Today’s Ramadan inspiration from my new book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS comes from Muslim Spain, that celebrated beacon of tolerance and multiculturalism. The tolerance of Abd al-Rahman III, the tenth-century Umayyad caliph of Córdoba, is illustrated by the eleventh-century Muslim historian Ibn Hayyan of Córdoba as he details a typical incident when Christian prisoners were brought into the presence of the caliph:
Muhammad [one of the officers of Abd al-Rahman III] chose the 100 most important barbarians [that is, Christians] and sent them to the alcazar of Córdoba, where they arrived Friday, 7 of the yumada I [March 2, 939]…All the prisoners, one by one, were decapitated in his presence and under his eyes, in plain sight of the people, whose feelings against the infidels Allah alleviated, and they showered their blessings on the Caliph. The death of these barbarians was celebrated in a poem by Ubaydallah b. Yahya b. Idris, saying:
Defeated the prisoners arrived,
Carried and shackled by Allah,
Like an angry lion you looked at them,
Surrounded by wild lions and dragons,
And in plain sight of everyone your sword annihilated them,
Among blessings and praises to Allah.
Click here to preorder The History of Jihad, the first and only comprehensive history of jihad — not just the jihad in tolerant and pluralistic al-Andalus, but against all of Europe, India, Africa and worldwide — in the English language.
Cicero says
Even now the educated Spanish refer to the Islamic rule of half of Spain as a Golden Age of Peace, Harmony and Enlightenment.
They have been feed this dipping at school and now are easy fodder for the canons of Islam
Rafael says
You are right Cicero about the Disney Al Andalus that the mainstream media and the stupid Spanish so called “progresistas” portray about some (never welcome) invaders setting a paradise on earth in Hispania, however that pill isn’t swallowed any more by any well informed Spaniard.
UNLIKE it happened in North Africa and the Middle East in Spain we ended up defeating them in 1492.
The reconquest of Granada was the answer to the fall of Constantinople and if it was not for the discovery of America that same year the Umma would have seen Spanish armies storming across Africa into Arabia and sacking Mecca. 700 years of fight made the Spanish kingdoms a formidable foe to Islam.
Despite conquering half a continent in less than a century we had the nuts to lead and fund (50%) the Lepanto armada, fight the French who supported the Turks with even French harbours, and even bring his king (Francis I) as a prisoner to Madrid, and deter protestantism in half Northern Europe. This latter was the silliest thing to do.
We expelled all Muslims during the 16th and 17th centuries because they proved to be supporting the turks as a fifth column and that shows the way to deal with Islam nowadays too.
Us Spaniards have in our DNA something that make us perceive Islam as something to stay away from and that cannot be changed as easy as some would like it to.
J D S says
Stupid people’s believe stupid things.
Stupidity breeds stupidity..plenty of breeding in Islam.
Cicero says
They have been fed this dripping at school
Marty says
In Islamic Spain, Christians were compelled to wear pictures of pigs on their clothes. Jews got to wear the Star of David. Good times for all.
Dave says
Papal response was too little too late- a reaction to centuries of jihad terror..
Even for Portugal ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dum_Diversas
Dave says
No. It will take work. It will take getting the truth out there. There is some awakening.
Hope and pray for more. I’m not blaming the victims. I don’t mean to demean them as victims; but the withering attack is at first unbelieved. I think it takes calling the evil things by name. We need to subvert the subverters. This “jihadwatch” is more “jihad warning” like the sirens sounding the approach of a coming storm. Robert has it right. We need to know the enemy.
Sons of Liberty says
Exactly Dave ! We need to KNOW the enemy and far too many DON’T ! The invasion we see today is a far more obscure one hidden by all the lies and disinformation of the mainstream media and IGNORANT politicians who refuse to see the truth staring them in the face . This is not an ARMED INVASION like in the past but one shrouded in the NEEDS of poor refugees. They still believe in the evil that is Islam but they will release the full reality of that evil later after they are closer to a majority . I say full reality because there will be jihad against unbelievers today…but nothing like what is coming !Dr. David Wood talks about this as well as Robert Spencer but who is LISTENING to their WARNINGS ? The Stealth Invasion continues………..
CogitoErgoSum says
Yes, let us pause and think about those who have been beheaded in the name of Islam. Another source of inspiration comes from Otranto, Italy in 1480 when 800 Christian men refused the kind offer to become Muslims (after their wives and children had been raped and/or enslaved by the kindly Muslims).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M81f3q0ghb8
Malcolm (South Afric) says
CogitoErgoSum
Thanks for the post, its amazing that the Western World is in denial, as history repeats itself.
Bud says
CogitoErgoSum
Thanks for posting this. The story of Otronto and it’s defenders has inspired me for some time. A little more background:
I believe Otronto was not the original target; for some reason the Ottomans could not attack a little further north of Otronto as originally planned. When they were first asked to surrender the city, the Mayor of Otronto gave his answer by throwing the keys to the city gates into the sea from atop the wall of the city. That night, a significant number of the soldiers in the city escaped over the wall, leaving a small number of soldiers with the citizens to fight the Ottoman invaders.
At about 1:32 in your video, the image shows a headless man being pushed by an enemy soldier. That is Antonio Primaldo. He was an elder of Otronto and a tailor by profession. At 1:42 in the video, the quote is that of Antonio Primaldo. He led his fellow citizens of Otronto up the hill, and urged them to stay strong in the faith, even unto death. He was the first one beheaded, and the story is that he remained standing until the last of the 800 was beheaded. The Ottoman soldiers could not move his headless body from its upright position. It was such a powerful sign and witness that it moved one of the Ottoman soldiers to convert to Christianity right there at that moment, and he was immediately speared to death by other Ottoman soldiers.
Thanks again for posting this powerful story.
CogitoErgoSum says
I was searching the internet for information about this incident also and couldn’t find anything. But here is something I found on Wikipedia from an article about Abd-ar Rahman III.
“Abd-ar-Rahman was accused of having sunk in his later years into the self-indulgent habits of the harem. He is known to have openly kept a male as well as a female harem. This likely influenced the polemical story of his falling in love with a 13-year-old boy (later enshrined as a Christian martyr and canonised as Saint Pelagius of Córdoba) who refused the Caliph’s advances. The love story may have been a construct on top of an original tale, however, in which he ordered the boy-slave to convert to Islam. Either way, enraged, he had the boy tortured and dismembered, thus contributing to the Christian perception of Muslim brutality.”
“Abd-ar-Rahman III’s mother Muzna was a Christian captive, possibly from the Pyrenean region. His paternal grandmother Onneca Fortúnez was a Christian princess from the Kingdom of Pamplona. In his immediate ancestry, Abd-ar-Rahman III was Arab and Hispano–Basque.”
CogitoErgoSum says
Oh no! I meant my comment above to be in response to the comment farther down by rubiconcrest. As for your comment, Bud, I want to thank you for providing more information about the Martyrs of Otranto. It is a very powerful story indeed. God bless you and Malcolm both.
revereridesagain says
I’m surprised the Muslims aren’t screaming for that church to be razed. That video should be shown in schools instead of the indoctrination into Islam with field trips to mosques and nonsense about “golden ages” that is taught now. It will do no good to send women home to do nothing but produce babies every year if this rot is still being forced down our children’s throats once they are old enough to attend school.
As a footnote, even England’s much-maligned king Richard III told a visiting European envoy that he wished he could have taken his army across the Channel to help defeat the Ottomans. A few years later the Islamic death grip on Spain was snapped and the discovery of the New World could commence.
Wellington says
The continued claim by both Muslim and non-Muslim alike to this very day that medieval Spain, when Islam had a major presence in the Iberian peninsula, was a time of great tolerance and civilized exchange (courtesy first and foremost, of course, because of Mo’s peachy-king followers) by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, enriching all three groups, blah, blah, blah, very much tends to prove that the cynical view of history as proffered by Napoleon is perhaps the most accurate one, to wit, that it is a pack of lies agreed upon.
Whenever I meet someone who asserts that medieval Spain is a wonderful example of Muslim tolerance, replete with the enriching of Western Civilization, which civilization most certainly of course, indeed and verily and the whole nine yards here, was so backward at the time, I know I am listening either to a liar or an ignoramus. Loads of both still exist, especially in that very foolish realm known as “academia,” and thus proving again that no amount of education is a guarantee against being uninformed and possessing a dearth of common sense and moral intelligence. Yes, it’s one thing to be intelligent and informed; it’s quite another to be highly well educated and yet extensively ignorant.
Flavius Claudius Iulianus says
+1
The Christian and Jewish primary sources of the day paint a very different picture than that painted by the literal translations of Arab propagandist and apologists by the uncritical and naive 19th century Islamic hobbyists/academics of Europe.
Sons of Liberty says
So TRUE , Wellington !
gravenimage says
Good post, Wellington.
Malcolm (South Afric) says
The 4th day of Ramadan, if Muslims could meditate on this, at the 1 min 43 sec look at this child, his name was Adam. Please watch the entire clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRMOBqI1Fgc
Malcolm (South Afric) says
Little Adam above the youngest saint: All Catholics and priest should push for the sainthood Adam. While his Mother and Father lay dead in the Church, while worshiping their God, Adam engaged the killers from Islam for two hours before they shot him.
“Unknown Author” : Little Adam used his reason. “Enough, enough, enough,” he said, for two hours to the Islamists, before they murdered him. So it was that Adam, the Christian fundamentalist, fell under the “sword” of the Islamic fundamentalists. Nowhere is there a more clear example of Islam, the violent political/religous system vs. Christianity, where all are called to be “as little children” who must try to use reason with Muslim aggressors, than in Adam, a little Catholic boy who, in my humble opinion, will someday be known as St. Adam of Baghdad, the youngest saint of the Catholic Church. “
gravenimage says
Poor baby.
Dragan Krstic says
Today May 20, Erdogan pays a visit to Bosnia, ex-repiblic of Yugoslavia where 25 years ago civil war between Moslims and Christians, Serbs and Croats took place. Review video: pogledajte kako je docekan Erdogan u Zetri.
Situation in this area of Europe might turn in another civil war if moslims will continue to provote citizens who are not followers of Mohammad.
Lydia Church says
Comment of the day:
To itm,
You MUST convert from islam to Christianity, or we will cut your head off!
(because, after all, we are of the tolerant religion of peace) (and… we are right)
We will do all the things to you that the koran says to do to filthy pigs called muslim infidels, dirty kufar.
islam is of satan (allah) and mohammed is the devil’s messenger.
Turn from evil, pagan, mithraist moon god islam to the religion of the one true God; Christianity.
Yes, we will torture, kill, rape you and your family, take all your possessions, and behead you if you and your family don’t renounce islam, denounce satan (allah), and convert to Christianity!
We will have another crusade and take all muslim lands by force and the sword, and impose our law and subjugate all muslims and their laws, and break the crescent, and replace it with the cross.
Oh… wait a minute, hold on…. I was reading from the conversion approach and tactics of islam, not Christianity. My bad!
Another reason why Christianity is fact and SUPREME over islam.
(sarcastic comparison of course!)
gravenimage says
Good point–it is Islam that does this, of course.
Ringo Starr says
It should be clear to all air breathing homosapians that Islam produces nothing but misery. Sharing the truth is the best way to stop the advance of this misery.
rubiconcrest says
I toured the Alcazar in Cordoba last year. There is no mention of this slaughter or where it might have taken place on those grounds. If anyone knows I would like to know. There should be a commemorative plaque.
CogitoErgoSum says
I accidentally posted this up above but I will post it again to lessen the effect of my confusion. My apologies for the duplication.
————————————————————–
I was searching the internet for information about this incident also and couldn’t find anything. But here is something I found on Wikipedia from an article about Abd-ar Rahman III.
“Abd-ar-Rahman was accused of having sunk in his later years into the self-indulgent habits of the harem. He is known to have openly kept a male as well as a female harem. This likely influenced the polemical story of his falling in love with a 13-year-old boy (later enshrined as a Christian martyr and canonised as Saint Pelagius of Córdoba) who refused the Caliph’s advances. The love story may have been a construct on top of an original tale, however, in which he ordered the boy-slave to convert to Islam. Either way, enraged, he had the boy tortured and dismembered, thus contributing to the Christian perception of Muslim brutality.”
“Abd-ar-Rahman III’s mother Muzna was a Christian captive, possibly from the Pyrenean region. His paternal grandmother Onneca Fortúnez was a Christian princess from the Kingdom of Pamplona. In his immediate ancestry, Abd-ar-Rahman III was Arab and Hispano–Basque.”
gravenimage says
Yes–more people need to learn this history.
Granddaddy says
I find it interesting that Islam never decapitates by machine. For instance, the French invented the guillotine. That’s the way to do it. Why go to all that effort when you can use a machine to do it for you? And with a lot less mess than doing it by hand. And the English made many improvements. Let us not forget the English and the steam engine. That’s the way it should be done: quick, neat, clean, and efficient. But Islam always does it by hand. I know it’s intended as terrorism, but they’re always smiling when they do it. We might smile, but it’s not considered polite. They don’t think like us. Just a thought.
gravenimage says
Islam likes things to be as bloody and painful as possible.
gravenimage says
Ramadan Day 4 thought for the day from Robert Spencer’s The History of Jihad
…………………..
Islam was brutal and oppressive in Spain.