Imagine his embarrassment when he discovers that jihad recruiters actually appeal to peaceful Muslims on the basis of the authenticity of their vision of Islam, and that they don’t have to work very hard to make their case, since the Qur’an contains numerous exhortations to commit acts of violence against non-Muslims (2:191, 4:89, 8:12, 9:5, 9:29, 9:123, 47:4, etc.). But by then it will likely be too late for France, if it isn’t already.
“After Paris attack, Macron vows ‘unrelenting fight’ against Islamist terror,” Times of Israel, October 8, 2019:
French President Emmanuel Macron vowed an “unrelenting fight” against Islamist terror on Tuesday as he paid tribute to the four Paris police staff stabbed to death last week by a radicalized colleague.
“We will wage an unrelenting fight in the face of Islamist terrorism,” Macron told a ceremony at the police headquarters where the attack took place.
Mickael Harpon, a 45-year-old computer expert in the police intelligence-gathering department, used a kitchen knife and an oyster shucker to kill three male and one female colleague in a 30-minute rampage that ended when an officer shot him in the head.
He had converted to Islam about 10 years ago and adopted increasingly radical beliefs, according to investigators.
The killings have raised questions about how he managed to avoid detection by the police, despite having top-level security clearance.
Macron said it was “inconceivable and unacceptable” that Harpon, who had worked for the police since 2003, had managed to carry out an attack “in the very place where we pursue terrorists and criminals.”
Addressing the police he said: “Your colleagues fell under the blows of a distorted, deadly Islam which we must eradicate.”…
CogitoErgoSum says
I’m still waiting for the that officially sanctioned version of French Islam to make its debut. Is it about ready?
DHazard says
We’ve been waiting for the U.S. version since the afternoon of September 11, 2001.
mortimer says
A tragically unfunny joke. Islamism is the same as Islam.
Rufolino says
The donkeys who are leading Europe are worse than the “donkeys” who commanded the armies in World War I.
And the failures of today’s idiots are leading to an even greater catastrophe, the suicide of a civilisation.
PRCS says
Islam:
the ideology.
Islamism:
a concept whose meaning has been debated in both public and academic contexts. The term can refer to diverse forms of social and political activism advocating that public and political life should be guided by Islamic principles or more specifically to movements which call for full implementation of sharia.
gravenimage says
Yeah, CogitoErgoSum–I haven’t heard much about that lately–nothing really since the summer:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/05/01/islam-made-in-france-debating-the-reform-of-muslim-organizations-and-foreign-funding-for-religion/
Might French authorities have run into a few snags?
Of course, the very idea that a “French Islam” is needed gives the lie to Macron implying that nothing is wrong with the ‘Islamic Islam’ that we already have.
Hugh Fitzgerald says
Not quite. Macron still can’t figure out what he was thinking when he proposed a “French Islam.” Probably he was thinking about nothing. It just sounded good. And now he’s been pushed by circumstances to take, or to sound as if he is taking, a harder line. He has left himself the leeway or loophole of denouncing not just a “deadly” but. a “distorted” Islam. Don’t expect him to explain in what way Harpon “distorted” Islam.
mortimer says
If someone Islamo-knowledgeable like Hugh Fitzgerald or Robert Spencer or Ibn Warraq or Bill Warner or David Wood explained Islam to Emmanuel Macron, he would not perceive the depth of their knowledge and he would probably not wish to believe them, because his worldview would have to change.
World leaders like Macron seem to garner their understanding of Islam from other world leaders … perhaps Saudi princes … in a few brief seconds during a polite luncheon.
World leaders like Macron do not sit down and study a collection of verses from the Koran, hadiths and Sira and figure out their deadly, implacable meanings for themselves. No, they let someone else give them an oversimplified, ‘Readers Digest’ version of Islam. They spend LESS time learning about Islam than they do sitting on the ‘throne’ every day.
underbed cat says
You just described the problem, they cannot conceive of the need to read a Quran they do not study. It is miserably frustrating to see the liberal reality of Islam, a truly a mind numbing mystical Hollywood fantasy until the show is over and the deadly curtain drops. In reality to move into the west they had to study western culture and found a lie works to subvert countries and found a crack that became the canyon since leaders were too busy securing their position.
The genius of the method is that before the curtain drops, they have disrupted a culture with controversy and convinced leaders that the truth is hate speech.
susanp says
They don’t have time to ‘study’ anything, Everyone in a position of power has aides, lawyers, assistants, speech writers, flunkies, to do everything, they don’t even have to think. It is unbelievable the excessive personnel a member of the House has, double that for Senators. We are paying millions for superfluous people to hang around and look busy as they follow their politicians around to make sure they remember their lines. Obama proved how stupid he is when he didn’t have a teleprompter and had to speak. World leaders are either politically invested in flooding their nations with muslims or they are clueless, I can’t decide which. The muslims will not bother them because they are protected and will be for the rest of their lives. It’s the lowly peons who will suffer but if we dare complain, we are racists, islamophobes, bigots, and xenophobes. It’s so exasperating and the only solution is to elect better politicians but where are they? Do they exist? Politicians are inherently corrupt and power hungry. Donald Trump has many faults but he’s not afraid to speak his mind. He gets a bit carried away sometimes but that’s preferable to to the hypocrisy and prevarication of the democrat degenerates.Trump tried to staunch political correctness but until we all cease to engage, that will be impossible.
gravenimage says
Good analysis from Hugh Fitzgerald.
Herb L says
Don’t forget that all this Islamization is born from the Elite. Here is the Agenda I can decipher. Elite had a Globalist plan to conquer the whole world, and erected the Georgia Guide stones that prove where this is headed. The Elite send down order to the puppets in governments to pursue the Illegal importing of migrants, then start squeezing in a few other country migrants, then start legalizing Muslims to run in our Elections to gain favoritism towards Muslims. Then start Infiltrating the Country Cities and towns taking over the whole city in a few years then spread to another and another until they are the Majority and stake out what used to be AMERICANS HOMES to be under Islamic control and make them No-Go zones to the Infidels, while constructing terrorist training camps in America and putting OUR own Militia’s in Jail for declaring a Public Militia. These Democrats took on a Socialist Party and Merged into an Anti-American war Cartel that will try to put Sharia Law into effect where they will have the ability to raise up the Islamic Caliphate and destroy OUR Freedoms by the Constitutional right of American Citizens to take out a despotic Government protected by the same Constitution that states that Americans can not overthrow the government. As soon as they have enough power, they will take our guns away by using our own Military against us, as they replace Americans who swear to protect the Constitution with Muslims that will not be under OUR Constitution but their own Sharia Law that gives ALL Muslims the rights to the whole world declared by a War Lord 1600 years ago. The biggest enemy in the world is Satan and his World of Islamic armies guided by the Quran. If the Muslims are not dispelled while they are not strong enough to take us down, and the Quran deemed as a world Enemy attack book of war, there will not be a world of Mercy. Muslims are not here to assimilate but to dominate, and that suites the Socialist Democrats just fine, but they think because they helped get Islam seated in America and Other Countries that the left will be allowed to live in peace with them. But Islam does not allow any allegiance to anyone or anything on this earth and will take the last Stupid Democrats, Liberals, and Socialists as their slaves and forced to convert to their Islamic Superiority Cult by death to the Infidel. Read the Quran and see what the Quran says about the Infidels, which by the way are ALL people in the world that will not take the oath of Islam, and the includes every one of us who were not born of a Muslim Father. In the Quran it states that Muslims are not to take an Infidel as a friend or helper, and to kill them wherever you find them, Muslims take OUR Christian Mercy as submission to the Muslims and Islam. There is no freedom or Mercy in Islam, there is no music or fun or kindness in Islam except to other Muslims that follow Sharia Law. Those who don’t take the oath to Islam will be killed. That about sums up what the Muslims and Democrats are in the story that will end humanity as we see it now. They love death more than we love life and are giving our whole future over to Islam without a fight from us.
gravenimage says
This isn’t all the elite, Herb–there are lots of ordinary people in denial about the threat of Islam.
underbed cat says
Funny but not really. It is genius how the deception works on most leaders that don’t have or didn’t listen to people who knew the doctrine to set off alarms and were not under life or death restraints to conceal the doctrine and ties to terror. Yes there is an obligation is to act tolerant, there are verses that sound tolerant but to “not be tolerant” and also to cover for those believers who act on the doctrine so that it is never explained to the liberal minded seduced leaders or if it is they think tolerance is the key, they can fix it with more money. Nope. The obligation to jihad is what the perceived moderates muslims know, but will support muslim open door settlements and mosque building and not speak how the doctrine of sharia law works and it’s primary goal. They can’t change the words of the Quran to slay the infidels which does not classify it as a religion once it is identified with a look under the mask.
mortimer says
Yes, underbed, the Koran and hadiths have sayings that at first glance appear tolerant, especially if they are shorn well before presentation as part of sly propaganda. Islam commonly uses the bait-and-switch method. It presents the conciliatory verses first and after gaining some power, Islam moves on to the intolerant verses of the Koran which abrogate and render non-effective the conciliatory ones.
Wellington says
If a distorted, deadly Islam is what you want to eradicate, then you must eradicate Islam in its entirety. Just substitute Nazism or Marxism for Islam and it would add up the same thing.
Really, the world needs to desist from looking for a good Islam lurking out there somewhere. Again, just substitute Nazism or Marxism for Islam to clarify matters here. I assure all it will be very clarifying.
James Lincoln says
Spot on, Wellington!
Macron said: “Your colleagues fell under the blows of a distorted, deadly Islam which we must eradicate.”…
If only he had left out the word “distorted”…
mortimer says
Yes, James, we can only ‘eradicate’ Islam by eradicating belief in Islam. We can do that by showing Muslims that the Koran was written by humans and that would be by showing Muslims that the Koran is covered with human ‘fingerprints’.
mortimer says
Thanks to Wellington and JL. The supposed ‘DISTORTION’ of Islam is INHERENT TO ISLAM and it is called ‘ABROGATION’. Islam ‘DISTORTS’ itself by SUPERSEDING the early MECCAN KORAN with the later MEDINAN KORAN. There are TWO KORANS and TWO ISLAMS.
Macron is only aware of the MECCAN ISLAM, and erroneously believes that the MEDINAN ISLAM is inauthentic.
The imperial Islam of MEDINA is the Islam that has ‘SUPERSEDED’ and ‘ABROGATED’ the first Meccan Islam and the MEDINAN ISLAM is now in effect.
Macron wants to believe in the ‘superannuated’ first version of Islam from the Meccan Koran.
Islam is BAIT AND SWITCH, Monsieur Macron !
Monsieur Macron, l’islam est un « LAPIN », un « APPAT AU CLIENT », une « PUBLICITÉ TROMPEUSE », un « APPAT ET SUBSTITUTION ». Vous avez été LEURÉ.
Rollo Audio says
Peaceful Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Wake up World
Battle says
Is Mr. Macron going to start by identifying the great majority mosques which teach Sharia hatred of Christian’s and Jews? Identifying their imams? Deporting the imams? Closing their mosques?
Is Mr. Macron starting with the attacker’s mosque? And the mosque’s imams?
I am not holding my breath. But I hope Mr. Macron has awakened.
What did the French used to say? “Viva La Resistance!”
Battle says
Sorry. “Vive Le France.”
Phil Copson says
He means: “I’m not going to do anything ! You know I’m not going to do anything! I know that you know that I’m not going to do anything ! And you know that I know that you know that I’m not going to do anything! Alors – we understand each other – C’est parfait ! “Vive La Frislam”
Lavéritétriomphera says
Le gouvernement n’a plus vraiment le choix.
mortimer says
Monsieur Macron ! Islamism is normative Islam, rather than an aberration.
« L’islamisme n’est ni une caricature, ni une contrefaçon ni une hérésie ni un phénomène marginal et aberrant par rapport à l’islam classique orthodoxe sunnite.
Je pense au contraire que l’islamisme, c’est l’islam à découvert, l’islam sans masque et sans fard, l’islam parfaitement conséquent et fidèle à lui-même, un islam qui a le courage et la lucidité d’aller jusqu’au bout de lui-même, jusqu’à ses dernières implications.
L’islamisme, c’est l’islam dans toute sa logique, dans toute sa rigueur. L’islamisme est présent dans l’islam comme le poussin dans l’œuf, comme le fruit dans la fleur, comme l’arbre dans la graine
Mais qu’est-ce que l’islamisme?
L’islamisme, c’est l’islam politique, porteur d’un projet et d’un modèle de société visant à l’établissement d’un état théocratique basé sur la sharia, seule loi légitime – parce que divine – telle que révélée et consignée dans le Coran et la Sunna, une loi qui a réponse à tout.
Il s’agit là d’un projet global et globalisant, total, totalisant, totalitaire. » – Henri Boulad SJ
“Islamism is not a caricature, nor a counterfeit, nor a heresy, nor a fringe or atypical phenomenon versus classical, orthodox, Sunnite Islam.
To the contrary, I think Islamism is naked Islam, Islam without a mask and without paint, Islam perfectly consistent and true to itself, an Islam that has the courage and lucidity to go all the way to its ultimate conclusions and final implications.
Islamism is Islam in all its logic and in all its rigour. Islamism is present in Islam as the chick is present in the egg, as the fruit is present in the flower and as the tree is present in the seed.
But what is Islamism?
Islamism is political Islam, the bearer of a project for a model society and whose aim is to establish a theocratic state based on Sharia, the only legitimate law—since it is divine—since it was revealed and enshrined in the Koran and Sunna—it’s a law that applies to everything.
Here is an all-inclusive and all-encompassing project, one that is total, totalizing and totalitarian.” – Henri Boulad SJ
simpleton1 says
Very good Mortimer, as cuts to the heart of things, with truth.
And in another point he actually points out that dialogue should be in “love”, and in “truth”!
I guess that priest will never become a cardinal. 🙁
Democracy should also be in truth, but the western world seems to be ok with its ignorance. Even worse, seeks blindness.
GreekEmpress says
The phrase “Day late and a dollar short” comes to mind, but I do pray it’s not too late for France.
gravenimage says
As do I, GreekEmpress.
Angemon says
What date is it today? October 9, 2019? Oh, for a moment there I felt it was September 12, 2001…
Tom says
How would Macron know if it was a “distorted deadly Islam” unless he has advisors who are knowledgeable of Islam. Of course the only valid advisors will be Muslim.
Macron and other leaders must recognize that Islam is Islam, there are no different forms of Islam according to Islamic leaders such as Tyyip Erdogan President of Turkey.
“Assimilation is a crime against humanity. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam, Islam is Islam. The mosques are our barracks, The minorets are our bayonets, The cupolas our helmets, and the faithful our soldiers.” Tyyip Erdogan, President of Turkey 2008.
mortimer says
Tom, it’s unlikely that Macron can learn this, because it takes about 10 years of study to absorb all the contradictory doctrines of Islam and make sense of them. Islam is OPPORTUNISTIC. There is no altruistic version of Islam. Islam grew out of a gang of desert highwaymen called the SA’ALIK. They robbed caravans and turned their gang eventually into an empire.
The criminal philosophy of a gang (and of Islam) is ‘DUALISM’ … BAIT-AND-SWITCH. If Macron doesn’t learn that about Islam … he’s hopelessly out of his depth.
ntesdorf says
President Macron doesn’t need to fight against “a distorted, deadly Islam which we must eradicate”, there is only one Islam and it is all based on the same three sources, Qr’an, Haddith and the Sira of Muhammad. Macron could be on a winning path with fighting against “a distorted political/religious system Islam which we must eradicate”.
mortimer says
No, ntesdorf, I disagree … there are TWO ISLAMS … first the BAIT and then the SWITCH. Macron only thinks the BAIT part is the real Islam. They contradict each other, they are both from Allah and Muslims believe that the BAIT and the CONTRADICTIONS are both true.
Islam is confusing. The ‘miracle’ of ‘abrogation’ … bait-and-switch.
Lavéritétriomphera says
We are getting less doublespeak. It’s a good sign. Macron is probably tired of political correctness.
mortimer says
Quite right … there is less nonsense coming from our leaders. The light is gradually dawning on them… but surely 18 years after 9-11 they should have learned by now. At this rate it may take another 15 years for them to understand that Islamism is in fact the same as Islam per se.
keya says
There he goes again.
tim gallagher says
Probably, even if this fool Macron did actually know that it is all of stinking, barbaric islam that is the enemy of our western way of life, France has now got too many Muslims living in the country for Macron to tell the truth. When he says that it is a “distorted, deadly Islam which we must eliminate”, he is probably keeping an eye on not upsetting the Muslim population in France, so he says it is only the “distorted” version of Islam that he has to fight against. He should say that it is all of Islam which is no damned good, but that would upset the Muslims in France. Macron is pathetic. He should learn from Orban or learn from Le Pen and just tell the truth about rotten Islam and say to hell with the reaction of Muslims in France. These leaders of western countries have got to start telling the truth someday (so get on with it) and taking whatever actions are necessary against Islam.
Lotus says
+1.
As for doing what it takes, see my post further down.
tim gallagher says
I agree with what you say in your post, Lotus. Throwing Islam out of Europe again is the only solution. And also the only answer in other western countries. Your comparison of the pathetically weak powder puff, Macron, with Charles Martel is a good one and explains a lot about why our modern western countries are in such trouble these days..
Peter WF says
Where is the “moderate” muslim “majority” that is fighting jihad?
I think that they are shaking in their boots and hiding at home with their women. They certainly don’t make the media in their confrontations.
France – had all those muslim colonies and now they are being colonized. Boot is on the other foot.
Don McKellar says
Since when was it France’s job to fight against an imaginary version of Islam? There is nothing there to fight against — they aren’t going to change the Koran for France. They aren’t going to ignore the warlord Mohammad’s vile and violent life story in the hadiths. What colour is the sky on his planet?
John Haller says
Paris Police HQ , coincidentally,right across the street from Notre Dame and they spent a lot of time trying to cover up who did that one as well. As far as I can see Macron is a dead man walking. One year of Gilets Jaunes proves that he has no friends from any sector of the French community.
infidel says
Meanwhile in India, a Muslim youth exposes a lying Muslim cleric at a talk-show. At the talk-show the mad cleric challenges the audience to show him even one Islamic school in India that preaches hatred against Hindus. Precisely at that time, a conscientious Muslim young man from the audience jumps forward and tells the world that he had been schooled to believe in the eventual mass murder of Hindus.
gravenimage says
Thanks for that story. Glad he was honest.
Lotus says
Today (10th October) is the anniversary of the Battle of Tours. Let’s not forget the vital efforts made in a series of battles in the 730s to hold and then push back the invading Muslims!
European civilization was saved because Charles Martel and his like were prepared to step up and do what was necessary to repel these invaders.
Where are the men with a backbone like that today? It’s rather depressing to think that the heir of Charles ‘the Hammer’ is Emmanuel Macron, who is more of a waterweed than a hammer.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/10/battle-tours-raymond-ibrahim/
http://www.classichistory.net/archives/battle-of-tours
gravenimage says
Hear, hear, Lotus!
SAFI says
The question is… is he just as ignorant as he appears on the surface, or does he have to lie for tactical reasons, as long as the current political climate makes it dangerous to speak the truth about Islam?
gravenimage says
No one has to lie. Even his staying silent would be preferable to this.
FireFox says
It is truly hard to understand the utter ignorance of these leaders.
Macron, May, Juncker, and Merkel are all “childless” leaders who have devastated European cultures and countries by their welcome and embrace of the barbaric Islam.
It must be easy when you have no kids and therfore no future or freedom to protect.
Islam is, was, and will always be a cancerous scourge upon humanity; and its followers a constant and ever present danger to all.
Islam’s 7th century ignorance, and it’s god of hate and death, belong in the desert alone with its self – not feeding off the teat of the west.
This invasion of Islam will at some point end up a civil war on free land.
Our past patriots must be turning in their graves.
We must stand hard against this globalist insanity.
Trick_or_Treat says
Macron, there is NO SUCH THING as a seperate distorted ‘version’ of islam which is deadly, and apparentlys needs to be eradicated, there is ONLY islam – NO breakaway distorted version – and, yes, it IS deadly, and, yes, it DOES need to be totally eradicated – EXTERMINATED. Wake up and scatch yer nuts you dickhead.
Lotus says
An extract from Raymond Ibrahim’s book, ‘Sword and Scimitar’ about the leadup to the Battle of Tours (10th October). The quotation marks set off the remarks of chroniclers.
// By the early 730s Muslims controlled all the major cities of the Frankish Mediterranean coastline, between the Pyrenees and the Rhône; and they ruled with an iron fist.
“As a warning to others, [they] burned a bishop alive” in neighboring Cerdanya in 730. Not content, Abdul and his hordes continued to penetrate deeper north into Francia, ravishing the countryside and despoiling “every church and monastery in their path.”
Their immediate target was Tours, where they heard the Basilica of Saint Martin—one of Western Christendom’s holiest sites— contained untold treasures.
“To spread as much terror and accumulate as much loot as possible, Abdul Rahman divided his army, probably some 80,000 strong, into several columns and sent them pillaging.”
Town after town fell, and the caliph in Damascus rubbed his hands with glee as he received, “among other things, male and female slaves, and seven hundred of the best girls, besides eunuchs, horses, medicine, gold, silver, and vases,” says al-Hakam.
As the Muslims wreaked havoc throughout Francia, Charles, having secured his northern and eastern borders, began rallying his liegemen in Paris. He set off with as many as thirty thousand battle-hardened Franks to intercept the invading army.
Meanwhile, Abdul “destroyed palaces, burned churches, and imagined he could pillage the basilica of St. Martin of Tours” during his drive north, laments a Christian chronicler.
“It is then that he found himself face to face with the lord of Austrasia, Charles, a mighty warrior from his youth, and trained in all the occasions of arms.” //
FireFox says
And Islam remains the very same unenlightened barbaric scourge of hate and death and destruction till today. How are people so blind to this truth and to Islam’s unchanged history. Has the good life seeded in us a dhimmi nature?
Lotus says
Continuing the acoount of the Battle of Tours. whose anniversary is today (10th October). From Raymond Ibrahim’s book, ‘Sword and Scimitar’. Quotations are from chroniclers or historians.
// So it was that in the year 732— precisely one hundred years after the death of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, a century which had seen the conquest of thousands of miles of formerly Christian lands—the scimitar of Islam found itself in the heart of Europe, facing that continent’s chief military power, the Franks.
The invading hordes consisted mainly of Berbers who “fought from horseback, depending on bravery and religious fervor to make up for their lack of armor or archery. Instead, the Moors fought with scimitars and lances. Their standard method of fighting was to engage in mass cavalry charges, depending on numbers and courage to overwhelm any enemy; it was a tactic that had carried them thousands of miles and defeated dozens of opponents. Their weakness was that all they could do was attack; they had no training or even concept of defense.”
Except for mounted nobles like Charles, the Franks, influenced by the Romans they had conquered, were now primarily an infantry force. Relying on deep phalanx formations and heavy armor—the typical infantryman bore seventy pounds of iron—the Franks were as immovable as the Muslims were mobile. Along with their shields, which the Franks received upon entry into adulthood, their arms consisted of swords, daggers, spears, and two kinds of axes, one for wielding and the other for hurling—the notorious francisca, which became so conflated with the Franks that either they were named after it or it after ther.
Having arrived somewhere between Poitiers and Tours, the latter being the Muslim target, the Franks took advantage of the familiar and densely wooded terrain. They secured the high ground, which not only served to provide shelter and mask their inferior numbers, but could also impede the much anticipated Muslim cavalry charge.
Once the invaders arrived, the two contending armies faced each other for six or seven days, neither wanting to make the first move. No fool, Abdul knew that behind the miles of dense woods, the best Francia could muster had assembled in large numbers. Worse, and as Charles had predicted, the Muslims’ gain was now their bane: having plundered numerous towns and churches on their northern drive, they were overwhelmed with booty. Nor did any one contingent or tribe trust leaving their share to the protection of another.
Abdul used this downtime to begin transporting the booty south for safekeeping. Charles awaited more of his men to arrive from the furthest outposts of his domains. Then, on October 10—the European climate was getting too cold for the Africans and Arabs, and their supplies and foraging areas had dwindled—Abdul commenced battle. To the loud cries of “Allahu Akbar!,” charge after charge they came.
An anonymous medieval Arab chronicler describes the battle in rather epic terms:
“Near the river Owar [Loire], the two great hosts of the two languages [Arabic and Latin] and the two creeds [Islam and Christianity] were set in array against each other. The hearts of Abd al-Rahman, his captains and his men were filled with wrath and pride, and they were the first to begin to fight. The Muslim horsemen dashed fierce and frequent forward against the battalions of the Franks, who resisted manfully, and many fell dead on either side, until the going down of the sun.” //
Lotus says
Final part of the account of the Battle of Tours. whose anniversary is today (10th October). From Raymond Ibrahim’s book, ‘Sword and Scimitar’. Quotations are from chroniclers and historians.
// Entirely consisting of wild headlong charges, the Muslim attack proved ineffective, for:
“the men of the north stood as motionless as a wall, they were like a belt of ice frozen together, and not to be dissolved, as they slew the Arab with the sword. The Austrasians [eastern Franks], vast of limb, and iron of hand, hewed on bravely in the thick of the fight,” continues another chronicler.
The Franks refused to break ranks and allow successive horsemen to gallop through the gaps, which nomadic cavalry tactics relied on. Instead, they tightened their ranks and, “drawn up in a band around their chief [Charles], the people of the Austrasians carried all before them. Their tireless hands drove their swords down to the breasts [of the foe].”
Military historian Victor Davis Hanson offers a more practical take:
“When the sources speak of ‘a wall,’ ‘a mass of ice,’ and ‘immovable lines’ of infantrymen, we should imagine a literal human rampart, nearly invulnerable, with locked shields in front of armored bodies, weapons extended to catch the underbellies of any Islamic horsemen foolish enough to hit the Franks at a gallop.”
As expected, the battle was a wondrous mess: “Muslims would ride up in large bodies, slash at the clumsier Franks, shoot arrows, and then ride away as the enemy line advanced.”
In response, “each Frankish soldier, with shield upraised, would lodge his spear into either the horsemen’s legs or the face and flanks of his mount, then slash and stab with his sword to cut the rider down, all the while smashing his shield—the heavy iron boss in the center was a formidable weapon in itself—against exposed flesh.
‘Gradually advancing en masse, the Franks would then continue to trample and stab fallen riders at their feet—careful to keep close contact with each other at all times.”
At one point, Allah’s warriors surrounded and trapped Charles, but “he fought as fiercely as the hungry wolf falls upon the stag. By the grace of Our Lord, he wrought a great slaughter upon the enemies of Christian faith,” Denis the chronicler extolled. “Then was he first called ‘Martel,’ for as a hammer of iron, of steel, and of every other metal, even so he dashed and smote in the battle all his enemies.”
As night descended on the field of carnage, the two bloodied armies disengaged and withdrew to their camps. At the crack of dawn, the Franks prepared to resume battle, only to discover that the Muslims had all fled under the cover of darkness.
Their master, Abdul, had been killed in fighting the day before, and the Berbers—freed of his whip and having tasted Frankish mettle— apparently preferred life and some plunder over martyrdom. They all fled back south—still looting, burning, and enslaving all and sundry as they went. Aware that his strength lay in his “wall of ice,” Charles did not give chase.
The aftermath “was, as all cavalry battles, a gory mess, strewn with thousands of wounded or dying horses, abandoned plunder, and dead and wounded Arabs. Few of the wounded were taken prisoner—given their previous record of murder and pillage.”
The oldest sources give astronomical numbers of slain Muslims—hundreds of thousands— with only a small fraction of slain Franks. Whatever the true numbers, significantly less numbers of Franks than Muslims fell in that battle. Even Arab chronicles refer to the engagement as the “Pavement of Martyrs,” suggesting that the earth was littered with Muslim corpses.
“The joyful tidings were soon diffused over the Catholic world,” and the surviving chronicles of the day—including that of the aforesaid and anonymous Arab—portray this victory in epic if not apocalyptic terms.
Even in distant England, fiery comets appeared for two weeks prior, “striking terror into all who saw them,” wrote the Venerable Bede; “seeming to portend awful calamity to east and west alike,” these falling stars “indicated that mankind was menaced by evils.… At this time, a swarm of Saracens ravaged Gaul with horrible slaughter; but after a brief interval in that country they paid the penalty for their wickedness,” concluded the “Father of English History,” who died just three years after the battle at Tours. //
Lotus says
The significance of the Battle of Tours and its aftermath. From Raymond Ibrahim’s book, ‘Sword and Scimitar’. Quotations are from chroniclers and historians.
// Although a decisive victory, the Muslim menace did not disappear overnight. Pockets of raiders still swarmed north of the Pyrenees and along the Mediterranean coast. “Almost every year of the reign of Charles until his death in 741 was spent in warring to unite Gaul or to rid Europe of Islam.”
Two years after Tours, Uqba bin al-Hajjaj, the new governor of Spain, invaded Francia “to avenge the defeat at Poitiers and to spread Islam.” His large land force remained in Gaul for nearly four years, during which time he carried raids as far as Lyons, Burgundy, and Piedmont, and forced some two thousand Christians to convert to Islam on pain of death.
The Hammer returned to the rescue: “Charles overthrew the tyrants who claimed rule over all of Francia and so completely defeated the Saracens, who were attempting to occupy Gaul, in two great battles, one in Aquitaine the city of Poitiers [or Tours, 732] and the second near Narbonne near the River Berre [in 737], that he forced them to return to Spain,” writes Einhard the chronicler (b. 770).
Thanks to Charles’s follow-up victories, including another significant one in 739, the Muslims became a spent force and were eventually driven back beyond the Pyrenees into Muslim-occupied Spain. //
gravenimage says
Thank you, Lotus.
E T says
So here we are today in 2019, the madman in Turkey, who wants to restore the Ottoman Empire is plotting with the madman in Iran to slaughter the Kurds, the Christians and any other group of people who gets in the way of the Religion of Peace. The leaders, in Europe, New Zealand and Canada are telling us there is nothing to fear as the migrants rape, steal, and kill. Islam is a political so called religion, now every fall in line.
jca reid says
Islam is quite clear on its intentions for the World & all of Mankind. Dominate, subjugate & eradicate everything else. The Koran & hadiths state this throughout their writings. The Muslims bitch about the Crusades. There were only about 17 FIXED battles in all of the Crusades spread out over centuries. European countries over a longer period have endured over 400 fixed battles & sieges. The only sensible Europeans on this matter are the Eastern Europeans. They’ve experienced over 400 years of Muslim Rule. They don’t want it. Learn from History. If you don’t, you’ll repeat the same mistakes.
Giacomo Latta says
Now the Muslim Kurds will have to leave the Middle East to emigrate to … well, the place which will become the new site of a Kurdish/Turkish war.
FYI says
Le Petit Empereur Macron
Or “Jupiter” as apparently he sees himself.
Speaking of Astronomical objects,look at that photo… and you can see the Sun shines from his…
Marigold says
The unfortunate French desperately need a strong leader not the weak one they have in Macron