There is also evidence that Muslims were on the ships that the Italian explorer, navigator and colonist Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in the 15th century.
It’s time to put paid to this claim made about Muslims and their supposed Columbus connection.
Three distinct claims are made by Muslim “scholars” about Muslims and Christopher Columbus. These are: first, the assertion that Columbus’s navigator was an “Arab” and “Muslim”; second, that the Pinzon brothers, one of whom was captain of the Niña and the other the captain of the Pinta, were Muslims (or Moriscos, outwardly converts to Catholicism); third, that Columbus recorded in his papers having seen a “mosque” on top of a mountain in Cuba, which means there must already have been Muslims in the New World before Columbus arrived.
Let’s deal with that last claim first, that “mosque sighting” in Cuba. It was first reported by a certain Dr. Youssef Mroueh in an article in 1996. There is no record of a “Youssef Mroueh” receiving a doctoral degree in history. In the article, Mroueh claims, without quoting the original words of Columbus’s papers, that he noted “seeing a mosque.” Here is Youssef Mroueh: “Columbus admitted in his papers that on Monday, October 21, 1492 [sic] CE while his ship was sailing near Gibara on the north-east coast of Cuba, he saw a mosque on top of a beautiful mountain.”
Note that word “admitted,” as if Columbus had wanted to hide any evidence of a Muslim presence in Cuba.
Why did Youssef Mroueh not quote Columbus? Here’s why: Columbus wrote “Señala la disposición del río y del puerto…, que tiene sus montañas hermosas y altas…, y una de ellas tiene encima otro montecillo a manera de una hermosa mezquita.” [unnamed editor] Relaciones y Cartas de Cristóbal Colón (1892), p. 49
In English: “Remarking on the position of the river and port…, he [Columbus] describes its mountains as lofty and beautiful…, and one of them has another little hill on its summit, like a graceful mosque.” — Clements R. Markham (tr.), The Journal of Christopher Columbus (1893), pp. 62-3
Columbus did not write that he had seen a mosque, but rather, that he had seen one hill atop another, looking “like a graceful mosque.” Youssef Mroueh surely knew this, but didn’t want to let his readers know it. So he didn’t quote from Columbus, changed the description from a simile (X is like Y, the hill is like a mosque) and made it a straight description (“there’s a graceful mosque on the hill”), and hoped he could get away with it. And in fact, his version has been accepted by some Muslims, including Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who claimed in 2014 that “In his memoirs [sic], Christopher Columbus mentions the existence of a mosque atop a hill on the coast of Cuba.”
Columbus never did.
And just as baseless and absurd was Erdogan’s claim in the same 2014 speech that “Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus. Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178.” Again, not a scrap of evidence. But such myths serve to feed Islamic pride. Many Muslims do believe such stories and dismiss any attempts by Westerners to disabuse them not as truth-seeking, but as examples of attempts to deny Muslim achievements.
The next claim made by Muslims is that Columbus had an “Arab” navigator.
Some Muslims have claimed that Columbus did employ two Muslims on his own ship, one as a navigator, and another as an interpreter. They are flatly wrong. Let’s consider the claims made that Christopher Columbus included Muslims in his crew. Not only is there not a shred of evidence to support this, but what evidence there is goes the other way. Columbus undertook his voyages because he wanted to discover an alternate route for Europeans to Asia, i.e., India, with its spices, precisely because Muslims had, with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, managed to seal off the old trade routes to the East from Christian Europe. Columbus, a devout Christian, who claimed the territories he discovered for “los reyes católicos” (the Christian monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella), would never have taken on members of the enemy camp (of Islam) for his crew, and especially would not have entrusted the critical job of navigator to a Muslim. But so effective has this Muslim rewriting of history been that in 2004, a State Department employee put out a claim about Columbus’s Muslim crew members: in a press release entitled “Islamic Influence Runs Deep in American Culture,” Phyllis McIntosh of the State Department’s Washington File claimed that “Islamic influences may date back to the very beginning of American history. It is likely that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America in 1492, charted his way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an Arab navigator.”
No, it is not “likely.” It never happened. The State Department was falsifying history in order to win favor among Muslims, both here and abroad.
Why did McIntosh make this absurd claim, even though “may date back” and “it is likely that” are weasel words providing an escape-hatch of deniability? How did she make the leap from no evidence to “may date back” and from “may” to “likely”? And even if, which did not happen, one crew member had turned out to be an “Arab” and thus a Muslim, how would that allow us to conclude that “Islamic influence runs deep in American culture”? What kind of “Islamic influence” would a single crew member have had on Columbus’s voyages, with all the other crew members on all three ships being Christians (or conversos, Jews who had accepted Catholicism), or on the subsequent discovery and settlement of the New World? McIntosh was pulling rabbits out of an ahistorical hat. She, and the State Department for which she worked, either felt there was no harm in trying to curry favor with Muslims (history is silly putty to some; they shape it as they will), or were under pressure to rewrite history, possibly from George W. Bush’s office (he was constantly prating about how “Islam is peace”), as part of a feelgood outreach campaign to American Muslims. But where did this particular story, about Columbus’s “Arab navigator,” come from?
It came from Muslims themselves. And it is based on a case of mistaken identity. For it was Muslims who, when they learned of an “Arabic-speaking Spaniard” on Columbus’s first voyage, decided that this must refer to a Muslim Arab. In fact, the reference was to one Luis de Torres, a converso (a Jew who accepted Catholicism). Luis de Torres knew Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, and some Arabic, and was taken on not as a navigator but as an interpreter by Columbus, who thought his knowledge of Hebrew would be useful if in Asia they ran into any Jewish traders (who were known to travel far and wide) or into members of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. But Muslims, in their eagerness to put themselves into the picture with Columbus, have committed two historical errors: first, they thought that the interpreter, the “Arabic-speaking Spaniard” Luis de Torres, was the navigator, and then they assumed that if someone on Columbus’s crew spoke Arabic, as Torres did, he must have been an Arab and a Muslim. Wrong on both counts.
mortimer says
I predict Americans will stay away from Youssef Mroueh’s propaganda house in droves.
Professor Harold Frankfurt described Youssef Mroueh’s process in his treatise titled ‘On Bullshit’:
“However studiously and conscientiously the bullshitter proceeds, it remains true that he is also trying to GET AWAY WITH SOMETHING. There is surely in his work, as in the work of the SLOVENLY craftsman, some kind of LAXITY which resists or ELUDES the demands of a disinterested and austere discipline. The pertinent mode of LAXITY cannot be equated, evidently, with simple carelessness or inattention to detail.”
Prof. Frankfurt notes that bullshitters like Youssef Mroueh have no interest in facts or truth.
Bullshitting, as Frankfurt explains, is not exactly lying, and bullshit remains bullshit whether it’s true or false.
The difference lies in the bullshitter’s COMPLETE DISREGARD for whether what he’s saying corresponds to facts in the physical world: he “does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He PAYS NO ATTENTION TO IT AT ALL. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”
Youssef Mroueh’s intention is to hoodwink Americans and I believe most Americans will smell the hot, steaming piles of farm-fresh TAQIYYA he is shovelling.
RonaldB says
That’s a great description. It adds significant insight not only to Muslims, who have a tenuous relationship with truth, but to Alexandrio Otavio Cortez AOC, who has exactly the same relationship with truth: it’s like a ship passing in the night.
It also describes leftists and Democrats in general. It’s a losing proposition to follow them around and fact-check, logic-check, or science check what they say. As per your description, they generate ridiculous and unprovable assertions at the drop of a hat, go on to another at the first whiff of resistance, and never stick with anything long enough to be shown to be right or wrong. As you say, truth is irrelevant, and feeling is everything.
I think Muslims are closer to liars than to the BS’ers you describe. And for this reason. When a Muslim government is in charge, their first impulse is to destroy evidence. The Wahabi government of Saudi Arabia destroys Muslim shrines. Why? It’s supposed to be because shrines encourage idolatry, but more likely, destroying historical ruins or shrines removes any possibility of actually studying the matter.
James Lincoln says
mortimer says,
A bullshitter “does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He PAYS NO ATTENTION TO IT AT ALL.”
You are, of course correct. Bullshitters are infuriating to folks who use evidence-based logic. Likely because there is absolutely no way to get through to them.
Come to think of it, this type of derangement syndrome has also affected many members of the political left in the United States.
William A Carr says
As I understand it Columbus did not discover ‘America’ at all as he never set foot there, his landfalls were all in the Caribbean islands. In any case the USA did nor exist in the 15th century. The Vikings have a much better claim to the discovery of the N American continent.
mortimer says
RB, bullshitters never see themselves as liars. I have seen this behavior in Muslims for the last 40 years … they present speculation as cocksure *fact* and state the tenuous idea as a solidly established, generally-recognized idea … even though it may be no more than a preposterous fallacy.
Hugh Fitzgerald provided a perfect example in the story above about Columbus who saw a mountain that ‘looked like’ a mosque.
This simile is turned into a FACT by bullshitter Youssef Mroueh. The logical process is this: A looks like or sounds like B. Therefore, B is the SAME as A. This is obviously a fallacy.
Youssef Mroueh wants gullible people to assume that Columbus or his crewman was a Muslim because Columbus used the word ‘mosque’ and his Spanish crewman knew a bit of street Arabic from associating with Arabs in the market places in occupied Spain before 1492.
Many Spaniards from southern Spain at the time would know some Arabic phrases for dealing or trading with Arabs and Jews who studied Hebrew recognize many Arabic cognate words. That doesn’t make those Jews Muslims.
gravenimage says
Here’s more bullsh*t from Youssef Mroueh:
“Precolumbian Muslims in the Americas”
https://www.beautifulislam.net/history/muslims_americas_p.html
Of course, he has nothing to base this on, making such ludicrous claims as there being Arabic inscriptions all over North America, and there being “ruins of mosques and minarets with inscriptions of Quranic verses have been discovered in Cuba,Mexico,Texas and Nevada”.
He also cites Barry Fell, a crank whose actual field of expertise was in invertebrate zoology. His rantings about supposed Old World epigraphs in the Americas has been widely debunked.
Finally, he cites towns named for Medina and Mecca in the US, which existence being supposed proof of Muslim presence in the US–let alone that of pre-columbian Muslim presence–Hugh Fitzgerald shot down in the first article in this series.
Wellington says
Bullshitting, as both RonaldB and James Lincoln have already noted, is something that Muslims and Leftists have in common. These two groups have a lot in common, none of it good.
ntesdorf says
Joseph Goebbels would have admired the sheer scale of the lies (Taqqiya) that the Muslims tell.
Rev G says
Odd that Columbus gets abused and minimized as a white Christian, but with a little revisionism and insertion of muslims in the mix he is all good and proper again.
gravenimage says
Good point, Rev G.
gravenimage says
Hugh Fitzgerald: A Tale of Two Museums (Part Four)
………………
Absolutely brilliant take down by Hugh Fitzgerald here.
fredoniahead says
I thought ol’ Columbus was persona non grata to the Left. That is what is repeated over and over in the Marxist indoctrination camps a.k.a public schools, universities, and colleges. The evil genocidal mad man that came over to the New Land solely to enslave the Natives and intentionally spread smallpox. That is what we hear from the Leftard self-loathing Hate Machine. So now, all of a sudden, Columbus’s voyage is to be praised because Abduls allegedly accompanied him. Right. More Red-Green hypocrisy. Make up your delusional minds.
Maybe it was the Abduls that helped Columbus enslave the Natives. After all, they had lots of expertise in the matter. I wonder if we’ll hear that one from the Left.