I received an email from “Stan,” who wrote to respond to my article “Donald Trump and Counter-Jihad.” Through Google I discovered that Stan is an Ivy-League-educated PhD. “Counter-jihadists,” Stan wrote, “deny that Islam was indeed more tolerant from the end of the 11th century down to the 17th.” Catholic Church teaching during that period “was far worse than dhimmitude … Jews and Christians could practice their religions … [There were] few forced conversions or massacres.” Catholic Spain expelled Jews who fled to Muslim territory. I would recognize these facts, Stan kindly advised me, “If you pick up a history book.” “No historian would consult with Robert Spencer,” as I do, Stan sniffed. Stan listed sixteen books addressing Christian anti-Semitism. If I had any “interest in the subject,” I would read them. Stan mentioned the 1209-1229 Catholic Crusade against Albigensians. “Would you rather have been an Albigensian in southern France or in Constantinople?” Please note: my article about Donald Trump never mentions Jews, Catholics, or Albigensians.
Counter-jihadis regularly confront variations of this: “Any intolerance that Islam shows today is the result of historical forces. Violence and intolerance are not inherent in Islam. Terrorism is caused by European colonialism, the recognition of the state of Israel, America’s support for dictators, and American wars-for-oil. In the past, Christianity was a violent, intolerant religion. The passage of time reformed Christianity; in the same way the passage of time will reform Islam.”
How can a counter-jihadi respond?
- Differentiate between behaviors inspired by temporary historical circumstance and behavior inspired by canonical documents.
- Recognize that most conventionally educated Westerners believe extravagant falsehoods and aren’t aware of important truths.
- Be aware of events outside of Western Europe and North America.
Differentiate between behaviors inspired by temporary historical circumstance and behavior inspired by canonical documents.
Scholars who describe medieval, Muslim Spain as relatively better for Jews than medieval, Christian Europe acknowledge that differences were inspired by temporary historical circumstance and not canonical scripture. Given that medieval socioeconomic conditions no longer exist, but canonical scriptures are still considered divine revelations, we should not expect medieval Muslim tolerance of Jews, or medieval Christian persecution of Jews, to recur. We should, rather, look to canonical scripture as inspiration for behavior.
Mohammed was an Arab, living in Arabia, among Arab Pagans, Jews, and Christians. Mohammed is al-Insan al-Kamil, the perfect human, worthy of emulation. Hostility to Jews is overt in the Koran, the hadith, and the biography of Mohammed. See, for example, here, here, here, and here. Mohammed wiped out a Jewish tribe. Mohammed inspected Jewish boys to determine if they had pubic hair as a precursor to slaughter. Mohammed supervised the torture-murder of Kinana, to rob him of gold and take his wife. Mohammed expelled Christians and Jews from the Arabian Peninsula, where they cannot live to this day. Bukhari 1:24 reports that Allah ordered Mohammed to make war on all mankind till Islam dominates the planet.
As part of daily prayer, Muslims repeat seventeen times a day that Jews anger God. Muslims commonly believe that the Koran is flawless, and that the Bible is corrupt. Merely possessing a Bible in Saudi Arabia is cause for imprisonment and torture.
In short, hostility to Jews is inextricable from Mohammed’s biography, the Koran, the hadith, and mandated daily Muslim prayer. Muslims have long been inspired by the ostensibly divine Koran to do what the Koran tells them to do: hate, murder, torture, steal, and rape.
Jesus, on the other hand, was a Jew. He lived in Israel, the Jewish homeland. Jesus was knowledgeable about and respectful of Jewish scripture. Jesus’ disciples and the authors of the New Testament were Jews. Christians accept Jewish scriptures as divinely inspired. Jesus declared that salvation is from the Jews. God continued to love the Jews and his promises to them are irrevocable. The Vatican cites these scriptures.
The harsh criticisms of some, not all, Jews in the New Testament were written by Jews as part of Jewish tradition. The most severe passages are less severe than those in the Torah. Compare Matthew 23, where Jesus excoriates the Pharisees for straining on a gnat and choking on a camel, to Exodus 32, where God orders Jews, immediately, to massacre thousands of their own “brothers, friends, and neighbors” for worshipping a golden calf.
Jesus specifically taught that his disciples were not to interfere with free will. If people chose not to be Christians, Jesus said, just move on. Jesus never ordered his disciples to make converts by force, or to oppress nonbelievers. In contradistinction to Bukhari 1:24, Koran 66:9, Koran 5:51 and many similar verses, Jesus, in the Good Samaritan episode, counsels his followers to treat all humanity, not just fellow believers, with compassion.
Spreading the faith by military conquest was not part of foundational Christianity; for its first three hundred years, Christianity was an outlawed and persecuted faith. The second century Greek Pagan Celsus described early Christianity as a marginal “religion of women, children and slaves.” Every time a Christian violates a Jew or anyone else, that Christian violates his own professed belief system.
When Christians committed crimes against Jews, other Christians protested and attempted to intervene. During the medieval Rhineland Massacres of the Crusades, Catholic bishops attempted to protect Jews. Popes repeatedly condemned blood libel. When Jews were expelled from Western Europe, they were invited into Catholic Poland and protected by the 1264 Statute of Kalisz and the 1573 Warsaw Confederation.
Confession and repentance are Christian rituals and virtues. Jesus taught his followers to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Christians have confessed their sins against Jews, and resolved to improve. This emphasis on confession and repentance is not found in Islam. Turkey, for example, prosecuted Orhan Pamuk, its own Nobel-Prize-winning writer, for merely mentioning the Armenian Genocide.
Why, then, have Christians committed horrible crimes against Jews? Why did Christians, including priests, twist the original Christian message into one of hatred against Jews? And why have Muslim states tolerated Jews?
One ray of light into this complicated topic is Edna Bonacich’s work on middleman minorities. Jews in Europe occupied a particular socioeconomic niche. Jews were middlemen. Medieval Christians and Medieval Muslims viewed middlemen differently. That difference, not scripture, affected Jewish lives differently in medieval Christian and medieval Muslim countries.
Mark R. Cohen, Princeton University professor emeritus, is the author of Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages, a book frequently cited to support the “Islam was more tolerant” generalization.
In his 1986 Jerusalem Quarterly article “Islam and the Jews: Myth, Counter-Myth, History,” Cohen acknowledges that Islam contains a “fundamental theological hostility towards the religion of Judaism … and towards Jews, stigmatized … as contemptible infidels.” Various historical and socioeconomic factors trumped Islam’s “fundamental theological hostility.” One of those factors was how Muslims viewed middlemen.
Mohammed was a merchant. He was born and lived most of his life in Mecca, a trading center. “Islam was born with a positive attitude towards commerce … Mohammed’s own life and … the Koran and other holy literature lent strong support to the mercantile life … Since many jurists in the early Islamic period were themselves merchants, Islamic law was shaped to meet the needs of a mercantile economy.” In the Muslim world, both Jews and Muslims were both moneylenders.
Medieval Christian Europeans were mostly peasants – poor people who valued rootedness, labor, and land. Jesus was a carpenter who preached the virtue of poverty. He lived in Galilee, a region of country bumpkins. Markets, money, travel and banks were underdeveloped in much of medieval Europe. Jews traveled, handled money, and appeared not to labor, as peasants understood labor. The Jew as merchant and moneylender was more troubling to economically naïve European Christians than to more economically sophisticated Middle Eastern Muslims.
Further, Cohen points out, Jews in medieval Europe were not just economically and religiously alien, they were ethnically and geographically alien. Jews were comparatively familiar to Middle Eastern Muslims – they came from the same geographic region, they spoke a language related to Arabic, similarly written right to left, and they shared a similar physical appearance.
Cohen cites another flashpoint for Jews living in Christian lands. Christianity separates church and state. This separation is rooted in Jesus’ saying, “Render unto Cesar what is Cesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” Jews had to develop relationships with both secular and religious authorities. One might be friendly while the other might not be. Church and state might be in competition. The Jew was often stuck in the middle of that often violent competition.
In Islam, there is no separation of church and state. Jews had to cultivate fewer powers, and they did not have to worry about a non-existent competition between centers of power. Cohen says that it is this separation of church and state in Christianity, and the lack of same in Islam, that explains why, during the medieval period, Jews were sometimes expelled from Christian nations, but not from Muslim ones.
Another factor Cohen cites for Jews’ position in Islam. “In Europe, the Jews nurtured a pronounced hatred for Christians, whom they considered to be idolaters subject to the anti-pagan discriminatory provisions of the ancient Mishnah … the Jews of Islam had a markedly different attitude towards” Islam. There was a “tolerant Jewish view of Islam.”
In 2016, Dario Fernandez-Morera published The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain. In 2013 he argued in Comparative Civilizations Review that Muslims favored Jews in Spain for tactical reasons. Visigoths, the rulers in Spain before the Muslim Conquest, discriminated against Jews. When Muslims invaded, significant numbers of Jews aided the Muslims as a way to improve their own lot. Muslims, he said, regarded Jews as “servants,” not as friends, and thus avoided violating the Koran’s admonition not to take Jews as friends. Muslim rulers feared betrayal from other Muslims. Elevating Jews to powerful positions protected the ruler’s back. A Jew, as a member of a hated minority, could never usurp a Muslim.
Fernandez-Morera cautions contemporary Jews against romanticizing their forebears’ lives in Muslim Spain. Islamic law mandated that Jews had to pay the jizya, could not build synagogues, had to keep their buildings shorter than Muslims’ buildings, could not carry weapons or ride horses, and had to show deference to Muslims, including by wearing distinctive clothing. They could not testify in court against a Muslim. There were harsher court sentences for Jews than for Muslims. Jews could not criticize Islam. Capital punishment was prescribed for a Jewish man who had sex with a Muslim woman. (Compare this to the medieval Polish legend of Catholic King Casimir the Great and his Jewish companion, Esterka.) Even if these mandates were not always followed, Cohen writes, the “themes of segregation and humiliation” in “Islamic sources … rival if not exceed … the Christian West.” Canonical Islamic prescriptions communicated to Jews their subordinate status and kept them in their place.
Fernandez-Morera quotes a satirical poem that refers to Jews as “apes,” as does the Koran. Jews, the Muslim poet says, should be “the lowest of the low, roaming among us, with their little bags, with contempt, degradation and scorn as their lot, scrambling in the dunghills for colored rags, to shroud their dead for burial … hasten to slaughter…do not consider it a breach of faith to kill them.”
Jews’ middleman minority status and their alignment, however tactical and temporary, with Muslims, may have contributed to Christian antisemitism. A 1986 University of Notre Dame Press book, The Jew as Ally of the Muslim: Medieval Roots of Anti-Semitism, addresses a Europe-wide association, by Christians, of Jews with feared Muslims. Daniel Pipes’ mostly positive review of the book, that appeared first in Commentary, can be viewed here.
In any case, the twenty-first century understanding of the word “tolerance” should not be applied to Muslim Spain. A naive person might envision Jews and Muslims in Al-Andalus sipping cappuccinos and discussing philosophy while eating rainbow cake celebrating same-sex weddings and watching their daughters play on the boys’ soccer team. “Tolerance” meant something very different in medieval Muslim Spain than it means in 2016.
Suppose someone told a black person that the antebellum South was a “tolerant” place because Jews were allowed to practice their religion without impediment. My reaction to discussion of Muslim Spain as “tolerant” is similar to that black person’s. Muslim Spain relied on slave labor. Its slaves were my forebears, Slavs. The word “Saqaliba,” derived from “Slav,” occurs in Arabic in reference to Slavic slaves and to eunuchs. In 961, there were 13,750 Saqaliba eunuchs in Cordoba alone. Jews were often the slave traders who transported Slavic slaves to Muslim Spain. Saint Adalbert’s attempt to liberate Slavs from Jewish slave traders is depicted on the bronze, twelfth-century Gniezno doors. Adalbert was later murdered by European Pagans. Christians were martyred by Pagans in Europe right up to the fourteenth century. Applying twenty-first century definitions of “tolerance” and twenty-first century conceptions of what it means to be a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian to this medieval narrative can only cause complete misunderstanding. Christians were not all-powerful in medieval Europe but were often quite vulnerable. Jews were not always helpless; some exercised the power that all slave-traders do. “Tolerant” Muslims were enjoying sexual access to female and castrated male slaves, not serving up rainbow cake.
Stan asked if I would rather be an Albigensian in Turkey or in France. I’ve traveled in Turkey and I loved it. Even so, I’d rather not live as a female Albigensian or a female anything else in any Muslim country.
When Tariq ibn Ziyad invaded Spain in 711, he delivered a “sermon” promising his jihadis Christian women to rape: “In this country there are a large number of ravishingly beautiful Greek maidens, their graceful forms are draped in sumptuous gowns on which gleam pearls, coral, and purest gold.” Muslim chronicler Ibn al-Athir describes another Muslim warrior in Spain, who “traversed this land in every direction, raping women;” another “carried off women.” Yes, violation of women occurs in all wars, fought by men of every religion. Islam, though, sanctions rape in war, rape that Muslim chroniclers openly celebrate.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a million Jews lived in Muslim countries. Nine and a half million Jews lived in Europe. This was 57% of the Jews in the world. During the twentieth century, the Jewish population of the US rose from one to six million, and the Jewish population of Muslim countries shrank to near zero. Jews voted with their feet.
Jews living in Christian lands gave the world Einstein, Marx, Freud, Franz Boas, Helena Rubinstein, Artur Rubenstein, Baal Shem Tov, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bruno Szulc, Adam Michnik, Disraeli, Gustav Mahler, Franz Kafka, “The Jews who invented Hollywood” and the bulk of Nobel Prizes won by Jews. This is a very different contribution to civilization than the fruits of the brand of “tolerance” practiced in Muslim Spain.
Finally, no generalization about tolerance cancels out Muslim Spain’s less tolerant moments. There is a widespread belief that Maimonides and his family feigned a conversion to Islam in order to survive persecution. Maimonides wrote in a letter that “On account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael who persecute us severely, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us … No nation has ever done more harm to Israel. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us.” And one must also remember events like the Grenada Massacre of 1066, during which a Muslim mob crucified Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and murdered many Jews.
Recognize that most conventionally educated Westerners believe extravagant falsehoods and aren’t aware of important truths.
My World History is a widely used Pearson textbook. It informs American schoolchildren that Mohammed respected Judaism and Christianity, Jews and Christians in Muslim lands could practice their religion freely, the Koran has never been changed, and religious faith helped Islam spread peacefully. “Islam offered followers a direct path to God and salvation.” And oh, yes – Islam improved conditions for women.
Even atheists need to understand politicization and bias in discussion of religion. Protestant England and Catholic Spain fought for world domination. Anti-Catholic propaganda played a role in that struggle. Much of what conventionally educated Americans think they know about Catholicism, and, by extension, Christianity, is simply wrong. Myths about Christianity are used to warp discussion of Islam.
Here’s an example. Suppose you criticize gender apartheid in Islam. An Islam-apologist hits back with “common knowledge” about misogyny in the Catholic Church.
Everybody knows that the witch craze of the Middle Ages was promulgated by the all-powerful, misogynist Catholic male clergy against goddess-worshipping healing women, nine million of whom died before secularization stopped the slaughter. You can learn this history in The Burning Times a documentary funded by a Western government. You can learn this history from bestselling author Barbara Ehrenreich, or NPR journalist Margot Adler.
Here’s the problem. Every “fact” in the above sentence is false. The witch craze took place during the Early Modern Period and the Enlightenment, after the Catholic Church lost much of its authority. During the Middle Ages the Catholic Church adamantly condemned witch hunting. Accusers were often women themselves, and lay women insisted that clerics join in. Victims were not healers and they didn’t worship the goddess; they were simply poor women past the age of fertility during the hungry times of the wars of the Reformation, the Little Ice Age, chaotic periods of confused authority, and skyrocketing food prices. Neither secularization nor science stopped the craze. It stopped largely because jurists stopped believing that they could prove accusations in a trial. Not nine million, but between forty and sixty thousand people were killed, over the course of two hundred years. Enlightened, anti-Christian, Revolutionary France managed to murder that many people in the eleven months of the Reign of Terror. Two Catholic priests – Friedrich Spee and Alonso de Salazar Frías – and believe it or not, the Spanish Inquisition – were key in stopping the witch craze.
Prominent atheists Steven Pinker and Michael Shermer are both PhDs and highly respected public intellectuals. Both Pinker and Shermer champion truth, not convenient propaganda, above all. Both Pinker’s 2012 The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined and Shermer’s 2015 The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People tell the same just-so story about a Catholic priest, Friedrich Spee, who was an eager participant in witch trials until an enlightened secular ruler stopped him and changed history.
There’s a problem with this anecdote. It is extravagantly false. There is not a shred of evidence to support it; Spee’s biographer, Ronald Modras, condemns it. In fact Father Friedrich Spee was a courageous hero who put his own life in danger by taking a stance against the witch craze. He did so because of his Catholic faith. His book, Cautio Criminalis, helped end witch trials and torture used to extract confessions.
The Catholic Church really wasn’t the force behind the witch craze. Understanding of the Inquisition needs to be completely revised. The Crusades, too, have been misunderstood, and need to be reexamined.
Bernard Lewis has warned against the uncritical dissemination of convenient myths. In his 2001 book, Islam in History: Ideas, People, and Events in the Middle East, Lewis wrote,
“The broad outlines of the story, in the simplified and dramatized form in which great historic events so often reach the popular imagination, were well defined. The Jew has flourished in Muslim Spain, had been driven from Christian Spain, and has found a refuge in Muslim Turkey. The reality was of course more complex, less idyllic, less one-sided. There had been times of persecution under the Muslims and times of prosperity under Christian rule in Spain – and many Christian states … had given shelter to the Spanish Jewish refugees … the golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam. The myth was invented by Jews in nineteenth-century Europe as a reproach to Christians – and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews.”
Mark R. Cohen echoes Lewis’ warning. “The Jewish-Islamic interfaith utopia” “a golden age of toleration, of political achievement, and of remarkably integrated cultural efflorescence” is a “myth invented by nineteenth-century European Jewish intellectuals frustrated by the tortuously slow progress of their own integration into gentile society.” It was the companion to another myth, in “which Jewish life in medieval Christian Europe was one long chain of suffering.”
The sloppy, popular insistence that Nazism = Christianity is one of the most depressing examples of smart people repeating empty myths for political reasons. In 2009, British celebrity Stephen Fry suggested that Polish Catholics were responsible for Auschwitz. The otherwise respectable Bernard Lewis writes in his Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice, “There is nothing in Islamic history to parallel … the Nazi Holocaust.”
One wishes that humanity had produced only one genocidal monster like Hitler. Tamerlane (1370–1405), “The Sword of Islam,” killed a larger percentage of the world’s population than that killed by Hitler or Stalin. He was famous for his signature pyramids of human heads. In his jihad against Hindus, he slaughtered a hundred thousand captive Indians. He buried four thousand Armenian Christians alive. He massacred Assyrian Christians; in the twentieth century, their descendants would be massacred by Muslims in the Assyrian Genocide, an event related to the Armenian Genocide. Historian Ashirbadi Lal Srivastava reports that Tamerlane left “pestilence caused by the pollution of the air and water by thousands of uncared-for dead bodies … for two months not a bird moved wing in Delhi.”
Historian Rene Grousset reports that Tamerlane repeatedly cited Islam as his inspiration. “It is to the Koran to which he continually appeals.” In the Malfuzat-i-Timuri, Tamerlane is quoted as saying that he opened the Koran at random to seek guidance and he found 66:9. While vanishingly few parents name their baby “Hitler,” Muslim parents today – including Zubeidat Tsarnaev – name their children after this murderous monster. There are heroic statues of Tamerlane in Muslim countries; see here and here.
One of the books Stan recommended is Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History, by James Carroll, a former Catholic priest. Carroll misleads readers about the deaths of Catholic Poles under Nazism. He does so because he wants to emphasize how rotten Catholics have been to Jews. That Nazis murdered and tortured Polish Catholics doesn’t fit neatly into Carroll’s narrative. Carroll reports that 150 Catholic Poles died at Auschwitz. In fact, c. 140,000 Poles were imprisoned in Auschwitz, of whom half were killed.
Critics of Christianity desperately want Nazism to be Christianity, or to be Christianity’s spawn. As real historians know, Nazism’s goal was to eradicate Christianity. In their own documents, Nazis cite neo-paganism, nationalism, and scientism as inspirations. In speeches justifying the shooting of “thousands of leading Poles” and the enslavement and mass murder of Czechs and Russians, SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler did not cite Christianity as inspiration. He cited nationalism and science. He and his men were wiping out “bacteria.” Christianity, to Himmler, was “the greatest of plagues.”
Top Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg hated Christianity. He championed – wait for it – the very heretics Stan also championed – the Albigensians. Albigensians, Rosenberg wrote, “moved me deeply.” Their “will and character … [were] essentially West Gothic … They rejected the Old Testament, avoided the use of any and all Jewish names … even the name of Mary. The crucifix to them appeared an unworthy symbol.”
Consider: every sadistic, dehumanizing crime – short of genocide – that Nazis committed against Jews, they also committed against largely Catholic Romani, aka Gypsies, and Catholic Poles. Auschwitz was built for, and for the first 18 months of its existence inhabited by, Poles. Poles were mowed down by Einsatzgruppen. Rudolf Spanner manufactured soap from Polish corpses. Poles were subjected to medical experimentation. Polish priests were singled out for mass murder. Dachau was the “largest monastery in Germany.” Even as Nazis were losing World War II, they committed the systematic destruction of Warsaw, as part of a cultural genocide. Zyklon B was first used to mass murder Soviet POWs. Handicapped Germans, not Jews, were the first and last victims of Nazi mass murder. Of Poles, Hitler stated, “I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness … with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language.”
Mentioning what the Nazis did to the Poles, to the Gypsies, to the handicapped and to Soviet POWs is not to diminish the unique Holocaust of the Jews. I mention this horrific record to emphasize why the popular misconception of “Nazism = Christianity” or “Christianity produced Hitler” “does not withstand examination.
Finally, it must be mentioned, that it was largely Christians, including my father, who saw heavy combat in World War II, who defeated Hitler, de-Nazified Germany, and utterly revile Nazism.
In September, 2016, Richard Weikart will publish Hitler’s Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich. Weikart, author of Hitler’s Ethic, will take on the popular misconception that Hitler was a Christian, or was inspired by Christian ideas.
Be aware of events outside of Western Europe and North America.
Stan insisted that Islam was tolerant when Christianity was not. Stan specified the years between 1000 and 1599. To support this generalization, Stan cited Spain.
During the period Stan specified, Islam was driving into all but extinction the Zoroastrians of Persia. Citing ancient accounts, Fariborz Rahnamoon claims that Arab invaders festooned 24 miles of road with the bodies of hanging Persians. Arabs ran mills with the blood of slaughtered Zoroastrians. Zoroastrian scholars were murdered and libraries burned. Sultan Husayn (1668-1726) ordered the forced conversion of Zoroastrians; he slaughtered those who did not accept Islam. An English traveler’s account describes the plight of the few surviving Zoroastrians in 1818: “They have nowhere to look for help and know no place to go where they would be free. They have made the desert their home and live with all the hardship that comes with it, just to preserve their religion in their ancient country. During the onslaught of conversion to Islam, some had taken to the mountain and others had fled to the bordering lands of India.” The world’s tiny remaining population of Zoroastrians live in India today.
During Islam’s allegedly tolerant medieval period, Islam was persecuting the Christians of Egypt. In Cairo, in 1343, Muslims accused Christians of being arsonists. Christians “were seized in the street, burned or slaughtered by the mob as it left the mosques. Anti-Christian violence raged in the main towns. To enable the Christians to go out into the streets, Jews would sometimes lend them their distinctive yellow turban,” writes Bat Ye’or.
Historian Philip Jenkins writes that in 1354, “Mobs demanded that Christians and Jews recite the Muslim profession of faith upon threat of being burned alive.” Jenkins quotes a contemporary account by Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi:
“Many reports came from both Upper and Lower Egypt of Copts being converted to Islam, frequenting mosques and memorizing the Quran … In all the provinces of Egypt, both north and south, no church remained that had not been razed; on many of those sites, mosques were constructed. For when the Christians’ affliction grew great and their incomes small, they decided to embrace Islam. Thus Islam spread among the Christians of Egypt and in the town of Qalyub alone 450 persons were converted to Islam in a single day … this was a momentous event in Egyptian history.”
More on Islam’s “tolerant” medieval period. In Jerusalem, in 1009 AD, Islam razed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection. In Egypt, in 1193, Al-Malik Al-Aziz Osman bin Salahadin Yusuf attempted to tear down the pyramids.
Also during Islam’s “tolerant” period: Islam was savaging the Balkans, laying seeds for killing and hatred that would last for hundreds of years. Islam was taking millions of Poles and other Slavs slaves. The Islamic Slave Trade was dwarfing the Atlantic Slave Trade. And the Islamic Conquest of India would inspire a profoundly tragic quote from historian Will Durant, a man who had confronted much human misery:
“The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.” All this and more would take place during a period that Stan called a period of Islamic “tolerance.”
Danusha Goska is the author of Save Send Delete.

Angemon says
Great article.
jihad3tracker says
A DEEP WELCOME TO DANUSHKA GOSKA, at 8:35 PM Eastern US time —
I do not know even the narrowest slice of bio about you personally, and not having an opportunity yet to check Jihad Watch’s search box for such info, but if Robert Spencer puts up an REMARKABLY LONG COMPREHENSIVE article here under your authorship, IMHO that establishes solid credentials as a counter-jihadist.
.
heidi says
Danushka slams Trump very eloquently, calls him “xenophobic” and a “buffoon”,“Donald Trump and Counter-Jihad.” refers to Trump supporters as stupid, and yet besides write about the problems of Islamism, what has she done to try to end the problem? Trump is the only leader recommending even a temporary ban on unvetted muslims, and she writes an article belittling him? does make one wonder whether perhaps her career would suffer if Trump were to get elected?
Myrtle says
Most Christians will tell you that you have the right , given by our GOD to worship any God that you choose. GOD forces nobody to follow HIM. If you want loose from HIM HE will let you loose, but you are no longer HIS. HE will bless HIS own and care for us, even though many have suffered and died for HIM, because of those following other gods hate our GOD and demand the following of their god. Our GOD is a GOD OF LOVE, the same cannot be said of other gods, fake gods, like Satan.
old white guy says
there are too many scholars and not enough wisdom. Christians do not go around killing non-Christians because they do not believe in or follow Christ. one could not call many of the church’s actions Christian and I would hesitate to call Christian many who profess to be Christian.
freewoman says
indeed, many is the theological and philosophical texts on free will.
Jay Boo says
Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Fox news discussing her book Heretic.
Jay Boo says
Compare Fox coverage to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.
Even Salon was critical of Jon Stewart
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/07/no_one_exposes_western_liberals_faulty_thinking_on_islam_better_than_self_professed_%E2%80%9Cheretic%E2%80%9D_ayaan_hirsi_ali/
SoCalMike says
Ivy League bimbos are the scourge of the US and Western Civ.
They infest our government, media, CIA and academia.
If you want to know why were have been arming, funding and geopolitically enabling Islamic Jihad for the last 7 years, look to the Ivy League.
13 Hours was a prefect illustration.
“Bob” and the CIA agents were typical IVY League arrogant bimbos who wouldn’t have lasted a minute without the protection of the contractors.
Just listen to the ignoramus maximus in chief open his ignorant mouth and start spewing forth ignorant lies and falsehoods as gospel.
These pathetic morons are so deeply in love with the sound of their own voices they can’t be bothered with the contaminating influence of factual knowledge.
Ideology and leftist revisionism gives them all the “answers” they need.
mortimer says
The proof of the pudding?
Jews living in Christian lands gave the world Einstein, Marx, Freud, Franz Boas, Helena Rubinstein, Artur Rubenstein, Baal Shem Tov, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bruno Szulc, Adam Michnik, Disraeli, Gustav Mahler, Franz Kafka, “The Jews who invented Hollywood” and the bulk of Nobel Prizes won by Jews.
And how many Jews excelled in Muslim lands?????
??????? … oh that many?
Sally says
Not to mention the Hassidic dynasties.
Kepha says
Hassidic Dynasties are basically harmless, and I know of one Hassidic Bes Din that told a Hasid to go down to a police station and apologize in person to an officer [noon-Jewish] whom he had insulted. And if you bring up nasty sex scandals going on in Hassidic circles, my own son’s 7th grade English teacher was arrested as a pedo.
freewoman says
well, they do have beautiful architecture. And that’s about it.
mgoldberg says
The article is extensive but also makes certain assertions that I think are facile. ““In Europe, the Jews nurtured a pronounced hatred for Christians, whom they considered to be idolaters subject to the anti-pagan discriminatory provisions of the ancient Mishnah … the Jews of Islam had a markedly different attitude towards” Islam. There was a “tolerant Jewish view of Islam.
This is more like the contemporary excusing of hatreds of muslims as somehow do to westerners or other ‘colonizers’ or whomever, who made them feel this way.
The Jews did not ‘nurture’ a pronounced hatred for Christians, they feared and were entirely wary as people who were indeed considered eternal outsiders by Christian doctrine. And it was worse. But that panaply of realities didn’t come about because of ‘discriminatory provisions of the ancient Mishnah’
The oral traditions of the Torah, were never meant to even be written but the expulsion and destruction of Israel and it’s very existence meant that the codes of laws, assessments, judgements and learnings that were meant to be orally handed down from teacher to student had to be codified to preserve the life and viability of jews and torah learning and laws in lands where they would be minorities under dominion of others laws. And this had entirely little of the ‘hatred’ that was nurtured by christians agains jews. That the author finds ‘reasons’ for the hatred and destructions of jews; the blood libels, the mass slaughteres, the forced oppressions, and forced conversions is again, simply facile. This is not to demean the entirety of christian cultures or faith. In fact, this nurturing of hatred, was almost entirely absent because the Torah of the Jews, the theology of the Jews, was indeed that all others could very well enjoy the fruits of heavenly repose, and reward by deed, not creed, and there was no forced conversion by Jews of non jews. This cannot be said of either Christianity nor Islam. I much prefer Christianity which gave us so many things that Islam only pretends to have delivered.
My thinking is that all utopianism leads to tyranny, and this Islam is the most vulgar and twisted version othis. Christianity in it’s most utopian forms, where it mandated or taught or encouraged conversions, forced and worse, had similar flaws. But of course this is all part of a much larger discussion and there is much to consider, but for the purposes of this article, for all it’s interesting data and analysis, the idea that the was a nurtruing of a hatred of christianity and that it was dervied from the Mishnah is poppycock.
freewoman says
Jews were the first to persecute Christians, starting with Jesus himself. The Jews considered themselves the privileged class of God and that gentiles could reach a relationship with God through Jesus rankled. Christians certainly feared the Jews and resented their economic success and extortion, but they also befriended the Jews when they were persecuted by outsiders. Many of those political dissidents rounded up during the holocaust were christian. At any rate, this is all human construct. From Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek (gentile), slave nor free, male nor female, for you all one in Christ Jesus.”
Contrast to Judiasm and Islam, and some other pagan religions i assume, one is born into these religions, it is difficult for outsiders to get full membership, and in the case of Islam, ones who leave are persecuted to the highest extent.
ECAW says
Jesus was a Christian?
Ian says
Not according to Mathew 5:17!
Wakeup says
God cannot be anything other than God he was born and lived amongst the Jews. Deliberately so because he is working in human history to reveal himself and his plans for humanity through his chosen group the Jews.
Jews and Jewish it is not regarded as politically correct to call Jews Jews these days but Jew is a noun what he/she is, so my friend Ramin is a Jew. Jewish is an adjective which describes as a having the properties of or pertaining to Jewishness therefore I regard myself and all other Christians as being Jewish. I do not regard muslims as being Jewish and it is clear that mohamed didn’t either and cautioned against us as being friends/allies. Hopefully if this is or will become true and we will stand by each other Donald Trump with his partly JEW family is my great hope at the moment.
So use the word Jew and if somebody questions you about it you can remind them they are Jewish (if they are Christian), we need to get the waggons in a circle and quickly.
Renee Atkins says
“The Jews considered themselves the privileged class of God and that gentiles could reach a relationship with God through Jesus rankled.”
This is a canard. Jews have always maintained that Gentiles could reach a relationship with G-d. Two whole books in the Jewish bible are predicated on Gentiles’ relationships with G-d: Job and Jonah. Neither Job nor the people of Nineveh were Jewish. The Talmud states “The righteous of all nations have a share in the world to come.” This is and has always been orthodox Jewish belief.
freewoman says
In subjection to the law, complete with circumcision. The Christian freedom from the Law was a real problem to them, and was debated in the early church. It’s Jesus the (orthodox) jews ultimately have trouble with. Job and Jonah predate Christ quite a bit and Jesus even referenced Jonah in His own prophecy.
Renee Atkins says
No, only Jews are subject to the law. Gentiles do not need to be circumcised. In fact, there are some laws Gentiles are not allowed to keep, like the sabbath. Gentiles in the process of conversion to Judaism keep all the laws but they deliberately violate the sabbath until their conversion. Gentiles only need to keep the 7 laws of Noah to be considered righteous. And only G-d, not Yad Vashem ;-), determines if they are righteous.
Renee Atkins says
And while the events of Job and Jonah predate Christianity, they were included in the Jewish canon within a few centuries, give or take. They were obviously revered and taken seriously by the Jews of the time.
Western Canadian says
“Christian freedom from the Law”
It is to laugh, it is to laugh….
Mark Swan says
The Jewish people have certainly done their part…
Science…Medicine…Law…Economics…Education…The Arts…Humor…and so much more would all be Pretty Lame Without Them…In essence the world would be Pretty Much Flavorless…
Imagine That…so what seems to be The problem haters have with them.
Maybe what the Jews did in Rejecting Christ…Killing Him…This may be It…Yet if We could go back in time and turn the Soldier around…You know the One who shoved a spear into Christ’s Side to finish Him…If we looked at This Soldiers Face…We would Each Clearly See This Was Our Very Own Face…Right There…He died To Liberate All Mankind…That Is Why He Died.
Judah’s Descendants were promised a Line of Kings…Culminating in The Messiah (savior or liberator)…Mankind needed liberating…Satan held them captive reaching there minds through the spirit in mankind…a very Powerful Spirit Being…This Captor Views all Humans With Rage and Contempt…this captor would be hateful to any people he associated with this liberator.
Christ was born amongst the Jews…His Mother was One…He was One…The Greatest One…The Lion Of The Tribe of Judah…all Christ’s Apostles Were One…All of The Scriptures were written down exactly as God wanted by the Jews…and they so carefully guarded every detail of these writings…The Christian Church Started and was Headquartered in Jerusalem…Did God make a mistake here or was Christ born exactly where He was Supposed to be…
Well Folks We had better look this up for Ourselves…God had named a Man Abraham (meaning a Father of Many Nations)…What Nations…the One called Israel today is just a single nation…Abraham Had a Son Named Isaac…and Isaac had a Son named Jacob…God changed Jacob’s name to Israel…and Israel had Twelve Sons…One was named Judah…He is the One all of the Jews come from (Just Like all Californians are Americans…yet all Americans are not Californians) All Jews are part of Israel…All of Israel are not Jews…We know a large part of Judah is in a Country called Israel today and some Jews live elsewhere…But Where is the rest of Israel not the Jews but the rest of Israel (more than a Billion People somewhere) where are they Today…What Nations did they become…Why Does the God of The Christian Bible Keep Mentioning…this Israel…h’m
Anyway…back to the Judah…From King David continuing on to The Christ… a Line of Kings…from Judah.
Any claim to a throne would get Satan’s special attention…Christ sits on THE throne Satan covets the most…But Satan is Not The Almighty God Who Created Him and Restrains him Even Now…Christ Has All Authority Over All Things…He Is A Power Beyond Comparison…He is very much God…the demons know and tremble.
Of Course mankind’s unjustified hate of any kind is simply a product of minds influence by Thoughts Satan Broadcasts Through The Air Even Now…a Genius at Mind Ploys…If…We Entertain Those Thoughts We think Like He does…He Is The Destroyer…The Enemy.
If…We Turn to God with A willing and Obedient mind…Christ can Join His Mind with Ours…We Can Love…and Not Hate…with Man It Is Impossible…
with God All Things Are Possible.
So if You are hating Jews…aren’t you just hating God who does what He wants in the world of men…with whom ever He wants…He does not need to ask anyone now does He…But We will account for all behavior good or bad.
I have to conclude that the Jews are just folks like the rest of us…just flesh and blood humans…nothing more or less.
mikey says
You sound reasonable, but you appear to have forgotten Jewish periods of intolerance towards non-Jews. There were two great rebellions by Jews against Rome, and in both non-Jews were targets for Jewish hostility. The second rebellion spread as far west as Cyrenica.
Further, the Jews assisted the Persians in their invasion of the Byzantine Empire in the 620s and in fact helped in the killing of Christians and the destruction of non-Jewish religious sites. Similar actions occurred during the Arab invasion of Visigothic Spain.
Further Jews (like many other groups) participated in the slave trade, for they brought Eastern European peoples to Muslim Spain as slaves. And later, after the Russian Revolution, Communists of Jewish extraction participated in the Holodomor.
What this would suggest is that Jews are just like every other people or nation since they include individuals who may be good or bad – and that Jews are not always the victim.
Kepha says
Alright. We know there were periods when Jews went after non-Jews. How several of the Crusades treated the Rhineland ghettoes as well was a horror (even some bishops who tried to stop the carnage got killed or at least had their palaces burned. But I am not sure that violence against the outsider (apart from the ban on the Canaanites and when the just war theory in Christianity is invoked) is intrinsic to the messages of those two religions. With Islam, it is hard to escape the conclusion that a posture of warfare and hostility is the expected stance vis-a-vis the Kufr.
Matthieu Baudin says
“…Mentioning what the Nazis did to the Poles, to the Gypsies, to the handicapped and to Soviet POWs is not to diminish the unique Holocaust of the Jews. I mention this horrific record to emphasize why the popular misconception of “Nazism = Christianity” or “Christianity produced Hitler” “does not withstand examination … Finally, it must be mentioned, that it was largely Christians, including my father, who saw heavy combat in World War II, who defeated Hitler, de-Nazified Germany, and utterly revile Nazism…”
Well said Danushka. The anti Christian propaganda of the Soviet regimes also contributed to the distorted, free for all attacks on Christianity and significantly influenced gullible minds in Post War western nations. Those of us with relatives in the camps have a duty to speak up to redress some of these unbalanced and prejudiced attitudes..
celticwarriorcanada says
This is an excellent Polemic! This author is very well researched and step by step debunks and exposes the misinformation Propagated even by so called intellectuals with PhD’s. Stan says”The Passage of time reformed Christianity;in the same way, the passage of time will reform Islam .”Leaving aside what ever ” The Passage Of Time ” is? We can know for sure that Christianity became reformed when Christians influenced by the Renaissance Intellectual Movement became Devout and Serious about their Faith , which inevitably led them to seek the Original sources of The Christian Faith .Leading them back to the Original Christian Documents , The Judaeo Christian Scriptures preferably in the Original Languages, The Historic Creeds , The Rule of Faith and the writings of The Apostolic and Patristic Fathers . Is this ” The Same Way ” that Stan is hoping will Reform Islam ? A more Devout Islam, concerned with the Original Faith as Revealed in Islams Sacred Writings and Tradition? If it is, then Stan’s wish and hope for Islam is happening before his very eyes, in this present “Passage Of Time” and its being led by Isis, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda etc.The evidence of the present Islamic Reformation is displayed in Paris, Brussels,San Bernadino, The Gang Rape of British Girls ,young boys etc. P.S.So enjoy your Islamic Reformation Mr. Ivy League man The Tolerance and Peacefulness of True Islam could never be more Evident !!!
mortimer says
Is Islam more tolerant now?
Stan wrote: “Islam WAS indeed more tolerant”
Here’s the key word, Stan: “WAS”
You claim Islam ‘WAS’ more tolerant in the middle ages? In the Renaissance? In the Baroque? Maybe yes, but maybe no. But that is unimportant if we live in the present.
Was Islam more tolerant after the Enlightment, Stan? No? Why not?
So let’s start using the word ‘IS’ now. Is Islam ‘more tolerant’ today? Where is Islam more tolerant? In which Islamic country? None? Not one Islamic country ‘IS’ more tolerant today? Why not, Stan? Why not?
Why ‘IS’ Islam so intolerant and backward today? Can a PhD answer that question?
rara says
This is the best argument I know:
“Was Islam more tolerant after the Enlightment, Stan? No? Why not?”
There’s even a simple explanation for the fact that all scientific progress in Muslim countries was concentrated in the period 800 AD – 1100 AD, and nothing afterward: the Muslim scholars started to cling more seriously to their religious texts. Their progress stopped some 900 years ago because they took what’s written in Quran and Hadiths very seriously.
Btw, the towers made of the heads of unbelievers weren’t just Tamerlane’s 14th century specialty, the Muslims in Europe did it even in the 19th century when the Christians rose against their rule:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Tower
Fessitude says
Muslims have done that all over the place, Hindu Kush, Maghreb. The more we uncover the Islam beneath the detritus of arcane scholarship and Western Amnesia, the more we will find the absolute, and historically unique, horror of Islam (I would wager including generally practiced cannibalism).
This article is good but a bit light on the horror of the so-called “Golden Age” of Islam. Not one connection of the Jewish “middlemen” with dhimmitude, and the reasonable equation of such Jewish “middlemen” with the Kapos of Nazi Germany.
freewoman says
Funny how the Left hates all generalizations for modern people groups and events but totally broad brushes history. I could add some things to what you wrote but I’ll just say that when we argue that the catholic church was reformed, we need to add that the reformation was about getting back to biblical truths, and to the earlier church. When islam gets back to its roots, you get ISIS.
I do appreciate the analysis of medieval times. Its so silly everybody yaks up the medieval times in the context of current events like it matters. Except to islam, it does. They take revenge for things that happened 400 years ago. The jihad never really stopped. Bill Warner has a nice map video of the jihad strikes along with the crusades, and he still didn’t have the hindu side of things. Is it true that the dark ages of europe was mostly related to muslims choking off trade through the Mediterranean?
I read a book about Babur, great-grandson of Tamerlane and descendant of Genghis Khan, who so admired these bastard conquerors he went on his own conquering rampage to establish the moghul empire. The nazis really don’t have much on those conquerors, they’re only notable for the breathtaking technological efficiency. Genghis Khan was probably the greatest killer of all time, and he was a mongol.
Fessitude says
“Is it true that the dark ages of europe was mostly related to muslims choking off trade through the Mediterranean?”
That’s what Belgian historian Henri Pirenne argued in his seminal book, Mohammed and Charlemagne. More details here — http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-decline-and-fall-of-western.html
I have also independently come across an interesting filament of data indicating that the great (i.e., horrific) Plague that plagued Europe during the Middle Ages/Renaissance may have been brought to the West via ships from the Muslim world.
From Edmund G. Gardner’s study on Saint Catherine of Siena, p. 3:
“In the year after Catherine’s birth, 1348, the great Pestilence, brought, it was said, in two Genoese galleys from the East, swept over Italy, Provence, France, and Spain, and in the following year spread to England and the rest of Europe.”
If so, was that just an accident arising out of the sparse trade going on between some Italian merchants and Muslims (in a general climate of hostility between Muslims and Europe), or was it an early form of biological warfare — biological jihad? There’s a graduate thesis for some enterprising Millennial to get to work on in some Western college somewhere (if their ex-Hippie or Muslim professor will allow them)!
Fessitude says
fuck these html codes — pardon my Arabic — but many of the italics in my post were unintended oversights….!
TH says
Regarding the witch hunts in the Europe of the XVII century,is it not interesting that there was very little of that in Spain? Why? Well, thanks to the Inquisition. If the local were up in arms about a supposed witch in a town, the Inquisition would appear on the scene and calm the people down, begin a thorough investigation and and diffuse the furore, plus more often than not realize that the poor woman was innoocent and recognize the fact.
freewoman says
not before she was tortured
ECAW says
Burning witches was predominantly a Protestant habit (the place where they went in for it most enthusiastiacally was….Switzerland). Catholics preferred using heretics as firewood as Allah prefers infidels. Each to their own.
Fessitude says
It is arguable that the Spanish Inquisition was importantly — if not primarily — a vetting process to winnow out the seditionist Muslims and ex-Muslims. Consider the context; the Christians had finally won back their Occupied Territory after centuries of ruthless Islamic rule by rulers as bad as ISIS. And now they had a society riddled with Muslims and Muslim spies.
In the study on the great Spanish poet & playwright Cervantes, Michel de Cervantes, sa vie, son temps, son oeuvre politique et littéraire (“Miguel de Cervantes: His life, his time, his political and literary works”), by the 19th century French historian, Émile Chasles, he mentions in passing that after the Reconquista, Spain contained many ex-Muslims who had ostensibly converted to Christianity and who thus had been allowed to remain — and that within a generation or two, large numbers of these supposed ex-Muslims perpetrated seditious sabotage so extensive, the Spanish King had to call back troops he had sent south into the Mediterranean to fend off Muslims down there (perennially terrorizing Christians), and deploy them back at home against this general insurrection. That should come as no surprise; but apparently always will to Westerners who can never, it seems, wholly exorcise their naivete about Muslims.
Baucent says
It’s a bit of a red herring and a game played by muslim apologists to try and compare acts of persecution down through the ages, to try and prove that Christianity is no different or maybe worse.
The real issue is what does the church teach today and what is practiced compared with what is taught and practiced in Islam. That is where stark differences show up. No leader of a recognised church (putting aside individuals who call them a church) would promote antisemitism, oppression of women, encourage violent attacks on non believers, or show hypersensitivity towards criticism of their faith. The same cannot be said of Islam in it’s various forms. Even a casual observer can see that medieval attitudes and practices remain unchanged.
It was Churchill who rightly pointed out that Islam “was the greatest (strongest) retrograde force in the world.”
Fessitude says
“It’s a bit of a red herring and a game played by muslim apologists to try and compare acts of persecution down through the ages, to try and prove that Christianity is no different or maybe worse.”
It’s not just a game played by Muslims; it’s also a staple of Western PC MC (and not only indulged by Western Leftists, either). The Muslim apologist game would not hold as much — if any — traction, were there not this fertile ground throughout the West for them to exploit, of a societal & historical self-criticism so excessive it has become a generalized neurosis (if not, among some, a psychosis).
Angemon says
Fessitude posted:
“It’s not just a game played by Muslims; it’s also a staple of Western PC MC (and not only indulged by Western Leftists, either). The Muslim apologist game would not hold as much — if any — traction, were there not this fertile ground throughout the West for them to exploit”
Well, well, it seems my insistence finally got through to you – I still remember when mentions of anything non-islamic regarding the problem of islam in the West would prompt you to reply something like “if you have any priority besides islam and muslims you should not be in the Counter Jihad”.
There may be hope for you after all…
freewoman says
That’s true because nobody’s perfect and claimers to religion don’t necessarily adhere to the doctrine. That’s why it’s more import to go back to the doctrinal texts themselves. Although even those arguments are extremely biased.
Not to mention, they have to hearken way back to the middle ages to try and bring Christianity down. In light of current events, or pre medieval, there’s no contest.
aton says
No it was NOT more tollerant.
Read the article: “Islamic inventions were Roman, Greek, and Persian.’.
Read the last chapter in ‘Jesus, King of Edessa’.
Islam has done nothing in its life, bar subjugate other vibrant societies and nations, and suck them dry. And when it is finished, and all their dhimmi slaves have been exterminated or exiled, the land returns to dust.
Look at the Dead Cities of Aleppo – 800 towns and villages that were decimated when Islam arriced in the region in the 7th century And they still stand there today. You can walk down their streets, and go into their churches. Very eerie. Very poignant. Very prophetic for the future of the West.
Aton
Rob says
Hitler may have been baptized as a Christian but he was clearly not a follower of Christ. He admired Islam, calling it a “religion of men”, and stated that he preferred the “heroism” of Islam to the “meekness and flabbiness” of Christianity. There was considerable collaboration between Nazi Germany and Islamists leading up to and during WWII.
BC says
“Christians were not all-powerful in medieval Europe but were often quite vulnerable”
Correction Robert. The Roman Church was very powerful in Mediaeval Europe, being an alternative government in most countries, and laying down the law even for monarchs. Individual Christians were
indeed not powerful, their daily lives were ruled by the church, but the church was very powerful politically. Luther and Henry 8th put a stop to that.
Kepha says
Danushka Goska has given us one more in a stream of very excellent articles by various contributors at JW. A heartfelt thanks.
“The harsh criticisms of some, not all, Jews in the New Testament were written by Jews as part of Jewish tradition.”
As excellent quote. I have often told people that I will concede that John is Anti-Semitic if they do the same with Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Moses himself.
Some of the myth of Islamic tolerance goes back to a French Huguenot pastor named Jurieu, who wrote unflattering comparisons of Catholic France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes with Ottoman Turkey (albeit an unspoken presupposition was that every reader in those days would know that Ottoman Turkey was pretty deplorable).
I also appreciated the comments about what the core documents of Islam teach–and they are clearly about Muslim supremacism and subjugation of others.
Fessitude says
Yes, perhaps a good deal of the ideological & polemical substance of modern PC MC derives from the Protestant Reformation’s comparison of Islam and the Catholic Church (e.g., Luther’s famous asseveration that while “the Turk kills the body” of the Christian, at least that Christian will end up in Heaven; whereas, the Pope through his wicked teachings damns the soul to Hell for eternity) — i.e., the fatal flaw of implying that anything on God’s green earth could possibly be worse than Mohammedanism.
Morton Doodslag says
This is such a bizarre formulation – do these same moral relativists argue that Nazism wasn’t genocidal from 1925-1935?
Why is the Left SO protective of Islam? Usually they savage anyone with a hint of religion in the West. These “multicultural” traitors, these Lefty terror-enablers, eagerly jump through hoops in Olympic feats of mental gymnastics to protect Muslims and their genocidal creed…
Why exactly is that? I believe the Left still admires and lusts for violence and hatred of the other the Muslims bring to the knife fight… The Lefts still imagines they can own this monster, make it theirs to wage their destructive wars to “fundamentally transform” the West.
The Left is an enemy. They are in league with their genocidal pets, the Muslims. Now let’s somehow force these two bedmates into each others arms, and set about dismantling them with extreme prejudice.
Linde Barrera says
Thank you a trillion times for this comprehensive article. This truthful critical thinking comparison is just 1 more reason why I love jihadwatch.org., Robert Spencer and all his writers.
Dacritic says
Danushka, thank you. This is brilliant.
Marcel Bérubé says
Many times , the best way to answer a question is to return the question .
So , Stan , could you tell me …..
Mark Swan says
Get To Googling Stan
sham says
1)KILLING WOMEN/CHILDREN (THE BASIC HUMANISM)
ISLAM PROHIBITED:
Malik :: Book 21 : Hadith 21.3.10
Do not kill women or children or an aged, weak person,Do not cut down fruit-bearing trees.Do not destroy an inhabited place. Do not slaughter sheep or camels except for food. Do not burn bees and do not scatter them. Do not steal from the booty,
Malik :: Book 21 : Hadith 21.3.8
Yahya related to me from Malik from Ibn Shihab that a son of Kab ibn Malik (Malik believed that ibn Shihab said it was Abd ar-Rahman ibn Kab) said, “The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, forbade those who fought ibn Abi Huqayq (a treacherous jew from Madina) to kill women and children. He said that one of the men fighting had said, ‘The wife of ibn Abi Huqayq began screaming and I repeatedly raised my sword against her. Then I would remember the prohibition of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, so I would stop. Had it not been for that, we would have been rid of her.’ ”
Muslim :: Book 19 : Hadith 4456
……….And the of Allah (may peace be upon him) did not kill the children of the enemy, so thou shouldst not kill the children……………
Bukhari :: Book 4 :: Volume 52 :: Hadith 257,258
Narrated Ibn ‘Umar:
During some of the Ghazawat of Allah’s Apostle a woman was found killed, so Allah’s Apostle forbade the killing of women and children.
Dawud :: Book 14 : Hadith 2608
Narrated Anas ibn Malik:
The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: Go in Allah’s name, trusting in Allah, and adhering to the religion of Allah’s Apostle. Do not kill a decrepit old man, o a young infant, or a child, or a woman; do not be dishonest about booty, but collect your spoils, do right and act well, for Allah loves those who do well.
BIBLE PROMOTE KILLING WOMEN/CHILDREN
Joshua 8:24-26
When the Israelite army finished chasing and killing all the men of Ai in the open fields, they went back and finished off everyone inside. So the entire population of Ai, including men and women, was wiped out that day—12,000 in all. For Joshua kept holding out his spear until ””everyone who had lived”” in Ai was completely destroyed.
Deuteronomy 2:32-34
Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, unto battle at Jahaz. And Jehovah our God delivered him up before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed every inhabited city, with the women and the little ones; we left none remaining. (ASV)
Deuteronomy 3:3-6
So the LORD our God delivered Og also, king of Bashan, with all his people into our hand, and we smote them until no survivor was left. We captured all his cities at that time; there was not a city which we did not take from them: sixty cities, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates and bars, besides a great many unwalled towns. We utterly destroyed them, as we did to Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women and children of every city. (NASB)
1 Samuel 15:3,8
Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ ” … He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword.(NIV)
Hosea 13:16
Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open. (NRSV)
I THINK HITLER,WW2,WW1,HIROSHIMA,EUROPEAN IMPERIALISM/INNOVATION THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES (I BILLIONS PEOPLE DIED/FORCED TO SLAVE DURING 15TH CENTURY TO MIDDLE OF 19TH CENTURY ACROSS THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES ) THESE ALL PEOPLE GOT THE LAW FROM THE ABOVE VERSES ,CHURCH WAS SUPPORT ALL THESE VULGARITIES.
freewoman says
lol
keep reading
sham says
2) ISLAM ALLOW NON MUSLIM TO LIVE:
“God forbids you not, with regard to those who fight you
not for (your) faith nor drive you out of your homes, from dealing
kindly and justly with them: for God loveth those who are just.”
(H.Q. 60:8)
17: 33. And do not kill anyone which Allah has forbidden, except for a just cause(KILL,ADULTERY & WAR). And whoever is killed (intentionally with hostility and oppression and not by mistake), We have given his heir the authority [(to demand Qisâs, Law of Equality in punishment or to forgive, or to take Diya (blood money)]. But let him not exceed limits in the matter of taking life (i.e he should not kill except the killer only). Verily, he is helped (by the Islamic law).
Bukhari :: Book 6 :: Volume 60 :: Hadith 134
…………… “I do not know that killing a person is lawful in Islam except in three cases: a married person committing illegal sexual intercourse, one who has murdered somebody unlawfully, or one who wages war against Allah and His Apostle.” …………..
Bukhari :: Book 8 :: Volume 78 :: Hadith 667
Narrated ‘Abdullah bin ‘Amr:
The Prophet said, “The biggest sins are: To join others in worship with Allah; to be undutiful to one’s parents; to kill somebody unlawfully; and to take an oath Al-Ghamus.
INSIDE THE ISLAMIC COUNTRIES AS A PROTECTED DHIMMI
Muslim :: Book 30 : Hadith 5853
The Jew went to Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) and said: Abu’l-Qasim, I am a Dhimmi and (thus need your protection) by a covenant, and added: Such and such person has given a blow upon my face. Thereupon Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: Why did you give a blow on his face? He said: Allah’s Messenger, this man said: By Him Who chose Moses (peace be upon him) amongst mankind, whereas you are living amongst us. Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) became angry and signs of anger could be seen on his face, and then said: Don’t make distinction amongst the Prophets of Allah.
Bukhari :: Book 5 :: Volume 57 :: Hadith 50
I also recommend him concerning Allah’s and His Apostle’s protectees (i.e. Dhimmis) to fulfill their contracts and to fight for them and not to overburden them with what is beyond their ability.”
BIBLE BLINDLY KILLING NON CHRISTIANS
Deuteronomy 13:6-9 “If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying: Let us go and”” worship other gods ”””(gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other, or gods of other religions), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly ”””’put him to death”””’. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people.”
Also let us look at Deuteronomy 17:3-5 “And he should go and worship other gods and bow down to them or to the sun or the moon or all the army of the heavens, …..and you must stone such one with stones and such ”””one must die””””””’.”
This verse was sent to me by Yusif 65; may Allah Almighty always be pleased with him: 2 Chronicles 15:13 “All who would not seek the LORD, the God of Israel, were to be”””’ put to death, whether small or great, man or woman””””’.”
Matthew 15:1-9
4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’
NO RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ACCORDING BIBLE LAW,SO KILLING NON CHRISTIANS IS NOT PUNISHABLE OFFENCE……..
NEW TESTAMENT AGREED OLD
“Do not think that I [Jesus] have come to abolish the Law (the Old Testament) or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke or a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law (the Old Testament) until everything is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18)”
“Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: ‘The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.’ (Matthew 23:1-3)”
maghan says
This near-illiterate and low IQ specimen claims to be Muslim yet does not logically follow the principle of abrogation. You judge a man by his actions mainly and the so-called Prophet was a fornicator with slave girls(Mary the Copt, e.g), child rapist and rapist of married females after murdering their husbands(Safiyya bint Huhayya). The truth is that Muhammad slaughtered and raped innocents. This most perfect role model as the Muslims stupidly chatter about.
Also the fool does not know that the Old Testament is Jewish folklore specifically for Jews. The teachings of Christ in the New Testament are what Christians are enjoined to follow. The OT is just folkloric background.
hammar says
This guy must of been smoking the same camel dung that “mo-the ham” was smoking while
raping and pillaging everyone and having sex with a six year baby.
Omar Kahlid says
I know this will anger Catholics but Christians do not consider Catholicism to be of Christianity. No where does the New Testament allow a Pope. No where can you pray to a priest, saint, cross or Mary. The New Testament prohibits these exercises. No priest can absolve you of sin. Cannot happen.
So compare islam to Catholicism or compare islam to Christianity but NEVER think that Catholics and Christians are the same thing. Christians pray for Catholics to come to know Christianity. Just read the New Testament and you will be enlightened.
btw: the Old Testaments are of Jewish origin and a precursor to Christs term on earth. Any violence in the Old is washed away with the love of the Christ.
Fessitude says
Don’t you just love the Internet? It’s like the world, only even goofier…
Ecosse1314 says
Naw..not angry at all. Just highly amused by your complete stupidity.
Hugh says
THis is my view on the Pope or Caesar. Note how I said the pope not Catholics per se
From the works of Martin Luther (1483-1546)
What is the whole papacy but a beautiful false front and a deceptively glittering holiness under which the wretched devil lies in hiding? The devil always desires to imitate God in this way. He cannot bear to observe God speaking. If he cannot prevent it or hinder God’s Word by force, he opposes it with a semblance of piety, takes the very words God had spoken and so twist them as to peddle his lies and poison under their name. (What Luther Says, II: 10007)
Since the papal church not only neglects the command of Christ but even compels the people to ignore it and to act against it, it is certain that it is not Christ’s church but the synagogue of Satan which prescribes sin and prohibits righteousness. It clearly and indisputably follows that it must be the abomination of Antichrist and the furious harlot of the devil. (What Luther Says, II: 1019)
The negotiation about doctrinal agreement displeases me altogether, for this is utterly impossible unless the pope has his papacy abolished. Therefore avoid and flee those who seek the middle of the road. Think of me after I am dead and such middle-of-the-road men arise, for nothing good will come of it. There can be no compromise. (What Luther Says, II: 1019)
Let him who does not want to be lost and go to the devil be on his guard with all diligence and earnestness against the papacy and its doctrine, and let him never again accept even the most insignificant and smallest part of the papacy’s teaching, no matter what it may cost him. Let him flee from the papacy and its following as from the devil incarnate himself, and let him by no means be silenced by the sweet, slippery words of hypocrites or be persuaded that yielding and conceding something for the sake of peace is a matter of little consequence and that the bond of love should not be disrupted for the sake of something trifling (as they represent and rationalize this to be). Come now, there is assuredly no joking in this matter; eternal salvation and eternal damnation are involved. (What Luther Says, II:1019-1020)
Can anything more horrible be said than that the kingdom of the papists is the kingdom of those who spit at Christ, the Son of God, and crucify Him anew? For they do crucify Christin themselves, in the churchand in the hearts of the faithfulTherefore let everyone who is honestly given to piety flee out of this Babylon as quickly as possible. For so great are its impurity and its abomination that no one can express them in words; they can be discerned only by eyes that are spiritual. (What Luther Says, II: 1020)
My dear pope, I will kiss your feet and acknowledge you as supreme bishop if you will worship my Christ and grant that through His death and resurrection, not through keeping your traditions, we have forgiveness of sins and life eternal. If you will yield on this point, I shall not take away your crown and power; if not, I shall constantly cry out that you are the Antichrist, and I shall testify that your whole cult and religion are only a denial of God, but also the height of blasphemy against God and idolatry. (What Luther Says, II: 1069)
Ah, my dear brother in Christ, bear with me if here or elsewhere I use such coarse language when speaking of the wretched, confronted, atrocious monster at Rome! He who knows my thoughts must say that I am much, much, much too lenient and have neither words nor thought adequately to describe the shameful, abominable blasphemy to which he subjects the Word and name of Christ, our dear Lord and Savior. There are some Christians, wicked Christians indeed, who now would gloss things over to make the pope appear against in a good light and who, after he does so and has been dragged out of the mud, would like to reinstate him on the altar. But they are wicked people, whoever they may be, who defend the pope and want me to be quiet about the means whereby he has done harm. Truly, I cannot do this. All true, pious Christians, who love Christ and His Word, should, as said, be sincerely hostile to the pope. They should persecute him and injure him. All should do this in their several calling, to the best of their ability, with all faithfulness and diligence. (What Luther Says, II: 1072)
What kind of a church is the pope’s church? It is an uncertain, vacillating and tottering church. Indeed, it is a deceitful, lying church, doubting and unbelieving, without God’s Word. For the pope with his wrong keys teaches his church to doubt and to be uncertain. If it is a vacillating church, then it is not the church of faith, for the latter is founded upon a rock, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it (Matt.16:18). If it is not the church of faith, then it is not the Christian church, but it must be an unchristian, anti-Christian, and faithless church which destroys and ruins the real, holy, Christian church. (Luther’s Works, vol. 40, Church and Ministry II, The Keys, p.348)
All this is to be noted carefully, so that we can treat with contempt the filthy, foolish twaddle that the popes present in their decrees about their Roman church, that is, about their devil’s synagogue (Rev.2:9), which separates itself from common Christendom and the spiritual edifice built up on this stone, and instead invents for itself a fleshly worldly, worthless, lying, blasphemous, idolatrous authority over all of Christendom. One of these two things must be true: if the Roman church is not built on this rock along with the other churches, then it is the devil’s church; but if it is built, along with all the other churches, on this roc, then it cannot be lord or head over the other churches. For Christ the cornerstone knows nothing of two unequal churches, but only of one church alone, just as the Children’s Faith, that is, the faith of all of Christendom, says, “I believe in one holy, Christian church,” and does not say, “I believe in one holy Roman church.” The Roman church is and should be one portion or member of the holy Christian church, not the head, which befits solely Christ the cornerstone. If not, it is not a Christian but an UN-Christian and anti-Christian church, that is, a papal school of scoundrels. (Luther’s Works, Volume 41, Church and Ministry III, Against The Roman Papacy, An Institution Of The Devil, p.311)
These arrogant and unlearned papists can’t govern the church because they write nothing, they read nothing, but, firmly saddled in the pride of possession, they cry out that the decrees of the fathers are not to be questioned and decisions made are not to be disputed, otherwise one would have to dance to the tune of every little brother. For this reason the pope, possessed by demons, defends his tyranny with the canon “Si papa.” This canon states clearly: if the pope should lead the whole world into the control of hell, he is nevertheless not to be contradicted. It’s a terrible thing that on account of the authority of this man we must lose our souls, which Christ redeemed with his precious blood. Christ says, “I will not cast out anybody who comes to me” (John 6:37). On the other hand, the pope says, “As I will it, so I command it; you must perish rather than resist me.” Therefore the pope, whom our princes adore, is full of devils. He must be exterminated by the Word and by prayer. (Luther’s Works, vol.54, Table Talk, No.441, p.330)
I believe the pope is the masked and incarnate devil because he is the Antichrist. As Christ is God incarnate, so the Antichrist is the devil incarnate. The words are really spoken of the pope when it’s said that he’s a mixed god, an earthly god, that is , a god of the earth. Here god is understood as god of this world. Why does he call himself an earthly god, as if the one, almighty God weren’t also on the earth? The kingdom of the pope really signifies the terrible wrath of God, namely, the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. (Luther’s Works, vol.54, Table Talks, No.4487, p.346)
Ecosse1314 says
Dear Hugh. So grateful that you are not having a go at us poor kafflicks.
No Victim No Crime says
So many people call themselves Christians yet they lack a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The reality is Constantine created Christianity aka Catholicism to control the people and hold his throne. Catholicism was a mix of paganism and the Bible to pull Born Again Believers into paganism and Baal worship. The reality of Biblical Salvation is anyone who believes on what Jesus Christ did on the cross is a saved saint. He/She is born again and has eternal salvation. There are no good works required to be saved and that certainly includes repentance. Repentance does not even mean turning from sin, as so many religious heretics try and push. 99% of the churches in America preach a false gospel and have perverted it to the point of no return. The problem is, the people themselves are not reading the Bible because they are too busy worshiping at the throne of statism, atheism or some other ridiculous cult like the tele vision set.
_HA_ says
One other important point to note is that Islamic culture was built on the bedrock of the many civilizations it conquered (Egypt, Greece, Persia, India, China, Sumeria, Akkadia, Assyria, Phoenicia…), and it is no wonder that it was for centuries more advanced than European Christendom. That area of the world was arguably the wellspring of civilization itself.
]And yet, in the space of a millennium, Islam turned that immense cultural legacy into sand and squalor, save for what petrodollars can buy. Conversely, in about that same time span, Christianity transformed the barbarians trashing the dying Roman empire into a civilization far surpassing the one they overran.
I can certainly understand why newly Christianized and barely civilized nomads and tree-worshippers on the outposts of what was the known world might have been regarded as a brutish lot back in the day. After all, civilizing entire nations is the work of millennia. But what exactly is Islam’s excuse what happened to the territory under its aegis?
Daniel Rubio says
Islam was so tolerant of others that the world’s muslim population went from 0 in the year 690 C.E. to over 1,400 million in 2000. Islam was so tolerant of others that from its humble origins in a few towns in the Arabian peninsula it tolerated itself into 1/3 of the whole world. If tolerance means “either you convert or you die”, then yes, islam was a very tolerant ideology.
The onslaught of islam into the Middle East, the former Roman Eastern Empire (Bizantium), Northern Africa, Persia, one half of the Indian subcontinent and huge parts of SouthEast Asia has been relentless. Islam conquered the Spanish peninsula and parts of the European Mediterranean before finally being cut short at Vienna avoiding the complete over-run of Europe in the sixteenth century. So tolerant was islam that all the pagans, zoroastrians, Christians, Jews and other assorted religions and ideologies were practically obliterated from all the lands it conquered..
The oxymoron of muslim “tolerance” throughout ancient history is actually the result of lack of sufficient documentation and lack of historical interest on the fierce penetration of islam in areas that it conquered, plundered and pillaged.
Muslim tolerance is not very distinct from the Catholic tolerance shown by the Spanish Inquisition from the sixteenth century onwards in every land starting in Northern Mexico and all the way down down to the southernmost tip of Patagonia in Argentina. The whole subcontinent was methodically wiped out of its indigenous ideology and replaced with an alien religion imported from Europe, imposed on the native Indians by blood and sword. The difference with the muslim conquest is that the Catholic one is greatly documented, and no-one is boasting that Catholic priets made great efforts to coexist with the pagan views of the Mexicas, Tlaxcaltecas, Incas and hundreds of other lesser ethnicities that existed in America before 1492.
Cameron says
Islam was only “tolerant” when Islam was supreme over vast regions and peoples and in the process of conquering more and more non-muslims. When Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Pagan, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, etc. slaves were subjugated to Islam. This was the tolerance given to a subjugated and subdued slave or semi-slave class of people whose rights to practice their own non-Islamic faiths were tolerated because of the jizya extortion being a large source of income, not to mention the value of slaves for forced labour, sex, etc.
Being tolerant of non-muslims who have been subjugated underneath Islam and sharia or are otherwise a source of financial value to Muslims is the only tolerance that many muslims have of infidels.
————-
One problem with the article is that I’ve still never read is the following:
“In September, 2016, Richard Weikart will publish Hitler’s Religion: The Twisted Beliefs that Drove the Third Reich. Weikart, author of Hitler’s Ethic, will take on the popular misconception that Hitler was a Christian, or was inspired by Christian ideas.”
==> continuing to the link provides the following from the amazon description of the earlier book (Hitler’s Ethic):
“In this book, Weikart helps unlock the mystery of Hitler’s evil by vividly demonstrating the surprising conclusion that Hitler’s immorality flowed from a coherent ethic. Hitler was inspired by evolutionary ethics to pursue the utopian project of biologically improving the human race.”
Very suspicious of this evidently anti-science rubbish, I checked out his agenda and works on wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Weikart
Clearly Weikart is a historian playing apologist for fundamentalist Christianity and creationism who seeks to absolve the known Christian sources of Adolph Hitler’s anti-semitism that led to the continent-scale anti-semitic pogroms of Nazi Germany instead on to the development of evolutionary sciences and secular values.
I enjoyed much or Robert Spencer’s article, but using crackpot anti-science christian creationist fundamentalists as sources is completely ridiculous.
Arguing that Hitler was not a Christian is rubbish, he has been quoted from his writings, from public speeches and also from more private meeting conversations that he was a Christian. The efforts of some Christian historians to shift Hitler’s values from Christianity and German nationalism onto secular ethics and the development of evolutionary sciences (labelled “darwinism”) such as Weikart is utter bullshit.
Even on Weikart’s wiki page there are several links to thorough refutations:
again – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Weikart
“Weikart is best known for his 2004 book From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany.[20][21] The Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement, “provided crucial funding” for the book’s research.[22] The academic community has been widely critical of the book.[4][23] Regarding the thesis of Weikart’s book, University of Chicago historian Robert Richards concluded that “Hitler was not a Darwinian” and “calls this all a desperate tactic to undermine evolution.”[24] Richards expressed an opinion that, “There’s not the slightest shred of evidence that Hitler read Darwin,” and “Some of the biggest influences on Hitler’s anti-Semitism were opposed to evolution, such as British writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose racial theory became incorporated into Nazi doctrine.”[24]”
I expect that rationalwiki has plenty of content refuting the anti-science, anti-secular, nonsense of Weikart:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Richard_Weikart
“Weikart’s most infamous work is his book-length argumentum ad Hitlerum entitled From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (2004). The book has been universally panned by the academic community.[11] Regarding the thesis of Weikart’s book, University of Chicago historian Robert Richards concluded that “Hitler was not a Darwinian” and “calls this all a desperate tactic to undermine evolution.”[12] Scholars Graeme Gooday, John M. Lynch, Kenneth G. Wilson, and Constance K. Barsky wrote that “numerous reviews have accused Weikart of selectively viewing his rich primary material, ignoring political, social, psychological, and economic factors” that shaped the Nazi ideology and policies.[13] Since there is no clear and unique line from Darwinian naturalism to Nazi atrocities, useful causal relationships are difficult to infer; thus, as Robert J. Richards observes, ‘it can only be a tendentious and dogmatically driven assessment that would condemn Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis’.”[14] Historian Peter J. Bowler was likewise direct writing that Weikart’s book reflects a “simple blame game in which (for example) Darwin and Haeckel are accused of paving the way for Nazism,” and denounced his efforts to connect evolution “with distasteful social policies” using a “remarkably simple-minded approach”.[15]
To understand why Weikart and his ilk continue to peddle the Darwin-Hitler connection, one should understand creationism as embedded in a larger religious ethical system. A scientific theory that contradicts the Bible can be seen as “godless” and thus immoral. In addition, the popular misconception that evolution necessarily implies social Darwinism makes this an easy rhetorical tactic. Even though these accusations are not true, creationism can be turned on its head by showing that it is not a moral system and has for centuries justified many evil acts such as genocide.[16]
His next book, Hitler’s Ethic, was not much better. Historian Gerwin Strobl wrote that Hitler’s Ethic’s introduction “reads like a mixture of a television voiceover and the worst kind of undergraduate essay” and lacked any “emphasis on intellectual developments inside Germany,” which ignores “that Hitler had set out to copy what he regarded as the Anglo-American example.”[17] “
Fessitude says
Nobody’s arguing that “Hitler was not a Christian” if by “Christian” one means “Christian on paper” — i.e., someone who was born into it, grew up labeled as a “Christian” (specifically, “Catholic” in Hitler’s case). What people are disputing is that Hitler was a devout Christian and that his devout Christianity motivated his evil behaviors. Like millions of other Westerners who are “Christian” only on paper, the evidence indicates that Hitler was not devout in his Christianity, but rather was entranced by heterodox currents – and admired Islam. Indeed, there exists copious evidence that in fact Hitler despised Christianity, while he admired Islam. See:
Definitive Hitler Quotes
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2015/07/definitive-hitler-quotes.html
Hitler and Islam
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2008/10/hitler-and-islam_28.html
And:
The “Nazi Pope”: one more PC MC brick dismantled
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2011/03/nazi-pope-one-more-pc-mc-brick-to-be.html
Cameron says
More the point that Hitler’s anti-semitism and his gaining enough popular support for that level of anti-semitism has its roots in Christianity rather than in the developing evolutionary sciences.
Why people like Weikart seek to distance Christianity from Nazism is understandable when you have mostly “good christians” in the allies fighting mostly “bad christians” in the axis powers. It’s all about the narrative.
That proponents of evolution denial (creationism) seek to associate the field of studying natural selection in nature with Nazi genocides (artificial selection like farmers have known how to do for thousands of years) is ridiculous. To associate “Darwinism” as they put it, with Nazism they are ridiculously obvious and have zero credibility as historians. Weikart trying to associate fields of scientific study and secular values with Nazism is beyond ridiculous, but that sadly is what we have come to expect from too many christian fundamentalists and creationists
Angemon says
Cameron posted:
“More the point that Hitler’s anti-semitism and his gaining enough popular support for that level of anti-semitism has its roots in Christianity rather than in the developing evolutionary sciences. ”
Huh, what? Hitler was all about “racial struggle”, and he portrayed Jews as wanting to thrive at the expense of Germans. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 defined Jews by race and ordained the separation of “Aryans” and “non-Aryans” .
Cameron says
[Richard] Weikart’s most infamous work is his book-length argumentum ad Hitlerum entitled From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (2004). The book has been universally panned by the academic community.[11] Regarding the thesis of Weikart’s book, University of Chicago historian Robert Richards concluded that “Hitler was not a Darwinian” and “calls this all a desperate tactic to undermine evolution.”[12] Scholars Graeme Gooday, John M. Lynch, Kenneth G. Wilson, and Constance K. Barsky wrote that “numerous reviews have accused Weikart of selectively viewing his rich primary material, ignoring political, social, psychological, and economic factors” that shaped the Nazi ideology and policies.[13] Since there is no clear and unique line from Darwinian naturalism to Nazi atrocities, useful causal relationships are difficult to infer; thus, as Robert J. Richards observes, ‘it can only be a tendentious and dogmatically driven assessment that would condemn Darwin for the crimes of the Nazis’.”[14] Historian Peter J. Bowler was likewise direct writing that Weikart’s book reflects a “simple blame game in which (for example) Darwin and Haeckel are accused of paving the way for Nazism,” and denounced his efforts to connect evolution “with distasteful social policies” using a “remarkably simple-minded approach”.[15]
To understand why Weikart and his ilk continue to peddle the Darwin-Hitler connection, one should understand creationism as embedded in a larger religious ethical system. A scientific theory that contradicts the Bible can be seen as “godless” and thus immoral. In addition, the popular misconception that evolution necessarily implies social Darwinism makes this an easy rhetorical tactic. Even though these accusations are not true, creationism can be turned on its head by showing that it is not a moral system and has for centuries justified many evil acts such as genocide.[16]
His next book, Hitler’s Ethic, was not much better. Historian Gerwin Strobl wrote that Hitler’s Ethic’s introduction “reads like a mixture of a television voiceover and the worst kind of undergraduate essay” and lacked any “emphasis on intellectual developments inside Germany,” which ignores “that Hitler had set out to copy what he regarded as the Anglo-American example.”[17]
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Richard_Weikart
My previous post disappeared so reposting the main point about using anti-evolution, anti-science, fundamentalist, creationist ‘historians’ when decribing the values of Hitler as being non-christian is pretty ridiculous. Otherwise besides that I enjoyed reading Robert’s article.
Danusha Goska says
Hi, Cameron, you post a cut-and-paste from a website called “rational wiki.” My guess is that that website has an agenda.
Cameron have you actually read Weikart’s work? I have. Have you read Himmler? Hitler? Madison Grant?
If you read those works, including Grant’s “Passing of the Great Race,” which Hitler referred to as his “Bible,” you will see that rational wiki is not reliable in this matter.
Your rational wiki cut and paste says that Weikart’s work has been “universally panned.”
I just checked that.
I just went to an academic database and looked for reviews of Weikart’s work.
I found positive reviews.
So your rational wiki cut and paste is not accurate.
Here’s just one positive review: Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress
Kurlander, EricView Profile. German Studies Review36.2 (May 2013): 459-461.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Weikart builds his case over nine crisply written, well-researched chapters. In the introduction and the first two chapters, Weikart argues that Hitler embraced an ethos of evolutionary progress and biological struggle, whose higher moral purpose was the creation of a society based on Aryan racial perfection. The author recognizes the wider cultural framework in which Hitler’s “ethic” emerged, noting the dozens of prominent scholars and politicians, from Ernst Haeckel to Lanz von liebenfels, who shared (and influenced) his worldview. But where many historians see arbitrariness and a lack of programmatic consistency in Hitler’s invocation of evolutionary biology, the author finds ideological coherence and political predictability….Hitler’s Ethic is nonetheless a stimulating work of intellectual history that deserves a wide audience.”
Kepha says
Danusha: In Hitler’s Table Talk, he speaks of Christianity as a “Jewish poison”.
I note as well that the “positive Chirstians” and “German Christians” who identified with Hitler’s agenda invariably took a highly critical view of the Bible, and also recast Jesus as a “fighter” against Judaism (including Grundemann’s foolish notion that the “Galileans” were somehow other than Jews)–an ominous precursor of the Left’s remake of Jesus into “the First Palestinian freedom fighter” or other such nonsense.
I am not familiar with Weikart’s book, but this interchange has whetted my curiosity.
I believe that one reason for the “Christianization” of the Hitler regime is that many historians and writers take a purely sociological perspective which sees any European who is not a Jew (or, if we’re dealing with Turks, Sqip, Pomak, Bosniaks, and the like, a Muslim) as a “Christian”, regardless of what he actually believes. Hence, these people would probably see old Soso Dzhugashvilli himself as a “Christian”. That may be one of Cameron’s presuppositions.
But, I will also agree that rationalwiki is as steeped in unproven axioms and a prioris as any of the rest of us.
Danusha Goska says
Kepha
Weikart works with primary material in German. Which means many quotes from Hitler and other Nazis working out genocide as an ethical behavior because the folks they want to eliminate are comparable to “bacteria.” Those folks include people who were largely Christian: the handicapped, Poles, Soviet POWs, Gypsies.
It’s horrifying material.
If you read Madison Grant, you will see him saying that Christianity weakened humanity with its charity to the weak; Grant says that the unfit need to be “eliminated.” Grant was affiliated with the Bronx Zoo when it put a human being, Ota Benga, on display, to demonstrate “proof” of Darwin’s theories.
I believe in evolution. I don’t have a problem with Darwin. I don’t think all atheists or all evolutionary thinkers commit genocide. OTOH, it’s undeniable that leading Nazis cited survival of the fittest ideas to justify their atrocities. It’s all in Weikart’s book. It’s not Weikart offering theories. It’s quotes from leading Nazis’ work.
We need to remember that capital A Atheism is itself a religion. They want to preserve the image of their belief system as immaculate — no dirty hands. People like Shermer and Pinker insist that rational thought and secularism are making people more ethical.
Any admission that genocidal monsters may have been influenced by Atheism or Scientism or Scientific Racism or Eugenics is anathema to them. It is, though, historical reality.
Kepha says
Dasnusha: I’m aware of the work of Madison Grant, but haven’t read him in detail. My family isn’t “all white”, so I don’t invest in overtly racist books. Further, I know the story of Ota Benga. It’s pretty chilling. I also understand that Henry Fairfield Osborn, one of the icons of my late childhood, who gazed bronze and benign at us every time we visited the Museum of Natural History in NYC, defended putting Ota Benga in the zoo.
As for “Atheism”, I long ago decided that if you listen to a professed atheist long enough, he will reveal the idol he truly worships. For the record, I’m an old-fashioned Protestant Christian with a lot of Jewish ancestry myself.
Again, thank you for an excellent article. I’ve always thought it a bit unfair to compare Ummayad Spain at its very very best with the Crusades in the Rhineland or the Russian pogroms while refusing to consider the Almohads, Almoravids, and other ugly episodes in Islamic history.
Mark Swan says
Danusha Goska…thank You for this article…Keep Them Coming Please.
Fessitude says
Nobody’s arguing that “Hitler was not a Christian” if by “Christian” one means “Christian on paper” — i.e., someone who was born into it, grew up labeled as a “Christian” (specifically, “Catholic” in Hitler’s case). What people are disputing is that Hitler was a devout Christian and that his devout Christianity motivated his evil behaviors. Like millions of other Westerners who are “Christian” only on paper, the evidence indicates that Hitler was not devout in his Christianity, but rather was entranced by heterodox currents – and admired Islam. Indeed, there exists copious evidence that in fact Hitler despised Christianity, while he admired Islam. See:
Definitive Hitler Quotes
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2015/07/definitive-hitler-quotes.html
Kepha says
@Dusty Fae on Apr. 12 at 3:32:
Randy, as a liberal, is soooooooooooooo infinitely more intelligent and learned than any of the rest of us, so I supposed he didn’t need translation. Thanks for providing it.