How the Catholic Church Became a Defender of Islam
And misled Christians in the process.
In the late 1930s Catholic historian Hillaire Belloc wrote:
It [Islam] is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past…
It seemed an unlikely prediction. At the time, the Islamic world was practically moribund. A comeback did not seem to be in the cards. Yet, Belloc was proved right. Within four decades, Islam was once again a power to be reckoned with.
Had he lived, however, even Belloc would have been surprised to find that one of the chief agents of Islam’s resuscitation was his own beloved Catholic Church. Although Belloc referred to Islam as a “formidable and persistent enemy,” by the end of the century, practically no “respectable” Catholic would have described Islam as an “enemy.” On the contrary, Islam had become a “fellow Abrahamic faith” which, we were told, shared much in common with Catholicism.
At one time, the Catholic Church had defended the West against Islam, but by the beginning of the 21st century, the Church had become a reliable defender of Islam against its critics.
Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, Catholic leaders and educators assured the world that Islam had nothing to do with violence. They also insisted that “Islam” means “peace” and that “jihad” is an “interior struggle.” If you disagreed with any of this you were dismissed as an “Islamophobe.”
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Church’s mission to fight “Islamophobia” came later. First came the Second Vatican Council and the 1965 declaration Nostra Aetate. Nostra Aetate was intended to examine the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions. In particular it sought to consider “what men have in common.”
What do Muslims and Christians have in common? Here’s the key passage:
They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.
In short, Islam was just like Catholicism…except it wasn’t. The Council fathers had come up with a list of surface similarities between Islam and Catholicism, but had ignored the deep differences.
For example, Catholics and Muslims supposedly worship the same God. And sure enough, the God adored by Catholics is “merciful and all powerful”—just like the Muslim God. But unlike the Muslim God He is also a Trinity—something that Muslims vehemently deny. He is also, from the Catholic point of view, a Father. Again, this is vehemently rejected by Muslims. In fact, to say that God is a father is, from the Muslim point of view the height of blasphemy. Moreover, in Islamic scripture, Allah is always associated with the Prophet Muhammad. In fact, when a Muslim avows that “there is no God but Allah,” he is obliged to add “And Muhammad is the prophet of Allah.” Unfortunately for the “same God” thesis, the name “Muhammad” does not appear anywhere in the Bible.
Strike one! The pious belief that Muslims and Catholics worship the same God does not hold water. The “common-ground” thesis is built on very shoddy scholarship.
But wait! There is a man named “Jesus” in the Koran, and he is considered a great prophet. So, you can at least say that Muslims and Catholics both “revere” Jesus. Perhaps the common-ground thesis is intact, after all. The only problem is, it’s not the same Jesus. On the one hand, you have Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand, you have the Jesus of the Koran, who does not resemble the former in any way, shape, or form.
Jesus of Nazareth is a recognizable human being, who eats and drinks and converses with his disciples in a recognizably human way. He also says things of startling and profound originality, causing many to say with wonderment, “no man has ever spoken like this before.”
The Koran, on the other hand, provides no details on the life of the Koranic Jesus. He has no substance, and practically nothing of interest to say. He is little more than a cardboard cutout. If you think I exaggerate, then read the Koran for yourself. In doing so, you may well find yourself wondering if the Council fathers and their “expert” advisers ever bothered to do the same.
Strike two! The pious belief that the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of the Koran share anything in common other than the same name is completely untenable.
But how about the final point? —the one in which the Council fathers assure us that “they [Muslims] value the moral life”? This is particularly misleading because the Council fathers must certainly have known that the Muslim moral code differs markedly in many respects from the Catholic moral code. The Muslim moral code allows for polygamy, child brides, wife beating, stoning for adultery, and execution for apostasy.
Oh! There’s one more thing. In the last sentence of the first paragraph of the section “on the Moslems,” the Council fathers mention that “[Muslims] worship God especially through prayers, almsgiving, and fasting.” But they forgot to mention “jihad,” even though the Koran explicitly states that jihad is more pleasing to God than prayer and almsgiving.
How could they have forgotten to mention the thing that is most pleasing to God– namely, jihad? It’s difficult to avoid the impression that the authors of the Muslim section had been deliberately dishonest.
And the deception continued. In the wake of the Council, the Church set up numerous Muslim-Catholic dialogues, Centers for Muslim-Christian Understanding, and Abrahamic faith initiatives of various kinds. And all of them presented a Pollyannish portrait of Islam.
When the English edition of the new Catechism of the Catholic Church appeared in 1994 it didn’t say much about the Muslims—only that “together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.” It wasn’t much to go on, but it did seem to suggest that Muslims were on the side of the angels. So, when Muslims struck New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, it seemed safe to assume as so many in government and media were saying that “this has nothing to do with Islam.” Moreover, once it became known that Muslims revered Jesus and honored Mary, all subsequent Islamic attacks could be dismissed as the work of a tiny minority of extremists who had misunderstood the peaceful tenets of the Islamic faith. And when Muslims began migrating into Europe by the millions, Catholic prelates only had to remind their flocks that “in the face of the migrant we see the face of Jesus.”
On the other hand, it didn’t pay to see the face of Jesus in the face of persecuted Christians. When Pope Benedict XVI asked for greater protection of persecuted Christians in Egypt, Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar University cut-off the dialogue with the Vatican and wouldn’t resume it until Benedict’s successor, Francis, agreed not to criticize Islamic persecutions of Christians. Francis, of course, thought this was a good deal: the dialogue was his pet project—one that must be preserved at all costs.
The Church had for all intents and purposes become an enabler of Islam. But it wasn’t like the aiding and abetting of yore. In those days, some traitor or other would open the gates of the city to the enemy. In the modern era, the Pope simply warns the Christian population that if they don’t open the borders of Europe to the Muslim horde, they are guilty of closing the door of the inn on the Holy Family.
Belloc was right about Islam. It would return as a formidable enemy of Western Civilization. But Western Civilization—including the Catholic Church—couldn’t accept the fact of enmity and it invented all sorts of reasons why Islam and the West were really the best of friends. The Church which once had a well-deserved reputation for being both a Church of faith and reason even mistook Islam for a religion of peace.
The Ayatollah Khomeini could have set them straight on that. The man who overthrew the Shah of Iran once declared:
Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those are witless. Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword…People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for Holy warriors.
Despite the Ayatollah’s warning, there still seems to be a constant supply of “witless” ones in the Church who “pretend that Islam counsels against war.” Chief among them is Francis who in his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, asserted that “authentic Islam and a proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”
It’s a remarkable statement, and also provably false. Moreover, it puts Christians in danger by misleading them about the nature of Islam. Catholic apologists for Islam have been repeating similar lies about Islam ever since the mid-sixties. Will they ever be held to account? One sincerely hopes so.
William Kilpatrick
William Kilpatrick is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His books include Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West, What Catholics Need to Know About Islam, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jiha
A knife-wielding Sudanese migrant shouting “Allahu Akbar!” has stabbed two people to death and wounded “at least” seven others in France.
A French intellectual warns that France will have a Muslim future
A Month in Southern France
The malign effects of millions of Muslims who cannot - and do not want to - integrate into French infidel society.
I spent a month this summer in a city in southern France, where I had occasion to study the effect of its Muslim Arab population on the tenor of life. Muslims were present on the streets, in the cafes, in the parks. I had not remembered them being out in public in such numbers when I last visited the city two years ago. I noted several new mosques that hadn’t existed two years ago. Streets here filled with hijabbed women, always with several children in tow — by my count, at a minimum each Muslim family had at least three children. By contrast, I almost never saw a French family with more than two children.
The Muslim women were striding confidently along, not making way, out of simple politeness, for anyone walking towards them in the crowded city streets. I encountered from time to time groups of Arabs, usually young men, sitting on sidewalks and stoops – did they not have any work to go to? – refusing to move for any Frenchman (or a visitor like myself), instead requiring the French pedestrians to make a detour around them by walking in the street. Micro-aggression, a maddening sign of triumphalism (“you must give way to us”), an assertion of their power, as Arabs, as Muslims, the “best of peoples,” over the French who, as Infidels, are the “most vile of created beings.”
Graffiti in Arabic can now be found in many parts of the city, no longer confined to the suburbs where the Arabs live and congregate. These graffiti proclaim god knows what — Allahu akbar? — but I doubt if any of it would please the native French if they understood it. There were also antisemitic graffiti in bad French, clearly written by Arabs, but not confined to Arab neighborhoods of the city. These scrawls included “Kreve les Juifs” – “Kreve” being a subliterate rendering of “creve” from “crever,” “to die.” The meaning of this graffito is “Let the Jews die.” Other signs were directed at the French. These include “Niquez les Français,” meaning, roughly, “F**k the French.” These graffiti have been allowed to stand, not painted over, possibly because the authorities believe that removing them would not be worth the time or money, as they would only be instantly replaced.
The Prefecture has, from last year to this, decided to more than double the number of gendarmes in the city. Everyone knows why: it’s to deal with the rise in violent street robberies and in house burglaries by the Arabs and Muslim Africans. Muslim young men in groups can be found not just sitting on sidewalks, but relaxing in outdoor cafes, where they sit for hours nursing a bottle of water, which gives them the right to remain at the cafe as long as they want. And so they do. Their idleness offends me. Do none of these people work? And just how much is the French government spending on them that they can indulge in such idleness?
The number of shisha shops, where Arabs can use the hubble-bubble pipes, has noticeably increased in the last two years. Several new ones that did not exist two years ago when I last visited have now been opened just on the street where I was staying. It’s one way for Arabs to pass their time, secure in the knowledge that the generous French government will provide for their every basic need: housing, medical care, schooling, even family allowances that were originally meant as pro-natalist measures, intended to encourage the French to have larger families. Instead, the French government now finds itself supporting not French families, but the much larger Muslim families. In the city, many Arabs, to judge by their presence on café terrasses, park benches, and city sidewalks and stoops, manage to while away the hours, day after day. Perhaps their wives are hard at work; I don’t understand these hours of idleness.
Some graffiti by the Arabs vandalize existing signs. Posters of Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor who was a former French Minister of Health and President of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982, have frequently been defaced, with swastikas painted over her face. Wall graffiti attacks on Macron’s posters read “Macron Jew Bitch.” In the 18th arrondissement in Paris, according to a friend, the words “Truie Juive” – “Jewish sow” – have been painted on shopfronts of what, I presume, are Jewish-owned stores.
At the main entry to the city of Avignon, a gigantic fresco was painted on a wall this summer. It shows Macron as a puppet, dangling from the strings held by the puppeteer, depicted as the well-known Jewish economist and former adviser to Mitterand, Jacques Attali, his “Jewish features” distinctly exaggerated. It took a while, but Jewish organizations finally got the city to cover up the fresco for its obviously antisemitic content. Other antisemitic visuals have shown Macron placed in the center of a circle of advisers, many of them clearly Jewish.
In Paris, the façade of the prestigious Sciences Po, one of the “grandes écoles,” was defaced with graffiti, including “Mort à Israel” (Death To Israel) and “Koufar” (Kuffar, or Infidel), a word that is aimed not at Jews alone, but at all non-Muslims.
The “Gilets Jaunes” are groups of leftist protesters who for almost a year have been appearing for weekend protests in many French cities, manifesting their rage against the state, and proclaiming a variety of free-floating grievances. One of their posters reads “Contre Racket Fiscal Judeo-Bolshevique Sur Les Carburants” – blaming “Jewish Bolsheviks” for the rise in the price of gasoline and heating oil. While the Gilets Jaunes are not a Muslim group, a number of Muslims have hitched their wagon to the left-wing Gilets Jaunes, showing up to join their protests. Some Jewish shops in France have had “JUDEN” written on their storefront windows, which brings up terrible memories of Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938.
The groups of Arabs sitting on sidewalks and stoops, and instead of getting out of the way, force French people to get off the sidewalks and walk in the streets, are malevolently exercising their dominance. Perhaps the more than doubling of the local force of gendarmes will be sufficient to discourage such bullying thugs. Perhaps those caught painting antisemitic or anti-French graffiti can be given serious sentences, instead of the slap on the wrist that they currently receive. Perhaps street robberies will go down, house burglaries will decrease, and the drug trade that North Africans control dealt a mortal blow by this sudden increase in the numbers of police.
The growing Muslim population in the French city I lived in during August created an underhum of menace, where Muslim toughs were intent on making life difficult the French whose city they were treating as their property, which, if current demographic trends continue, it eventually will be. The indigenous French with whom I spoke all agreed, without exception, that there was a profound “problem with Muslims,” and they were hoping for politicians in Paris to do something. But what? Shutting down mosques where Muslims have been “radicalized” or expelling “extremist” imams back to North Africa won’t be enough. They are hoping that the government will eventually realize it must put a halt to all further Muslim immigration, and will be prepared to expel Muslims to their countries of origin if they break the law, rather than paying for their upkeep in French jails, and then releasing them back into France where they committed their original crime and, where, we know, their level of recidivism is very high.
It’s the daily disruption of life, the menace in the air, the graffiti meant to insult and frighten both “the Jews” and “the French,” that chips away at the collective sense of wellbeing. The Arabs who run the drug trade, or who conduct street robberies, or commit house burglaries, or stolen cars (another favorite activity) have all contributed to the sense of insecurity that is now palpable. In the French family I was visiting, the husband has now armed himself, and his wife, too, with pepper spray, for he lives in the city center where, he says matter-of-factly, it is simply “no longer safe at night.” He was born in, and grew up in, this city that was always considered one of the safest in France. Thanks to the Muslim immigrants whom a succession of French governments have allowed in, all of them criminally negligent in not sufficiently investigating what the arrival of so many millions of Muslims would inevitably mean for the native French and the future of France, it is no longer so safe.
What I observed in my month in southern France was nothing so obviously alarming as jihadi attacks. Instead, what one sees is a slow degringolade, where the quality of life for the French goes steadily, inexorably down pari passu with the increase in the Muslim population. Those immigrants have been responsible for more street muggings, more robberies, more home burglaries, more aggressive behavior on the street toward the Infidels, more hideous graffiti against Jews and the “Français de souche” on the walls of buildings, more drug trafficking, more of everything that unsettles and frightens those French people who sense that they are gradually losing control of their own country. Macron is no Eric Zemmour, but he cannot continue to turn away from confronting the malign effects resulting from millions of Muslim immigrants who cannot, and do not want to, integrate into the society of the French Infidels. I think – I hope – that in his second, and final, five-year term as President, Macron will surprise us all by backing to the hilt his no-nonsense Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, who has a good understanding of the Muslim menace, and is prepared to act aggressively for the benefit of the indigenous people of France.
‘Allahu Akbar’ Migrant Knifeman Kills Two, Wounds Seven in France
A knife-wielding Sudanese migrant shouting “Allahu Akbar!” has stabbed two people to death and wounded “at least” seven others in France.
The suspected killer, said to be an asylum seeker in his thirties, was initially reported as having struck outside a bakery in Romans-sur-Isère, in the south-east of the country, by outlets including the MailOnline, citing local media.
However, a later BBC report — which did not mention the suspect’s nationality or alleged cry of “Allahu Akbar!” — said he attacked the shopkeeper and customers at a tobacconist before moving on to a nearby butcher’s shop.
Details are still emerging, but it seems the victims who have already died do include a butcher and a customer at a tobacconist.
Christophe Castaner, France’s interior minister, has offered his condolences to the victims — five of whom remain in critical condition — and confirmed that the suspect is now under arrest and investigators seeking to confirm his motives.
The suspect’s roommate is also said to be under arrest.
French Municipal Police officers stand in a street in the centre of Romans-sur-Isere, on April 4, 2020, after a man attacked several people with a knife, killing two and injuring seven before being arrested, according to sources close to the investigation. (Photo by JEFF PACHOUD/AFP via Getty Images)
Plain-clothed Police officers stand in a street in the centre of Romans-sur-Isere, on April 4, 2020, after a man attacked several people with a knife, killing two and injuring seven before being arrested, according to sources close to the investigation. (Photo by JEFF PACHOUD/AFP via Getty Images)
This story is developing…
A French intellectual warns that France will have a Muslim future
Because of its relationship with Algeria, France has a 50-year history of Muslim immigration, pre-dating Angela Merkel’s 2015 welcome mat. Last month, Michel Gurfinkiel, a French intellectual who founded the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institution, participated in a radio interview with Gregg Roman of the Middle East Forum. During the interview, he warned that French demographic changes predict a future in which Islam is ascendant:
Domestically, the past fifty years of steady immigration from Islamic countries into France is “transforming the fabric of French society” from within. Demographic and sociological surveys indicate that 10-15% of the French population is now of Muslim origin, including 20-30% of French citizens or residents under the age of 25. Some integrate successfully, but many align with the most radical and militant expression of the religion. Their rejection of France’s secular constitution is matched by resentment of the French military’s fight against global jihadism in Africa and the Middle East, seen as a “deliberate assault ... on Islam.”
Meanwhile, French people, as is true for most Europeans, have lost faith in their institutions. Christianity is declining and the French are no longer marrying or having children. Free speech is also dying in France:
In January, a 16-year old identified only as “Mila’ criticized Islam as a “religion of hate” on her Instagram account in response to online harassment from a homophobic Muslim troll. The resulting online threats of bodily harm led to Mila and her family being placed under police protection. The French custom of satirizing or criticizing religion does not extend to Islam, “and the main reason ... is, of course, fear,” said Gurfinkiel. “It’s a fact that Muslims don’t react peacefully to these kinds of [speech] as ... Christians [do], and everybody ... remember[s] ... the humorists of Charlie Hebdo ... slaughtered by a Muslim commando a few years ago.”
Another sign that Islam is ascendant in a land that was once considered the cradle of European Christianity is that churches in France are routinely desecrated.
Dr. Peter Hammond, in his early 21st-century book about Christian genocide in Muslim lands, Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat, produced a rough rule of thumb about the threat to a dominant culture from Islamic immigration:
As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. This is the case in:
United States — Muslim 0..6%
Australia — Muslim 1.5%
Canada — Muslim 1.9%
China — Muslim 1.8%
Italy — Muslim 1.5%
Norway — Muslim 1.8%
At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs. This is happening in:
Denmark — Muslim 2%
Germany — Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom — Muslim 2.7%
Spain — Muslim 4%
Thailand — Muslim 4.6%
From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves — along with threats for failure to comply. This is occurring in:
France — Muslim 8%
Philippines — 5%
Sweden — Muslim 5%
Switzerland — Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands — Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago — Muslim 5.8%
At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world.
When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions. In Paris , we are already seeing car-burnings. In Russia, grade-schools were attacked. Any non-Muslim action offends Islam and results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam, with opposition to Mohammed cartoons and films about Islam. Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections, in:
Guyana — Muslim 10%
India — Muslim 13.4%
Israel — Muslim 16%
Kenya — Muslim 10%
Russia — Muslim 15%
After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, such as in:
Ethiopia — Muslim 32.8%
At 40%, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in:
Bosnia — Muslim 40%
Chad — Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon — Muslim 59.7%
From 60%, nations experience unfettered persecution of non-believers of all other religions (including non-conforming Muslims), sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon, and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels, such as in:
Albania — Muslim 70%
Malaysia — Muslim 60.4%
Qatar — Muslim 77.5%
Sudan — Muslim 70%
After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, beheadings, stoning, and even some genocide, as these nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim, such as has been experienced and in some ways is on-going in:
Bangladesh — Muslim 83%
Egypt — Muslim 90%
Gaza — Muslim 98.7%
Indonesia — Muslim 86.1%
Iran — Muslim 98%
Iraq — Muslim 97%
Jordan — Muslim 92%
Morocco — Muslim 98.7%
Pakistan — Muslim 97%
Palestine — Muslim 99%
Syria — Muslim 90%
Tajikistan — Muslim 90%
Turkey — Muslim 99.8%
United Arab Emirates — Muslim 96%
France’s Muslim population has substantially increased since Hammond wrote those words. The tipping point is near.
France Not Enforcing Lockdowns in Muslim No-Go-Zones
March 30, 2020
Daniel Greenfield
They do call them no-go zones for a reason.
But let's not kid ourselves. There are neighborhoods in New York City and LA where the police won't be asking crowds to go indoors and that the media would never dream of shaming and which won't go viral on social media. This is the same thing except it's a symptom of a much worse problem. There are people who follow the rules and those who don't, and those who expect others to follow their rules.
While it has just increased the sanctions against those who do not respect confinement repeatedly, the government decides to be more conciliatory with offenders in the suburbs. A double standard which outrage the police.
It is not a priority to enforce closings in certain neighborhoods and to stop gatherings in certain neighborhoods." The sentence, which unequivocally scandalizes the police and their representatives, is signed by the Secretary of State to the Minister of the Interior.
In a videoconference connecting Beauvau to the prefects of the defense zones, Laurent Nunez expressed this concern on March 18 to see the cities, on the verge of implosion , ignite if confinement was applied there too strictly.
You get the idea. It's last stage colonialism. Except the colonies are in France.
As long as the authorities don't try to exert too much local control, but put on a show for the country as a whole, there's not much of a problem. If they insist on trying to control the situation on the ground, there will be a violent pushback.
Meanwhile the black market in, among other things, masks, goes on, covertly approved of by the French government.
Katie Hopkins Video: French Jews in Paris Under Attack
The police tell them they can no longer protect them.
March 24, 2020
Frontpagemag.com
Subscribe to the Glazov Gang‘s YouTube Channel and follow us on Twitter: @JamieGlazov.
This new Glazov Gang episode features Katie Hopkins, U.K.’s freedom fighter.
Katie sheds disturbing light on French Jews in Paris Under Attack, unveiling how the police are telling the Jewish Parisians that they can no longer protect them.
Don’t miss it!
And make sure to watch Katie share: They Plotted to Behead Me, where she discusses: When a female Jihadi wants your head as a wedding present.
Follow us on Twitter: @JamieGlazov.
American Historians Present Jihadi Terrorists as Western Allies
Considering that Muslims have at times allied with Europeans, sometimes even against fellow Muslims, why present Muslim attacks on Europe throughout history as ideologically driven — as jihads ("holy wars") against the infidel? Why not see them all as generic wars?
This is the main point of an apologia being leveled against my book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. Thus, weeks before my recent lecture at the U.S. Army War College, another speaker was brought in to present an "alternative view." That speaker was John Voll,* professor emeritus of Islamic history and past associate director of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. (This center was "gifted" 20 million dollars from Prince Alwaleed — a Wahhabi who suggested that the 9/11 attacks were based on America's position "toward the Palestinian cause" — for the express purpose of improving Islam's image in the West.)
According to the War College's advertisement:
In contrast with the well-known story of Muslim-Christian military conflict, less well-known is the long history of Muslim-Christian alliances and cooperation, even in times of conflict. Voll will address risk of misunderstanding when the history of clashes between Islam and the West is viewed in broad generalizations. Voll will focus his discussion on alliances and conflicts in the modern era[.]
Voll reasserted these themes weeks after he presented in a less than honest Army Times report that depicted him as "a more mainstream speaker ... who[m] CAIR-Philadelphia did not object to" (as opposed to me):
Voll does not agree with Ibrahim's view that Christians and Muslims are almost inevitably at odds. Extreme advocates of this "Clash of Civilizations" hypothesis tend to deal with only half of the historical record of relations between the West and Islam, he said in an email.
"While the history includes many wars and conflicts, that history also includes many experiences of cooperation and alliances," Voll explained. "To ignore the history of Muslim-Christian cooperations and only emphasize the conflicts is to present a misleading narrative that opens the way for dangerous misunderstandings of world history in general and current global affairs in particular."
Is this true? Yes and no. Yes, Muslims have (infrequently) allied with non-Muslims — in this case, Europeans. No, this does not prove that the exponentially greater, perennial attacks on every corner of Europe were not ideologically driven by jihad. It merely proves that Muslims are pragmatic — which Islam endorses — and willing to ally with whoever best serves their interest.
For instance, in its announcement, the Army War College noted that "Voll will focus his discussion on alliances and conflicts in the modern era, to include the history of the Anglo-Egyptian relationship, and the enemy-ally transitions of the Sanusiyyah and the Angle-American powers of World War II and the Cold War."
Why the "modern era"? Could it be that, as opposed to the twelve centuries of Islamic raids on Europe (circa. 634–1830, when Barbary was subdued), Muslims have been remarkably weak vis-à-vis infidel Europe beginning in the late modern era and therefore had much to gain by allying with the infidels?
Relying on the late modern era — the last two centuries, which Voll bizarrely claims represent "half of the historical record of relations between the West and Islam" — to explain the totality of Islamic-European relations (nearly fourteen centuries) is one of the oldest tricks relied on by Islamophilic academics: presenting rare exceptions (alliances with non-Muslims) to the rule (jihad against infidels) as the rule itself.
This is well epitomized by the recent book Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War between the Muslim World and the Global North, by William Polk, a retired professor of history at Harvard (my complete review here). Despite its ambitious subtitle, only some 30 of its 550 pages deal with the first millennium (when jihad was the norm); 95 percent is devoted to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — the "modern era." As with Voll, this lopsided approach allows Polk to present Muslims as not just occasional allies of the West, but its eternal victims as well.
But as much more balanced historians such as Bernard Lewis put it:
We tend nowadays to forget that for approximately a thousand years, from the advent of Islam in the seventh century until the second siege of Vienna in 1683, Christian Europe was under constant threat from Islam, the double threat of conquest and conversion. Most of the new Muslim domains were wrested from Christendom. Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa were all Christian countries, no less, indeed rather more, than Spain and Sicily. All this left a deep sense of loss and a deep fear.
"We tend nowadays to forget" these troubling facts precisely because those most charged with reminding us — the professional historians of Islam, the Volls and Polks of Western academia — go out of their way to suppress them.
Moreover, Islam's modus operandi has always relied on circumstances. When Muhammad was weak and outnumbered in his early Meccan period, he preached peace and made pacts with infidels; when he became strong in his Medinan period, he preached war and went on the offensive. This dichotomy — preach peace when weak, wage war when strong — has been instructive to Muslims throughout the centuries.
Indeed, when it comes to making life easy for Muslims, particularly vis-à-vis infidels, Islamic law (shari'a) is remarkably lenient, via the doctrine of taysir (ease). It is why millions of Muslims — who under strict shari'a are banned from willingly relocating to infidel nations — are flooding the prosperous West: it is beneficial to them, even if they hate and occasionally abuse their hosts (which, for some clerics, validates their presence as a form of jihad).
At any rate, ignoring the first millennium of Muslim-European history — when Islam was as strong if not stronger than Europe, therefore regularly waging jihads on it — and focusing only on the last two centuries — when Islam has been much weaker than the West and therefore in need of dissembling its true feelings for the infidel — is truly what "present[s] a misleading narrative that opens the way for dangerous misunderstandings of world history in general and current global affairs in particular," to quote Voll, though in reverse.
*As an amusing side note, I actually sat in on one of Voll's classes at Georgetown University nearly two decades ago. An apparently especially contentious question and observation I made concerning what he was saying ended, I distinctly recall, with a curt response and an especially dirty look — and my deciding not to sign up for his class.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and distinguished senior fellow at the
Jew-Hate in France
When Jewish students avoid going to public schools.
April 1, 2020
Stephen Brown
Last December, vandals desecrated 107 Jewish graves with anti-Semitic inscriptions in Westerhoffen in eastern France. Anti-Jewish graffiti was also found in the nearby town of Schafhouse-sur-Zorn. No suspects were arrested. Earlier in 2019, in February in Alsace, also in eastern France, 100 Jewish graves were desecrated with Nazi symbols.
The desecration occurred just hours before the French government’s lower legislative house was to adopt a motion modeled on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism which states that denying Jews their right to self-determination is anti-Semitic.
In the same month, an Israeli student was attacked by two strangers on the subway for speaking Hebrew into a cell phone. His nose was broken. A 17-year-old, arrested with a stolen phone and known to police, was taken into custody. His ethnic origin was not given.
And perhaps most frightening, U.K.'s leading freedom fighter Katie Hopkins stated in a recent Glazov Gang video that 18 Jewish families in Paris had received letters telling them to “get out” or be killed.
Perhaps to indicate the senders of these poisonous letters meant business, Hopkins also cited the case of the 82-year-old Jewish woman last year who lived in one of the poorer suburbs surrounding Paris. She was stabbed to death and thrown off her balcony by her Muslim neighbor.
Anti-Semitic attacks are on the increase in France. According to Wikepedia, in 2018, they rose by 69 per cent amounting to about 500 assaults. Anti-Semitism surged during the Second Intifada from 2002-2004 to disturbing levels.
Despite only making up one to three per cent of the population of France, Jews are subjected to 40 per cent of all racially or religiously motivated attacks. There are about 500,000 Jews in France and they make up the third largest number of Jews in the world after Israel and the United States.
Anti-Semitism has a long history in France. From the Dreyfuss affair, in which a Jewish French officer was convicted of treason on false charges, through to the Vichy regime.
But at no time did Jews feel they were in such danger as today with the Muslim immigration to France. Some Jews are now so concerned with their security that they have emigrated to Israel with their families. In 2014, the number of French Jews leaving for Israel for the first time exceeded the United States. Seventy per cent of Jews are concerned about anti-Semitic insults while 20 per cent are concerned about physical assaults. Prior to this, Jews never felt compelled by anti-Semitism to leave France.
Muslim anti-Semitism is virulent and also deadly. The best proof of this occurred when Mohmmed Merah, a petty Muslim criminal, attacked a Jewish school in Toulouse and killed three students and a rabbi. There have also been numerous other attacks on Jews and against Jewish institutions, which are guarded by special security guards with some coming from Israel.
Some of these, such as the one against Ilan Halimi, are notorious. Halimi was a French Jew of Moroccan descent who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Muslims calling themselves “gang of barbarians.”
The problem with anti-Semitism in France is, essentially, that hatred of Israel and the Jews has become a major part of the identity of Muslims of north African and African origin.
“Hatred for Israel and for Jews has become a major component of the identity of French of Arab or African background; it is the cement of the second generation,” said Gil Mihaely, founder and director of the Causeur, a French magazine dedicated to intellectual debate.
Mihaely further states that the anti-Jewish demonstrations of 2014 in France, in which two synagogues were attacked in Paris, “betray a profound need to identify oneself as an adversary of Israel and of the Jews.”
The French historian Georges Bensoussan also states about anti-Semitism in his country that Muslim families in France “drink it with the mother’s milk.”
This does not augur well for the future of a Jewish presence in France.
Anti-Semitism is so bad that Jewish students are avoiding going to public schools.
In a “large number of schools” students are “beaten and insulted because they are Jews,” said the president of the council representing Jewish institutions in France in a story in Le Figaro.
“In my time we all went to secular schools. Today not more than a third of third of Jewish children go to secular schools, the other two thirds go to private schools, either Jewish or Christian,’ said the president.
One high school principal was reported to have warned Jewish students in 2017 not to attend his school for fear of harassment and assaults.
It is also disturbing to see members of the French left ally itself with anti-Semitic Muslims. The Communist mayor of Valenton, a community near Paris, insulted France’s Jewish community in 2014 when he named a street after Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti was actually made an honorary citizen of Valenton five years earlier.
Barghouti was sentenced by an Israel court in 2004 to multiple life sentences for planning deadly terrorist attacks. But that didn’t stop Valenton’s mayor from calling the terrorist “…the face of the of the resistance of the Palestinian people against the occupation,,,”
As a counter, Sammy Ghozlan, founder of The National Bureau For Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, said: “The celebration of a murderer is unacceptable.”
It is noticeable that Muslims in France become very agitated about what they regard as Israeli crimes but don’t utter a word about their 300,000 fellow Muslims killed in the war in Syria or about the thousands killed in Yemen or Libya.
And when in 2012 a moderate imam tried to mobilize people, including Muslims, to demonstrate against Merah’s anti-Semitic crimes, only about 50 people showed up. But such apathy now appears among the entire population. In 1990, after a Jewish cemetery was desecrated, thousands of people showed up to protest against anti-Semitism. But after the Merah murders, only Jews showed up to demonstrate.
As one writer stated about Muslims and non-Muslims in France, the sentiment today is that two communities are forming side by side who regard one another with hostility. One can see this, in one respect, with their different attitudes anti-Semitism. And this sentiment, the writer states, is shared by many. In other words, France is a fractured society.
If the flight of French Jews, and Jews from other western European countries as well, is not stopped, then they all will wind up looking like the Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East whose Jewish communities were chased out decades ago. In other words, Hitler’s dream of a Jew-free Europe will finally be realized. Western Europe will be ‘Judenrein’.
No comments:
Post a Comment