Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four. Part Five. “While the Mad Fakir was rousing Swat and Buner, this powerful priest incited the Mohmands”.[1] The Mohmand were also a Pashtun tribe, against whom the British had waged war on and off since 1851, but the main operations began between 1897–1898. Though he was known […]
Winston Churchill and Islam (Part Five)
Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four. The extraordinary credulity of the people is hardly conceivable. Had the Mad Mullah called on them to follow him to attack Malakand and Chakdara they would have refused. Instead he worked miracles. He sat at his house, and all who came to visit him, brought him a […]
Winston Churchill and Islam (Part Four)
Part One. Part Two. Part Three. The Mad Mullah was born Saidullah Khan [sometimes also known as Sadullah, or Mastun Mullah (Ecstasy Mullah), or the Sartor Fakir or Faqir (the Bare-headed Saint)] in the village of Rega Buner in the Buner Valley and was a member of a branch of the Yousafzai tribe, another Pashtun […]
Winston Churchill and Islam (Part Three)
Part One. Part Two. In the evenings one can imagine them recounting tales of the former glory days of Islam, continues Churchill, [when] the Mullah will raise his voice and remind them of other days when the sons of the prophet drove the infidel from the plains of India, and ruled at Delhi, as wide […]
Winston Churchill and Islam (Part Two)
Part One is here. Churchill biographer Con Coughlin also describes their character in unflattering terms: “The Pashtuns invariably used violence to resolve their differences, which led to feuds between families lasting for generations. The Pashtun language even contains a specific word to define revenge between cousins. In many respects these frontiersmen were warriors in the […]
Winston Churchill and Islam (Part One)
In late 2001, I was sitting in the private library of the late David Littman, husband of the distinguished historian Bat Ye’or, in their beautiful villa overlooking Lake Geneva (Switzerland), when David received a phone call from his friend the official biographer of Sir Winston, Sir Martin Gilbert. Gilbert cited a memorable passage from The […]
Umberto Eco, Carl Jung, Karl Barth and Hitler on Islam and Nazism
In a speech that he gave at Columbia University, Umberto Eco spelled out fourteen features that he considered were typical of “Eternal Fascism” (which he also calls Ur-Fascism), and I have shown that all fourteen features were present in Islam.[1] Charles Watson,[2] and G.-H. Bousquet[3] refer to Islam as a totalitarian system tout court, while […]
Historical Methodology and Dogmatic Islamophilia (Part 8)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 To bring the story to the present, one cannot leave out the case of John Esposito, a Catholic, and Professor of International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. He is also the director of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the […]
Historical Methodology and Dogmatic Islamophilia (Part 7)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Throughout his article Religion and Anti-Religion, Professor Watt can barely disguise his contempt for secularism. “The wave of secularism and materialism is receding,“ notes Watt with approval, “most serious minded men in the Middle East realize the gravity of the problems of the present […]
Historical Methodology and Dogmatic Islamophilia (Part 6)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 2. Dogmatic Islamophilia of Western Islamologists Consider the following remarks, and try to guess in what sort of publication they might have first appeared: “Archaeologists increasingly have questioned accepted assumptions about biblical history and the biblical narrative….“ “Archaeological finds, however, at times call into question […]