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Jihad Watch

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

London Mayor: Worried about Islamic jihad terror? Remember the Alhambra

Jan 5, 2016 5:52 pm By Robert Spencer

Johnson’s tortured reasoning here appears to be that, well, see, Muslims made a great civilization in Europe once, and so they may do it again, instead of simply mounting jihad terror attacks and promising imminent takeover. Very well. Maybe they will, but there doesn’t seem to be much genuine intellectual ferment among Muslims in the West — just a lot of victimhood-mongering, finger-pointing, and evasiveness. Johnson also appears to be implying that the Islamization of Europe and Britain is inevitable, and so we should look on the bright side.

However, Johnson wants us to know that he is tough-minded, by golly; he isn’t falling for any romanticized ahistorical fantasy. “Both Christians and Muslims wanted to be on top; both indulged in occasional pogroms and forced conversions; and don’t forget that in 1492 it was the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, who kicked out the last Moor from the citadel of Granada and expelled every Jew from Spain.” But “what you cannot deny is the scale of the Muslim achievement.”

This is muddled in all sorts of ways. In the first place, Johnson’s moral equivalence is ridiculous in light of the fact that during the 800-year Muslim occupation of Spain, there was not some sort of mutual jockeying for power among Christians and Muslims. Both may have “wanted to be on top,” but the Christians were decidedly on the bottom. Even Mari­a Rosa Menocal, in her romantic and fantastic hagiography of Muslim Spain, The Ornament of the World, acknowledges the second-class status to which Jews and Christians were relegated there. “In return for this freedom of religious conscience the Peoples of the Book (pagans had no such privilege) were required to pay a special tax–no Muslims paid taxes–and to observe a number of restrictive regulations: Christians and Jews were prohibited from attempting to proselytize Muslims, from building new places of worship, from displaying crosses or ringing bells. In sum, they were forbidden most public displays of their religious rituals.”

According to historian Richard Fletcher, “Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch.” On December 30, 1066, about four thousand Jews in Granada were murdered by rioting Muslim mobs–more than would be killed in the Crusaders’ infamous Rhineland pogroms of the mid-twelfth century. What enraged the Granadan Muslims was the political power of the Jewish vizier Samuel ibn Naghrila and his son Joseph: the mob resented the fact that these men had authority over Muslims, which they saw as a “breach of sharia.” The mob was incited to kill the Jews by a poem composed by Muslim jurist Abu Ishaq: “I myself arrived in Granada and saw that these Jews were meddling in its affairs. … So hasten to slaughter them as a good work whereby you will earn God’s favor, and offer them up in sacrifice, a well-fattened ram.”

The mob heeded his call. A Muslim chronicler (and later sultan of Granada), ‘Abd Allah, said that “both the common people and the nobles were disgusted by the cunning of the Jews, the notorious changes they had brought in the order of things, and the positions they occupied in violation of their pact [of second-class status].” He recounted that the mob “put every Jew in the city to the sword and took vast quantities of their property.”

So heed Boris Johnson’s advice. Islamic jihadists may murder some non-Muslims and enforce second-class status on Jews and Christians, but hey, they may build some fine buildings, so relax, you greasy Islamophobe.

Boris-Johnson

“Amid dystopic visions of an Islamic Europe, remember the Alhambra,” by Boris Johnson, Telegraph, January 3, 2016:

Phewee. I snapped the novel shut before the easyJet plane had even landed. I read it so fast I more or less inhaled it. It’s the new bestseller – Submission – by that seedy-looking, chain-smoking French intellectual called Houellebecq (pron. Wellbeck), and it is brilliant because an outlandish scenario is made to seem so darned plausible.

The author imagines his own country in just six years’ time. The presidential elections are coming up, and Marine Le Pen’s National Front is on 34 per cent in the polls, and the Socialists are a long way behind, on 22 per cent. But only a point behind them is a new party that has emerged from the banlieues. Led by a charismatic and benevolent second-generation immigrant called Muhammed Ben Abbes, financed by the Gulf, the Muslim Brotherhood is picking up votes across urban France.

The Socialists continue to do badly, through general voter ennui and anger at the economic crisis caused by the euro; and when the real voting takes place, in the first round of the presidential election, Ben Abbes somehow manages to edge them out. He comes second. Suddenly it is between him and the fire-eating, blonde-haired leader of the National Front. What do the Socialists do? They do a deal to keep out the far Right. They throw their weight behind Ben Abbes, who sweeps to power in the run-off. The Muslim Brotherhood is effectively in charge of the republic, and the process of Islamification is so gradual that the frog (so to speak) does not realise it is being boiled.

It begins with the mandatory teaching of the Koran in schools; then French women start wearing veils and abandoning skirts; then men start having up to four wives, and as many concubines as they can afford; and then the genial Ben Abbes embarks on a great and visionary programme to change the whole contour and complexion of the EU, to admit Turkey and the Maghreb countries. Before you can say Allahu akbar the French are leading a programme to create a kind of “Eurabia”, and France’s Jewish population flees for Israel.

As for the rest of the French population, they follow the establishment in a kind of submission, as the title suggests; and “submission”, of course, is the literal meaning of Islam. The hero is a seedy-looking, chain-smoking intellectual who becomes a Muslim, and is rewarded with a luscious, Gulf-funded university post and a nubile young wife. Otherwise – and this is the really spooky bit – the country just carries on. The point of the book is to send a shiver up the spine, to play upon Islamophobia, and to make you wonder what it really would be like if Europe were under Muslim rule.

‘We will be forced constantly to insist on the distinction between Islamic extremism and a religion followed by more than a billion people who are no less peaceful than ourselves’

I was brooding on this vanishingly unlikely contingency when the plane touched down and it hit me. We were there: we had just landed in the last patch of western Europe to resemble Houellebecq’s dystopia in the sense that it was the last place to be under the control of the Muslims. We have spent a couple of nights in Granada in southern Spain, and on Saturday there was a procession through town to celebrate the expulsion of Boabdil, otherwise known as Muhammad XII, the last sultan of Granada.

You may remember this wretch. On January 2 1492 he was forced to hand over the keys to the incomparably beautiful rose-pink Alhambra palace, and as he looked back he emitted a groan of anguish known as “El suspiro del Moro” – the Moor’s last sigh. At which point his mother whipped him, saying: “You weep like a woman for what you could not defend like a man!” When you look at what Boabdil had surrendered, you can see her point.

The Muslims ruled this part of Spain for 800 years, and their legacy was colossal. Now I don’t go along with this notion that it was all a kind of multi-culti sweetness and light, with Christians, Muslims and Jews living side by side in perfect harmoneee, like Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. Both Christians and Muslims wanted to be on top; both indulged in occasional pogroms and forced conversions; and don’t forget that in 1492 it was the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, who kicked out the last Moor from the citadel of Granada and expelled every Jew from Spain.

No, there is no easy way you can retrofit medieval Spain to become some prototype of modern urban pluralism and tolerance. But what you cannot deny is the scale of the Muslim achievement. It was the intellectual flowering of the Cordoba caliphate that helped to protect and transmit ancient Greek texts and eventually to propel the European Renaissance. The Islamic architecture of Granada is simply astonishing….

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Filed Under: dhimmitude, Featured, journalistic bias, United Kingdom, Useful idiots, willful ignorance Tagged With: Alhambra, Boris Johnson


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Comments

  1. Don McKellar says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 6:04 pm

    They sure were quick to close down the comments section on that one!

    • ECAW says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 10:34 am

      Yeah, I had 2 or 3 ready to make when I saw that!

      • Mirren10 says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 12:59 pm

        Me too. But it’s heartening to see the majority of the comments underlined what a dickhead Johnson is, and also how many of them are **islamo-savvy**. Which is, of course, why they quickly closed them down. I do hope that slimy little twat read them. 🙂

  2. Pig Jizya says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 6:06 pm

    London Mayor: “Worried about Islamic jihad terror? Remember the Alhambra”

    That has got to be one of the dumbest things I have ever heard someone say about Islam. Or at least in the top 10.

    Boris Johnson is dumb. The UK is committing suicide by electing these regressive liberal idiots.

    • Peggy says

      Jan 5, 2016 at 11:13 pm

      It’s not like they don’t have choices now. There are other parties they can vote for so they will get exactly what they want.
      I pity the smart Brits who don’t waste their votes on Labor or Liberal but sadly there isn’t enough of them.
      Majority rules is democracy so we can’t argue with it. Looks like majority want Sharia.
      They will commit suicide just to prove they are not racist.

      • Scott M says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 7:16 am

        Yes, unfortunately true Peggy. It is happening everywhere – even here in Australia. All too dumb to actually take another look at what is really happening – all too busy calling concerned people names because they dare to disagree with, what is by now- overwhelming evidence that there are real problems with muslims. By the time they all work out they’ve made a mistake – it will be too late to change anything without spilling blood. This is what we are leaving our children to deal with.

        • Peggy says

          Jan 7, 2016 at 5:32 am

          It’s terrifying. Our children and grandchildren will curse us for what we are going to leave them with. They will have to spill their blood because we don’t want to look racist.
          I am from Australia as well and even though I didn’t trust Tony Abbott much at the beginning I can see now that he was the only hope we had. When he started to speak up he was quickly removed and replaced by that idiot who now says that he won’t discriminate when it comes to taking those “refugees” in.
          At least Tony said that he will take in mostly Christian refugees but this traitor is changing that.
          We have some minor parties who are also concerned about Islamisation of Australia and they are the ones who will get my vote this year. Pauline Hanson was right all along.
          Australia Christians headed by Vickie Janson who was associated with the Q Society of Australia will get my vote if any candidates in my electorate. Definitely in the senate.
          Just Google Australian Political parties against Islam and you will find some there.

      • Mirren10 says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 1:17 pm

        ”It’s not like they don’t have choices now. There are other parties they can vote for so they will get exactly what they want.”

        Unfortunately, Peggy, our ”first past the post” electoral system ensures that is *not* the case. Look at how many votes UKIP got, compared to the SNP, and note the fact that UKIP got *no* seats, but the SNP got **56**.

        http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/the-chart-that-shows-why-farage-has-a-right-to-complain-about-the-voting-system-10235575.html

        What we need is proportional representation.

        • Mirren10 says

          Jan 6, 2016 at 1:18 pm

          Sorry, UKIP got **one** seat.

        • Peggy says

          Jan 7, 2016 at 5:37 am

          I wonder which bright spark made these rules.
          Maybe people power can made the changes. There should be massive protests to do exactly that.
          Will there be enough non Muslims in Britain to care enough to take to the streets?

    • Azacque says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 1:13 am

      All they know and do is be-head, shoot, burn, destroy and rape.
      In our society that makes them all criminals .

    • particolor says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 3:51 am

      Remember the Alamo !

      • Scott M says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 7:34 am

        Yes, even at the Alamo NOBODY really “won” – because a month later, the Mexicans got wiped out at the next battle at San Jacinto – just lots of dead people. That’s what the do-gooders and social engineers have bequeathed to us and our children. Massive social, economic ,political and military upheaval and discord. Lots of people are going to die because some supposedly intelligent people are just too dumb, too arrogant to actually understand and comprehend just exactly what they are dealing with – a bit like the fictional Dr Frankenstein.

    • BC says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 5:26 am

      BJ note the initials as an acronym is a Tory if he was a liberal he would not be considered next in line for the Tory leadership. At the moment the Tory government is as right wing as Thatcher’s maybe more.
      BTW most people think of BJ as a buffoon.

  3. gravenimage says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 6:21 pm

    London Mayor: Worried about Islamic jihad terror? Remember the Alhambra
    ……………………………..

    Actually, remembering the centuries-long ordeal of Infidels in Muslim-occupied Spain is not a bad idea–but not, of course, in the way the moronic Boris Johnson means.

    More:

    We were there: we had just landed in the last patch of western Europe to resemble Houellebecq’s dystopia in the sense that it was the last place to be under the control of the Muslims. We have spent a couple of nights in Granada in southern Spain…
    ……………………………..

    What an *utter moron*. Greece and many parts of the Balkans were still under the Muslim heel centuries after Spain and Portugal had regained their lands.

    And appalling that Johnson would read “Submission”–a horrifying novel about the supine slide of Europe into Islam–and think, “gee, that wouldn’t be so bad”. *Ugh*.

    • Mirren10 says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 1:23 pm

      ”And appalling that Johnson would read “Submission”–a horrifying novel about the supine slide of Europe into Islam–and think, “gee, that wouldn’t be so bad”.

      Yes. His tone of amused derision makes me vomit.

  4. Chabuco says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 6:25 pm

    “…. remember the Alhambra”—-

    Yeah, I remember the Muslim imperialist crusades from the West, stopped by Martel, and from the East, stopped by the likes of the Prince of Wallachia and later Sobieski.

    Imperialist, crusader monuments, palaces, fortresses and other legacies are halal as long as they’re Muslim.

    • Chabuco says

      Jan 5, 2016 at 6:34 pm

      “The Muslims ruled this part of Spain for 800 years, and their legacy was colossal… “—

      There you go, very explicit. Imperialism and conquests are halal as long as they are Muslim, nothing sociopathic and supremacist about that at all.

      “… living side by side in perfect harmoneee”—-

      Nothing says perfect “harmoneee(sic)” like being subjugated and conquered by rampaging imperialist crusaders…. as long as they’re Muslim, of course

  5. Angemon says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 6:44 pm

    The point of the book is to send a shiver up the spine, to play upon Islamophobia, and to make you wonder what it really would be like if Europe were under Muslim rule.

    Europe – well, parts of it, large parts – was under muslim rule, both in the East and West. And the common thing is that they kept fighting to be rid of it. Unless one wants to argue that Europeans all across Europe were too stupid to realize how much better they were under muslim rule, I’m going to go with “it was horrible and we’d much rather die fighting than living in it”.

    We will be forced constantly to insist on the distinction between Islamic extremism and a religion followed by more than a billion people who are no less peaceful than ourselves

    “We will be”? We already are.

    We have spent a couple of nights in Granada in southern Spain, and on Saturday there was a procession through town to celebrate the expulsion of Boabdil, otherwise known as Muhammad XII, the last sultan of Granada.

    Again, unless anyone wants to argue that Europeans were too stupid to realize that they were much better under muslim rule, that celebration should be very telling.

    You may remember this wretch. On January 2 1492 he was forced to hand over the keys to the incomparably beautiful rose-pink Alhambra palace

    With good reason – they were constantly fighting with Christians, even though they were outgunned and outnumbered, and the threat of an Ottoman invasion of Spain, using Granada as a foothold, was ever looming. Being spared and allowed to walk away was a much better deal than he could have bargained for in his position.

    The Muslims ruled this part of Spain for 800 years, and their legacy was colossal. Now I don’t go along with this notion that it was all a kind of multi-culti sweetness and light, with Christians, Muslims and Jews living side by side in perfect harmoneee, like Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. Both Christians and Muslims wanted to be on top; both indulged in occasional pogroms and forced conversions;

    Ah, the usual false equivalence. Christians were mainly the natives of the Iberian Peninsula, and Jews had a community there dating back to before the birth of Christ. The muslim Moors? Rapacious, blood-thirsty invaders.

    and don’t forget that in 1492 it was the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, who kicked out the last Moor from the citadel of Granada

    See above.

    and expelled every Jew from Spain.

    A move they and their descendants would live to regret, and for which Spaniards have tried to make amendments for:

    http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4168/spain-citizenship-sephardic-jews

    No, there is no easy way you can retrofit medieval Spain to become some prototype of modern urban pluralism and tolerance.

    It’s not easy, but by golly, you’ll try! Transparently, and clumsily, and not fooling anyone, but you’ll try.

    But

    “But” Being the place where you have your head.

    what you cannot deny is the scale of the Muslim achievement.

    You mean, the slave work of dhimmies.

    It was the intellectual flowering of the Cordoba caliphate that helped to protect and transmit ancient Greek texts and eventually to propel the European Renaissance.

    Nope. Churches and monasteries, plus Byzantine refugees after the fall of Constantinople. In any case, if the great hallmark of islamic achievement is keeping what others did until someone else came along to use it, color me unimpressed. Especially considering that it was muslim invaders who wrecked havoc and destroyed what Christians had achieved. Also, Cordoba was not the legitimate caliphate

    The Islamic architecture of Granada is simply astonishing….

    There’s no such thing as “islamic architecture”. There is, however, “architecture invading rapacious arabs stole from Persians and Byzantines and claimed as their own”. Is that what you’re referring to?

    • Kepha says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 8:35 am

      And they forget that further east, in the Middle East itself, an important link in the chain of the transmission of ancient knowledge was translation into Syriac–“Our Christian language of northern Iraq”, as one of my students explained it.

    • Mirren10 says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 1:31 pm

      *Excellent* post, Angemon.

      What happened to the layout, though ? 🙂

      • Angemon says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 4:53 pm

        Mirren10 posted:

        “*Excellent* post, Angemon.

        What happened to the layout, though ? 🙂”

        I screwed up automated blockquotes 🙁 . I posted a reviewed, more legible version shortly after.

  6. Neil Jennison says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 6:46 pm

    Boris is like Cameron….his highest loyalty is to himself.

    • Jakob1944 says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 3:37 am

      His children will inherit his dirt……………

  7. jura says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 6:47 pm

    Renessaince in northern Italy was not thanks to Grenada but Byzantine!
    Mr. Spencer, please, can you enlighten this issue in your blog?
    Many thanks.

    • Kepha says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 8:36 am

      And let’s not forget those Irish monks and those influenced by them who kept learning alive in northern Europe even before 1000 A.D.

  8. Angemon says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 6:51 pm

    Ugh, messed up blockquotes – better do them by hand. Let me try again:

    The point of the book is to send a shiver up the spine, to play upon Islamophobia, and to make you wonder what it really would be like if Europe were under Muslim rule.

    Europe – well, parts of it, large parts – was under muslim rule, both in the East and West. And the common thing is that they kept fighting to be rid of it. Unless one wants to argue that Europeans all across Europe were too stupid to realize how much better they were under muslim rule, I’m going to go with “it was horrible and we’d much rather die fighting than living in it”.

    We will be forced constantly to insist on the distinction between Islamic extremism and a religion followed by more than a billion people who are no less peaceful than ourselves

    “We will be”? We already are.

    We have spent a couple of nights in Granada in southern Spain, and on Saturday there was a procession through town to celebrate the expulsion of Boabdil, otherwise known as Muhammad XII, the last sultan of Granada.

    Again, unless anyone wants to argue that Europeans were too stupid to realize that they were much better under muslim rule, that celebration should be very telling.

    You may remember this wretch. On January 2 1492 he was forced to hand over the keys to the incomparably beautiful rose-pink Alhambra palace

    With good reason – they were constantly fighting with Christians, even though they were outgunned and outnumbered, and the threat of an Ottoman invasion of Spain, using Granada as a foothold, was ever looming. Being spared and allowed to walk away was a much better deal than he could have bargained for in his position.

    The Muslims ruled this part of Spain for 800 years, and their legacy was colossal. Now I don’t go along with this notion that it was all a kind of multi-culti sweetness and light, with Christians, Muslims and Jews living side by side in perfect harmoneee, like Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder. Both Christians and Muslims wanted to be on top; both indulged in occasional pogroms and forced conversions;

    Ah, the usual false equivalence. Christians were mainly the natives of the Iberian Peninsula, and Jews had a community there dating back to before the birth of Christ. The muslim Moors? Rapacious, blood-thirsty invaders.

    and don’t forget that in 1492 it was the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, who kicked out the last Moor from the citadel of Granada

    See above.

    and expelled every Jew from Spain.

    A move they and their descendants would live to regret, and for which Spaniards have tried to make amendments for:

    http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4168/spain-citizenship-sephardic-jews

    No, there is no easy way you can retrofit medieval Spain to become some prototype of modern urban pluralism and tolerance.

    It’s not easy, but by golly, you’ll try! Transparently, and clumsily, and not fooling anyone, but you’ll try.

    But

    “But” Being the place where you have your head.

    what you cannot deny is the scale of the Muslim achievement.

    You mean, the slave work of dhimmies.

    It was the intellectual flowering of the Cordoba caliphate that helped to protect and transmit ancient Greek texts and eventually to propel the European Renaissance.

    Nope. Churches and monasteries, plus Byzantine refugees after the fall of Constantinople. In any case, if the great hallmark of islamic achievement is keeping what others did until someone else came along to use it, color me unimpressed. Especially considering that it was muslim invaders who wrecked havoc and destroyed what Christians had achieved. Also, Cordoba was not the legitimate caliphate

    The Islamic architecture of Granada is simply astonishing….

    There’s no such thing as “islamic architecture”. There is, however, “architecture invading rapacious arabs stole from Persians and Byzantines and claimed as their own”. Is that what you’re referring to?

    PS: if any administrator reads this, please delete my previous post – I screwed up the blockquotes and the end is a pain to read.

    • Budvarakbar says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 7:02 am

      “helped to protect and transmit ancient Greek texts and eventually to propel the European Renaissance.”

      No — a thousand times no — Firstly: protect from what??

      Secondly European Renaissance was a purely native phenom — all across the northern 2/3rds of Europe as they threw off the religious chains

    • Mirren10 says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 1:37 pm

      Angemon, I’ve sent that arse Johnson a letter, using the points you and TheBuffster, and dda, make. Hope you all three don’t mind – you said it much better than I could.

      • Angemon says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 4:54 pm

        Mirren10 posted:

        “Angemon, I’ve sent that arse Johnson a letter, using the points you and TheBuffster, and dda, make. Hope you all three don’t mind – you said it much better than I could.”

        Of course I don’t mind 🙂

  9. judaeogladiator says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 7:15 pm

    Swollen watermelon under trump hair and nothing in between

    • Edwin1683 says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 3:06 am

      You said it, judaeo. It looks like he stuck a mop on his head and then fell into a vat of bleach. Or did he just pull the feathers off a few dozen baby chicks and glue them on his head?

      You can tell just by looking at him that he loves to hear himself talk!

      • judaeogladiator says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 7:46 pm

        And talk and talk signifying nothing. He is the worst type of poof full of sound and fury signifying nothing. You just want to uppercut the traitor.

    • Budvarakbar says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 6:57 am

      Looks to me like he belongs in Holland with some part of his anatomy stuck into and plugging a hole in a dike! On second thought he could probably do that in London

      • Edwin1683 says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 12:57 pm

        LOL Budvarakbar! with just one point where I beg to differ: in London he’s one of the ones making the holes.

  10. TheBuffster says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 7:55 pm

    “It was the intellectual flowering of the Cordoba caliphate that helped to protect and transmit ancient Greek texts and eventually to propel the European Renaissance.”

    I always love it when that nonsense comes up.

    The Byzantine Christians, Greek in background, never lost the literature of Classical culture. The only kudos that the Muslims get is that they didn’t entirely destroy that literature when they conquered the Christians of the Eastern Empire. But if the Muslims had never invaded and conquered in the first place, the Byzantine Christians would have carried on and whatever had been lost in the Barbarian invading and conquering of Western Europe would naturally have been returned in time.

    Also, the Muslim piracy in the Mediterranean had everything to do with the disruption of trade between Western Europe and North Africa and the Eastern Empire, which included the trade in books and information. The Barbarians, many of whom had a great interest in learning the “Roman” ways and the Christian religion, weren’t out to destroy knowledge and impoverish the places they had conquered. They wanted to be part of it. But one thing that impoverishes a culture more than anything is being cut off from its trade with the rest of the civilized world.

    The Muslims saved nothing for Europe, except what the invading Muslims stole from the Christians they conquered in the first place. And the saving was in the form of deigning to not destroy it all.

    If the Muslim conquests had never happened, Europe would have recovered from its other disasters much faster with no help from the followers of the Religion of Peace.

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      Jan 5, 2016 at 11:03 pm

      You wrote – “If the Muslim conquests had never happened, Europe would have recovered from its other disasters much faster with no help from the followers of the Religion of Peace.”

      YES. Exactly.

      perhaps one of our British jihadwatchers could send Mr Johnson two books: Henri Pirenne, “Mohammed and Charlemagne” and Emmet Scott, “Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited”.

      Throw in a copy of Mark Durie’s “The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom” and tell Johnson that right now he is behaving like a Dhimmi and he needs to stop, fast.

      • TheBuffster says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 12:45 am

        I haven’t read Pirenne’s book, but my husband and I have read the Emmet Scott and Mark Durie books. We highly recommend them.

    • Robbie says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 9:06 pm

      You’ve been reading history!!!! So many people in Europe and America fall for the “Islam saved it” nonsense without studying the historical truth. Byzantium hung on to the treasures of Roman and (especially) Greek science, literature and philosophy.And if Islam can be credited with anything in its relentless war on Byzantium, that credit would be that the Islamic conquerors did not completely destroy everything when they over-ran the plague weakened Christian Byzantine Empire.

      Europe has apparently forgotten the centuries when it doggedly fought for its very life against constant Islamic attacks. Infiltrating and destroying from within (as we are seeing now) is a much better Islamic strategy.

  11. Dante says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 8:06 pm

    Hey wait a minute. Boris has 100 million pounds invested in a Saudi Bank. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/04/boris-johnson-urged-disinvest-bank-linked-saudi-regime

    • Mirren10 says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 1:44 pm

      That’s £100 million of **our** money. Disgusting little toad that he is.

  12. Vae Victis says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 8:08 pm

    There is a grand plan for the subjugation of the European peoples. They are to be replaced by sub-human more submissive populations that will follow the will of the ruling elite (Allah). This is all about power, control and privilege for a designated few at the expense of the majority.
    Europe is destined to become a waste land. For a glimpse of the future, look at the Middle East now.
    Everyone should read the history of Muslim conquests. East Europeans, Spaniards, Middle East minorities and Hindu know what the future holds.
    This is racism at its very worst. Racism against the European peoples.

    http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2015/11/12/europes-refugee-crisis-and-the-kalergi-plan-for-white-genocide/

    • Peggy says

      Jan 5, 2016 at 11:20 pm

      This has been obvious to me for a long time now. I keep saying it over and over on this site and others.
      Please don’t stop saying it. One day we may just convince enough people.
      The elites want to rule us and Islam is the perfect vehicle because people police themselves and dish out punishment. Not even Communism was this efficient.

      • Vae Victis says

        Jan 6, 2016 at 2:08 am

        I agree entirely Peggy

        “…people police themselves and dish out punishment”
        As is happening today in Muslim countries, anyone who questions Islam (ruling class) or who wants to leave Islam or even falsely accused by another, can be punished or murdered by anyone in the community with impunity. – even by family members.

        Keep spreading the word. We must educate people about this evil.

  13. خَليفة says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 8:33 pm

    Least anyone forget those Barbary Muslim pirates from not so long ago.
    Would any sane person believe Muslims today wouldn’t do the same if they could.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirates

  14. DarkMath says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 9:02 pm

    People need to realize the reason Muslim Spain was a center of the arts and learning is precisely because it ABANDONED core Islam. Al-Andalus was Islamic in name only. In fact as Al-Andalus collapsed its rulers hired hard core Muslim mercenaries from North Africa who were shocked at how UN-Islamic Al Andalus was: https://youtu.be/PM8HnvuKbAo?t=3579

  15. Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 9:48 pm

    Boris Johnson’s photo looked somehow familiar. And then I remembered — he’s a highlander:
    http://www.balnafettach.com/images/photos/cattle2.jpg
    It’s the same trumpy comb-over.

    • TheBuffster says

      Jan 5, 2016 at 9:53 pm

      OMG!!! That’s hilarious!

  16. Jo says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 10:00 pm

    Boris, go live in the middle east for a while. Every westerner who does that comes back with two convictions. A love of Israelis and a disdain for Islam!

  17. vlparker says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 10:15 pm

    Heartwarming, Boris.

    You really have to wonder about the libtard brain.

  18. mortimer says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 10:42 pm

    Apologists for Islam never tire of referring to the “Golden Age” of tolerance that supposedly characterized seven centuries of Muslim dominated Spain. It’s mythology.

    Boris Johnson hasn’t read any of Islam’s source texts hasn’t a degree in Spanish history, but he is an expert on Islam in Spain. How can that be?

    Did he study the history of Moorish Spain? No? It must be that Johnson has a keen imagination then. He is ‘guessing’ or ‘supposing’ or ‘deducing’ or ‘concluding’ or ‘theorizing’ of ‘feeling strongly’ that Islamic Spain ‘must have been’ a period of ‘moderation’.

    Johnston’s fantasy is preposterous. He could ‘know’ that because, certainly, Johnston is not an expert on Sharia law or Islamic sociology or Spanish history. He is merely guessing about it all purely and simply. Johnston is not very intellectual to do this because it’s so easy to check the facts…not very ethical…certainly unscholarly.

    In fact, Islamic Spain, specifically Cordoba, on closer inspection was not what has been assumed. The Firstly, the entire culture was based on slavery. Secondly, the Muslim intellectuals of the period were denounced as heretics by other Muslims, thereby justifying later that they be overthrown. Competing Muslims eventually (as they also do) began to squabble among themselves. Cordoba was totally destroyed and sacked not by the “barbarian Christians” attacking from the North, but by the fanatical Muslim Berber in 1010. They left hardly a stone standing.

    Boris Johnston’s unconscionable distortion of history is a typical political manipulation that we expect from second rate politicians, but not from the mayor of London. It’s appalling.

    Furthermore, the myth of ‘tolerant Islamic Spain’ is exploded by the physician Maimonides who was a witness and victim of Medieval Spain.

    “NO NATION has ever done MORE HARM to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have…. We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, their absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear…. We have done as our sages of blessed memory have instructed us, bearing the lies and absurdities of Ishmael…. In spite of all this, we are not spared from the FEROCITY OF THEIR WICKEDNESS and their OUTBURSTS AT ANY TIME. On the contrary, the more we suffer and choose to CONCILATE them, the more they choose to act BELLIGERENTLY toward us…” – Maimonides

    Physician Maimonides accurately described the ‘Islamic disease’ we see today…it is IDENTICAL!

    His conclusion: APPEASEMENT OF MUSLIMS DOESN’T WORK.

    • Kepha says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 8:44 am

      So wrote the refugee physician to the Muslim ruler of Egypt. I’ve often suspected that one reason why the Moreh Nebukim (Guide for the Perplexed) is such a difficult read (The Guide that makes you Perplexed) is because Maimonides had to be very careful about what he wrote in a Muslim setting and minces his way around certain things–especially since he wrote in Arabic

  19. sidney penny says

    Jan 5, 2016 at 11:20 pm

    “Amid dystopic visions of an Islamic Europe, remember the Alhambra,” by Boris Johnson, Telegraph, January 3, 2016:

    Yes Boris Johnson – “remember the Alhambra”

    ” structure that Islam adapted to their use as a mosque in the 8th century AD.”

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Origin-Mosque-Cordoba-Andalusia/dp/0595423256

    The Origin of the Mosque of Cordoba: Secrets of Andalusia [Marvin Mills] . Insights into the famous Alhambra in Granada and Madina Azahara.

    Marvin Mills is an architect, architectural historian and professor of history of Architecture.

    This book represents twenty years of thought and research on perhaps the greatest Islamic monument in Spain- the Mosque of Cordoba. The unfolding of the mystery of its origin goes back to Atlantis when an era of world civilization made possible the birth of a community called Tartessos in Andalusia.

    This sophisticated society welcomed the trading Phoenicians in the 12th century BC. Together they designed and built essentially the structure that Islam adapted to their use as a mosque in the 8th century AD.

    But new evidence gathered by the architect, Marvin Mills, fails to support this contention as we examine the architecture and history of the building and realize that another provenance is indicated. Even the orientation of he mosque is suspect as it fails to orient to Mecca. And Carbon-14 dating indicates a much older attribution.

    Revelations such as these will make it impossible to continue as usual in the progress of the field of Spanish architecture, Phoenicians in the West, the reality of Atlantis without dealing with this new approach. Insights into the famous Alhambra in Granada and Madina Azahara, the palace-city outside of Cordoba, add to the new perspective by challenging their origins as well.

    http://marvinhmills.com/pdf/originofmosqueofcordoba.pdf

    The Origins of the Mosque of Cordoba

    Secret of Andalusia

    The Alhambra

    150 pages by Marvin Mills November 2006

    Enjoy this Boris Johnson

  20. Baucent says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 1:40 am

    “But what you cannot deny is the scale of the Muslim achievement. It was the intellectual flowering of the Cordoba caliphate that helped to protect and transmit ancient Greek texts and eventually to propel the European Renaissance. The Islamic architecture of Granada is simply astonishing…”

    The only thing astonishing is Johnson’s ignorance of history. He is aping a popular myth unfounded in fact. As for that Islamic architecture, the Christian Byzantines provided the architects and craftsmen and that includes that great Islamic treasure the “Dome of the Rock”.

  21. Rob says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 1:48 am

    So this is what it comes down to:
    After Magna Carta, after the Enlightenment, after the Reformation, after the Battle of Britain, after Dunkirk and after Churchill, some woolly-headed ninny says a Muslim takeover is inevitable.
    Muslims invaded North Africa which was highly developed, mainly Christian and certainly not Arab.
    They inherited the Greek and Roman cultures. What they brought was the camel.
    Hell the last two Pharaohic dynasties of Egypt were Greek families.

  22. Michael Warden says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 2:43 am

    Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is well known in England for being a complete buffoon. He was born in New York and had a Turkish grandfather. His father was Stanley Johnson. Stanley’s father, Johnny Johnson, had been born Osman Kemal in Bournemouth to a half-English and half-Swiss mother, Winifred. Johnny’s father, Ali Kemal Bey, was a Turkish journalist who had been killed for his anti-Nationalist sympathies during the Turkish War of Independence. After Winifred died shortly after childbirth, Osman was orphaned, and moved in with his English maternal grandmother, where he was renamed Wilfred “Johnny” Johnson and rejected his Turkish heritage. Stanley’s mother, Irène Johnson (née Williams) was half-English and half-French, having been the illegitimate granddaughter of Prince Paul of Württemberg and through him a descendant of King George II of Great Britain. Via this royal connection, Boris is related to most of the royal families of Europe, and is an eighth cousin of British Prime Minister David Cameron.

    • Kepha says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 8:45 am

      That interesting genealogy still fails to save Johnson from being a blithering ijjit.

  23. Sh. N. says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 4:15 am

    ” Muslims made a great civilization in Europe once ”
    Exactly how ?
    Why are you so naive ?
    They just slaughtered !
    They just raped !
    Are buildings built by Arab architects ?
    We’re Muslim scientists Arab ?
    Don’t misunderstand it; their names were Arabic.
    They were all non-Arabs who their fathers or themselves had no way to live but converting to Islam.
    Most of Muslim scientists were from other countries which were being defeated and submitted. …
    Except for Iran, Turkey and … , they are all called Arab countries.
    Some people say ” Middle Easterns are firey.” You know why ? That’s because of our genome is a mixture of our non-Arab foremothers and our Arab – rapist fathers.
    Don’t let the historians write this story again. This time for Europe.

  24. Charli Main says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 4:57 am

    .” But “what you cannot deny is the scale of the Muslim achievement.”
    Astounding ignorance of the historical facts.
    The ” moors ” that invaded Spain were a bunch of ignorant goat herders living in mud huts and tents. When they arrived in Spain they found a flourishing Romano-Iberian and Visigoth culture and a plethora of religious buildings, centres of learning and medicine, which immediately became ” Islamic” and ” their achievements”.
    PS Boris Johnson´s Muslim ancestors probably built the Hagia Sophia as well !!!!!

  25. dumbledoresarmy says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 5:50 am

    Even if the Muslims *had* built some nice buildings, so what? It wouldn’t make Muslim conquests any less brutal and cruel nor any less horrible for their Dhimmi victims or for all the girls (many of them mere children) who were dragged off to the harems and subjected to endless rape that destroyed their bodies and their minds (we don’t hear about all the ones who were murdered – tortured to death in inventive ways, once their lords and masters got tired of them – or who went insane, or killed themselves). Even if the Muslims *had* had cool science and inventions – which they *didn’t* – NOTHING justifies all the other sh*t.

    What Mr Johnson is saying is no different from someone saying that it wouldn’t have been so bad if the Third Reich *had* conquered Russia and all of the West, because Autobahns.

  26. salim says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 5:51 am

    First time I heard about this guy was after the 7/7 attacks on London. He wrote an article that impressed me and I thought “this man would make a good leader”. He became the London Mayor and since then he did not say anything sensible.

  27. Mark says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 6:46 am

    … And Hitler made some nice stadiums and buildings. Maybe of we just let him take over ask he would have done odd build some nice buildings here too?

    Get real

    • Johnny Rogers says

      Jan 7, 2016 at 1:30 am

      Worried about London or Coventry Blitz? Nazi Germany gave us Volkswagen!

  28. jewdog says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 7:36 am

    I’ve read the biography of Maimonides and there is no doubt that despite second class citizenship, occasional pogroms and Islamic extremism similar to what we have today, Islamic culture was less extremist and intolerant than today. When Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews, the Turkish Ottoman Sultan Bezalel offered them refuge. Also, Saladin invited the Jews to settle in Jerusalem, and Jews and Muslims fought side by side against the Crusaders. The degeneracy of Islamic culture doubtless has many causes, one primary one being the spread of literacy and availability of the Islamic texts in modern times (as Raymond Ibrahim has pointed out), as well as proselytizing by the Saudis as funded by their oil wealth. In any case, Alhambra puffery is disingenuous and irrelevant to the situation today.

    • eduardo odraude says

      Jan 6, 2016 at 9:35 am

      As to much of what happened and why in the medieval period, that is highly debatable. Such knowledge as historians possess is not sufficient to demonstrate that the average medieval Muslim society was more tolerant than the average medieval Christian society. It may or may not have been so.

      We are on much surer ground based on the evidence of the present, from which we can conclude that the Bible over the long run tends toward societies in which religion is independent from the state, universal human rights are enshrined, and increasingly free social order arises, while the Islamic core texts over the long run lead to increasingly totalitarian social order. That conclusion about Islam is supported by the dovetailing of three items: human rights reports on Islamic nations, public opinion polls of Muslims, and the core Islamic texts themselves, .

    • Sheik yer mami says

      Jan 7, 2016 at 3:01 am

      You know about the conditions to get asylum from the Mohammedans?

      There is a Qur’an verse saying they should only be given asylum to “hear the word of allah”. After that, all bets are off.

  29. eduardo odraude says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 8:50 am

    I believe Mark Durie points out there would have been no need for Muslims to “save” Greek works if the Muslims had not conquered Greek Christendom. It hardly makes sense to give Islam credit for saving what needed no saving until Islamic conquerors swallowed it.

    As Emmet Scott has argued, the Germans who sacked Rome did not end classical civilization, but rather adopted it and kept it going. It was the Muslim takeover of the most powerful parts of Christian classical civilization, cutting Europe off from Constantinople and the Christian Middle East, and from the papyrus of Egypt, that caused Europe to fall into the Dark Ages.

  30. Mark says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 9:26 am

    This brain dead mayor needs to watch the following video, https://youtu.be/t_Qpy0mXg8Y Please view share and give this video a thumbs up to support it.

  31. Hummer says

    Jan 6, 2016 at 6:57 pm

    What has happened to the UK and why. Where are they digging up their so called leaders from. I have an “educated” by experience hunch it has to do with their elitist educations where they were taught what to believe and avoid learning to think for themselves-no critical analysis. Certainly that’s what wrong in the USA.

  32. Sheik yer mami says

    Jan 7, 2016 at 2:57 am

    The Alhambra is a fort, nothing else. There is nothing distinctly Arabic or Islamic about it. I’ve been there, for the second time, last March. To take a real close look, to see if I missed something the first time ’round. No, it is a fort. Its big, and it was never anything else. We know that the Mohammedans used to for their slave raids, and that the slaves were brought there, to be bought and sold to the harems of North Africa and elsewhere. The “Cordoba Mosque”, for those who have eyes to see, is built on columns of a Roman temple. Over this temple, at one time or other, they built a cathedral. And then the Mohammedans came, and turned it into a mosque. Strangely, there is no mosque anywhere in the world that resembles that one; it is distinctly Spanish, and so you wonder why it is unique and why there are not more of the same in Africa or Arabia that look just like it. Similar to the claptrap they peddle about the guitar and the Flamenco, they’ll say its ‘Arabic’, or “Islamic’. But there is no Arab Muslim who plays the guitar and sings the mesmerising songs like the Spanish do; and they never will. Boris Johnson is an airhead and a fraud. What a stupid man!

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