Doc's Talk: In spite of Islam

Saturday, January 26, 2013

In spite of Islam

Nurit Greenger

Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and the editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal. I often comment on his articles posted on Middle East Forum. This week the Forum posted an article named, Turkey, Closest to Leading the Middle East, which is the translation of the full-page interview with Pipes in the Turkish newspaper Akşam, titled "Ortadoğu liderliğine en yakın ülke Türkiye. (http://tr.danielpipes.org/12441/ortadogu-liderligine-en-yakin-ulke-turkiye).

My comment was: Know Islam: http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/202689, which invited an exchange reply from a well informed reader named Ianus, (http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/202781).

I see it very important to share this exchange with broader audience.

NG wrote: "When this world fell into the hands of the Muslims-Arabs, the Arabs inherited a great culture, from Alexandria, Egypt, to Aleppo, Syria and beyond. Thus the early "Golden Age" of Islam was as a result of the good fortune of being in the "right place at the right time."

Ianus: The Arabs didn't inherit anything, they robbed, with raw force, everything, reducing a higher culture to a lower civilizational status! The question should be rather, What would the Byzantine civilization have looked like if the Moslem invasions, their wanton destructions, mass abduction of people into Moslem slavery, massacres and mass forced conversions into Islam, that accompanying them had taken place? My modest answer is: The Arabic "golden" age would have looked, by contrast, like a new stone age, an era of regress and barbarization, which it finally turned out to become.

Incidentally, the claims of "inheritance" were made by Moslems from the very beginning as Sebeos* witnesses in his "History of Emperor Heraclius":

"After this they dispatched a message to the Byzantine emperor, saying: "God gave that country as the inherited property [i kaluats zharhangut'ean] of Abraham and of his sons after him. We are the sons of Abraham. It is too much that you hold our country. Leave in peace, and we shall demand from you what you have seized, plus interest. The emperor rejected this. He did not provide a fitting response to the message but rather said: "The country is mine. Your inheritance is the desert. So go in peace to your country."

And so everybody, except the Mahometans themselves, understood clearly what the Mahometans' real inheritance was. It is every thief's dream to be recognized as "inheritor" of the victim of his misdeeds. But why shall we buy that claim? Because the thief [Islam] can start doing to us what he has done to the Byzantines?

NG: Eventually, as always with Islam, in one of its many insecure and reactionary phases, it would find these treasures stock of civilization to be "anti-Islamic" and would squander this great heritage and destroy it. That what they will do to today's Western civilization should they get a chance.

Ianus: In some parts of Europe, which they have managed - with help of a certain all-powerful Western state - to occupy, this is happening. The ruined churches of Kosovo and Northern Cyprus are a foreboding of what is going to happen everywhere else too when Moslems have it their way.

NG: Interesting fact, even the crescent moon, the symbol of Islam, originally was NOT Islamic; it was a symbol of the great 1000 year Eastern Christian Empire in Byzantium, adopted by the Muslims.... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent**)

Ianus: The crescent symbol is pre-Hellenic and goes back to the ancient moon god Nannna, or Semitic Sin whose attributes, queer rites and cult Arabic Allah has fully imitated, including the lunar calendar, worshipping a meteorite stone, fasting period beginning and ending with the crescent moon, etc.

Speaking of robberies and stolen symbols, for me a much more sinister theft of symbolism is Hagia Sophia*** which the Turks are so fond of boasting, displaying it in almost every photo of Constantinople and Turkey. These barbarians could not build something better so they boast of at least having raped and Islamizing the Emperor Justinian's Temple.

What other thieves are ashamed of doing in public, the Turks enjoy to the full. To explain what I mean imagine for a moment I am a robber, without any provocation assault you, rob your house, kill you, enslave your family and then I repaint the house, add a shoddy minaret to it and advertise it as "mine", the very heart of my identity and religion! What would you say to that ? That I and my "religion" deserve respect and affection as Turks demand from us for doing exactly that, which in every civilized land brings infamy, contempt and the most severe punishments?

In spite of Islam

It has long seemed to be that if any accomplishments in the sciences or arts ever came out of any country otherwise suffocating under Islam, it was always in spite of the religion, never because of it.

___

*Sebeos was a 7th-century Armenian bishop and historian. The history of Sebeos contains detailed descriptions from the period of Sassanid supremacy in Armenia up to the Islamic conquest in 661.

**The crescent was in use in the ancient Greek colony of Byzantium. Subsequently, it became one of the symbols of the Byzantine Empire and especially of Constantinople. It is unclear whether the Ottomans adopted the symbol after the conquest of Constantinople or it was already in use. Indeed, during the Byzantine-Ottoman Wars, the crescent was used simultaneously by both the Byzantines and the Ottoman Sultans.

*** Hagia Sophia is a former Orthodox patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, and now a museum in Istanbul, Turkey

1 comment:

Traeh said...: I have been reading Muhammad and Charlemagne Revisited, by Emmet Scott, and it offers detailed argument and much archaeological evidence for the claim that the European Dark Ages did occur, and were a result of the Muslim takeover of North Africa and the Middle East.

Scott notes that European classical civilization had been integrated into Mediterranean civilization as a whole, and that the major centers of Mediterranean civilization were not in Europe, but in the East and North Africa -- for example Ephesus, Antioch, Alexandria, and later Constantinople. When the Muslims burst out of Arabia to conquer much of the Middle East and North Africa, the massive destruction that resulted destroyed the core of Mediterranean civilization. The Islamic conquests led to a Dark Ages for two or three centuries in the lands that Islam had conquered. Consequently, Europe, though not itself conquered by Islam, soon also fell into a Dark Ages, because Europe had in many ways been dependent on the East and was a comparative backwater part of Mediterranean civilization.

Scott traces the European collapse in part to a breakdown in Mediterranean economic exchange, but emphasizes the loss of papyrus to Europe, since that source of writing material was no longer easily accessible from Egypt. That led to a loss in Europe of classical traditions, record keeping, literature and learning, and other aspects of the Dark Ages in Europe.

The notion that the Germanic "barbarians" dispatched Roman classical civilization is contradicted by a great deal of evidence. The "fall" of Rome in 476 actually did not alter classical civilization in Europe that much. The Germans remained a minority and thoroughly assimilated into and adopted the mores and ideas and practices of the classical civilization they had conquered. They sought to preserve it, not substitute their own culture in its place. They educated their children in the centers of classical education.

Archaeological records now show that economic life continued in a fairly advanced stage in classical civilization until long after the Germanic invasions of Italy and southern Europe, indeed down until some time toward the end of the 600s -- in other words, until Islam had conquered large swaths of North Africa and the East.

I don't know if Scott says why the Muslim East emerged before Europe did from the Dark Ages that followed the Muslim conquests. But I think the answer is that prior to the Muslim emergence from Arabia, the Eastern Mediterranean and Christian Middle East had a more advanced civilization culturally and economically than did Europe. So one might well expect Europe to recover more slowly from the Islamic blow to Mediterranean civilization. Europe had been dependent on the East in a number of important ways.

Also, Islam did not immediately completely penetrate into the places it conquered. The pre-Islamic culture still provided the creative possibility of a "golden age" to emerge even under the minority Muslim conquerers. But once those societies had been sufficiently Islamized over a number of generations, their creativity dried up. And so things have remained.; 3:58 AM

The IDF’s Minorities in Numbers and Pictures

In honor of IDF Diversity Week, we present diversity through numbers and pictures. Each year, more and more Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin and immigrants from around the world take on the responsibility of defending Israel.

MUSLIMS:

Muslim Arab Israelis are not required to draft in the IDF, but there are many who volunteer. In 2013, there were over 200 Muslims serving in the IDF and over 300 in the reserves.

Bedouins:

Bedouins are nomadic Muslims who were in Israel when modern borders were set in place and are now considered Israeli citizens. They are not required to draft but a growing number choose to enlist. In 2012, there were over 1,400 Bedouin Muslim soldiers doing regular IDF service and almost 1,500 in the reserves.

Read more:http://www.idfblog.com/2014/02/27/truth-idf-numbers-pictures/#more-34027

Are you aware that in 2013, Middle class taxes go up-significantly?

In January of next year, the federal income tax rate for middle-class taxpayers is scheduled to rise from 25 percent to 28 percent, and the payroll tax is scheduled to rise from 13.3 percent to 15.3 percent… This drives the marginal tax rate based on the aforementioned three taxes to 48.12 percent. Add in state and local property, corporate, excise, and other state and local taxes, and the percentage of each additional dollar that is taxed hovers around 50 percent… When half of each additional dollar earned is taxed away, taxpayers experience a disincentive to start businesses or expand existing ones. This leads to fewer jobs being created.

Why is HAMAS Inside Tampa Schools?

Clare Lopez

Kelly Miliziano, who teaches history classes at Steinbrenner High School in the Tampa, Florida area apparently thinks it’s perfectly OK to invite a senior official of a HAMAS-affiliated organization into her classroom to discuss Islam with her students. According to local media reports, not only has this been going on for years, but in spite of the civil and criminal proceedings that could result from such reckless negligence, the Hillsborough County school superintendent, Mary Ellen Elia, and the chairman of the school board, Candy Olson, also expressed approval for students under their responsibility to be exposed repeatedly to guest speaker, Hassan Shibly, who is the Executive Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the Tampa area.
More...

Did You Know... Ignoring the Call to Islam will Bring Jihad

‘Conquest through Da’wa [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da’wa.’
-- Yousef al-Qaradawi , Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader The Arabic word ‘Da’wa’ means the “call to Islam.” But do not think that Da’wa is the same thing as an invitation to an optional holiday event. The classical Islamic doctrine of jihad mandates that enemies must be given the opportunity to convert to Islam or pay the jizya tax before it is permissible to attack them.
Clare M. Lopez

Who is being discriminated-facts tell the truth

Religious bias

Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,409 offenses reported by law enforcement. A breakdown of the bias motivation of religious-bias offenses showed:

65.4 percent were anti-Jewish.
13.2 percent were anti-Islamic.
9.5 percent were anti-other religion, i.e., those not specified.
4.3 percent were anti-Catholic.
3.8 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
3.3 percent were anti-Protestant.
0.5 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2010/narratives/hate-crime-2010-incidents-and-offenses.

On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview

with PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

"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.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, a PLO executive, said:

"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."

"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

The Arab Apartheid

Ben-Dror Yemini
In 1948, the Arab countries refused to accept the UN partition proposal and they launched a war of annihilation against the State of Israel which had barely been established. All precedents in this matter showed that the party that starts the war - and with a declaration of annihilation, yet - pays a price for it. Between 550,000 and 710,000 Arabs fled because of the war and a larger number of 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries (the "Jewish nakba").
Population exchanges and expulsions were the norm at that time, occurring in dozens of other conflict points and affecting about 52 million people. In all the population exchange precedents that occurred during or at the end of an armed conflict, there was no return of refugees to the previous region, which had turned into a new national state.
Only the Arab states acted completely differently from the rest of the world. Instead of assimilating the refugees, they crushed them despite the fact that they were their coreligionists and members of the Arab nation - instituting a regime of apartheid. So the "nakba" was not caused by the actual dispossession, which had also been experienced by tens of millions of others. The "nakba" is the story of the apartheid, oppression, abuse and denial of rights suffered by the Arab refugees at the hands of the Arab countries. (Maariv)

International Law and Military Operations in Practice - Col. Richard Kemp

"Islamist fighting groups study the international laws of armed conflict carefully and they understand it well. They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy's main weaknesses. Their very modus operandi is built on the correct assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules, while these insurgents employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law. "

Lost Historical Moments

What Rabin’s last Knesset speech really said:repudiation of a Palestinian state

Rabin ruled out a fully sovereign Palestinian state :

“We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority.”

Rabin ruled out a total withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and thus a return to the pre-June 1967 borders :

“The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.”

Rabin ruled out withdrawing form the Jordan Valley:

“The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.”

Rabin ruled out uprooting settlement blocs, like the Gush Katif bloc in Gaza (which was subsequently uprooted by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon):

“The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

AND

Rabin ruled out removing any settlement before coming to a full peace agreement with the Palestinians:

“I want to remind you: we committed ourselves, that is, we came to an agreement, and committed ourselves before the Knesset, not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth.”

Rabin insisted on Israel retaining full security control of the borders with Egypt and Jordan, contrary to Israel’s relinquishment of the Philadelphia Corridor on the border with Egypt:

“The responsibility for external security along the borders with Egypt and Jordan, as well as control over the airspace above all of the territories and Gaza Strip maritime zone, remains in our hands.”

Correcting Oslo Myths-Part 2

3) Kuttab laments that the post-1993 Oslo process resulted in a Palestinian Authority "whose ministers and legislators are not guaranteed passage between Gaza and the West Bank ...."

Before free passage or other perquisites, PA leaders were obligated, among other things, to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, end anti-Israeli, antisemitic incitement in schools, mosques, and communications media, and resolve all outstanding issues through peaceful negotiations. They met none of these commitments, sometimes bolstering terrorism and greatly increasing incitement.

4) Kuttab complains that under Oslo the PA got "lightly armed police ---- but no real sovereignty over the land or contiguity between our communities in Gaza and the West Bank."

Oslo agreements repeatedly were revised, regardless of Palestinian non-compliance, until the authorized number of police grew from 8,000 to 40,000. Though they were to be the only armed forces in the territories, Israeli estimates early in the second intifada put the number of gunmen - police, "security services," terrorists, and armed gangs - at 85,000. Their armament reportedly included not only heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, but also anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.

Sovereignty was to be negotiated in the envisioned 1998 "final status" talks - after a five-year period of confidence-building. Palestinian leadership chronically undermined the process. Palestinian terrorism made the 1993 - 1998 Oslo period more deadly for Israelis than the 15 years preceding it.

The United States doesn't have contiguity between the lower 48 states and Alaska and Hawaii; territorial contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza Strip - that is, through the 20 miles of Israeli territory between them - was never promised and would destroy Israeli contiguity.

5) "Palestinians have been made to endure hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank, an eight-foot wall deep in our territories, and tight Israeli control over borders."

The security barrier is not "deep in Palestinian territories," but rather encompasses less than 8 percent of Judea and Samaria, and is mostly a fence, rarely a wall; the land in question is not "our [Palestinian] territories" but disputed territory to which, according to the authors of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Jews as well as Arabs have claims; and there are no international borders, only the 1949 armistice lines with Jordan. Under 242, borders remain to be negotiated. As for checkpoints - like the security barrier and "tight Israeli control" - Palestinian Arabs precipitated these measures themselves. No terrorism and there would be no fence or tight Israeli control and few checkpoints - like before the first intifada.

Correcting Some Oslo Myths

1) In Oslo "Israeli, Palestinian and other world leaders promised that ... Palestinian sovereignty would be solidified."

No, they didn't. The 1993 Declaration of Principles and subsequent Oslo agreements outlined a process by which final status negotiations about the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be reached. The process required an end to anti-Israel terrorism and incitement and a commitment to peaceful negotiations. The PA, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other terrorist groups, sabotaged the process from the start.

2) "The reality is that, in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which states that it is inadmissible to occupy land by force, Palestinian territories are still under foreign military occupation."
Wrong again. Resolution 242 (1967) does note "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." It also affirms the right of every state in the area "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." There were no "Palestinian territories." Jordan occupied the West Bank, Egypt controlled Gaza. Israel did not have "secure and recognized boundaries," so retention of some of those territories was possible under 242. Israel is not a "foreign" military occupier in the West Bank but, pending final negotiations, the lawful military administrator as a result of a successful war of self-defense.

Doc's Talk