• Why Jihad Watch?
  • About Robert Spencer and Staff Writers
  • FAQ
  • Books
  • Muhammad
  • Islam 101
  • Privacy

Jihad Watch

Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Fitzgerald: The once and future Kingdom of Prester John

Oct 23, 2006 10:30 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Ethiopia plays a special role, as a Christian kingdom, in both the history of Islam and the history of Christianity. Because of an event that supposedly took place during Muhammad’s lifetime, when many dozens of his followers found refuge from enemies in Ethiopia, a refuge freely offered by the Negus, Ethiopia was given a special status in Islam, and for many centuries was supposedly therefore not the object of Muslim attack.

Whether or not that was observed or honored in the breached is unclear. Certainly Arab slavers worked to the north in what is now the Sudan, to the west in the Congo (Tippoo Tib was not the only Muslim slavers about whom Stanley and Livingston presumed) and to the south. Pemba and Zanzibar were under the control of the Sultan of Muscat and Oman for centuries, and were used as a holding pen for black slaves then later brought by dhow to the Arab and Ottoman slave markets. And certainly Arab Muslims conducted Da’wa — through violence as well as missionary work — on the Horn of Africa (see Somalia, see Eritrea).
And now it is clear that since Muslims have the way, they certainly have the will to boldly go after the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia, conducting campaigns of Da’wa and intimidation deep within Ethiopia. All you have to do is find and debrief any number of Christian Ethiopian students in this country. They will set you right.

In the history of Western Christendom, the role of the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia is also as singular. If in Islam a special pass was for some time honored in regard to Christian Ethiopia, which might explain its continued existence as an independent Christian kingdom, Islam imperiled Christian Europe. Europe was constantly under assault, sometimes by Arab armies both East (Spain and into France) and West (Byzantium, and much of southeastern and central Europe, as far north as Hungary). It was also under constant assault by Muslim raiders up and down the coasts of Italy and France and all the way to England and Ireland. The raiders even on one famous occasion went to Iceland, destroying villages, killing many, and kidnapping and then enslaving others — men, women, and children — who were then brought back to Muslim lands. There they worked as slaves and were islamized, with their own pasts erased.

In this, hope was needed, and hope arose in the form of a myth: the myth of a powerful Christian kingdom, ruled by a benign and powerful Christian king, Prester John. And where was this powerful Kingdom of Prester John? It was far away, on the other side of the lands seized by and now ruled by Muslims. It was a distant, yet powerful dream-ally, comforting to the imagination of fearful Christians. At first their imagination placed the Kingdom of Prester John in distant India. Later, in an act of geopolitical remue-menages (and remue-meninges, to quote the only memorable pun Jack Lang ever made) — the Allied-Van-Lines of the European imagination transferred the Kingdom of Prester John, in its imaginary location, to Ethiopia. Fear-inducing Islam prompted the necessary comforting myth. The European mind did the necessary lifting, moving the whole kingdom several thousand miles from India to East Africa. Quite a feat.

Look into Ethiopia. See why the American government, instead of wasting so much in Iraq, ought to be helping the Christian government to maintain itself, and to campaign against and shut down wherever possible the campaigns of Da’wa being ceaselessly conducted within the borders of Ethiopia. And if the American government actually had a clever grasp of things, it would right now be stationing troops and giving money to the Ethiopians, as it should to black African Christians everywhere — so that they can combat the instruments of Jihad, including all those Saudi-built and Saudi-maintained mosques transforming the syncretistic, easygoing Islam of the marabouts of West Africa as well. (See the horrifying transformation of Islam taking place in Niger; try to get bigshots to pay more attention to that, and a bit less attention to the entirely trivial and uninteresting saga of the trivial and uninteresting Joseph Wilson et ux.).

Study up on Ethiopia and how an American force in southern and eastern Sudan, there to “rescue the people of Darfur,” would do so much to draw attention to the Arab Muslim aggression against black Africans, whether Christians and animists or non-Arab Muslims. (Those non-Arabs are, simply by virtue of being non-Arabs, expendable in the eyes of Arabs, because they are inferior Muslims.) An American force there would also do much to raise the morale of black African Christians, or Hamitic ones — in the once and possibly future Kingdom of Prester John.

You will discover that there is more to learn about Ethiopia than tips on collecting Ethiopian Coptic textiles, the brouhaha over that obelisk taken from Axum to Rome (and recently returned), the precise place from which Pushkin’s ancestor likely came, Father Ludolf, Johnson’s “Rasselas,” and Ryszard Kapuscinski’s book on Haile Selassie, and of course those who, in Marcus-Garvey fashion, saw in Selassie, Ras Tafari, the leader of that cult or possibly religion (what’s the difference? who decides?) of Rastafarians who, as Robert Lowell once wrote, could be seen downtown in the Village, combing curlicues of marijuana out of their hair.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Follow me on Facebook

Filed Under: Uncategorized


Learn more about RevenueStripe...

FacebookYoutubeTwitterLog in

Subscribe to the Jihad Watch Daily Digest

You will receive a daily mailing containing links to the stories posted at Jihad Watch in the last 24 hours.
Enter your email address to subscribe.

Please wait...

Thank you for signing up!
If you are forwarding to a friend, please remove the unsubscribe buttons first, as they my accidentally click it.

Subscribe to all Jihad Watch posts

You will receive immediate notification.
Enter your email address to subscribe.
Note: This may be up to 15 emails a day.

Donate to JihadWatch
FrontPage Mag

Search Site

Translate

The Team

Robert Spencer in FrontPageMag
Robert Spencer in PJ Media

Articles at Jihad Watch by
Robert Spencer
Hugh Fitzgerald
Christine Douglass-Williams
Andrew Harrod
Jamie Glazov
Daniel Greenfield

Contact Us

Terror Attacks Since 9/11

Archives

  • 2020
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2019
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2018
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2017
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2016
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2015
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2014
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2013
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2012
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2011
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2010
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2009
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2008
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2007
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2006
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2005
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2004
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2003
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • March

All Categories

You Might Like

Learn more about RevenueStripe...

Recent Comments

  • OLD GUY on UK: Woman converts to Islam, distributes Islamic State jihad terror videos
  • OLD GUY on Al-Qaeda Calls on Jihadis to Kill Non-Muslims With Poisoned Coronavirus Masks
  • Boycott Turkey on Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, France and UAE conduct joint military exercises amid rising Turkish threat
  • Michael Copeland on New study reveals that Muslim religiosity strongly linked to hatred towards the West
  • Michael Copeland on New study reveals that Muslim religiosity strongly linked to hatred towards the West

Popular Categories

dhimmitude Sharia Jihad in the U.S ISIS / Islamic State / ISIL Iran Free Speech

Robert Spencer FaceBook Page

Robert Spencer Twitter

Robert Spencer twitter

Robert Spencer YouTube Channel

Books by Robert Spencer

Jihad Watch® is a registered trademark of Robert Spencer in the United States and/or other countries - Site Developed and Managed by Free Speech Defense

Content copyright Jihad Watch, Jihad Watch claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to their respective owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and you do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.

Our mailing address is: David Horowitz Freedom Center, P.O. Box 55089, Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.