AND NOW THE MUSLIMS HAVE DESECRATED THE GREATEST MONUMENT TO CHRISTIANDOM OF THAT ERA. THE HAGIA SOFIA WAS ERECTED BY CHRISTIAN SOVEREIGNS JUSTINIAN AND THEODORA
Empire of God
Robert Spencer's new masterpiece unveils how the Byzantines saved civilization.
[Order Robert Spencer’s new book. Empire of God: How the Byzantines Saved Civilization: HERE.]
Founded as a kingdom in 753 B.C., Rome became a republic in 509 B.C. and an empire in 27 B.C By the fourth century A.D., the empire was so huge – extending from present-day Scotland to the Persian Gulf – that it was decided to divide it, for administrative purposes, in half, with one capital (and one emperor) at Rome and another at Constantinople. Most reasonably educated people in the Western world today are aware that our civilization began with Rome, and had its antecedents in Athens and Jerusalem. If we went to decent schools, we acquired at least some awareness of Rome; some of us read Virgil’s Aeneid, Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, and Robert Graves’s I, Claudius; those of us with a fondness for old movies have seen Roman epics like Spartacus and The Robe and Quo Vadis? We know that while the Greeks were big on philosophy and drama and art, the Romans were more practically inclined, constructing massive arenas and aqueducts, not to mention a number of roads that are still used to this day. No, we’re not experts on Rome, but it’s a part of our consciousness. Indeed, a series of postings on social media that were widely shared just a few weeks ago suggested that a not inconsiderable percentage of American men think about the Roman Empire several times a day.
But what are they thinking about when they think about Rome? Almost invariably, they’re thinking about the Rome that had its capital in the city of that name – the Rome, that is, of Caesar, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. But if the empire centered at Rome – first, the united empire, and then the western empire – is very much alive in our consciousness, the eastern empire, which was ruled from Constantinople, isn’t. When we think about the timeline of history, that empire may well fall often between the cracks: we don’t know much about it; we don’t have much of a sense of it; we can’t picture it. If we think of the people of the western part of the empire as our forebears, we think of the eastern part as exotic – almost as alien, perhaps, as ancient India or China or Japan. And yet, as Robert Spencer writes in his magnificent, eye-opening new book, Empire of God: How the Byzantines Saved Civilization, the eastern part of the empire is also a central part of our heritage. Whereas the western part lasted barely a century after the east/west split, the eastern empire went on for more than a millennium. Today we know it as the Byzantine Empire, but in its day, during all those centuries after the city of Rome fell, what remained of the empire in the east was known simply as the Roman Empire, and Constantinople was, to all intents and purposes, the New Rome.
Constantinople, of course, was founded by and named for the Emperor Constantine, who ruled from A.D. 306 to 337, and whose personal conversion to Christianity was crucial to the establishment of that faith as the majority religion throughout the western and eastern parts of the empires. During his reign of a year and a half (361-363), Julian the Apostate, who worshiped Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, and all the other old deities, used strongarm tactics in an attempt to turn around the empire’s Christianization. Crisis came under Valens (364-378), who made the mistake of inviting Goths (who’d been conquered by the Huns) to settle in Thrace; soon enough, in the Romans’ most catastrophic defeat in centuries, the Goths turned on their hosts with “unspeakable savagery,” slaughtering them en masse in a years-long war that ended in Roman capitulation: ultimately, the Goths were permitted to remain in Thrace on their own terms, maintaining their distinctive culture rather than conforming (as had long been the expectation) to Roman norms. Spencer’s account of this nightmarish chapter brings to mind several current situations – the recent Hamas massacres and their aftermath, the ongoing Islamization of Europe, and the daily flow of illegal aliens across America’s southern border – and carries a chilling lesson for all those who look upon such matters with nonchalance. It was, by the way, Rome’s ill-advised immigration policies that were the principal cause of what has long been known as the “fall of the Roman Empire” in A.D. 476 – even though, as Spencer notes, the events of that year have long been misunderstood. “The unfortunate phrase ‘Fall of the Roman Empire’ has given a false importance to the affair of 476,” wrote historian John Bagnell Bury in a passage quoted by Spencer. “But no Empire fell in 476; there was no western empire to fall. There was only one Roman Empire.” And it lasted until 1453.
Most of us are familiar with at least the lineaments of early Christianity. After the gospel came the letters of Paul, a persecutor of Christianity whose conversion to the faith played a huge role in securing its future; and after Paul came Constantine, another convert whose acceptance of Christianity was also pivotal. In A.D. 325, he summoned the Council of Nicaea to resolve the theological dissension surrounding what would come to be known as the Arian heresy; from that council emerged the earliest version of the Nicene Creed, which is still a central part of almost all Christian denominations today. It’s not insignificant that the council took place in the eastern part of the empire, as did every one of the subsequent six councils that shaped Christian theology for all time – Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople again (553, 680–681), and Nicaea again (787). In A.D. 380, the Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the empire’s official religion; and in an episode that illuminates the degree to which Christian clergy and Christian values actually carried weight in the empire, Theodosius, because he’d responded to the murder of a general by having many citizens put to death at random, was denied access to a church in Milan by the local bishop, Ambrose, who assailed him in the strongest terms: “How could you lift up in prayer hands steeped in the blood of so unjust a massacre?” Theodosius, instead of adding Ambrose to the death toll, accepted his rebuke and, returning to his palace, “shed floods of tears,” after which he strove to repent of his sins.
Among the more important later emperors was Justinian (527-565), whose reign Spencer describes as “Byzantium’s finest hour.” Justinian built the Hagia Sophia and introduced a legal code that was superior to the ones in effect at the time in Western Europe; under him, the empire survived a devastating plague and reached its greatest extent ever. Under Heraclius (610-641), the empire finally defeated the Persians after decades of combat but also lost the Levant to the bellicose adherents of the newly hatched Muslim faith. Leo III (717-741), deciding that the reason for the losses to Islam was the empire’s tolerance of religious images (which Islam rejected), tried to ban them; but the Second Council of Nicaea affirmed that venerating icons was consistent with Christian belief (although this ruling didn’t bring a total end to the struggle over iconoclasm). Nikephoros (802-811), perhaps under the influence of the Islamic doctrine that those who die in the act of jihad go straight to paradise, declared that soldiers killed in battle for the emperor were martyrs.
By the middle of the tenth century, the Byzantine Empire was the most powerful nation in the Western world, and Constantinople the most splendid city, an occasion of awe and wonderment to foreign visitors; classical education was undergoing a powerful revival, with “young noblemen boast[ing] of their libraries as a sign of their erudition.” Meanwhile Roman Catholicism and what was coming to be known as the Orthodox Christianity of the east were quickly diverging from one another. A great victory for the latter came when Prince Viadimir of Kyiv sought to pick out a state religion for his realm: his emissaries gave a thumbs-down to the worship services of the Bulgars and Germans, but were overwhelmed by the splendor and beauty of the ceremonies at the Hagia Sophia. Their report back to Vladimir played a crucial role in his eventual decision to enter Russia into the Orthodox camp. It was in 1054 that “[t]he thousand-year estrangement between the Eastern and Western churches” began; and it was around the same time that, because “Constantine IX [1042-55] first disbanded a large Roman army in the east, and then Constantine X [1059-67] preferred to rely on paying tribute and reaching out in friendship to the empire’s enemies rather than fighting them,” that the Byzantine Empire commenced its long decline.
A key factor in that decline was Islam, whose followers in Turkey defeated the empire in a series of wars in the late twelfth century, mostly during the reign of the incompetent Romanos IV (1068-71), shriveling it to half its size and devastating it economically. These losses were followed by the Crusades (1095-1291), in which warriors from all of Christian Europe passed through Constantinople on their way to liberate the Holy Land from the infidels. Alas, even after the Crusaders had driven the Muslims from the Levant, the latter continued to hold power in Asia Minor and to represent a threat to the empire. So, as it happened, did the Crusaders, who in 1204 sacked Constantinople, reducing the great metropolis, “the mistress of the world,” to ruins and destroying many of its priceless artistic treasures. For the contemporaneous historian Niketas Choniates, this barbaric act exposed the Crusaders as “frauds,” traitors to the holy cause that had allegedly motivated them to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims. After this indignity, the empire was crushed, but not yet dead: for two and half more centuries it stumbled along, and among the major developments was that Orthodox Christianity became increasingly oriented toward mysticism, even as Roman Catholicism headed in the opposite direction. It was on May 29, 1453, that Constantinople – and what was left of the empire – finally fell to the Muslim Turks, whose leader, Sultan Mehmed II, had ordered them to “slaughter all the survivors” and “plunder at will.” Entering the Hagia Sophia, in which “a large number of Christians” were “praying for the city’s deliverance,” the jihadis covered the floors with the blood of the supplicants and a cleric sent by Mehmed proclaimed from the pulpit the statement of the Muslim faith: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet.” After nine centuries, the “cathedral was now a mosque.”
All in all, then, the tale of the Byzantine Empire is an immensely colorful one – a tale of some emperors who were virtuous and wise and strong and honest, and others who were evil and foolish and weak and corrupt; of endless palace intrigue, with one emperor deposing another and then being deposed himself, almost invariably in ways that involved unspeakable savagery; of messy transfers of power, also involving unspeakable savagery; of alliances and betrayals and invasions and wars and conquests and defeats, all of which, needless to say at this point, also involved unspeakable savagery. Through it all, right up until its ignominious fall, Constantinople remained the envy of every other city in Christendom – rich in learning and culture, respectful of the ancient Roman legal tradition, and devoted to the perpetuation of classical Greek schooling. Among the areas in which the Byzantine Empire influenced the contemporary Western world – especially the U.S. – is law: Justinian’s legal code, notes Spencer, was “highly valued among America’s Founding Fathers,” notably Adams and Madison. Spencer further points out that if the Second Council of Nicaea had forbidden iconography, Western art would never have undergone the flowering that made possible everything from Michelangelo to Dali. And Spencer writes about all of it with elegance and insight, bringing to life one Byzantine emperor after another – plus many other prominent players – and making this reader, at least, exceedingly grateful to have become more fully acquainted with the rich history of the mysterious empire in the east.
Bruce Bawer
Bruce Bawer is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
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The Hagia Sophia: A 'Center of Knowledge about Islam'?
Last summer, Turkish authorities transformed Hagia Sophia ("Holy Wisdom") — which was originally built, and for a millennium functioned, as one of Christendom's greatest cathedrals — into a mosque (again). On that Friday, July 24, 2020 (which for millions of Eastern Christians is now deemed a "day of mourning"), Muslims met inside the desecrated church, where they were led in prayer by a sword-waving imam, to spasmodic cries of "Allahu akbar."
The Turks, beginning with their president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have been presenting this bit of cultural appropriation as their "right." Imam Ali Erbas, Turkey's president of religious affairs, has gone one farther, claiming that "the goal is for all our mosques and especially Hagia Sophia to become centers of knowledge about Islam."
So be it. As the anniversary of the Turkish conquest of Constantinople and its Hagia Sophia recently passed (May 29, 1453), let us revisit what happened on that day — a day that truly does impart much "knowledge about Islam," not least because we have primary source documents describing exactly what the Turks did, particularly in and around Hagia Sophia. (All quoted text in the following narrative was derived from contemporary sources, mostly eyewitnesses; exact references can be found in chapter 7 of Sword and Scimitar.)
Once they had penetrated inside Constantinople, the "enraged Turkish soldiers ... gave no quarter":
When they had massacred and there was no longer any resistance, they were intent on pillage and roamed through the town stealing, disrobing, pillaging, killing, raping, taking captive men, women, children, old men, young men, monks, priests, people of all sorts and conditions[.] ... There were virgins who awoke from troubled sleep to find those brigands standing over them with bloody hands and faces full of abject fury[.] ... [The Turks] dragged them, tore them, forced them, dishonored them, raped them at the cross-roads and made them submit to the most terrible outrages[.] ... Tender children were brutally snatched from their mothers' breasts and girls were pitilessly given up to strange and horrible unions, and a thousand other terrible things happened[.]
Because thousands of citizens had fled to and were holed up in Hagia Sophia, the ancient basilica offered an excellent harvest of slaves once its doors were axed down:
One Turk would look for the captive who seemed the wealthiest, a second would prefer a pretty face among the nuns. ... Each rapacious Turk was eager to lead his captive to a safe place, and then return to secure a second and a third prize. ... Then long chains of captives could be seen leaving the church and its shrines, being herded along like cattle or flocks of sheep.
The slavers sometimes fought each other to the death over "any well-formed girl," even as many of the latter "preferred to cast themselves into the wells and drown rather than fall into the hands of the Turks."
Having taken possession of the Hagia Sophia — which at the time of its capture had served as a cathedral for a thousand years — the invaders "engaged in every kind of vileness within it, making of it a public brothel." On "its holy altars" they enacted "perversions with our women, virgins, and children," including "the Grand Duke's daughter who was quite beautiful." She was forced to "lie on the great altar of Hagia Sophia with a crucifix under her head and then raped."
Next "they paraded the [Hagia Sophia's main] Crucifix in mocking procession through their camp, beating drums before it, crucifying the Christ again with spitting and blasphemies and curses. They placed a Turkish cap ... upon His head, and jeeringly cried, 'Behold the god of the Christians!'"
Practically all other churches in the ancient city suffered the same fate. "The crosses which had been placed on the roofs or the walls of churches were torn down and trampled." The Eucharist was "thrown to the ground and kicked." Bibles were stripped of their gold or silver illuminations before being burned. "Icons were without exception given to the flames." Patriarchal vestments were placed on the haunches of dogs; priestly garments were placed on horses.
"Everywhere there was misfortune, everyone was touched by pain" when Sultan Muhammad finally made his grand entry into the city. "There were lamentations and weeping in every house, screaming in the crossroads, and sorrow in all churches; the groaning of grown men and the shrieking of women accompanied looting, enslavement, separation, and rape."
The sultan rode to Hagia Sophia, dismounted, and went in, "marveling at the sight" of the grand basilica. After having it cleansed of its crosses, statues, and icons — Muhammad himself knocked over and trampled on its main altar — he ordered a muezzin to ascend the pulpit and sound "their detestable prayers," wrote a disgruntled Christian. "Then this son of iniquity, this forerunner of Antichrist, mounted upon the Holy Table to utter forth his own prayers," thereby "turning the Great Church into a heathen shrine for his god and his Mahomet."
To cap off his triumph, Muhammad had the "wretched citizens of Constantinople" dragged before his men during evening festivities and "ordered many of them to be hacked to pieces, for the sake of entertainment." The rest of the city's population — as many as forty-five thousand — were hauled off in chains to be sold into Easter captivity.
Such is the "knowledge about Islam" that the Hagia Sophia's experiences truly impart.
Setting the record straight concerning the conquest of Constantinople, as this article has done, is doubly important now that Google and Big Tech are, like the Turks, devoted to hiding the truth of this day. Before Turkey violently transformed the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, googling the date "May 29" — a day that for centuries before Pearl Harbor "lived in infamy" — produced numerous search results on the Muslim conquest of Constantinople; today, very few do.
Note: Quoted excerpts in the above narrative were taken from and are sourced in Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
The Jerusalem Jihad, Same as It Ever Was
"If we searched the entire world for a person, more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli." —Hassan Nasrallah
Israel finds itself in a cycle of endless small wars due to four political illusions — strategic errors, really.
THE TEMPLE MOUNT
Starting in 1948, the struggle against Israel was about religion — and imprudent tolerance. When the IDF recovered Jerusalem, twice, in fact, Israel should have done what any Muslim, Arab, Persian, or Ottoman victor would have done: remove or relocate adversarial symbols of religious submission. The Al Aqsa Mosque, built over the ruins of the Jewish temple by Umayyad Calif Abd al-Malik, is a permanent beacon, a signature of Islamic privilege. Yet the Jewish temple on the same spot in Jerusalem has a pedigree that precedes Islam by millennia.
After serial defeats, Islam still has its mosque and its "Dome of the Rock" fictions — centrifugal symbols that motivate local and global jihad terror at the expense, to be sure, of Jewish culture, security, safety, peace, and sovereignty.
Wars with, and within, Islam are underwritten by the fusion of realpolitik and toxic religion. For Islamists, separation of church and state is a sacrilege cultivated by Jews, like-minded infidels, heretics, and apostates.
A case on point might be the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul: originally built as a Christian cathedral by Justinian in 537 A.D.; seized by the Ottomans in 1453 A.D. and converted to a mosque; rebranded as a museum by Atatürk in 1933; and now reopened as a mosque by a modern neo-Ottoman, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Symbol and significance matter.
Over time, the Christian Church in Turkey, once the majority religion, was systematically extinguished by political atrocity and Islamic intolerance. Today, Sunni and Shia zealots are united in their quest to see that Jews and Judaism suffer a similar fate in the Levant.
THE TROJAN HORSE
From the start, the modern state of Israel has been beset by enemies from without. Indeed, the Mideast has been a bad neighborhood for non-Muslims since Mohamed's time. Israel now has to deal with an internal Arab-Muslim citizen demographic that may hold the balance of domestic secular power.
If Al Aqsa is a brick-and-mortar Trojan Horse in the heart of the Jewish state, the real threat is the Jerusalem jihad, those 1.5 million so-called "Palestinian" Arab-Israelis, a Sunni demographic that would never tolerate a like number of Jews in their midst should they have the upper hand.
Ironically, as Islamofascists like Hezb'allah and Hamas assume more local control, a second Holocaust is as near as any certainty can be. Talk of wiping Israel and Jews off the face of the map is not empty rhetoric; it is the lynchpin, the objective, for Palestinian, Shia, and Sunni zealots worldwide.
No subject, at home and abroad, unites Muslims so well as Jew-hate.
GAZA GOATS
In spite of formidable military prowess and exceptional national courage, Israel has always tried to temper victory with justice. Modern Israel, in part a nation of immigrants, is always sensitive to charges of "imperialism," a slander more appropriate for historical and modern Islam than Judaism. Conquest, proselytizing, forced conversions, and related atrocities are Islamic, not Judaic values.
From 1948 to 1967, the Gaza strip was occupied and administered by Egypt, yet Cairo never granted Palestinians Egyptian citizenship. After the 1967 Arab attack against Israel, the IDF took the Sinai and Gaza from Egypt. Under Israeli control, between 1967 and 1982, the Gaza Strip had a growth rate that averaged 10% per annum.
In the interests of peace with Egypt, the Sinai was returned to Egyptian control, but Cairo never had any illusions about the Muslim Brotherhood or the Palestinian tar baby. After the Oslo accords of 1993, Israel ceded administrative control of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinian Authority (née PLO), again in the interests of a permanent peace.
In short order, a rift developed between the P.A. on the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. The PLO and Hamas are joined only by terror and virulent religious bigotry. Hamas, now allied with Shia Hezb'allah, is poised to take complete control in Arab Palestine, another certainty if de jure Palestine ever holds another election.
By granting measured political autonomy to Gaza, Israel enabled the "two state" fiction, an Arab fantasy where Israel would be flanked on two sides by fratricidal attack dogs dedicated to the demise of Israel.
Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist.
Withal, Arab Palestine has never been able to take yes for an answer, and now politics has been hijacked by religious jihad and political terror – again at Israel's expense.
Palestinian autonomy, once a peace offering, is now the dagger pointed at the heart of Zion.
THE TWO-STATE FICTION
Reality is a bitter pill even on a good day.
Unlike the Arabs, many Israelis could never accept the facts of modern Palestinian culture, a Petri dish of discontent and sedition. Religious jihad today is as much a threat to Arab tribal totalitarians as it is to the state of Israel. While keeping Palestinians at arm's length, Arab neighbors use the West Bank and Gaza Arabs as confrontation proxies. Palestinians are in every sense sacrificial goats — permanent Muslim patsies at best, front-line cannon fodder at worst.
Every janissary, dictator, or Muslim autocrat is, alas, hostage to a persistent mujahedeen threat. Keeping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict alive serves several Muslim interests, inclinations, and prejudices — and policy worldwide. Israel was always naïve to think that it could cut a deal with local jihad proxies while the Jerusalem trophy and the Temple Mount were in play.
Any thought of legitimizing a nation, like Palestine, on two Israeli borders is a triumph of hope over experience. "Two states" has never been the solution — only a toxic problem. A Palestinian state is a recipe for national suicide and another Jewish holocaust.
GRIM HORIZONS
Over time, there are few silver linings in the clouds over Israel. Today is no exception. Clearly, Muslim zealots see the 2021 sea change in Washington politics as a golden opportunity to roll back the Abraham Accords and related progress in Arab-Israeli relations. The Biden/Harris administration is likely to minimize or ignore the Trump initiatives and return to the recidivist apologetics of the Obama era. The smoke hardly cleared from the latest Jerusalem jihad when the Biden White House assured Palestinians, and Hamas, that America would rebuild anything that Israel's Defense Force had destroyed. Thus, Muslim attacks from without and within Israel are now motivated or incentivized, in part, by post-conflict American support and largesse. Any idea that humanitarian aid can go to Palestinians without Hamas taking a butcher's cut is just another fantasy.
In the West Bank and Gaza, we now have a perfect storm where terror, corruption, and jihad meet at the merge. Islamic terror and Palestinian corruption are subsidized by the United States again — self-fulfilling prophecies underwritten by American tax monies.
Over time, the Palestinian question was so central to Arab politics that the P.A. or Hamas had the power to kill any initiative that improved relations with Israel. The Abraham Accords were a benchmark of sorts to the extent that they canceled the Palestinian "veto."
Feckless, if not reckless, American policy now gives veto power back to Hamas, a neo-national terror state. The Jerusalem jihad has new life in 2021, again at Israel's expense.
G. Murphy Donovan writes about the politics of national security.
Muslim Family in Nashville Assaults Son for Converting to Christianity
"His family demanded he take back his Christianity belief and say he was a Muslim" by 8 Comments
Don’t worry, they’re moderates. If they were extremists, he wouldn’t have lived long enough for the police to save him.
A mother, dad and son were arrested after officers responded to a welfare check to find a juvenile who appeared to be “cut haphazardly” with lumps on his face.
According to an arrest warrant, the victim told police his family attacked him for recently becoming a Christian. The family are Muslims, the warrant adds.
The victim told officers his mother, brother and father repeatedly punched him and spat in his face. Arrest records show his mother then took a knife and scratched the back of his right hand with it.
His family demanded he take back his Christianity belief and say he was a Muslim during the attacks, the arrest record adds. The victim said the abuse continued until law enforcement arrived at the home.
When officers saw the victim, he was “trembling and wide eyed” with “disheveled” hair. The boy was transported to a local hospital for treatment, arrest records state.
Officers responded to the welfare check at the Nashville home on Dec. 11 after the boy’s employer called police with concerns.
They started with some beatings and scratched him with a knife. Very moderate.
How are we dealing with this in Nashville? There’s no information on the family yet, but Nashville has been a hub for refugee resettlement. More recently large numbers of Afghans have poured into Nashville.
The state had previously produced convert terrorists.
Carlos had a cousin who was a lifelong Muslim, and he had once seen Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan speak, so he decided to explore Islam as well. As it turned out, and somewhat to the surprise of his family, Carlos would not have to venture far from his college campus at Tennessee State.
As it happened, Tennessee State offered the free course “Introduction to Islam,” taught by founders of the Olive Tree Education Foundation, the proselytizing arm of the local Islamic Center of Nashville. Promoting itself as a moderate outreach group embracing a tolerant version of Islam, Olive Tree had provided hundreds of hours of instruction to TSU students.
He went on to shoot up a recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas.
This is how you end up with the worst aspects of the Islamic world in ‘Music City’.
Don’t worry, they’re moderates. If they were extremists, he wouldn’t have lived long enough for the police to save him.
A mother, dad and son were arrested after officers responded to a welfare check to find a juvenile who appeared to be “cut haphazardly” with lumps on his face.
According to an arrest warrant, the victim told police his family attacked him for recently becoming a Christian. The family are Muslims, the warrant adds.
The victim told officers his mother, brother and father repeatedly punched him and spat in his face. Arrest records show his mother then took a knife and scratched the back of his right hand with it.
His family demanded he take back his Christianity belief and say he was a Muslim during the attacks, the arrest record adds. The victim said the abuse continued until law enforcement arrived at the home.
When officers saw the victim, he was “trembling and wide eyed” with “disheveled” hair. The boy was transported to a local hospital for treatment, arrest records state.
Officers responded to the welfare check at the Nashville home on Dec. 11 after the boy’s employer called police with concerns.
They started with some beatings and scratched him with a knife. Very moderate.
How are we dealing with this in Nashville? There’s no information on the family yet, but Nashville has been a hub for refugee resettlement. More recently large numbers of Afghans have poured into Nashville.
The state had previously produced convert terrorists.
Carlos had a cousin who was a lifelong Muslim, and he had once seen Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan speak, so he decided to explore Islam as well. As it turned out, and somewhat to the surprise of his family, Carlos would not have to venture far from his college campus at Tennessee State.
As it happened, Tennessee State offered the free course “Introduction to Islam,” taught by founders of the Olive Tree Education Foundation, the proselytizing arm of the local Islamic Center of Nashville. Promoting itself as a moderate outreach group embracing a tolerant version of Islam, Olive Tree had provided hundreds of hours of instruction to TSU students.
He went on to shoot up a recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas.
This is how you end up with the worst aspects of the Islamic world in ‘Music City’.
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