Too much time on the present, not enough time on the past
by Michael Devolin
“Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.” — Will Durant
We are forever hearing the Muslim world using the term “Crusader” in reference to the West when accusing us of every evil that has ever befallen them, as though we had invented colonialism and exploitation or the acquisition of booty in the pursuit of empire.
One of the most prevalent characteristics of the jihadist—when he’s not using the religion of Islam to justify his savagery—is his habitual revision and/or obfuscation of actual Middle Eastern history. Always careful to avoid turning back the pages far enough to reveal how Islam’s religious parvenus actually pioneered the very idea of imperialism and colonial rule, the jihadist must overlook the fact that long before there was a Palestine “occupied” by a State of Israel, there was also a Palestine when Jews lived absent the presence of religiously intolerant Arab Muslims. Today’s “pro-Palestinian” protester vehemently refuses any discussion regarding the awkward historical truth defining who is actually occupying who in the land of Israel.
Efraim Karsh has noted, “Contrary to the conventional wisdom, it is the Middle East where the institution of empire not only originated (for example, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Iran, and so on) but where its spirit has also outlived its European counterpart.” We are now accustom to seeing anti-Zionism placards at any event arranged for the purpose of protesting against the State of Israel, as though any Jew should be ashamed of admitting to being a Zionist. Unlike the Islamic imperialist (read: jihadist), the Zionist doesn’t want to rule the world and hold indigenous captives under his thumb. Rather he simply wants to return to the land of Israel, his ancient homeland, and live there in peace, safely out of reach of the Islamic imperialist.
But the jihadist will travel back in history only so far as Jabotinsky and Herzl, as though Zionism began with them. Never mind the fact that Jabotinsky and Herzl and their Zionism saved many Jews from the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Sobibor, or repatriated into Israel those Jewish survivors who walked out of the darkness of Eastern Europe at the end of WW2, the jihadist, in his madness, erroneously sees only a mirror image of himself and Islam’s imperialistic tendencies in the Zionism of the Jew. This is why the nefarious Protocols of the Elders of Zion has become the Arab Muslim’s most popular proof for his vitriol against the Jews of Israel. Never mind the ancient history of Zionism, that this same Zionism predates even the Muslim Arab invasion of ancient Israel, the Islamist sees only Jabotinsky and Herzl and the Jewish refugee fighting (and winning) his way back into what had been for so long a preponderant Arab Muslim Palestine.
The Arab Muslim, the original jihadist, has never been willing to tolerate a sovereign Jewish state, regardless the evidence of a perpetual Jewish presence in the land of Israel. As Jamil Mardam, Syria’s Foreign Minister, told Herzl’s friend Moshe Shertok back in 1943, “You won’t find a single Arab leader who would voluntarily acquiesce in your becoming the majority in Palestine…there can be no mutually agreed settlement as no Arab statesman will accept a Jewish majority.”* Islam’s jihadist is willing to look only so far back into the history of the Middle East as serves his religion’s imperialistic dictates. About the fate of the Jews, even Jews running from the Holocaust, he couldn’t care less.
For every European and American kingmaker who travelled to the Middle East “to do the impossible for the ungrateful,” to borrow a phrase from Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, there was always an Arab Muslim waiting there who dreamed of empire and was more than willing to accept their money, even at the expense of the common Arab who was simply trying to raise a family and live in relative security. The reasons given today to justify Islamic jihad are simply born of a religiously taught hatred of everything Western but have no valid connection to the real history of the Middle East and therefore no credence when used to inculpate the West for the volatile instability of the region.
Arab Muslim empires rose and then came crashing down long before Western powers took their turn at exploiting the Middle East’s natural resources. One has only to take a short read into the history of Islam’s many kings and caliphs to realize that the jihad waged back then, with Arab Muslim killing Arab Muslim, was not at all dissimilar to the jihad waged today, with Arab Muslim killing Arab Muslim, Jew and Christian: jihad, not because there is any sense to it, or because there is an end that could possibly justify the means, but only because Islam and its tenets advocate jihad and for no other reason. The jihadist is not interested in ancient history and how that history can never justify his crimes against humanity. The jihadist is only interested in the last twenty four hours and the measure of harm he has loosed into the world.
*from Efraim Karsh’s ‘Palestine Betrayed’
Michael Devolin has been a member of JDL Canada since the 1980s, and has served as the personal bodyguard to Meir Weinstein, National Director of JDL Canada, at several high-profile trials, including the Jim Keegstra hate crimes trial and the Imra Finta war crimes trial.
duh_swami says
Interesting article…What’s frequently overlooked is every Mahoundians burning desire to get into Allah’s Paradise when they die. Even if they can’t qualify for virgins, they still want in.
A source of their personal paranoia(s) is that Allah did not promise Paradise to everyone. According to Tabari, Mahound said that only one in a thousand will be admitted, and full capacity was 10,000, the rest will go to Hell where most of the women are. Even the most pious can be shut out. Only the jihadi dying in battle for Allah gets a guaranteed couch in the orgy chamber. If not for the promise of Paradise, there would be no religious Islam at all.
john spielman says
and islamic paradise is nothing but a drunken brothel! Just more proof that islam is a doctrine of demons and muhammed-pbuh* was a demon possessed mass murderer, thief, liar , misogynist, and PEDOPHILE!
pbuh* perpetual banishment unto hell!
pumbar says
I thought the wine in jannah was alcohol free (probably more like Kool-Aid).
Aardvark says
duh-swami said:
“Mahound said that only one in a thousand will be admitted, and full capacity was 10,000, the rest will go to Hell where most of the women are.”
If the total capacity is 10,000, then they must be full already! And there is no longer any point in being a follower of the vile Mohammed!
Perhaps we should be pointing out this awkward fact to the multitude of barbarian gangs currently out there striking at necks. The might just as well give up and go home!
el-cid says
What I love about this article is the intellectual challenge it presents. I did not expect this from the JDL crowd–I have learned something today.
Bravo.
EvaGirl says
Oh Please!
Don McKellar says
It’s a remarkable thing about Islam. We can look to the past objectively and factually to completely discredit every ridiculous claim and point in it. And we can also completely ignore history and look at it objectively and factually and completely discredit every ridiculous claim and point in it.
In fact the only time that any non-moslem accepts the fictional narrative of Islam is when they accept the lies spewed by moslems without any investigation or careful consideration to the truths either current or past.
tpellow says
Yes, Efraim Karsh is a significant historian/writer.
Two of his books-
1.) with Inari Karsh-
“Empires of the Sand”
http://www.danielpipes.org/822/empires-of-the-sand-the-struggle-for-mastery-in-the-middle
2.)
“Islamic Imperialism”
(review by Robert Spencer)-
http://www.meforum.org/1781/islamic-imperialism-a-history
Jay Boo says
If a Muslim criticizes Christians openly it might invite a closer scrutiny of their bigoted ideology so instead they use the code word ‘”Crusader” but in reality don’t doubt for one moment that these (No god but Allah) wackos are referring to every Christian both now and in the past.
tpellow says
Of course, ‘Jihadwatch’ has some significant articles in its archives, not least several
by Hugh Fitzgerald (now of ‘New English Review’ site), including-
“What really happened in 1492”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/01/fitzgerald-what-really-happened-in-1492
David Hayden says
Check the following blog entry for more information on the history between Catholic Spain and the Islamic Moriscos after 1492. Moriscos were actually allowed in Spain until King Phillip III finally expelled them in 1609. Even at that, the Moriscos had until 1615 to be out of the country.
OCT
30
1492 Did Not End the War Between Catholic Spain and the Muslims
Fighting between Muslims and Christians began in Iberia (Visigoth Spain) in 711 A.D. in a clash between Muslim invaders from North Africa (Arab and Berber) led by Tariq ibn Ziyad against the Catholic King Roderick. Thus began an eight-century struggle for the control of present day Spain and Portugal (Iberia). However, the 1492 conquest of the Muslim Nasrid Kingdom of Granada by the military forces of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella did not end the war between Catholic and Muslim forces in Spain. Although the Nasrid ruler Boabdil presented the keys of the Alhambra to Ferdinand on Jan, 2, 1492, within a year Boabdil and 6,000 Muslim emigrated from Granada for North Africa.
Boabdil’s departure did not signal the end of the conflict between Muslims and Catholics. A reformer in the church, Archbishop Hernando de Talavera, sought a conciliatory approach to the Muslims who remained in Granada and encouraged the use of education and understanding in an attempt to convert them to the faith. His initiatives met with some success until 1499 when a more hard-nosed Archbishop Francisco Ximenez de Cisneros was able to override Talavera’s conciliatory approach and enforced mass baptisms of Muslims. Result? A rebellion against Catholic rule in the Alpujarras which spread throughout the region. This revolt failed, and in 1502 the Muslims were given the choice of either conversion or emigration. Most of the Muslims remained and “converted” to Catholicism. By 1425 the Muslims who converted became known as Moriscos.
Unfortunately, this did not solve the conflict at all. Most Moriscos, although nominally Catholics, remained alienated and kept to themselves and secretly practiced their own Muslim faith. As historian Richard Fletcher wrote, “Islamic law permits the practice of taqqiya, the concealment of true belief during a time of persecution. These ‘New Christians’ of sixteenth-century Spain outwardly conformed to the requirements of the church which they had been compelled to join while secretly maintaining allegiance to the Islamic faith of the ancestors.”
By the 1550’s the Spanish government became quite weary of the Moriscos who were suspected of secretly supporting the Muslim Turks’ incursions along the Mediterranean coastlines of Spain and North Africa. By 1557 the Moriscos lost the privilege of speaking in Arabic, wearing Muslim clothes, listening to Muslim music and other restrictions. Enforced assimilation became the goal.
It didn’t work; it did lead to another revolt in the Alpujarras region in 1468. This time the Spaniards put down the revolt with brutal force led by Don Juan, the half-brother of King Philip II. The king then ordered the Moriscos in Granada to be dispersed throughout Castile in order to separate the dense settlements of rebellious Moriscos in the Alpujarras region. This order didn’t solve the problem either. The Moriscos proved to be unassimilable. As a result, in 1609 King Philip III began the expulsion of all the Moriscos from Spain; five years later the Moriscos were almost totally diminished as a threat to Catholic Spain.
A careful reading of Miguel Cervantes Saavedra’s Don Quixote (Part I published in 1605 and Part II in 1615) is replete with references to Moriscos in Spain. Future blogs and a book on this topic are in my plans for the foreseeable future.
Sources used for this blog:
Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain
Maria Antonia Garces, Cervantes in Algiers: A Captive’s Tale, “Chronology”
Posted 1 week ago by Islam: Historical Interpretations by David Hayden
Darren says
Battle of Tours 732 A.D, first crusade 1096 A.D. Hundreds of years of muslim aggression and expansion before the first crusade. The crusade was a reaction to an action. Yes there was human nature at play as well so there was less unsavory reasons to go along with the crusade as well. What the barbarian hordes and the liberal slaves fail to realize is jihad is condoned and ordered by allah, killing and murdering people is not in Christianity. The Catholic church was an institution of man, and like any institution it get’s corrupted. Humanity will find a way to corrupt anything and everything given enough time, a sad fact of reality. Muslims always do that they mention one period of history without going back further to justify their argument.
mortimer says
“Islamic Imperialism” began when Omar invaded Israel. The Koran frequently mentions the ‘Children of Israel’ and commands Jews to ‘dwell in the Land’.
However, the command of Allah is superseded by Omar’s conquest and Caliph Abd al Malik’s Dome of the Rock and subsequent mythology created by him and his successors.
Muslims will all eventually discover the delusional malarkey of Islam’s contradictory and dangerous legends.
deja vu says
Muslims will all eventually discover the delusional malarkey of Islam’s contradictory and dangerous legends.
———————————————————————————————-
All? Only if they have educated minds and are open to the invitation to examine them.
Eventually? How much time have we got?
Doug says
Dear Robert,
Thank you for making this article and information available. I appreciate being reminded of the historical perspective. It is sad that different beliefs or thought systems don’t foster acceptance and discussion but end up separating people and fostering suspicion to violence. I look forward to the day that we all realize we are One …
Blessings, Doug.
KiwiKaffir says
Bring back crusading!