Iran might have an attack on Americans (at home or abroad) planned before Inauguration Day
President Trump’s statement to Rush Limbaugh last week regarding Iran (“If you f--- around with us, if you do
something bad to us, we are gonna do things to you that have never been done
before.”) served a useful purpose. There may be further retaliation for the
assassination in Baghdad last January of the man who was effectively the
number-two official in Iran's government, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
leader Qassem Soleimani. Assuming Trump leaves office in January, the attack may
come before he does so. If so, Trump’s crude boast raises the question, what
should be the United States’s response?
As a legal and moral matter, Soleimani richly deserved his
violent demise. Iran’s arch-terrorist, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary
Guards Corps and its Quds Force, Soleimani played roles in the deaths of
hundreds of American diplomats, servicemen, and intelligence officers in
Lebanon in the 1980s, including the kidnapping and torture of some; the deaths
of dozens more U.S. personnel in Saudi Arabia and East Africa in the 1990s; and
the deaths of hundreds more Americans in Iraq in the first decade of this
century. (The 9/11 Commission, after consideration, took a cautiously agnostic
view of possible Iranian involvement in that attack.)
Soleimani was plotting further bloody mayhem against us
when a Reaper drone’s Hellfire missile hastened him on his journey across the
river Styx. But whether killing him and publicly claiming credit for it was worth
the candle, strategically speaking, remains an open question.
Millenarian terrorists such as those in al Qaeda and the
Islamic State already do all they can to murder any American, and as such ought
to be eliminated whenever possible. Meanwhile, evil but rational state actors
such as Iran’s ayatollahs presumably hold some of their capabilities back. The
reason the U.S. has mostly refused to assassinate foreign leaders ourselves,
other than some ill-considered plots in Africa and Latin America in the 1960s
that never came to fruition, is that we’re too vulnerable, as an open society,
to blow-back.
It’s easy to forget, given the excellent job done by the
U.S. Secret Service, the lengthy list of American presidents and presidential
candidates targeted for death: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford,
and Bill Clinton were shot at, while someone threw a grenade at George W. Bush;
Ronald Reagan, George Wallace, and Theodore Roosevelt were shot and wounded;
and Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, Huey Long, John Kennedy,
and Robert Kennedy were shot dead. Leaders in democracies risk more than those
in dictatorships.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is active inside the U.S. They operate out
of their United Nations Mission in New York and their Interests Section in
Washington. Iran assassinated a dissident in the D.C. suburbs in 1980 and
plotted to kill a Saudi ambassador at a Georgetown restaurant in 2011 with a
bomb that might have killed hundreds. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
does pre-operational surveillance of potential targets in the U.S., such as the
New York City subway and the helipad near Wall Street where Marine One lands
when presidents visit Manhattan. The ayatollahs are so brazen as to allow U.S.
law enforcement to see their men doing so. Tehran also demonstrates to us that
it maintains significant cyber-warfare capabilities.
Iran’s military retaliated for our strike against Soleimani
with a ballistic missile attack days later on Al Asad Airbase in western Iraq
that wounded 110 American servicemen. (I happened
to serve there in 2006-07.) But what if the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
or its catspaws such as Hezbollah further retaliate against American
installations in the Middle East, with the added goal of being seen as chasing
our forces out of a region that we were already departing? Or even inside the
U.S.?
If the blow comes before Election Day, Trump will incline
toward a heavy response, both on the merits, as well as in political hopes of
the healthy “rally ‘round the flag” attitude most Americans have toward our
commander-in-chief in a crisis. If the blow comes during violent domestic
disorder that is feared between Election Day and Inauguration Day, perhaps it
will be ignored, which would be a mistake. Or worse, an act could be blamed on
American left- or right-wing extremists if it happens stateside and is not
clearly attributable to Iran. If the blow comes after Inauguration Day, a new
Biden administration might face the question of how to respond to an attack on
our country, triggered by the arguably rash act of its predecessor, without
being distracted from its own agenda.
The U.S. cannot afford another land war in the Middle East.
As threats from peer competitors such as Russia and China grow, invading Iran,
a large and nationalistic country, is unrealistic. Even stealthy bombing raids
on enemy senior leadership targets in Tehran risk downed U.S. airmen, and the
sort of hostage crises suffered by the Carter and Reagan administrations could
dominate either Trump’s second term or Biden’s first. “Precision global strike”
missiles are tempting to use, but risk a tragic false alarm of a nuclear
launch. (Even if our other adversaries were given discrete advance warning, as
President Kennedy said of a U.S. nuclear test that unexpectedly took place
during the Cuban Missile Crisis, “There’s always some son of a bitch who
doesn’t get the word.”)
On the other hand, there was the Clinton administration’s
weak military response to Iraq’s 1993 plot to assassinate former President
George H.W. Bush on a visit to Kuwait. The Clinton administration bombed
Baghdad’s empty intelligence headquarters in the middle of the night, killing
the janitorial staff and encouraging more truculence from Saddam Hussein for
another decade.
Rather, if Tehran acts up, from standoff distances, we
should destroy all Iranian air, artillery, and naval forces along the Persian
Gulf and the Gulf of Oman’s shores, removing Tehran’s oft-voiced threats to
shut the Strait of Hormuz or attack our regional allies. We should also
eliminate their coastal and at-sea oil facilities. Further, we should
neutralize or at least suppress their proxy forces in countries such as
Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and (if local authorities allow us) Iraq. Finally,
offensive cyber weapons can shut down as much of Iran’s industrial economy as
needed, for as long as needed.
America should be prepared to give Iran a big bloody nose
if Tehran acts out over the next few months — but on our terms, while marshaling
limited forces for future needs, and allowing whoever takes the oath of office
on Jan. 20 to focus on our now-overwhelming domestic needs.
Kevin Carroll served as
senior counselor to the secretary of homeland security (2017-18) and the
chairman of the House homeland security committee (2011-13), as well as a CIA
and Army officer. Kevin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
While Cuomo Targets Orthodox Jews, Muslim Mass Gatherings Go On
Like Black Lives Matter riots, Muslim mobs don’t spread the virus.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Every year, Shiite Muslims in Flushing, Queens conduct the Arbaeen, a procession in honor of Mohammed's grandson whose death at the hands of a Sunni caliph marked the pivotal break between Shiites and Sunnis, slapping their faces and chests for their beheaded Imam Hussein.
Queens, once the borough that gave birth to President Trump and David Horowitz, now has a large Muslim population, and the fall processions of wailing crowds are a regular event.
The coronavirus didn’t change that.
In early October 2020, videos show a huge knot of Muslim men packed closely together in circles, not wearing masks or with masks down, chanting and furiously beating their chests in memory of Hussein’s martyrdom. Some are shirtless in the traditional fashion. The slaps are meant to be hard enough to cause real pain and there’s plenty of reddened skin on display.
The Shiite procession marches down Flushing’s Main Street, past rows of Chinese stores without a police officer in sight. The media also doesn’t stop by to document the event.
It’s one of a number of Shiite mass gatherings in New York and New Jersey, including more mourning events for Imam Hussein on Manhattan’s Park Avenue in August, where few of the participants wear masks, and another in Kensington, Brooklyn around the same time.
Unlike the Orthodox Jewish prayers of the High Holy Days and the Sukkot celebrations, these Shiite Muslim gatherings were not written up by the New York Post, the New York Daily News, or the New York Times as a public threat. Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio did not blame Muslims for the spread of the virus or declare a crackdown that would close mosques.
The Ashura Jaloos event took place in late August in the Kensington 11218 zip code which is listed on the "orange zone" on De Blasio's coronavirus watchlist. The Queens procession took place in another watchlist neighborhood where coronavirus rates have been rising.
At the end of August, Governor Cuomo threatened to crack down on Orthodox Jewish weddings and blamed the “Jewish community” and the “Catholic community” for spreading the coronavirus, but made no mention of any action against Muslim events like the one in Manhattan that had taken place a few days before his threats against Orthodox Jews.
On October 4th, the Queens procession took place. A day later, Cuomo held his infamous antisemitic press conference in which he threatened, “I have to say to the Orthodox community tomorrow, ‘If you’re not willing to live with these rules, then I’m going to close the synagogues.’”
To bolster his argument that Chassidic Jews were to blame for the spread of the virus, Cuomo used a photo of a funeral from 2006. Once again, he made no reference to Muslim mass gatherings taking place even right before the release of the new data and his press conference.
The media widely and wrongly claimed that the outbreaks were only taking place in zip codes with large Orthodox Jewish communities. This was false, especially when it came to Queens.
There are plenty of mosques to be found in the targeted zip codes in Brooklyn and Queens, in the red, the orange, and the yellow areas, on De Blasio’s watchlist. Some are quite large and in the red zone, but Orthodox Jews made a good target. Muslims make a politically incorrect one.
No Democrat would be caught dead threatening Muslims or shutting down mosques.
And the same papers that scold, sneer, and mock at men in fur hats would never dream of ridiculing shirtless Muslim men slapping their chests in public. That would be racist.
Like the Black Lives Matter riots and the Sharpton 50,000 rally in Washington D.C., Islamic religious rituals somehow don’t spread the virus. Not even when they’re taking place in areas on the watchlist. Orthodox Jewish prayers, like Trump rallies, are blamed for spreading it.
The same hypocritical doublethink extended not only to the rituals, but to the reactions.
When a group of Chassidic Jews protested the discriminatory restrictions by Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, by burning masks and waving Trump flags, the media was furious.
"Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jews burn masks in violent protests as New York cracks down on rising cases," a Washington Post headline blared. That's the same paper which has repeatedly described Black Lives Matter riots that wrecked entire cities as being "mostly peaceful".
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who had falsely claimed that Antifa violence was a myth, and expressed support for Black Lives Matter, despite the repeated riots, demanded that, “those responsible must be held to account for such violence” and expressed support for Cuomo’s crackdown.
Nadler also tweeted a petition of support for Cuomo and De Blasio’s crackdown on Jews from “300 Rabbis” representing something called the New York Jewish Agenda which had been created earlier this year to fight for “social justice.”
The letter was headed by Sharon Kleinbaum of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, a gay temple, much of whose membership defected when it decided to pray for Hamas terrorists.
“Recent events have demonstrated that CBST is far more committed to a progressive political agenda than to the Jewish people,” Bryan Bridges, a former board member, wrote. “I couldn’t imagine raising a child in this congregation, and have that child hear, just before we recite Kaddish, the names of people who are trying to kill her grandparents.”
But, to give Sharon Kleinbaum credit, she doesn’t limit her antisemitism to Jews in Israel.
Kleinbaum supported providing space to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, but is quite happy to see apartheid implemented by her Democrat political allies against Orthodox Jews in America.
The differing treatment meted out to Orthodox Jewish and Shiite Muslim religious gatherings is a troubling demonstration of how antisemitism is baked into the intersectionality of the Left.
It’s not about Israel. And it never was.
Pierre Leroux, who coined the term ‘Socialism’, wrote, “Every government having regard to good morals ought to repress the Jews”. This was a century before the rebirth of the modern State of Israel. It wasn’t Zionism that the founder of Socialism was objecting to, but Judaism.
Is it any wonder that Leroux’s socialist successors like Bill de Blasio are taking him at his word?
There is no systemic racism in America. But there’s no question that when you look at the very different treatment for Black Lives Matter rallies, Shiite Muslim gatherings, and Orthodox Jewish events, that systemic antisemitism is alive and well. Especially among New York Democrats.
"My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed," Bill de Blasio had tweeted in April.
There was no such warning for Muslims who, unlike the Chassidic Jews of Brooklyn, were not harassed or threatened in any way. They went on conducting Islamic events with no interference. The New York Post did not spy on their weddings, the New York Daily News did not ridicule their religion, and the mayor and governor did not threaten to come after them.
Cuomo threatened to close synagogues. He did not threaten to close mosques. Nor did he display any pictures, like the one above, of mass Muslim religious gatherings. Instead, he found a photo of a Jewish funeral from 2006 to suggest that Jews were spreading the coronavirus.
Systemic racism is a lie. Systemic antisemitism is real. Just ask Cuomo.
Usul al-Fiqh: The (Misunderstood) Key to Islamic Fanaticism
A linguistic distortion of an Arabic term may hold the key to understanding the Muslim mentality.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Sword and Scimitar, The Al Qaeda Reader, and Crucified Again, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
An interesting but little remarked upon linguistic distortion may hold the key to understanding the Muslim mentality.
Whoever undertakes a deeper study of Islam must early on encounter the Arabic term uṣūl al-fiqh, which is almost always translated as “sources of jurisprudence.” Here is a standard definition from the Encyclopædia Britannica:
Uṣūl al-fiqh, the sources of Islamic law and the discipline dedicated to elucidating them and their relationship to the substantive rulings of the law…. [They are:] the Qurʾān, the Prophet’s Sunnah (practice of the Prophet Muhammad as transmitted through his sayings, actions, and tacit approval), ijmāʿ (consensus of scholars), and qiyas (analogical deductions from these three)…
This last point is key: Islamic law is fundamentally based on four sources: the Koran, the Sunna, ijmāʿ and qiyas.
The reality, however, of the term uṣūl al-fiqh is deeper. Whereas the word uṣūl is correctly translated as “sources”—and those are its four sources—the original meaning of fiqh has nothing to do with law, but rather knowledge. Thus the term uṣūl al-fiqh means Islam’s “sources of knowledge,” which is perfectly translated by one word—epistemology.
The standard Arabic-English dictionary, Hans Wehr, validates this; its primary definition under its entry for fiqh states: “understanding, comprehension; knowledge.” After that general definition comes the more technical and familiar “jurisprudence in Islam.”
Why does this ostensibly academic point matter? Because a people’s epistemology—defined as “the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity”—has a much greater if not profound impact on their psyche, as opposed to their mere laws.
By way of analogy, consider the Western mainstream. Its epistemology—largely limited and defined by secularism, materialism, and, increasingly, an omnipresent and intrusive media—has a much greater impact on the average Western person’s understanding of the world, as opposed to the mere law, which remains secondary, an objective thing in the background. One may acknowledge and try not to transgress it, but the law does not necessarily influence one’s perception of reality.
Indeed, it is precisely because Western epistemology holds religion in little account that Western translators tend to limit the Arabic word fiqh to “law.” (Newer Arabic-English dictionaries do not even acknowledge fiqh’s etymology in “knowledge,” and go straight to “jurisprudence”). The reason for this is obvious: it is easier for Western people—who like all peoples tend to project their values onto others—to believe that the Koran, Sunna, ijmāʿ, and qiyas are used only to establish Muslim law, as opposed to establishing the very perimeters of Muslim thought and knowledge.
And yet, when we understand that these four are not just sources of the law but rather sources of general knowledge—that the Koran, Sunna, etc., far from merely establishing the “laws” of a Muslim society, are meant to establish the Muslim’s very perceptions of reality—only then does the persistence and prominence of what is termed “radical Islam” make complete sense.
Incidentally, from here one also comes to understand why translating sharīʿa as “Islamic law” is also insufficient. The root, sharʿa, means “to go (into), to enter or start something; to begin, start, commence.” Thus, the believer whose epistemology is limited to and defined by the Koran, the Sunna, etc., “goes into” and “starts something” new—namely, life in the light of Islamic knowledge. This is further underscored by the fact that, in pre-Islamic Arabia, centuries before “Islamic law” came into being, the word sharʿa was a reference to “the clear, well-trodden path to water”—that is, the path to life for the Bedouin mind. Only later did it take on the technical meaning of “Islamic law.”
Notwithstanding, it needs to be stressed that epistemologies are not innate or genetic; all the above does not mean that the roots of knowledge for anyone born into or identifying with Islam are limited to its four acknowledged sources. In other words, yes, a person can perceive themselves as Muslims and yet see the world through, say, a Western epistemology.
But for those who treat the Koran, the Sunna, the consensus of their ulema, and analogical reasoning therefrom, as they are supposed to be treated—that is, as ultimate and divine sources of knowledge, intimately establishing their every perception of reality—such are and will continue to be the world’s “radical Muslims.”
MUSLIMS ARE A BARBARIC
GLOBAL THREAT!
Turkish President Erdogan Declares: ‘Jerusalem Has Been Our City For Thousands of Years’
When a country's leader is in desperate need of a history lesson.
Erdogan addressed the opening of the Turkish Parliament on October 1 with a ringing declaration that “Jerusalem Has Been Our City For Thousands of Years.” The “our” in “our city” seemed to refer now to the Turks, and now to the “Palestinian people.” The story is here.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday implied that Jerusalem belongs to Turkey, referring to the Ottoman Empire’s control over the city for much of the modern era.
In this city that we had to leave in tears during the First World War, it is still possible to come across traces of the Ottoman resistance. So Jerusalem is our city, a city from us,” he told Turkish lawmakers during a major policy speech in Ankara. “Our first qibla [direction of prayer in Islam] al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem are the symbolic mosques of our faith. In addition, this city is home to the holy places of Christianity and Judaism.”
The Turks were the colonial masters of Jerusalem for 400 years, from 1516 to 1917, ruling over Muslim Arabs, Jews, and Christians too. If those 400 years of rule means that “Jerusalem is our [Turkish] city,” then what should we say about Istanbul, which as Constantinople was for more than a thousand years the richest and most important city in Christendom? Jerusalem has been lived in continuously by Jews for the last 3500 years; the archaeological evidence of that Jewish presence in the city has been found at thousands of sites – ancient synagogues, homes, tombstones, wine-presses, oil lamps, pottery – much of it with Hebrew inscriptions, with more such evidence being uncovered by archaeologists every year. Does President Erdogan expect the Western world to overlook all that? When Jerusalem was the first qibla, for just a few years before 624 A.D., when Muhammad replaced it with Mecca, Jews had already been living in Jerusalem for more than 2000 years.
The Ottoman Empire ruled over Jerusalem from 1516 to 1917. Modern Turkey, its successor state, has long stressed its enduring connection to the holy city, regularly condemning Israel’s alleged efforts to “judaize” it and the US administration’s December 2017 recognition of it as Israel’s capital. Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel since the country’s founding, and the Jewish people have thousands of years of history in the city, backed up by extensive archaeological finds.
During a lengthy speech at the opening of the Turkish parliament’s new legislative session, Erdoğan spent several minutes lamenting the fate of Jerusalem and the Palestinians’ plight.
“Another crisis that our country and our nation carefully follow is the oppression of Israel against the Palestinians and the indifferent practices that disregard the privacy [sic] of Jerusalem,” he said toward the end of his address.
“The issue of Jerusalem is not an ordinary geopolitical problem for us. First of all, the current physical appearance of the Old City, which is the heart of Jerusalem, was built by Suleiman the Magnificent, with its walls, bazaar, and many buildings. Our ancestors showed their respect for centuries by keeping this city in high esteem.”
It was not Suleiman the Magnificent, but the Jews of Jerusalem who built much of the Old City, including the Jewish Quarter with its 37 synagogues, all but two of which were dynamited by the Jordanians between 1949 and 1967. It was not Suleiman the Magnificent who built the First or Second Temples, including the Western Wall that is all that remains of the latter, but the Jews. It was not Suleiman the Magnificent, nor any Turkish ruler, who established the venerable Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives that is 3,000 years old, and contains 150,000 Jewish graves. Suleiman did build the current walls of the Old City, and many of its gates, from 1535 to 1542, but what is within those walls was built by Jews – cisterns, aqueducts, mikvahs — as well as by Turks. Christians, too, built important sites, such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 335 A.D., the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, the Cenacle, and many other buildings of note in Jerusalem. These have made little impression on Erdogan. After discussing the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Muslim sites, Erdogan says, in his sole reference to a non-Muslim presence in Jerusalem, that “ In addition, this city is home to the holy places of Christianity and Judaism.”
The Palestinian people have been living in Jerusalem “for thousands of years,” but they were occupied and had their rights violated, the Turkish leader went on.
If the “Palestinian people” have been living in Jerusalem “for thousands of years,” where is there a single scrap of archeological evidence of their presence? Any sign of a distinctively “Palestinian” home or house of worship, or pottery shards, or coins, or mosaics, or glassware, or oil lamps, or scraps of writing? And what was the language of those “Palestinians” for those thousands of years before the Arabs, and their language, arrived? What was the religion of those “Palestinians” who have in Erdogan’s fantastical tale been living in Jerusalem for “thousands of years”? It couldn’t have been Islam, which only began in Mecca with Muhammad being visited by the angel Gabriel in about 610 A.D., and then preaching this new faith starting in 613 A.D. We need Erdogan to tell us what religion they had before the mid-7th century, what language they spoke, and why there is no physical evidence of their existence, though there are thousands of Jewish sites and artifacts that attest to the presence of the Jewish people, the Jewish religion, the Hebrew language, in Jerusalem.
And when were the “Palestinian people” in Jerusalem “occupied”? Has it only been since the modern state of Israel took possession of the Old City after the Six-Day War? Weren’t the “Palestinian people” in Jerusalem also “occupied” by the Turks, from 1516 to 1917? Or don’t the Turks count as “occupiers,” because they are fellow Muslims? A great many Arabs, still resenting how the Ottoman Turks mistreated their ancestors for centuries, would beg to differ.
Some of us might want to bring up another embarrassing fact about those “Palestinians.” Why are the “Palestinian people” nowhere mentioned by any of the Muslim chroniclers and travelers? Why do we find no mention of them in the extensive state records of the Ottoman rulers and administrators of the Empire, who held Jerusalem from 1516 to 1917?
And let’s bring the story of the “Palestinian people” up to date. Why do none of the Arab – or Turkish — rulers, diplomats, writers, and journalists ever mention the “Palestinian people” until after the Six-Day War, when it became important for the Arabs, having failed militarily, to wage a propaganda campaign against Israel that would force the Jewish state to be squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines? With the help of Soviet advisors, the Arabs began a campaign that focused on this newly invented “Palestinian people.” Only thus could the Arab gang-up on Israel be presented to the world as a conflict “between two tiny peoples, each struggling for its homeland.”
At this point it is de rigueur to quote Zuheir Mohsen, the “Palestinian” leader of the terror group As Saiqa, and I won’t break with tradition. In an interview he gave to the Dutch newspaper Trouw in 1970, Mohsen declared what should be an obvious truth:
The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.
Tayyip, the favor of your reply is requested.
The Battle of Lepanto: When Turks Skinned Christians Alive for Refusing Islam
The anniversary of one of history’s most cataclysmic clashes between Islam and the West
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center
Earlier this week, on October 7, 1571, was the anniversary of one of history’s most cataclysmic clashes between Islam and the West—one where the latter finally crushed and humiliated the former.
In 1570, Muslim Turks—in the guise of the Ottoman Empire—invaded the island of Cyprus, prompting Pope Pius V to call for and form a “Holy League” of maritime Catholic nation-states, spearheaded by the Spanish Empire, in 1571. Before they could reach and relieve Cyprus, its last stronghold at Famagusta was taken through treachery.
After promising the defenders safe passage if they surrendered, Ottoman commander Ali Pasha—known as Müezzinzade (“son of a muezzin”) due to his pious background—had reneged and launched a wholesale slaughter. He ordered the nose and ears of Marco Antonio Bragadin, the fort commander, hacked off. Ali then invited the mutilated infidel to Islam and life: “I am a Christian and thus I want to live and die,” Bragadin responded. “My body is yours. Torture it as you will.”
So he was tied to a chair, repeatedly hoisted up the mast of a galley and dropped into the sea, to taunts: “Look if you can see your fleet, great Christian, if you can see succor coming to Famagusta!” The mutilated and half-drowned man was then carried near to St. Nicholas Church—by now a mosque—and tied to a column, where he was slowly flayed alive. The skin was afterward stuffed with straw, sown back into a macabre effigy of the dead commander, and paraded in mockery before the jeering Muslims.
News of this and other ongoing atrocities and desecrations of churches in Cyprus and Corfu enraged the Holy League as it sailed east. A bloodbath followed when the two opposing fleets—carrying a combined total of 600 ships and 140,000 men, more of both on the Ottoman side—finally met and clashed on October 7, 1571, off the western coast of Greece, near Lepanto. According to one contemporary:
The greater fury of the battle lasted for four hours and was so bloody and horrendous that the sea and the fire seemed as one, many Turkish galleys burning down to the water, and the surface of the sea, red with blood, was covered with Moorish coats, turbans, quivers, arrows, bows, shields, oars, boxes, cases, and other spoils of war, and above all many human bodies, Christians as well as Turkish, some dead, some wounded, some torn apart, and some not yet resigned to their fate struggling in their death agony, their strength ebbing away with the blood flowing from their wounds in such quantity that the sea was entirely coloured by it, but despite all this misery our men were not moved to pity for the enemy. . . . Although they begged for mercy they received instead arquebus shots and pike thrusts.
The pivotal point came when the flagships of the opposing fleets, the Ottoman Sultana and the Christian Real, crashed into and were boarded by one another. Chaos ensued as men everywhere grappled; even the grand admirals were seen in the fray, Ali Pasha firing arrows and Don Juan swinging broadsword and battle-axe, one in each hand.
In the end, “there was an infinite number of dead” on the Real, whereas “an enormous quantity of large turbans, which seemed to be as numerous as the enemy had been, [were seen in the Sultana] rolling on the deck with the heads inside them.” The don emerged alive but the pasha did not.
When the central Turkish fleets saw Ali’s head on a pike in the Sultana and a crucifix where the flag of Islam once fluttered, mass demoralization set in and the waterborne melee was soon over. The Holy League lost twelve galleys and ten thousand men, but the Ottomans lost 230 galleys—117 of which were captured by the Europeans—and thirty thousand men.
It was a victory of the first order, and all of Christendom—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant—rejoiced.
Practically speaking, however, little changed. Cyprus was not even liberated by the Holy League. “In wrestling Cyprus from you we have cut off an arm,” the Ottomans painfully reminded the Venetian ambassador a year later. “In defeating our fleet [at Lepanto] you have shaved our beard. An arm once cut off will not grow again, but a shorn beard grows back all the better for the razor.”
Even so, this victory proved that the relentless Turks, who in previous decades and centuries had conquered much of Eastern Europe, could be stopped. Lepanto suggested that the Turks could be defeated in a head-on clash—at least by sea, which of late had been the Islamic powers’ latest hunting grounds. As Miguel Cervantes, who was at the battle, has the colorful Don Quixote say: “That day . . . was so happy for Christendom, because all the world learned how mistaken it had been in believing that the Turks were invincible by sea.”
Modern historians affirm this position. According to military historian Paul K. Davis, “More than a military victory, Lepanto was a moral one. For decades, the Ottoman Turks had terrified Europe, and the victories of Suleiman the Magnificent caused Christian Europe serious concern…. Christians rejoiced at this setback for the Ottomans. The mystique of Ottoman power was tarnished significantly by this battle, and Christian Europe was heartened.”
No matter how spectacular, however, defeat at sea could not shake what was first and foremost a land power—so that more than a century later, in 1683, some 200,000 armed Ottomans had penetrated as far as and besieged Vienna.
But that—to say nothing of Turkey’s many other jihads down to the present—is another story.
Historical quotes in this article were excerpted from the author’s Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West – a book that CAIR and its Islamist allies did everything they could to prevent the U.S. Army War College from learning about.
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