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Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed: Italy must remember its pluralist past

Apr 16, 2018 11:41 am By Robert Spencer

Akbar Ahmed has a sterling reputation as a “moderate” Muslim and thoughtful academic, but there is a sinister undercurrent to his new book Journey Into Europe: he calls for a “New Andalusia,” which to non-Muslims who have forgotten their own history conjures up the newly-minted historical myth of a paradise of peace and tolerance, under the benign rule of Islam. In reality, however, as I show in my forthcoming book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS (which you can preorder here), Jews and Christians in Muslim Spain did not enjoy anything remotely close to equal rights with Muslims, and were subjected to the Sharia-mandated discrimination and harassment of dhimmitude, punctuated by occasional outright persecution, characterized by enslavement and massacres. Since Islamic law has not changed since then, one wonders what Akbar Ahmed is really recommending to credulous and unsuspecting Europeans.

And now he is calling upon Italy to “remember its pluralist past.” Once again, it is the responsibility of non-Muslims in the West, and no one else, to be “pluralist” and prove their “tolerance.” No one ever calls upon Saudi Arabia to remember its pluralist past, when Jews, Christians, and polytheists lived in Arabia. No one ever calls upon Sharia states to be more tolerant of non-Muslims. The onus is always only on the West.

Ahmed characterizes the foes of mass Muslim migration in Italy as if they were all neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, and antisemites, with the strong implication that no one would have any reason for opposing that migration except for racism and xenophobia. He retails, in highly misleading fashion, some historical incidents, but leaves some others out. In The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS I offer some information about Islam and Muslims in Italy that Akbar Ahmed doesn’t mention.

The Muslim conquest of Sicily began in 827. By 829, the jihadi invaders had been almost completely driven off the island when they received unexpected help: an invading Muslim army from al-Andalus, led by Asbagh ibn Wakil. Although they ultimately took Palermo, the Muslims were not able to secure the eastern part of Sicily, stymied both by the ferocity of the native population and their own inability to unite their various factions. The fighting went on for decades.

In 878, the Muslims finally took Syracuse, and the booty was immense. According to the eighteenth century historian Edward Gibbon, “the plate of the cathedral weighed five thousand pounds of silver; the entire spoil was computed at one million of pieces of gold [about four hundred thousand pounds sterling].” Along with the treasure, the Muslims enslaved over seventeen thousand Christians. The exact number is not known, but according to Gibbon, it exceeded the number of the seventeen thousand Christians who were captured when the Muslims took Taormina and were sent to Africa to lead lives of slavery.

The warriors of jihad were finally able to secure complete control of Sicily in 902. The conquerors treated their new domains with extreme severity, brutally suppressing the Greek language and forcibly converting thousands of young boys to Islam.

Later the Sicilians were able to drive the invaders out, but the devastation they wrought was immense. Convivencia, eh?

Preorder The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS here.

“Italy must remember its pluralist past,” by Akbar Ahmed, Daily Times, March 31, 2018:

Immigrants and asylum seekers in Italy are facing an onslaught these days. A former candidate for the far-right Northern League recently went on a shooting spree targeting African migrants, wounding six people. On March 5, a Senegalese street vendor in Florence was murdered, terrifying the city’s African community. The man was married to the widow of his cousin who was killed by a far right gunman in 2011 in Florence. In recent years, anti-migrant mobs have chanted such slogans as “let’s burn them all, let’s make soap out of them.”…

Italy, like other countries in Europe, has seen the rapid rise of the far right amidst an immigration wave and distrust of the political establishment.

I have studied these trends in a new book, Journey into Europe: Islam, Immigration, and Identity, which explores Islam in Europe and the place of Islam in European history and civilization. It is the fourth book in a quartet of studies examining relations between the West and the Muslim world and based in fieldwork across the length and breadth of Europe.

To understand what is happening in European politics and society today, it is necessary to understand European identity, which can be interpreted in three distinct categories-primordial identity, predator identity, and pluralist identity.

Primordial identity emphasizes one’s unique culture and traditions, and predator identity indicates the aggressive, even militaristic lengths that people will resort to in order to protect their identity. Predator identity can be triggered due to perceived threats including globalization, unemployment, economic instability, and the greed and failure of elites. Add the presence of immigrants, and a society can move in extreme and bloody directions which challenge the very notion of a modern democracy.

Pluralist identity, on the other hand, emphasizes racial and religious coexistence, and in Europe was seen in Andalusia, where Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived, worked, and created together. It is this fruitful period in Europe, which the Spanish call convivencia, that contributed to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the development of European humanism.

This pluralist period also existed in Italy, and Italians describe it as convivenza. Italy produced Christian leaders such as Roger II, the King of Sicily, and Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, King of Sicily, and King of Italy, who spoke Arabic, had Muslim bodyguards, and featured Arabic inscriptions on their royal mantle. Muslims and Jews were permitted to live by their own laws, and the jewel of Sicilian architecture, Roger’s twelfth-century Palatine Chapel, incorporated Christian, Muslim, and Jewish influences. Frederick, shocked by the killing of Jews in the name of the infamous “blood libel,” absolved the community of this crime. He even successfully took Jerusalem for Christianity at the height of the Crusades without a drop of blood being shed through his friendship with the Egyptian sultan and respect for Islam….

In this time of political and social turmoil, Italians and Europeans must remember this pluralist part of their history and the contributions it has made to Italian and Western civilization. Italians need to address what Orlando called the “emergencies” of problems like unemployment without reviving a predator identity that led to destruction on a catastrophic scale in the last century. They must act before it is too late.

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Filed Under: academia, Featured, History of jihad Tagged With: Akbar Ahmed


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Comments

  1. Benedict says

    Apr 16, 2018 at 11:53 am

    “Italy must remember its pluralist past”
    ……
    and Saudi Arabia its pluralist present —?

  2. andra says

    Apr 16, 2018 at 12:24 pm

    I really hope for the true Europeans to rise soon against the Islamisation of our continent. I am so sick of demanding Muslims who speak of respect and mean submission, who speak of tolerance and mean Sharia.

    • Traian imperator says

      Apr 16, 2018 at 3:10 pm

      When they will have no more beer, they will.

  3. No Muzzies Here says

    Apr 16, 2018 at 12:29 pm

    Just a complicated way of saying that Muslims want to turn Italy and the entire world Muslim.

  4. Peter says

    Apr 16, 2018 at 1:23 pm

    Arabians should remember its pluralist past (polytheists, Jews, Christians), as should Pakistanis (Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians), rather than celebrate and promote the demise of non-Muslims.

    • gravenimage says

      Apr 16, 2018 at 4:08 pm

      So true.

  5. The European says

    Apr 16, 2018 at 3:46 pm

    If Westerners do not find remedies for their various fatal diseases very soon – egalitarianism, multiculturalism, the completely insane cult of diversity, pluralism, multiracialism, genderism etc. -, their ethnical and cultural demise will be inexorable. Time is almost up. By 2042 the US will be a country where white people are a minority (about 46% of the entire population); you’ll be flooded with Blacks, Hispanics , Muslims and other people from Third-World countries. You’ll lose power and control over the USA.
    Fighting Islam is a good thing, because this dehumanizing, and totalitarian ideology is destroying everything that is dear to us, but it is not enough. If you want to save America, you should rekindle the spirit of your founding fathers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton … They built your great country for white people, for Anglo-Saxons and for Europeans. Just stop immigration, repeal the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, adopt the reasonable immigration policies of Japan and China and you’ll survive.

  6. gravenimage says

    Apr 16, 2018 at 4:07 pm

    Islamic scholar Akbar Ahmed: Italy must remember its pluralist past
    ……………………

    As Robert Spencer makes clear, this “pluralist past” involved the bloody Muslim conquest of Sicily and parts of southern Italy, with enslavement and slaughter of the native popualtion by the ravening Mohammedans.

    *Of course* Akbar Ahmed wants more of the same today. *Ugh*.So true

    • balam says

      Apr 17, 2018 at 9:02 am

      @gravenmage: Mohammad is the shining example of establishing pluralist society in Medina when he cut the throats of about 900 Jews of Quraiza Tribe with his own hands from dawn to dusk and expelled the rest the very people,who welcomed him .He was a PSYCHOPAPATH and worse than HITLER .His followers are the wolves of Allah in sheep’s clothing and Akbar Ahmed is one of them .He is like a poisonous snake in the sleeve of America. I would not trust him as far as I could throw him.

  7. Michael Copeland says

    Apr 16, 2018 at 5:21 pm

    No pluralism for Otranto.
    When muslim invaders besieged Otranto, successfully, in 1480 the inhabitants were “invited” to convert to Islam – or be killed. They refused to convert, and one by one eight hundred men were beheaded on a hill outside the town. When reinforcements arrived, too late, shortly afterwards the skulls were collected and placed reverentially in the church. They are still there.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/647mau/church_in_italy_displays_the_skulls_and_bones_of/

  8. sheik yer'mami says

    Apr 16, 2018 at 7:37 pm

    “The fighting went on for decades” is an understatement. Sicily was occupied for 300 years, but never completely. The Mohammedans could only conquer areas where traitors colluded with them, but in the end they were evicted.

  9. sidney penny says

    Apr 17, 2018 at 3:51 am

    “And now he is calling upon Italy to “remember its pluralist past.” Once again, it is the responsibility of non-Muslims in the West, and no one else, to be “pluralist” and prove their “tolerance.” No one ever calls upon Saudi Arabia to remember its pluralist past, when Jews, Christians, and polytheists lived in Arabia. No one ever calls upon Sharia states to be more tolerant of non-Muslims. The onus is always only on the West.”

    Robert, the onus is not only on the West.

    Non-Muslims everywhere had to be tolerant of Muslims.

    For Obama, it is always a one-way street.

    https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/12/obama-india-needs-to-cherish-and-nurture-its-muslims

    https://www.firstpost.com/india/barack-obama-says-india-needs-to-cherish-nurture-and-cultivate-its-muslim-population-4239389.html.

    Obama spoke of India’s “enormous Muslim population”, which is successful, integrated and thinks of itself as Indian.That is unfortunately not always the case in some other countries, Obama added.

    Referring to India, he said, “And that is something that needs to be cherished and nurtured, cultivated. It’s important to continue reinforcing it.”

  10. Sentinel says

    Apr 17, 2018 at 5:55 am

    “Italy must remember its pluralist past”

    What’s that got to do with the price of cheese ? It also had plagues of locusts and the Black Death but simply because it happened previously doesn’t mean it was a good thing or that historical mistakes should be repeated.

  11. Robert says

    Apr 17, 2018 at 9:22 am

    AMERICAN, CITIZENS, PATRIOTS BE AWARE!
    There never has been, nor will there ever be such an animal as, a “Moderate” Moslem!
    WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, HISTORY WILL SHOW THAT “ISLAM is ISLAM!”
    EVERYTHING ELSE IS ISLAMIC “TAQIYYA!”

  12. jack cade says

    Apr 17, 2018 at 11:02 am

    The Muslim barrows who pray for Islam to take over Europe imagine that buses and trains will still run, that a welfare system will still coddle them, and that shit will flow down a pipe. But no, Mr Muslim barrow, civilization will be gone; once Islam takes over, everything degrades to the 7th century.

  13. Granddaddy says

    Apr 18, 2018 at 12:24 am

    This reminds me of the Muslim who said, “The United States has always been a Judaeo-Christian-Muslim nation.” You really have to be an ignorant fool to believe anything this Akbar Ahmed says.

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