Colm Gillis also mentions, in his excoriation of Boris Johnson, as “an achievement of the sultans,” the architectural feats of Mimar Sinan (“the great architect Sinan”). But those feats were not achievements of the sultans — they merely paid the bills. They belonged to Sinan himself, as his personal achievement. And Sinan, it might be noted, was born a Christian — whether Armenian or Greek is still disputed — and raised in a Christian milieu. He only became a Muslim when, at the age of 22, he was drafted into the Janissary Corps. Surely the fact that the leading mosque architect in the Ottoman Empire was born and raised a Christian is worth noting, even if it undermines Colm Gillis’s claim that Sinan’s buildings should be considered “an achievement of the [Muslim] sultans.”
Finally, in a fit of tu-quoque, Gillis offers, by way of a riposte to Boris Johnson’s observation that the Muslims did not make use the printing press until nearly 400 years after it had been introduced in the West, that the West had its “luddites,” too. But the Luddite movement as a force to be reckoned with lasted only from 1811 to 1816. it was not an expression of societal hostility to everything new, but only reflected the opposition of workers in a few industries, opposed to those machines that necessarily led to a loss of jobs, or to the use of lower-paid workers who would operate the machines. There was no general suspicion of innovation in England, as the cascading inventiveness of its industrial revolution amply demonstrates, nothing comparable to the unwillingness of the Ottomans, for many centuries, to make use of the printing-press.
Johnson’s authority for his ignorance is Winston Churchill. If Churchill said it, it must be true. However, Churchill was neither a historian nor a sociologist. He was a myth-maker whose literary skills were devoted to “demonstrating” the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race over all others. To achieve this sleight of hand, Churchill had to simultaneously denigrate other cultures, including Islam. It seems that Great Britain under Johnson will be beset by similar doses of myth, fantasy and supremacist doctrines.
Johnson was not mindlessly endorsing everything Churchill said. He was referring to Churchill’s by-now celebrated observations on Islam and Muslims that appeared in The River War. That particular quote was one of the most brilliant analyses of Islam, and its effect on its adherents, that anyone has yet produced, and Johnson was right to allude to it.
But what is positively fantastic is the claim by Colm Gillis that Churchill was not “a historian.” Churchill was not an academic historian, he never had to pass a Ph.D. exam or labored over a doctoral dissertation that few would wish to reread. He was something far better than that. In his life, Churchill was an army officer, a journalist, a government official, a politician, and a historian. He studied history by constant reading. One of his most famous remarks was his advice to a young man: “Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.” Till the end of his life he remained a student, as well as a writer, of history. He was always a keen observer of men and events. And for more than half a century he was a direct participant in the most important events in British, and even world, history.
No other historian has ever held so many, so various, and such important, positions in his own government, and engaged in so many occupations — journalist, writer, lecturer — outside of it. He reported on British imperialism as a military man and journalist, in Sudan, India, and South Africa. During World War I, he was again at the center of things, as First Lord of the Admiralty. In the 1920s, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the 1930s, it was Churchill, though in the political wilderness, who alone warned the British elite, and through his journalism the British public, that Germany was rapidly rearming, that Hitler was an unprecedented threat, that Europe would almost certainly be engulfed, because of relentless Nazi aggression, in a Second World War, and that Britain had itself to rearm to counter Hitlerism. As British Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945, he was at the very center of world events. In 1945, he then resumed his career as a historian, working on his mammoth History of the English-Speaking Peoples, until he returned again as Prime Minister from 1951 to 1955.
The distinguished historian Professor H. C. Allen of London University once suggested that when we consider the total bulk of Churchill’s historical work, “judged as an historian alone, and setting aside all his other manifold and in some cases greater achievements, Sir Winston Churchill’s fame would be secure.”
He wrote many kinds of histories; about his own life, about his distinguished ancestors, about World War II. The Oxford historian A.L. Rowse thinks his masterpieces are his 4-volume Life of Lord Marlborough and his 4-volume History of the English-Speaking Peoples, a history of Britain and its former colonies and possessions throughout the world, covering the period from Caesar’s invasions of Britain (55 BC) to the beginning of the First World War (1914). It’s hard to imagine that one man could have written a work that seamlessly covers nearly 2000 years of history, and that has earned the respect of such distinguished historians as H. C. Allen, A. J. Rowse, Andrew Roberts, and Martin Gilbert, among many others. Churchill was, in the writing of history as in so much else, a one-man multitude.
When Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 “for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values,” he was only the second Nobel winner who was given the literature award primarily for his works of history; the first was Theodor Mommsen in 1902, for his History of Rome. No doubt those who awarded Churchill the Nobel for his historical works did so only after learning from eminent historians about Churchill’s achievements as an historian.
But perhaps we should instead listen to Colm Gillis. Why should the opinions of Professors A. J. Rowse, H. C, Allen, Andrew Roberts, Martin Gilbert and a hundred other historians of similar distinction, matter? And what do those unnamed historians who nominated Churchill for the Nobel Prize, or those who were later consulted by the Literature Prize committee as they made their choice, know about history? They’re all part of a credulous cult of Churchill-worship. Why should we care what they think? Colm Gillis knows better; he dismisses Churchill, who he claims was “neither a historian nor a sociologist,” but a mere spinner of “myth, fantasy and supremacist doctrines” who exalted the white, English-speaking peoples above all others. Gillis mocks the attitude he attributes to Boris Johnson that “If Churchill said it, it must be true.”
“Question authority!” is the ipse-dixit message of Colm Gillis. To whom many of us will want to reply: “Why should we?”
crawford421 says
Gillis isn’t suited to wash Churchill’s drinking glasses.
CRUSADER says
Gillis would be welcome to spit in Adolf Hitler’s eye.
InfidelLover says
“Question authority!” is the ipse-dixit message of Colm Gillis
Right. So why should we not question the authority of Colm Gillis?
In any case, my trust in a particular authority rests on how factual are their claims, their scholarship, their attention to detail, their sense of judgement in weighing up facts.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
However, Churchill was neither a historian nor a sociologist.
And thank goodness for that. Back in Winston’s time, historians were a fairly objective lot. Not so anymore, where history departments have devolved into self-selected groups of globo-socialists… and unanimous Moslem-boosters to boot.
Churchill had clarity. Colm Gillis has disparity, with more incongruous moving parts that the survival instinct should allow.
CRUSADER says
Document about “JIHAD in ISLAM” ~
http://www.muhammadanism.org/Terrorism/jihah_in_islam/jihad_in_islam.pdf
jewdog says
If you’re going to put down Churchill you could also say that Dickens wrote pulp fiction, Albert Einstein and Alexander Graham Bell were amateur tinkerers, Jesus was a Jewish Jim Jones, and Moses was a shyster lawyer. And maybe this Colm Gillis is a pretentious putz.
CRUSADER says
It’s possible to say ANYTHING….
It doesn’t make it right.
It doesn’t make it true.
(Hey, just look at the poop that Prabh lays here now and then….)
carolyne says
IMO there have been two great Englishmen. William Shakespeare for his mastery of the English language and Winston Churchill for his knowledge of history and his understanding of the Islamic culture. No one has ever even come close to either of them.
Robert says
Two great Englishmen, yes…
And in the 20th century, the two great English leaders were one man.. the Right Honorable Sir Winston Churchill, and one woman, the “Iron Lady” the Right Honorable Lady Margaret Thatcher.
The two best English Prime Ministers of England in the 20th Century.
Battle says
jewdog hits nail on head. Good.
CRUSADER says
hammer hammer hammer — 100%
(just like ole Chuck Martel!!!) 😉
jarmanray says
Sir Winston Churchill was at the center of so many historical events such as his speech in 1946 about the Iron Curtain that Stalin was erecting after the defeat of the NATZIs. Not only did he write about history, he has been the object that historians have written about and his decisions aided in the direction in which much of West adopted. Sir Winston was history itself.
carolyne says
I agree with you. Mr. Churchill was himself history.
SB says
Colm Gillis, nothing is owed to Islam. You are deranged. If you are into 9 year old girls being married off to 55 year old pervs, (without their say so) you are definantly deranged.
Battle says
CRUSADER: Much thanks for the two links.
Rarely says
Winston Churchill was not a god and certainly had his shortcomings. But whatever those shortcomings may have been he certainly hit the nail on the head when it comes to islam in spite of them. The effort which many current day muslims make to prove Churchill correct is amazing. Personally I would love the muslim world to prove Churchill wrong. It would be a much better world.
Mark Swan says
By whose standards do we presume to rank Mr. Churchill’s Historian Credentials,
certainly not Mr. Gillis’s preposterous bias—Mr. Churchill’s works stand.
CRUSADER says
IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR WESTERN EUROPE?
An interview with Bruce Bawer, author of ‘While Europe Slept.’
Years ago as I was awakening from my long Democrat slumber and educating myself about Islam, one of the most eye-opening books that I read was a 2006 page-turner titled While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West From Within, by a gay American living in Western Europe. Not only was it enlightening, but it made me an instant fan of Bawer’s compelling storytelling. In addition to following his subsequent books such as Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom, The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind, and even a thriller about Islamic terrorism called The Alhambra, I was fortunate and honored to become friends with Bruce through our mutual work for the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Now Bawer has released a new volume with a stark black cover titled Islam: The Essays, a massive collection of well over three hundred of his articles on this crucial subject dating from the fall of 2002 through the summer of 2018. Though he suggests that the reader undertake the book chronologically in order to understand the evolution of his understanding of the topic (“Early on, for instance, I refer to ‘fundamentalist Islam’; soon enough, I drop the word ‘fundamentalist,’ having realized that Islam itself, properly understood, is fundamentalist.”), Bawer is such an engaging, perceptive writer that one can open the book at random to literally any page and find it impossible to stop reading. A chilling chronicle of the Islamization of multicultural Europe over the last 17 years, Islam: The Essays is a must-have for FrontPage Mag readers and for others in need, like I once was, of awareness and insight into the Religion of Peace™.
…..
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274398/there-any-hope-western-europe-mark-tapson
—————————————————-
Interesting point about “fundamentalist”
as a term.
One can say that a mathematical formula
can be termed fundamentalist if it basically
holds up as a strict example of maths….
Shakespeare’s literature is fundamental
to learning English writing…
Islam at its very core is fundamental to Muslims.
Angemon says
Well, is it false?
CRUSADER says
Boris Johnson is now PM, and forming the new cabinet….
Get ready for a HARD BrExit !
gravenimage says
Yes–notice that Gillis hopes no one asks that question.
Terry Gain says
Winston Churchill was the greatest man of the 20th century. It is hardly surprising that he would have had a negative opinion of Islam and be courageous enough to have stated it.
gravenimage says
Many of the creato0rs of the “Islamic Golden Age” were Infidels or recent converts–sometimes forced converts.
Whenever a society becomes majority-Muslim, it stagnates.
James says
I remember the inspiring TV documentary on Churchill, the Valiant Years with music by Richard Rodgers. Churchill was certainly a great leader and the series was very impressive. I have, however, read that he had assistants in writing some of his history books. They would write sections that he was not so interested and he would correct them. He concentrated on issues that did interest him, and these he wrote himself. I would guess that James Michnener also used this method on his endless thick historical novels. And Alexander Dumas apparently did this as well on his big historical novels. A British friend commented that Churchill was a great orator and leader in the war, but a bit of a gadfly afterwards. Perhaps that is why the public voted in Socialists right after the war, but probably they should have listened to Churchill or found a Thatcher as opposed to the socialists who starated the mass migrations and welfare state dependency that plague GB today.
Rod says
Churchill wrote a “A History of the English Speaking Peoples”. He wrote no histories of Arabic, Mahratta, Punjabi, Urdu, or Swahili speaking peoples. He knew little or nothing about such peoples. How could he?
As a British Army officer in his early twenties on the North West Frontier and in Sudan, he would have known no more about the peoples opposing him than that they were shooting at him. He would have held the views about other races prevalent among ignorant and racist upper class Englishmen in the nineteenth century. There were of course many British army officers who had years of experience commanding and working with battalions of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Gurkha soldiers, and who had deep understanding of their customs, culture, religion. Churchill was not one of them.
His achievements in later life were extraordinary by any standards, but that doesn’t make him universally infallible. Why would anybody regard him as an expert on Islamic culture or achievement, things about which he had no claim to special insight?
Further, why would anyone question the glorious past achievements of the Islamic world in art, music, poetry, astronomy, mathematics, architecture? They are widely recognised, and evidence of them exists in abundance today, for all to see. Only the untravelled, unread, uneducated could deny their existence.
Ignorance can perhaps sometimes be excused. Wilful ignorance, coupled with racist bigotry, is not only laughable, but beneath contempt.
gravenimage says
Note that “Rod” is unable to disprove anything that the savvy Winston Churchill said about Islam , so he just absurdly says that no one in Churchill’s position could possibly know anything about Islam. A weak try, even by “Rod’s” standards.
And no one here has said that Churchill was infallible–but he was certainly spot on about Islam.
And note that “Rod” is actually unable to point to any supposed achievements of Islam–he just posits this as a given.
Mark Swan says
Absolutely graven image,
Mr. Churchill’s keenly perceptive and intelligent take on Islam is not based on
ignorance—the fact that it is based on observation is obvious, in its accuracy.
This may irritate someone like Rod, yet it is reality, not Rod’s wishful thinking
that shines the light on Islam, for all to see.
gravenimage says
Spot on, Mark. And so glad to see you posting here again.
Rod says
Yes, gravenimage, I did neglect to provide you with examples (“unable” is another lie), but there’s nothing to stop you having a look yourself. Or is that against the rules of true fanaticism? Just as the Nazis denied themselves the pleasure of hearing Felix Mendelssohn’s music, so your eyes and ears must be sealed against the intrusions of certain unpalatable truths.
So, you may never know many of the wondrous things I have seen, heard and learned, but never mind. One day, as a true disciple of the cult of bigotry, you may qualify for the Robert Spencer Gold Star of Unsullied Ignorance. I hope that is some consolation.
Marigold says
Winston Churchill was not perfect.None of us are but his oratory in particular inspired the British people during the grim days of WW2. They needed to think that it was possible to defeat the Nazi dicatatorship. Boris Johnson has a similar gift and a positive outlook in what can only be described as a battle against a new dictatorship the EU. He might surprise everyone.
Robert Laity says
I happen to agree with Winny. “Islam in a man IS like rabies in a dog”
David says
To quote the article: “It seems that Great Britain under Johnson will be beset by similar doses of myth, fantasy and supremacist doctrines”.Yes, and they will be about Islam, the most Supremacist religion, self-declared of course. Many are aware that Muhammad was a white man with black slaves. That probably makes him the first White Supremacist!