other words, the Jews were entirely responsible for Muhammad's "hurt feelings." The idea that Muhammad was an egomaniac who could not tolerate any criticism didn't even cross the mind of "free-lance monotheist" Karen Armstrong.
(Oh and by the way, she referred to the Qurayzah Jews as "traitors.")
Karen Armstrong is the spiritual advisor of the postmodernist movement. No wonder Terry Gross has interviewed her 3 times.
at April 22, 2005 12:23 PM
Terminator:
Shmuly Boteach is a "pop Orthodox rabbi" who has written a few books, including one about Orthodox Jews and sexuality (Dating Secrets of the 10 Commandments) and made a lot of TV appearances. He has also, in the past, associated with Michael Jackson, until the most recent spate of child molestation accusations.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at April 22, 2005 12:27 PM
While we're at it, shall we get another detail correct about what the Arabs/Islam gave us? No, our numbering system does not come from them; neither did they invent algebra. They were brigands and warriors--math knowledge rarely comes from maurading populations. You need a highly developed civilization for math development.
It's tiresome to hear the Arabs being held up as such highminded purveyors of math, science and what not. They were mere borrowers of culture, that is, where they refraimed from destroying it. In this, they resemble the Aztecs (in more ways than one), who were also barbarians who conquered the previous MesoAmerican civilization and absorbed its ways. It's a fairly common procedure whenever barbarians conquer a civilized society.
The foundations of higher math, including algebra, came from India. Its math-like logic functions are deeply embedded into their ancient language, Sanskrit, and in the ancient grammar written by the Indian philosopher Panini. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Sanskrit script can see where our numbers come from.
Google on "Math", "number system" and "India" and see what you come up with.
Here's just one site that gives an overall history of math in India.
http://members.tripod.com/~INDIA_RESOURCE/mathematics.htm
The Hindus, from ancient times to this day, have produced many great mathematical geniuses. There was a great deal of contact between the ancient Greeks and the Hindus. India's influence on many subjects spread far and wide to the West and Middle East. King Asoka, 300 years before Christ, sent Buddhist missionaries to Syria and Egypt. Certainly the Arabs were influenced by them as well, adopting the form we see of the Hindu numbering system almost exactly.
So it's time to give the maths credit where credit is really due. If the Arabs/Islam can be credited with any contribution to civilization, someone cut through the myths and find out what they really contributed and report back here.
Posted by: eowyn at April 22, 2005 12:28 PM
"Then she might realize that the Koran is a Cliff's Notes version of the Torah and Bible written by a perverted schizophrenic bully with a learning disability. "
That is one of the best descriptions of the qur'an I've ever heard. LOL
And eowyn, I am glad someone else is sick of the old line about islam inventing algebra. They were pirates, maybe they perfected raiding villages and taking booty. They simply overwhelmed developed civilizations and claimed that civilizations's acomplishments.
Posted by: Carolyn2 at April 22, 2005 12:56 PM
My dear Geoff:
"Robert, tell me you're getting copies of these for an 'essay page.'"
Geoff, click on "Articles" at the top left.
Scroll down through all the garbage I've written.
Then you will see a comprehensive list of Hugh's essays.
Cordially
Robert Spencer
at April 22, 2005 12:56 PM
What an amazing fisking of Ms. Armstrong! Hugh, you have made mincemeat out of her "scholarship". What school did she go to again? I think you mentioned previously that her thesis was rejected at Oxford; was that related to Islamic studies, or was it another subject?
This woman never ceases to amaze me with her whitewashing of Islam. Very few Muslim apologists are so inept that their ENTIRE introduction consist of factual errors and misleading statements. ALL SIX of her sentences are either factually incorrect or misleading. Not even Esposito is this bad. It is no wonder that this woman is not taken seriously by most academics (not even by our very own "Scholar of the House").
I am glad that you picked up on her "Columbus was a Jew" smear. I found that part particularly offensive. It's almost as she was implying that conquest was an inherently Jewish trait, rooted in the scriptures of Judaism. Meanwhile, she ignores the 400 pound gorilla in the room - the centrality of Jihad conquest in the Quran, Hadith, and Sira. Unbelievable.
Just out of curiousity, does anyone know why Karen has not yet converted to Islam? She seems to have such a high regard for the faith - to the point of giving it the nice/tolerant/modern presentation that you would usually expect from your local MSA chapter. Could it be that she thinks she's too sophisticated to believe in a 7th century religion that is steeped with superstition, violence, and misogyny? Or that such faiths are best observed by those of non-European ancestry? If she does think of Islam to be such a crude faith that is not worthy of her membership, then isn't she guilty of "carrying a complex burden of prejudice that is central to her identity"?
Posted by: igor at April 22, 2005 1:08 PM
Robert,
"Scroll down through all the garbage I've written."
Your "garbage" has proven for me to be very educational.
Posted by: Skeet Street at April 22, 2005 1:12 PM
I've read both A History of God and the biography of Muhammad by "Karen from the Harem" Armstrong. Likewise I noticed the omission of information that would serve to undermine her cause of shaming non-Muslims for the state of the Muslim world.
I'm sorry to hear that my father has been taken in by her drek, thanks to her frequent appearances on Bill Moyers's TV shows on PBS. She's benefitted very nicely from advancing Islamic causes. Her book "A Short Story of Islam" was included in 5000 unsolicited packages that the Saudi embassy sent to public schools post-911. She's been a featured speaker at forums on Islam sponsored by the Egyptian government.
Posted by: northernvirginiastan at April 22, 2005 1:56 PM
That time of year in inexorably arriving when we must endure those unendurable ads "For Dads & Grads." Why not make a real virtue of a false necessity (the fabricated-for-commercial-reasons Father's Day), Northern Virginistan, and buy your father not a tie or cologne, but "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance" or "The Dhimmi" or "Onward Muslim Soldiers" or "Why I Am Not a Muslim." That would make his day, and yours.
Posted by: Hugh at April 22, 2005 2:37 PM
"My dear Geoff:
"Robert, tell me you're getting copies of these for an 'essay page.'"
Geoff, click on "Articles" at the top left.
Scroll down through all the garbage I've written.
Then you will see a comprehensive list of Hugh's essays.
Cordially
Robert Spencer"
Ahhhh - eeeeexcellent.
I concur with Skeet, however - it's hardly garbage you've written.
Another question: can I borrow the Lear this week, since you must have won that big million-dollar payout from your erstwhile challenger of ages past? I promise I'll clean out the JihadWatch Heated Pool Area, also paid for no doubt by that cool mil.
Geoff
at April 22, 2005 2:48 PM
Hugh, I think I speak for many of Robert's minions when I say: take an afternoon, sit down and write a book, for crying out loud. Or ought one hide light under a bushel basket?
Waterdragon: Boteach rocks. =D
Geoff
Posted by: Geoff at April 22, 2005 2:52 PM
Columbus was a Buddhist, fool, some Jap told me so! And the Muslims not only were peaceful, but established a pc, anti-racist, sexist and homophobic democracy where anyone could live in peace and prosperity with cradle to grave social benefits and no one was ever punished for his beliefs. But evil white Europeans destroyed this on command of their multi-national corporate masters and re-wrote all the history books! Otherwise you'd know that a black lesbian in Namibia invented the steam engine and the mullahs in Saudi Arabia developed manned space flight 300 years before the Wright Brothers.
Posted by: Jakester at April 22, 2005 2:59 PM
I agree with the Math expose. Islam just borrowed it from their subjects, that's why you find so few Mathematicians in Islamia these days. Next, you'll prolly hear how Saladin invented radio but the Franks stole the patent, then pretended they discovered it!
Posted by: Jakester at April 22, 2005 3:04 PM
Here's the d'himmis email, straight from Al Guardian: mailto:karmstronginfo@btopenworld.com
Posted by: Jakester at April 22, 2005 3:35 PM
Folks:
I don't think Karen Armstrong was the first to suggest that Columbus was a Converso from Judaism. I have seen such claims from Jewish sources, but never pursued them.
I am not sure, however, what made him a "protege" of Ferd and Izzie, other than the fact that they had the resources to fund his expedition and he had no takers in Italy. The English monarch did the same for another Italian born navigator of the same era -- Giovanni Cabotto aka John Cabot (my apologies to any Italian posters for any spelling errors).
As for Karen's apparent "softening" of views towards Jews -- aside from her lousy scholarship, the woman's not known to be particularly mentally stable, is she?
Posted by: waterdragon52 at April 22, 2005 4:36 PM
Here is the result of the public school “teaching” in America today.
QUOTE:
“Look, Dr. Yeagley, I don’t see anything about my culture to be proud of. It’s all nothing. My race is just nothing. Look at your culture. Look at American Indian tradition. Now I think that’s really great. You have something to be proud of. My culture is nothing. I’m not proud of how America came about.”
This from a nice mainstream Caucasian girl when asked by her instructor of social psychology at OSU. Yeagley BTW is a real Indian (not a phony Ward Churchill Injun).
Point is, this is what the left has succeeded at. Shame and guilt. They actually want kids turn on their parents, reject the family and reject Christianity. The left wants power to rule this country and has to eliminate these obstacles. This weakens America and leaves us more defenseless against enemies.
The left (remnants of the cultural revolution and their adherents) want absolute power in America from the top down. Their time has come and gone. They will be rolled up and throw out in the dumpster. They are imploding right now and becoming more cartoonish every day.
at April 22, 2005 4:57 PM
"I am glad that you picked up on her "Columbus was a Jew" smear. I find that part particularly offensive."--from a posting above.
I must beg to differ on several counts. First, a great many people enjoy "claiming" this or that historical figure as "belonging" to their nation, their tribe,their religion, whatever. This is an understandable impulse, particularly if this offers some consolation that members of that particular nation, tribe, religion may have. I have seen the books that used to be carried in Harlem bookstores, of the "One Hundred Famous Negroes" sort, that listed, along with predictable claims to Pushkin and Abraham Lincoln, the more surprising claims to Beethoven and Abraham Lincoln. Everybody and his brother wants to make a claim for Shakespeare (he was Catholic, he was Jewish, he was Muslim, he was even a Welshman). In the old days, everyone wanted to claim Cristoforo Colombo.
Armstrong offers a poisoned apple of flattery (offering Jews the chance to claim Columbus -- but Columbus not as hero but as aggressive Christian plotter against Islam), one which relies on a baseless claim but that some will confuse with a serious claim (accepted by some, rejected by others) that he came from a family of converts. But that does not he himself was a convert; he was a Christian.
For those who like to bask in the reflected glory of someone who comes from the same ethnic background, same country, same race or religion (and clearly there are many such people, and the impulse is understandable and often harmless -- here my inner voice is attempting to mimic Frankie Sinatra talking fondly of the man he deliberately called Tony Benedetto) Columbus is certainly worth claiming. He was a heroic figure, and he tried in Portugal, and with the English king, before finally convincing los reyes catolicos that they should back him. He was not going in search of a “military base” from which to launch a “new crusade” (though had such been practical, it would have been a great idea). Nor can Columbus be held responsible for whatever wickedness followed upon Columbus’s discoveries, the wickedness (enshrined in the Leyenda Nera, or Black Legend) of the subsequent curled conquistadores, in those parts of the New World demarcated and assigned to Spain by the Treaty of Tordesillas.
No real historian (this leaves out Karen A. who attempts to smuggle in nonsense and lies the way the PLO tried to smuggle in Iranian weapons hidden aboard the Karine B. – two Narrenschiffen, or ships of fools, or foolish ships) would suggest that Columbus was “a Jew who converted to Chrsitianity.” The claim is made about his family, at least one or two generations back. It would take a long time to investigate the claims. But no one should dismiss lightly an argument that Indro Montanelli accepted (and my god, how unfortunate his going hither, to be replaced by the snidely anti-American Romano, still worrying in print about Senator McCarthy and “witch trials” in the United States, in the page he took over, after Mieli left, from Montanelli, in the pages of the Corriere della Sera).
Columbus remains a hero to many, and though K.A. may dislike him, she dislikes him not for the history of Spanisj oppression, etcetera, that is made so much of by the ward churchills of this world, but because he was a Christian Jewish Neo-Con out to find that military base from which NATO could launch its warmongering crusade for oil Or something like that. You get my drift – which I hope managed to get hers.
at April 22, 2005 6:34 PM
I would like to see Karen Armstrong kidnapped and held in a harem in Saudi Arabia where she would experience Muslim tolerance to the full.
Mean and uncharitable?
You bet.
Posted by: DianaC at April 22, 2005 9:54 PM
Help - I grew up believing Christopher Columbus was an Italiano from Genoa!! Hugh, think you are being much too kind to Karen Armstrong - this crazy dame might 'believe' she knows what she's writing about but has no credentials that I know of and obviously NO knowledge of History.By the way who asked friggin' Islam to invade Spain in the first place...
Posted by: Morgane at April 23, 2005 12:23 AM
Karen Armstrong has not converted to Islam because she knows, in her heart of hearts, on which side the bread is buttered. And as she studies Buddhism, I hope she visits a Taiwanese temple or has a long, earnest talk with a Thai Phra about what home-grown Buddhism really thinks of a "womyn's right to choose"--and, Ma'am, would you kindly sit back a bit? You'll pollute me, otherwise.
Carolyn2: You wrote:
Then she might realize that the Koran is a Cliff's Notes version of the Torah and Bible written by a perverted schizophrenic bully with a learning disability.
You forget that the perverted schizophrenic bully with a learning disability missed the main point as well.
Posted by: Kepha at April 23, 2005 12:30 AM
Are there no editors at publishing houses who examine Armstrong's books for even the simplest errors of fact?
I have her "History of God" - found in a second hand bin for 50 cents- but have never gotten around to reading it. Now I'm fascinated to dip into her pool of wisdom. Or would that be her puddle of parochialism? (I have read an intriguing if somewhat scattershot book that IS worth a glance if only for the curious facts you can cull, called "A History of Sin" by Oliver Thomson.)
I think I've even heard Armstrong on Terry Gross' NPR program, although I can no longer stand to hear Gross' voice, with its increasingly odd 'struttering' affectation (some type of sub-conscious effort for gaining sympathy is how I read it), and her own glaring lack of research for most of the subjects she takes on. And her jarring emotional disharmony with her guests' feelings.
The most glaring example I've noticed was an interview with actor Gene Wilder, whose wife, the gifted comedienne Gilda Radnor, died of grotesquely misdiagnosed ovarian cancer. After telling a slow, somber and poignant anecdote about his wife's death, Gross, in what can only be described as sounding like something erupting out of a fugue state, immediately and chirpily remarked that she thought it was interesting that Radnor started to take singing lessons while undergoing (failed) chemotherapy.
Where a normal person would have simply said: "How sad. I'm so sorry for you.", Gross ignored Wilder and his heartfelt reminsicence and plowed obliviously forward with her prepared interview notes. Unhearing and unfeeling.
Armstrong appears as immune to the facts. Or what is happening before her own eyes.
Unaware of the Mohammedan/Koranic dictum:
"Paradise is under the shadow of swords."
Which makes mincemeat of the idea that the 'prophet' was essentially a "peacemaker".
Posted by: BigSleep
at April 23, 2005 1:22 AM
Karen Armstrong has become more than a useful idiot. She is a menace.
Posted by: epg at April 23, 2005 1:29 AM
eowyn
Thanks for the information on the Hindu origin of algebra, maths and the numbers systems. You know, when Muslims paint a picture of pre-Islamic India, they describe a land of pagan cavemen who were essentially civilised with the Arabic faith, they refer to pre-Islamic India as Jahiliya, a land of ignorance.
It is distressing to see how truth and history can be slaughtered in this way, and how essential idiots in the West accede to this dhimmi lying.
There is also something psychologically disturbing about a religion and culture that essentially lies about what its achievments are. When it hates Hindu civilisation and then claims its truths for itself, you realise that the psychology that does this is disturbed, and that it is a parasitic and thieveing culture with a nasty blind imperialistic streak that will seek to stamp out all things that do not have its taint, and then parasitically claim it for its own to boost its own low self esteem.
Thanks again.
Posted by: Zico at April 23, 2005 4:24 PM
Yes, thanks from me too, eowyn, re math and Hindus. It's important that this truth not be lost, not be crushed under Islamic lies. And its important that our kids are told as well, for I'm sure many of our schools perpetuate the Islamic mythical glories.
Zico, you're right, there is definitely something psychologically disturbing about a religion and culture that essentially lies about what its achievments are. But then they have nothing to brag about, no accomplishment and no chance of ever accomplishing anything. Over a thousand years of it, and at least a sixth of the world's population and it's nothing more than Earth's insane crippled child.
Posted by: feralee at April 23, 2005 11:54 PM
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