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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

V. S. Naipaul On Islam: A Florilegium

Aug 11, 2019 10:00 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

The writer V. S. Naipaul died a year ago today, on August 11, 2018, at the age of 85. A novelist, travel writer, essayist, and historian, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. His most important works, for me, have been the  two books he devoted to studies of Islam and Muslim peoples. Among the Believers (1981) reports on a six-month trip he took through Iran, Pakistan, Malaya, and Indonesia after the Iranian Revolution both reflected, and inspired, the new fundamentalism among Muslims. Beyond Belief: Excursions In the Lands of the Converted Peoples (1998), was a study of how Muslims in Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaya had fared in the roughly twenty years since Naipaul first wrote about them.

Here’s a florilegium of Naipaul’s observations on Islam. They do not date:

1. In a speech he gave at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, on  October 4, 2001, Naipaul claimed that Islam had both enslaved other peoples and attempted to wipe out other cultures. “It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter’.”

He claimed what he called “this abolition of the self demanded by Muslims was worse than the similar colonial abolition of identity. It is much, much worse in fact… You cannot just say you came out of nothing.”

He argued that Pakistan was the living proof of the damage Islam could wreak.

“The story of Pakistan is a terror story actually. It started with a poet who thought that Muslims were so highly evolved that they should have a special place in India for themselves.

“This wish to sift countries of unnecessary and irrelevant populations is terrible and this is exactly what happened in Pakistan.”

From V. S. Naipaul, Speech, October 4, 2001

And similarly:

“It [Islam] has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter’… This abolition of the self demanded by Muslims was worse than the similar colonial abolition of identity. It is much, much worse in fact… You cannot just say you came out of nothing…

“The time before Islam is a time of blackness: that is part of Muslim theology. History has to serve theology.”

From Among the Believers

2. “I think when you see so many Hindu temples of the tenth century or earlier time disfigured, defaced, you know that they were not just defaced for fun: that something terrible happened. I feel that the civilization of that closed world was mortally wounded by those invasions. And I would like people, as it were, to be more reverential towards the past, to try to understand it; to preserve it; instead of living in its ruins. The Old World is destroyed. That has to be understood. The ancient Hindu India was destroyed.”

“In art and history books, people write of the Muslims ‘arriving’ in India as though they came on a tourist bus and went away again. The Muslim view of their conquest is a truer one. They speak of the triumph of faith, the destruction of idols and temples, the loot, the casting away of locals as slaves.”

From India: A Wounded Civilization

3. “While the Ottomans moved into South-East Europe, the Moghul invasion of India destroyed much of Hindu and Buddhist civilization there. The recent destruction by Moslems in Afghanistan of colossal Buddhist statues is a reminder of what happened to temples and shrines, on an enormous scale, when Islam took over.”

From India: A Wounded Civilization

4. “India has been a wounded civilization because of Islamic violence: Pakistanis know this; indeed they revel in it. It is only Indian Nehruvians like Romila Thapar who pretend that Islamic rule was benevolent. We should face facts: Islamic rule in India was at least as catastrophic as the later Christian rule. The Christians created massive poverty in what was a most prosperous country; the Muslims created a terrorized civilization out of what was the most creative culture that ever existed.”

“How do you ignore history? But the nationalist movement, independence movement ignored it. You read the Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru, it talks about the mythical past and then it jumps the difficult period of the invasions and conquests. So you have Chinese pilgrims coming to Bihar, Nalanda and places like that. Then somehow they don’t tell you what happens, why these places are in ruin. They never tell you why Elephanta Island is in ruins or why Bhubaneswar was desecrated.”

From V. S. Naipaul in Economic Times, 13 January 2003

5. “In India, unlike Iran, there never was a complete Islamic conquest. Although the Muslims ruled much of North India from 1200A.D. to 1700A.D. in the 18th century, the Marathas and the Sikhs destroyed Muslim power, and created their own empires, before the advent of the British….The British introduced the New Learning of Europe, to which the Hindus were more receptive than the Muslims. This caused the beginning of the intellectual distance between the two communities. This distance has grown with independence….Muslim insecurity led to the call for the creation of Pakistan. It went at the same time with an idea of old glory, of the invaders sweeping down from the northwest and looting the temples of Hindustan and imposing faith on the infidel. The fantasy still lives: and for the Muslim converts of the subcontinent it is the start of their neurosis, because in this fantasy the convert forgets who or what he is and becomes the violator.”

From Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples

6. “Indian intellectuals have a responsibility to the state and should start a debate on the Muslim psyche. To speak of Hindu fundamentalism, is a contradiction in terms, it does not exist. Hinduism is not this kind of religion. You know, there are no laws in Hinduism.”

From: India: A Wounded Civilization

7. “Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert’s world view alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story. The convert has to turn away from everything that is his…”

From Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples

 

 

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Filed Under: Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, Islamic supremacism Tagged With: V. S. Naipaul


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Comments

  1. samsweden says

    Aug 11, 2019 at 10:05 am

    This is my fourth time asking you kindly to unsubscribe me. Please do so forthwith.
    Thank you,
    mokdadsamir (at) gmail.com

    • marc says

      Aug 11, 2019 at 12:48 pm

      And this is the 4th time me telling you that you need to click the unsubscribe button on the bottom of the email, I do not have control over this, only you do.

      BTW, i have edited your email address here so bots don’t pick it up, don’t post your email address in public forums, you are likely to be heavily spammed.

    • Robert Spencer says

      Aug 11, 2019 at 7:47 pm

      Samir Mokdad: I don’t believe you. You’re a liar. I personally removed you from the subscriber list the last time you asked – and incidentally, that was the first time I saw your demand, despite your claiming it was the third or fourth notice. Clearly you’re just trying to discredit the site, and are one of the more inept and ham-handed who have attempted to do so.

      • gravenimage says

        Aug 11, 2019 at 11:05 pm

        +1

        • CRUSADER says

          Aug 12, 2019 at 5:22 am

          Golly! That was strange, and quite off topic.
          Although quite a tangent on jihad performed,
          however ineptly…and ham-handed! LOL

          Well, good riddance to that bloke!

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 12, 2019 at 2:06 pm

          Actually, CRUSADER, I’ve seen this sort of thing here a few times before. In some cases it may be someone who is just not that technically savvy–but in other cases it seems to be a pose that Jihad Watch is somehow imposing itself on people without their consent, which is *quite* false and only intended to smear.

        • marc says

          Aug 12, 2019 at 10:55 pm

          @gravenimage I’m thinking it’s a competency issue also, this is his last email to Robert

          “`> Message: To Messrs Jihaf Warch,
          > Please take note that this is my THIRD TIMEI I am kindly asking you to stop my subscription to Jihad Watch.
          > I hope you will adhere to my request to stop my subscription to your esteem Jihad Watch..
          > Please confirm,
          > Thank You,
          > Your sincerely,
          > Samir Mokdad
          > Sweden.
          > mokdadsamir (at) gmail.com “`

          and my reply in which he was cc’d

          “`I’m still unsure which emails he means. I did ask twice for him to forward.

          But I’ll assume not mailchimp, but the ones from wordpress, we have no control over them, only he can click on that link as you need to be logged in with your wordpress.com (not Jihadwatch) account to make any changes (better than mailchimp) to subscriptions, we have absolutely no control over the management of these.

          Maybe he lost his wordpress.com account login, we can’t recover that, only he can by clicking here:

          https://wordpress.com/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword“`

          You can’t subscribe someone without their consent, I set this system up carefully to avoid abuse, mailchimp and wordpress would be aware of that and laugh at him if he claims otherwise.

          Reading is just hard for some people

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 12, 2019 at 11:14 pm

          Maybe, Marc–I am not always that tech savvy myself, as you well know. But Samir is *still* claiming this, even after Robert Spencer unsubscribed him personally some time ago. He wrote this today:

          Samir says

          Aug 12, 2019 at 11:08 am
          For the 7th time I am kindly ask you to UNSUBSCRIBE me from your Jihad newsletter.
          Please confirm.
          Samir Mokdad.
          mokdadsamir@gmail.com
          Gothenburg- Sweden

          https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/08/wisconsin-men-convert-to-islam-try-to-join-the-islamic-state-one-gets-5-1-2-years-after-prosecutors-asked-for-20#comment-2133475

          He is also calling Jihad Watch a “Jihad newsletter”. I don’t think that this can be innocent from him at this point.

  2. Mark 1984ishere says

    Aug 11, 2019 at 10:30 am

    ty

  3. Krishna says

    Aug 11, 2019 at 10:32 am

    He is such brilliant minded expert on Islam

  4. james says

    Aug 11, 2019 at 10:46 am

    The efforts of Islam to displace pre-existing civilization can probably be seen in the beginning phase in US cities where they are starting to spread their tents. In Minneapolis they elected a woman to Congress who insists on wearing a Hijab in Congress. She did not say, I want to be like the Americans, she said, I want the Americans to be like Muslims. The customs of the Americans must be set aside in favor of ours. The police appointed a Muslim immigrant to the police and in a year or so he shot a woman dead who had called for police protection. Again, something that makes sense in the Islamic world he came from. Or women in the West should put on hijabs to express solidarity with Muslim women. Why don’t Muslim women take off such costumes to express a desire to become American, or German or French.

  5. Ren says

    Aug 11, 2019 at 10:58 am

    Muslim mind is of savagery.

    • elee says

      Aug 11, 2019 at 4:51 pm

      Hence the title of a recent classic jihad playbook is translated as “The Management of Savagery.”

      • CRUSADER says

        Aug 12, 2019 at 4:55 am

        Look 👀 who reviewed this book!*

        “The Management of Savagery:
        How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump”

        by Max Blumenthal

        The rise of international jihad and Western ultra-nationalism…

        In the “Management of Savagery”, Max Blumenthal excavates the real story behind America’s dealings with the world and shows how the extremist forces that now threaten peace across the globe are the inevitable flowering of America’s imperial designs.

        Washington’s secret funding of the mujahedin provoked the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. With guns and money, the United States has ever since sustained the extremists, including Osama Bin Laden, who have become its enemies. The Pentagon has trained and armed jihadist elements in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya; it has launched military interventions to change regimes in the Middle East. In doing so, it created fertile ground for the Islamic State and brought foreign conflicts home to American soil.

        These failed wars abroad have made the United States more vulnerable to both terrorism as well as native ultra-nationalism. The Trump presidency is the inevitable consequence of neoconservative imperialism in the post–Cold War age. Trump’s dealings in the Middle East are likely only to exacerbate the situation.

        * Review:

        “Max Blumenthal has spent the last decade transforming himself into one of the most vital voices in journalism today, always speaking truth to power with fearlessness and integrity.”

        – Reza Aslan, author of “Zealot”

        • Angemon says

          Aug 12, 2019 at 7:31 am

          I believe elee was referring to “Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Islamic Nation Will Pass”, a early 2000’s document penned by the Iran-based head of al-qaeda propaganda Mohammad Hasan al-Hakim.

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 12, 2019 at 2:10 pm

          Thank you, Angemon.

          And while I believe that this is a different book, CRUSADER, you post was very interesting. We’ve seen the West–especially America–absurdly blamed for Jihad many times before by those seeking to hide Jihad’s clear Islamic roots.

      • CRUSADER says

        Aug 12, 2019 at 5:07 am

        But… of course you me at this book:

        “Management of Savagery:
        The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Islamic Nation Will Pass”

        (Arabic: إدارة التوحش: أخطر مرحلة ستمر بها الأمة‎, Idārat at-Tawaḥḥuš: Akhṭar marḥalah satamurru bihā l ‘ummah), also translated as “Administration of Savagery”, is a book by the Islamist strategist Abu Bakr Naji, published on the Internet in 2004. It aimed to provide a strategy for al-Qaeda and other extremists whereby they could create a new Islamic caliphate.

        The real identity of Abu Bakr Naji is claimed by the Al Arabiya Institute for Studies to be Muhammad Khalil al-Hakaymah. His known works are this piece and some contributions to the al-Qaeda online magazine Sawt al-Jihad. National Public Radio has described Naji as a “top al-Qaida insider” and characterized the work as “al-Qaida’s playbook”.

        “Management of Savagery” discusses the need to create and manage nationalist and religious resentment and violence in order to create long-term propaganda opportunities for jihadist groups. Notably, Naji discusses the value of provoking military responses from superpowers in order to recruit and train guerilla fighters and to create martyrs. Naji suggests that a long-lasting strategy of attrition will reveal fundamental weaknesses in the ability of superpowers to defeat committed jihadists.

        ”Management of Savagery” argues that carrying out a campaign of constant violent attacks (vexation operations) in Muslim states will eventually exhaust their ability and will to enforce their authority, and that as the writ of the state withers away, chaos—or “savagery”—will ensue. Extreme violence is emphasized.

        “One who previously engaged in jihad knows that it is naught but violence, crudeness, terrorism, frightening [others] and massacring — I am talking about jihad and fighting, not about Islam and one should not confuse them.”

        — Worth, Robert F. (2016). “Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS”. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 174.

        Jihadists can take advantage of this savagery to win popular support, or at least acquiescence, by implementing security, providing social services, and imposing Sharia. As these territories increase, they can become the nucleus of a new caliphate. Naji nominated Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, North Africa, Nigeria and Pakistan as potential targets, due to their geography, weak military presence in remote areas, existing jihadist presence, and easy accessibility of weapons.

        Naji professes to have been inspired by Ibn Taymiyya, the influential 14th-century Islamic scholar and theologian.

        The word in the title توحش tawaḥḥuš has been translated as “savagery” or “barbarism”. As it is a form V verbal noun derived from the root وحش waḥš “wild animal”, it has also accordingly been translated “beastliness”.

        A number of media outlets have compared the attempts by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to establish territorial control in Iraq and Syria with the strategy outlined in “Management of Savagery”. The first issue of the Islamic State’s online magazine, Dabiq, contained discussion of guerrilla warfare and tactics that closely resembled the writings and terminology used in “Management of Savagery”, although the book was not mentioned directly. Journalist Hassan Hassan, writing in The Guardian, reported an ISIL-affiliated cleric as saying that “Management of Savagery” is widely read among the group’s commanders and some of its rank-and-file fighters. It was also mentioned by another member of ISIL in a list of books and ideologues that influence the group.

        Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has been described by The Jamestown Foundation as following Naji’s guidelines in Yemen, while the book has been mentioned positively in interviews with members of Somalia’s Al-Shabaab.

        Scholars Brian A. Jackson and Bryce Loidolt argue that “Management of Savagery” and Mustafa Setmariam Nasar’s “The Global Islamic Resistance Call” led al-Qaeda to innovate and shift practices.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_of_Savagery

        • CRUSADER says

          Aug 12, 2019 at 5:09 am

          But… of course you meant that book….

        • Angemon says

          Aug 12, 2019 at 7:36 am

          Ups, disregard my previous post – that’s what I get for replying directly from my email XD

        • Angemon says

          Aug 12, 2019 at 7:46 am

          But since you mentioned that mental guy, curious case he is. He used to be all fire and brimstone against Assad until, back in 2015, after travelling to Moscow to attend RT’s 10th year anniversary gala, had a sudden 180º turn and became a Kremlin-linked Assadist, a prolific purveyor of role reversal between war criminals and their victims. Then again, he’s the son of Sid Blumenthal who, during the 2008 Democrat Primaries underhandedly popularized the idea that Barack Obama was born in Kenya – and he, as far as I know, has yet to issue any retraction or acknowledge any wrongdoing.

  6. rbla says

    Aug 11, 2019 at 11:19 am

    Since the introduction of Western learning there have been numerous accomplished scientists of Hindu origin such as the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan and Einstein’s collaborator Satyendra Nath Bose after whom the subatomic particle the ‘boson’ was named. The one renowned physicist from Pakistan is Abdus Salam, a member of the despised heretical Ahmadi sect.

    • Hugh Fitzgerald says

      Aug 11, 2019 at 5:46 pm

      There are exactly three Musliims who have won Nobels in science. One was, as you say, an Ahmadi who, if Muslims won’t count him as a real Muslim, why should we? And all three did their work in non-Muslim lands, where the intellectual atmosphere and sfinancial upport were so much better than at home.

      • gravenimage says

        Aug 11, 2019 at 11:14 pm

        And at least two of these were virtual apostates.

      • CRUSADER says

        Aug 12, 2019 at 4:49 am

        Also difficult to discern if Baha’i are considered Muslims….

        This happened a while ago:

        https://news.bahai.org/story/650/

        Iranian media attacks on Baha’is and Nobel Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi
        seek to stir “irrational fears and prejudices”

        Fraudulent claims in the Iranian news media about seven imprisoned Baha’i leaders and the efforts of Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and others to defend them represent an effort by the government to prevent Baha’is from having adequate legal representation – and also to stir up “irrational fears and prejudices,” the Baha’i International Community said in a statement today.

        “Reports published in government-run news outlets point to an effort on the part of the authorities to use the mass media to spread accusations that the seven prisoners have engaged in subversive activities, and to continue to deprive these Baha’is from any access to legal counsel by maligning Mrs. Shirin Ebadi, the well-known Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner who, together with her colleagues, has stated her readiness to defend the Baha’is,” said the statement.

        The statement, posted to the Baha’i International Community’s United Nations Office Web site, responds to allegations that Mrs. Ebadi’s daughter has become a Baha’i, that Baha’is are agents of Zionism, and that when Iranian Baha’is communicate with the Baha’i Faith’s international governing body in Israel, it is somehow a “conspiracy.”

        “The Iranian government seizes every means at its disposal to stigmatize the Baha’is and then, within the poisoned atmosphere it has itself created, when it wants to discredit someone, it asserts that the person is a Baha’i,” the statement said. “Mrs. Ebadi is not the first individual upon whom this tactic has been used. As a lawyer, Mrs. Ebadi defends individuals and groups of many different backgrounds; this does not mean that she necessarily espouses their beliefs. What, then, is the state-sanctioned press trying to insinuate when it contends that her daughter is a Baha’i?”

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 12, 2019 at 2:14 pm

          +1

  7. Cicero says

    Aug 11, 2019 at 12:28 pm

    It is salutary that Jihad Watch has acknowledged rhe anniversary of VS Naipaul’s demise. No other newspaper or magazine has seen fit to do so.

    Truly his was a towering intelligence engendered from within a colonial construct – an Indo – Trinidadian who was able to reach through layers of deracination and mind colonialism to write truths as he saw it.

    When the Twin Towers went down in the USA in 2001 he was one of the very first commentators the British main stream media asked for his reactions. They soon dropped him as they realised he was unafraid to speak uncomfortable truths about their religion of the Book.

    His other writings of fiction about his own people – the Trinidadians and the East Indians were incisive and perceptive. They were offended and sent him to Coventry. His prose is as good as Dr Anjuli’s ,if not better.

    • Anjuli Pandavar says

      Aug 12, 2019 at 6:43 pm

      Cicero, thank you, but no. I do not come even close.

  8. Angemon says

    Aug 11, 2019 at 12:31 pm

    Islam is in its origins an Arab religion

    A vehicle for Arab supremacism.

  9. jewdog says

    Aug 11, 2019 at 5:02 pm

    Very similar observations were made in a lecture by Egyptian Coptic Bishop Thomas at the Hudson Institute. Great guy.:

    • Kepha says

      Aug 11, 2019 at 8:55 pm

      Interestingly enough, even though Coptic Christianity did away with Hieroglyphic Egyptian, the Coptic liturgical language gave an idea of how the ancient Egyptian language sounded, and kept such things as names of months, providing clues to a far deeper Egyptian antiquity.

    • CRUSADER says

      Aug 12, 2019 at 4:42 am

      Hudson Institute.

      Good resource.

  10. Kepha says

    Aug 11, 2019 at 8:52 pm

    I am impressed at how Naipaul exposed Islam’s erasure of history; and cannot help but note a major contrast with Christianity, even though the parallels regarding the converted peoples are still there.

    Born among the Jews with its primary documents first presented in Greek, Christianity was never a vehicle for Hebrew or Greek supremacy. Christianity’s adamant refusal to de-canonize the Old Testament (indeed, it branded Marcionism as heretical) meant it would periodically rediscover its Hebrew roots. Hence, its preservation of the classical world and the impetus it gave to an archaeology that rediscovered the ancient Near East–and put it to work to illumine the study of the Old Testament.

    By initially reading the Hebrew Bible in the Septuagint translation (but not exclusively), it blessed the work of translation into the languages of the converted peoples, from the Syrians, Armenians, and Copts to all the languages of Europe and the ongoing work of putting the Bible into the languages of Africa and Asia (and in many cases, sparking an extensive native vernacular literature). While the Christian converted peoples might have forsworn their ancestral gods, they continued to be able to access their pre-Christian pasts.

    Even in the New Testament itself, the converted peoples are not subjects of the faithful remnant in ethnic Israel (symbolized by the 144,000), but are presented as “…a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb [Christ], arrayed in white robes and palms in their hands [praising and thanking] (Rev. 7:9 ff).

    • CRUSADER says

      Aug 12, 2019 at 4:41 am

      Jay Smith
      
Leader, Hyde Park Christian Fellowship, London, England
      has an excellent critique on how the Gospel gets translated for Arabic speakers…

       
      https://www.ciu.edu/content/jay-smith’s-critique-‘-son-and-crescent’

      • Kepha says

        Aug 13, 2019 at 9:13 am

        Thanks for the link. I’m aware of the controversy described. The fact of the matter is that the Gospel is all wrapped up in God becoming man and dwelling among us (Jesus Christ), and that he died for our sins according to the Scriptures and was raied on the third day. While it’s important to meet people where they are, it’s also important to present Christ a he is, not as we might wish him to be.

  11. Lydia Church says

    Aug 11, 2019 at 10:52 pm

    This is the perfect place for me to bring this up, and the perfect timing since I saw this last night.

    I was watching public tv and I love watching travel shows. We have been watching ‘Rick Steve’s Europe’ for years, and I never noticed anything odd, albeit the passing bit that you find everywhere anyway. Now I have not watched all of the episodes, it was hit and miss now and then, so I wouldn’t know if this is normal for him or not, I just never noticed it until last night.

    It went like this. It was an episode on Spain (Cordoba, Granada, Andalucia, and Costa del Sol). Of course he gets into the different aspects including architecture. So he brought up the buildings including former and current mosques. Well the way he carried on, you’d think he was enamored with it all, ‘oh, the details!’ and so on. He mentioned all these items, like how advanced they were in math, etc. He would read the koranic verses on the mosque walls and things like that. He several times mentioned how when the muslims were in power, oh, how the kingdom was in its ‘prime’ and such. The whole thing sounded like a big ad for islamic culture. The way he mentioned that muslims somehow just ‘entered’ as if they weren’t doing anything wrong, (not trying to invade and conquer by the sword, or anything like that… oh, of course not…) but then later with the ‘reconquista’ they were ‘pushed back down,’ and some of the mosques destroyed and built over by castles or other buildings (gasp! How brutal!) Ironically, he did mention how they had pushed everyone but a few to convert to islam, and later with the reconquista, the rulers had baptized all including muslims into Catholicism (as if they were just as bad). Then later he goes on to extol the pillars and virtues of how ‘tolerant’ they were, and how peacefully they existed and lived there… and at one point he emphasized how all three religions and cultures had coexisted peacefully together, until the host lady on the video corrected him and said that it was ONE culture and three religions. You can read between the lines on that one. And you get only one guess on which culture it was that she was referring to. It sounded like your typical interfaith ad for the one world religion. ‘See? We can all learn to get along and live together peacefully!’ FALSE!!! And earlier he admitted that they had imposed their religion upon all of Spain, on all but a few, not mentioning that those few who resisted were the martyrs and true Christians whom no one can force to convert to anything else! So how is that three religions and cultures living together in harmony, peace, and tolerance?! Like he was implying they had all just jumped on the muslim bandwagon of their own freewill or something. Gimme a break! I couldn’t stomach it but wanted to see what he said about it all. There was more, I can’t possibly list it all.

    Bottom line: I think he really needs to read one of your latest books Robert! You might want to send him a complimentary copy for educational purposes, I’m sure there is some mailing address on his website. I do recall finding some suspicious things over there when I looked last time too. Hmmm…..

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 11, 2019 at 11:28 pm

      Disgusting dhimmituede.

      • CRUSADER says

        Aug 12, 2019 at 4:27 am

        Rick Steves is part of the Seattle absorption sphere which sucked out souls and replaced free thought with politically correct garbage!

        His ilk have destroyed the Pacific Northwest, which used to be cleaner and clearer and freer… but there is little to absolve there now…

    • CRUSADER says

      Aug 12, 2019 at 4:25 am

      He is part of the Seattle absorption sphere which sucked out souls and replaced free thought with politically correct garbage!

      His ilk have destroyed the Pacific Northwest, which used to be cleaner and clearer and freer… but there is little to absolve there now…

    • CRUSADER says

      Aug 12, 2019 at 4:36 am

      Rick Steves could best do with a lead in, first, with a book by such a professor of religious studies at Colorado / Spain, Brian Carlos, author of “Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain” and of “Muslims of Medieval Latin Christiandom, c. 1050-1614” and of “Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors: Faith, Power, and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad”….

      Then, it might be possible to segue toward Rick Steves‘ mind to approach what Robert Spencer offers….

    • AP says

      Aug 12, 2019 at 6:14 am

      Rick Steves, is all about the money. That’s all. The muslims conquers pilled up the severed heads so high that a man on horse back could not see over it. That is Steves buddies. Just the facts.

      • CRUSADER says

        Aug 12, 2019 at 7:31 am

        El CID seems forgotten.

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 12, 2019 at 2:19 pm

          Alas, CRUSADER, the historical El Cid was a rather equivocal figure–he was definitely a great general, but allied with Muslims as often as with his fellow Christians, and switched sides regularly. He was portrayed as a purely heroic figure only starting with the Romantic movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

        • CRUSADER says

          Aug 13, 2019 at 5:47 am

          “Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors: Faith, Power, and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad”

          by Brian
          Catlos

          goes into this El Cid character, but he still did much for the time and circumstance he was in….

    • Carol the 1st says

      Aug 12, 2019 at 9:53 pm

      I saw that one too Lydia and it was an appalling sidestepping of history with barely a slap on the wrist for the most graciously misunderstood of the three great Abrahamic faiths!
      I concluded that as a tourism promoter Steve’s would likely airbrush even organ-theft cesspools with the same rose-colored hue.

  12. gravenimage says

    Aug 11, 2019 at 11:03 pm

    V. S. Naipaul On Islam: A Florilegium
    …………………

    An important thinker–thank you, Mr. Fitzgerald.

  13. CRUSADER says

    Aug 12, 2019 at 4:22 am

    Of course the distasteful and misguided Edward Said argued that Naipaul “allowed himself quite consciously to be turned into a witness for the Western prosecution”, promoting what Said classified as “colonial mythologies about wogs and darkies”. Said believed that Naipaul’s worldview may be most salient in his book-length essay “The Middle Passage” (1962), composed following Naipaul’s return to the Caribbean after 10 years of exile in England, and the work “An Area of Darkness” (1964).

    But who cares what Edward Said had thought! He had been bought off by Saudi funding.

    https://www.islamawareness.net/AntiMusWriters/Naipaul/naipaul_article002.html

    The man who did more than any other to destroy legitimate Middle East studies in the United States, the late professor Edward Said, author of the notorious Orientalism, is the subject of a devastating critique in the Middle East Quarterly, “Did Edward Said Really Speak Truth to Power?” by Efraim Karsh and Rory Miller.

    Ibn Warraq did a great job countering Edward Said in “Defending the West” !!

    Robert Spencer – Edward Said, Crusades & the West:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mljffuAcaxc

    • Kepha says

      Aug 12, 2019 at 11:20 am

      Said’s critique of “Orientalism” is an assault on the intellectual curiosity that made the Wet great. Attack the missionary and colonial enterprises as much as you want, but, in the end, these opened up the Western world to the cultures and worldviews of Asia and Africa.

      • Kepha says

        Aug 13, 2019 at 9:15 am

        Oops. Made the West great.

  14. infidel says

    Aug 12, 2019 at 4:45 am

    VSN is of Indic heritage often championed by lib Hindus for his fiction….and of course inconveniently ignore the harsh truths he spoke about the peaceful religion

    • CRUSADER says

      Aug 12, 2019 at 5:25 am

      https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

  15. Anjuli Pandavar says

    Aug 12, 2019 at 9:43 am

    “It [Islam] has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter’… This abolition of the self demanded by Muslims was worse than the similar colonial abolition of identity. It is much, much worse in fact… You cannot just say you came out of nothing…”
    —
    This sent a chill down my spine. This is precisely what the dominant Western orthodoxy has been doing for, what?, two decades, now. So far has it gone that even the near-destruction of the Notre Dame is viewed by the President of France not as a tragedy, but as an *opportunity*. And this *before* they’ve converted.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 12, 2019 at 2:20 pm

      So true.

    • Kepha says

      Aug 13, 2019 at 9:16 am

      In fact, Western elites have been tearing down their own civilization for about two centuries now.

  16. Muslim2019 says

    Aug 12, 2019 at 1:52 pm

    V.S Naipaul an Islamophobe and fuel for the hell fire – what an evil destination awaits him.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 12, 2019 at 2:25 pm

      Like all pious Muslims, “Muslim2019” believes that anyone daring to tell the truth about the horrors of Islam must be punished–preferably murdered by Muslims. *Ugh*.

      • CRUSADER says

        Aug 13, 2019 at 5:50 am

        What’ll Muslim2019 say in 2020?

    • Anjuli Pandavar says

      Aug 12, 2019 at 6:46 pm

      “V. S. Naipaul …fuel for the hell fire – what an evil destination awaits him.”
      —
      And it would be an honour for me to join him there.

  17. Chand says

    Aug 13, 2019 at 5:34 am

    Naipaul says: “We should face facts. Islamic rule in India was at least as catastrophic as the later Christian rule. The Christians created massive poverty in what was a most prosperous country; the Muslims created a terrorized civilization out of what was the most creative culture that ever existed.”

    Yeah, India got screwed twice. Once by the followers of the violent caravan raider Muhammad and once by the followers of the non-violent carpenter Jesus.

    • John Martin Armitage says

      Aug 14, 2019 at 3:12 pm

      Well … you say twice, but that isn’t taking into consideration that the cotton industry – long thought to be a casualty of Brit imperialism – actually grew massively during the Raj. Like wise, a non-existent steel-industry, outshone that of Japan within a decade or so. There are many examples like these, if one wants to look! Admittedly, I am no fan of empire, but the simple fact is, that a weak India was going to be annexed. The French, Portuguese, Russians and Brits were all serious contenders. The Brits won – and became the first, and only, regime to unify the whole of India. Does India think it would have become the tiger economy it is, if not for the British?

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