My latest in PJ Media:
In light of the ongoing efforts by Democrats and the establishment media to make the Make America Great Again hat equivalent to the Nazi swastika, presidential candidate Julián Castro’s recent embrace of the phrase was curious in the extreme. Yet thus far no Leftist political or media spokesperson has complained about the fact that at the Hamas-linked Islamic Society of North America annual convention last week, Castro declared: “Muslim Americans for generations have been part of the fabric of our American family. They have helped make America the great nation it is.” So far, no one has wagged a disapproving finger at Castro and reminded him that, in the immortal words of Andrew Cuomo that so many Leftists agree with today, “America was never great.”
Their silence is odd, but even odder is the fact that Castro apparently did not provide even a single example of how Muslims “have helped make America the great nation it is,” yet his audience seems to have taken for granted that it was true. But what is the basis for this confidence? Can Mr. Castro elucidate? Since, as he said, “Muslim Americans for generations have been part of the fabric of our American family,” it shouldn’t be hard for him to list a few examples of how Muslims have helped make America the great nation that it is, right?
Castro may not want to do this, of course, since it would only draw attention to his right-wing, bigoted, hate-filled claim that America is great, and that will only lose him voters among Democrats today. So we will have to do it for him.
Castro probably had in mind the increasingly popular Leftist dogma that the slaves in the pre-Civil War American South were Muslims. This claim has been gaining a great deal of currency recently, and despite the fact that slavery has been illegal in the United States for over 150 years, there are more Muslim slaves all the time. According to PBS, “10 to 15 percent were said to be Muslims,” but by April 2019, PBS had revised this, saying that “up to 20 percent of Africans enslaved in America were Muslim.” Even that isn’t enough for the VOA, which claims that “approximately one-third” of American slaves were Muslim.
The VOA does admit, however, that “while the exact number of enslaved Muslims is unknown, up to 40 percent of those who were captured and enslaved came from predominantly Muslim parts of West Africa.” However, that factoid works against the VOA’s own argument about the percentage of Muslims among the slaves, for as the historian Jeremy Black, author of A Brief History of Slavery, notes, Muslim slavers, including those who sold slaves to Atlantic slave traders, enslaved only non-Muslims. Nor are the alleged Muslim slaves likely to have come from non-Muslim areas of West Africa, as there simply weren’t many Muslims at all in those areas during the time that the transatlantic slave trade was thriving.
There is much more. Read the rest here.
Jay says
Castro has had a lobotomy and no one told him! It’s hard to imagine how uninformed Castro is!
Liberal democrats are the poster children for the definition of STUPIDITY!
Trump 2020. Our only hope!!
mortimer says
Julian Castro is the poster boy of gullible naivety in the matter of Islam.
He must be named after COUNT JULIAN of Ceuta who provided ships and help for the Arab invaders who then attacked and successfully invaded Spain, eventually occupying Spain brutally for almost 800 years.
COUNT JULIAN CASTRO.
mortimer says
COUNT JULIAN CASTRO = MYTHOLOGY PEDDLAR … There was also a myth about Islamic Spain.
“The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain” by Darío Fernández-Morera, ISI Books, 376 pp., $29.95
“EL MITO DEL PARAISO ANDALUZ”, DARIO FERNANDEZ-MORERA, Editorial: ALMUZARA, 2018.
Comment: Scholars, journalists, and even politicians uphold Muslim-ruled medieval Spain—“al-Andalus”—as a multicultural paradise, a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in harmony. There is only one problem with this widely accepted account: it is a myth.
gravenimage says
There were a smattering of Muslims here, but no mass of them until just recently. In the same way, Jihad didn’t occur here until the 1990s–then it exploded (literally and figuratively) after 9/11.
Flavius Claudius Iulianus says
Every year on September 8, I mark a great victory of the West over Islam. The Maltese people do this as well in their Victory Day celebrations [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Day_(Malta) ].
Although the Turks successfully breached the fortifications of Fort Saint Elmo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Siege_of_Malta#Capture_of_Fort_St._Elmo), theirs was a Pyrrhic victory. The cost was so great for the Turks that it triggered a slow decline in the Turkish Caliphate to the point of a final defeat to the British Empire. This is primarily thanks to The Knights Hospitaller, their amazing leader, Jean Parisot de Valette, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Parisot_de_Valette) and the steadfast Maltese people.
gravenimage says
Julián Castro Lauds How Muslims Have Helped Make America Great
………………….
Well, after our independence Muslim pirates forced our hand and led us to develop a Navy and Marine Corps when we could ill afford it–and led to our, along with Britain and France, inspiring the West to free shipping in the Mediterranean for the first time in a thousand years. That *is* quite a legacy–but probably not the one Castro has in mind…
Savvy Kafir says
True! Our bloody conflicts with the Barbary pirates in the early 18th Century, and with Moro guerillas in the Phillipines at the end of the 19th Century are the only significant U.S.-Muslim interactions I can think of, until we started buying Muslim oil. The Muslim population in the U.S. was virtually nil, until common sense became scarce, and the myth of culural relativism became commonplace, in second half of the 20th Century.
gravenimage says
Spot on, Savvy Kafir.
Christopher Watson says
Of course there might be a case for the westwards exploration by Columbus and many others to be due to the difficulty of sailing the Mediterranean. There wasn’t an invasion of North Africa until Napoleon in the late 18th century.
gravenimage says
Yes–much of the spur for the age of exploration was trying to avoid Dar-al-Islam.
E T says
What is his name—CASTRO. Hmmmmmmmmmnn
mortimer says
Excellent point by Robert Spencer: it is against Sharia law to enslave a fellow Muslim (or an Arab either). The Islamic-Arab slave trade was intrinsically racist.
Tabari II:21 “Ham [Africans] begat all those who are black and curly-haired, while Japheth [Turks] begat all those who are full-faced with small eyes, and Shem [Arabs] begat everyone who is handsome of face with beautiful hair. Noah prayed that the hair of Ham’s descendants would not grow beyond their ears, and that whenever his descendants met Shem’s, the latter would enslave them.”
StacyGirl says
Thanks. Quite edifying and equally damning.
Jamesstuartbrice@gmail.com says
I cannot recall any way in which Islam has made America great.Individual persons from the Muslim world have made contributions, not as muslims but instead as scientists or doctors, and then as ones who often got their training here. The great contribution at is something that Obama and people like Ilhan Omar or Linda Sarsour would like to claim. I do not know of much of anything Islam did to make America great. Arab slave dealers brought blacks to the coast of Africa to supply plantations in the South. Perhaps that helped cause the Civil War so that America could show its greatness by abolishing slavery. Or it destroyed the World Trade Towers so that Americans could show they can rebuild after a terrible defeat. Or they attacked Israel, so America can show greatness in helping a democracy surrounded by enemies. Or perhaps they flood our country with enemies so that we can show our tolerance.
Peter WF says
Muslims must have had a very low key but essential part in landing Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon?
As I see it the technology, after 50 years, has not reached the Arab world.
gravenimage says
Have you heard the ridiculous claim that astronaut Neil Armstrong immediately converted to Islam because he supposedly heard the Adhan (Muslim call to prayer) on the moon? This myth has been around for decades. One Muslim site claimed that proof of this was that Armstrong “moved to a Muslim country” after he retired. In reality, Armstrong lived in Lebanon, Ohio.
mortimer says
In fact, Neil Armstrong was a devout, believing Christian. When he walked in the footsteps of Jesus in Jerusalem, he told his guide that it was more exciting for him to walk there than to walk on the moon.
James Lincoln says
mortimer,
Neil Armstrong – a brave beyond brave American patriot.
I choked up and had tears in my eyes the day that he passed.
God bless him.
FYI says
“That’s one small step for a man{BEEP}..one giant leap for mankind{BEEP}…and what’s that?Church bellls!… haha how nice…”
gravenimage says
True, Mortimer and James.
https://www.charismanews.com/opinion/standing-with-israel/72185-why-neil-armstrong-was-more-excited-to-visit-israel-than-to-visit-the-moon
StacyGirl says
+1
infidel says
While India toils day and night to send probes to space and almost landed on the moon yesterday, these abominable creatures from Pakistan only dream of somehow infiltrating into India and do mass murder of Hindus..
gravenimage says
True, Infidel.
Alexios Comnenis says
islam had niching to do with America. Islam was an enemy of America and it will be. Muslims did not do anything good for this country. This man is unbelievable insane and just plays in the hands of islam.
gravenimage says
Notice Castro is incapable of any specifics?
infidel says
Some of these Hispanic immigrants…. the less said the better,.,,, I don’t even want to open my mouth….. after ruining their own Central and South American nations, they immigrate to America… The least they can do is at least NOT TO DAMAGE if they cannot do any good!!!
Trick_or_Treat says
Must be meaning kind of like how islam has made London great of the space of just a few decades?
libertyORdeath says
Two unsurprising facts – 1. that a majority of Africans who came to America as a result of the Transatlantic slave trade came from muslim majority regions. 2. That 97.8% (a figure I am inventing in the tradition of the VOA) were thrilled to embrace christianity in the U.S.
Joe says
There are 55 (or so) Muslim countries. Why are all of them impoverished, except for the ones that have a tremendous amount of oil? In those cases, it was mostly Americans (but some mostly Christian Europeans) that gave oil value with drilling and automotive technology.
Persia was one of the strongest empires on Earth. Even when Rome was at full strength, they didn’t conquer Persia. What has Persia done after it was ruined by Islam?
On the other hand, Europe was not a world power until it became Christian.
These are not casual circumstances. All of those arguments that build a connection between faith and reason hold water.
MJP says
I figured Castro was a total nutcase his statements concerning Muslims confirms it
Giacomo Latta says
Muslims have ”helped” make America great in the same way as pestilence invading the human body increases the number of white corpuscles.
Billy Chickens says
“Muslims have helped make America great.” HahahahahaLOL. I knew a Muslims family of four – father, mother, son, daughter – who came from Iran or Iraq years ago and now they are all Christians. The son married a Christian and now they have several little Christian children, all with Christian names.
I was also friends with a Kurdish Muslim who married an evangelical Christian while in Iraq, then later they both converted to the Catholic faith here in the States. So if any Muslims helped make America great it would Muslims who came here, cast aside their horrid Islamic chains, became Christians and lived lives worth living.
gravenimage says
+1
Lauren Hermann says
+10
Giacomo Latta says
One very special Muslim who ”helped” to make America great is an individual named Tippu Tip. He was a mix of Arab and black (strangely enough) who traded in ivory and slaves in Eastern Africa. Make sure you Google his name for details before Wikipedia cleanses him from history. I only know he was Muslim; I don’t know if he did any trade directly with America.
Neil Schmidt says
I submit that ALL the slaves were Muslim. I mean….we ALL know that Muslims have made any country into which they have flooded and thrived…..BETTER….and that they are responsible for showing Christians and Jews the errors of their ways. How do I know? I heard it on CNN.
Im4truth4all says
A Lenin quote: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”
tgusa says
You can count on the bottom of the barrel rising to the top in the democrat party. That is exactly how they have set it up.
Linda Rivera says
Muslims have made America great??? The LIES and constant vile propaganda are nauseating. I never get over my grief and pain that my precious 3,000 brothers and sisters were savagely slaughtered on 9/11 by Muslims OBEYING BLOODTHIRSTY Quran commands.
I never forget the Muslim Boston slaughter. The Muslim slaughter of our young people at the Florida nightclub and so many other cruel Muslim terror attacks.
I never forget 7/7, other London Muslim terror attacks, the Manchester, England nightclub massacre of our young people.
The horrendous SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE MUSLIM TORTURES and SLAUGHTERS of our French brothers and sisters in Paris.
The Barbaric Muslim RAPES and MASSACRES of our Russian brothers and sisters in the school in Beslan, Russia.
I WILL NEVER FORGET.
gravenimage says
+1
Angemon says
Possibly knowing he won’t be questioned about anything he says…
hornedviper9 says
Yeah because 9/11, Boston Marathon Bombing, San Bernadino MASSACRE, Pulse NightclubMASSACRE, etc was so Great, May Castro ROT in Hell!
Carolyne says
I understand that politicians sometimes shade the truth a little and tailor their speeches to fit their audience, but is there no low point beyond which Democrats will not go?
gravenimage says
Sadly this is a good question.
Me says
Castro… Isn’t this a communist family ?
gravenimage says
Not every Castro is a communist–some are, though…