{"id":6603,"date":"2013-10-10T13:00:39","date_gmt":"2013-10-10T20:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6603"},"modified":"2013-10-10T13:00:39","modified_gmt":"2013-10-10T20:00:39","slug":"surreal-and-suicidal-modern-western-histories-of-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/surreal-and-suicidal-modern-western-histories-of-islam\/","title":{"rendered":"Surreal and Suicidal: Modern Western Histories of Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The full magnitude of the modern West\u2019s ignorance of its own past recently struck \"viame while rereading some early history books concerning the centuries-long jihad on Europe. \u00a0 The historical narrative being disseminated today simply bears very little resemblance to reality.<\/p>\n

Consider some facts for a moment:<\/p>\n

A mere decade after the birth of Islam in the 7th\u00a0century, the jihad burst out of Arabia.\u00a0 Leaving aside all the thousands of miles of ancient lands and civilizations that were permanently conquered, today casually called the \u201cIslamic world\u201d\u2014including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and parts of India and China\u2014much of Europe was also, at one time or another, conquered by the sword of Islam.<\/p>\n

Among other nations and territories that were attacked and\/or came under Muslim domination are (to give them their modern names in no particular order): Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Sicily, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Albania, Serbia, Armenia, Georgia, Crete, Cyprus, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Belarus, Malta, Sardinia, Moldova, Slovakia, and Montenegro.<\/p>\n

In 846 Rome was sacked and the Vatican defiled by Muslim Arab raiders; some 600 years later, in 1453, Christendom\u2019s other great basilica, Holy Wisdom (or Hagia Sophia) was conquered by Muslim Turks, permanently.<\/p>\n

The few European regions that escaped direct Islamic occupation due to their northwest remoteness include Great Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany.\u00a0 That, of course, does not mean that they were not attacked by Islam. Indeed, in the furthest northwest of Europe, in Iceland, Christians used to pray that God save them from the \u201cterror of the Turk.\u201d These fears were not unfounded since as late as 1627 Muslim corsairs raided the Christian island seizing four hundred captives, selling them in the slave markets of Algiers.<\/p>\n

Nor did America escape.\u00a0 A few years after the formation of the United States, in 1800, American trading ships in the Mediterranean were plundered and their sailors enslaved by Muslim corsairs.\u00a0 The ambassador of Tripoli\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0to Thomas Jefferson that it was a Muslim\u2019s \u201cright and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to enslave as many as they could take as prisoners.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, for roughly one millennium\u2014punctuated by a Crusader-rebuttal that the modern West is obsessed with demonizing\u2014Islam daily posed an existential threat to Christian Europe and by extension Western civilization.<\/p>\n

And therein lies the rub: Today, whether as taught in high school or graduate school, whether as portrayed by Hollywood or the news media, the predominant historic narrative is that Muslims are the historic \u201cvictims\u201d of \u201cintolerant\u201d Western Christians.\u00a0 That\u2019s exactly what a TV personality recently told me\u00a0live on Fox News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So here we are, paying the price of being an ahistorical society: A few years after the Islamic strikes of 9\/11\u2014merely the latest in the centuries-long, continents-wide jihad on the West\u2014Americans elected a man with a Muslim name and heritage for president, who\u00a0openly empowers<\/a>\u00a0the same ideology that their ancestors lived in mortal fear of, even as they sit by and watch to\u00a0their future detriment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Surely the United States\u2019 European forebears\u2014who at one time or another either fought off or were conquered by Islam\u2014must be turning in their graves.<\/p>\n

But all this is history, you say? Why rehash it?\u00a0 Why not let it be and move on, begin a new chapter of mutual tolerance and respect, even if history must be \u201ctouched up\u201d a bit?<\/p>\n

This would be a somewhat plausible position\u2014if not for the fact that, all around the globe, Muslims are\u00a0still<\/em>\u00a0exhibiting the same\u00a0imperial impulse<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0intolerant supremacism<\/a>\u00a0that their conquering forbears did.\u00a0 The only difference is that the Muslim world is currently incapable of defeating the West through a conventional war.<\/p>\n

Yet this may not even be necessary.\u00a0 Thanks to the West\u2019s ignorance of history, Muslims are flooding Europe under the guise of \u201cimmigration,\u201d refusing to assimilate, and forming enclaves which in modern parlance are called \u201cenclaves\u201d or \u201cghettoes\u201d but in Islamic terminology are the\u00a0ribat<\/em>\u2014frontier posts where the jihad is waged on the infidel, one way\u00a0or the other<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All this leads to another, perhaps even more important point: If the true history of the West and Islam is being turned upside its head, what other historical \u201corthodoxies\u201d being peddled around as truth are also false?<\/p>\n

Were the Dark Ages truly benighted because of the \u201csuffocating\u201d forces of Christianity?\u00a0 Or were these dark ages\u2014which \u201ccoincidentally\u201d occurred during the same centuries when jihad was constantly harrying Europe\u2014a product of another suffocating religion?\u00a0 Was the Spanish Inquisition a reflection of Christian barbarism or was it a reflection of Christian desperation vis-\u00e0-vis the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who, while claiming to have converted to Christianity, were practicing\u00a0taqiyya<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and living as moles trying to subvert the Christian nation back to Islam?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t expect to get true answers to these and other questions from the makers, guardians, and disseminators of the West\u2019s fabricated epistemology.<\/p>\n

In the future (whatever one there may be) the histories written about our times will likely stress how our era, ironically called the \u201cinformation age,\u201d was not an age when people were so well informed, but rather an age when disinformation was so widespread and unquestioned that generations of people lived in bubbles of alternate realities\u2014till they were finally popped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com\u00a0 The full magnitude of the modern West\u2019s ignorance of its own past recently struck me while rereading some early history books concerning the centuries-long jihad on Europe. \u00a0 The historical narrative being disseminated today simply bears very little resemblance to reality. Consider some facts for a moment: A mere decade after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[225,227,99],"tags":[192,1015,1028,231,1017,331,894],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Iv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2439,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-jihad-influenced-the-norway-massacre\/","url_meta":{"origin":6603,"position":0},"title":"How Jihad Influenced the Norway Massacre","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Hudson New York In his manifesto, Anders Breivik, the perpetrator of the Norway massacre, wherein some 80 people were killed, mentioned the Crusades and aspects of it as an inspirational factor. Predictably, Western elites \u2014 especially through the MSM \u2014 have begun a new round of moral,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11999,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/book-review-sword-and-scimitar-fourteen-centuries-of-war-between-islam-and-the-west-by-raymond-ibrahim-da-capo-press-2018-pp-297\/","url_meta":{"origin":6603,"position":1},"title":"Book Review: Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West by Raymond Ibrahim. Da Capo Press, 2018. Pp. 297","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 26, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Please\u00a0read\u00a0this\u00a0book\u00a0review\u00a0from\u00a0my\u00a0colleague Terry Scambray \/\/ New Oxford Review Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West\u00a0by Raymond Ibrahim.\u00a0 Da Capo Press, 2018.\u00a0\u00a0 Pp. 297 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We judge individuals by what they say and what they do.\u00a0 We judge cults, religions and ideologies the same way; that\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2956,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/consider-the-source\/","url_meta":{"origin":6603,"position":2},"title":"Consider the Source","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Jihad has Islamic, and non-Islamic, roots. by Raymond Ibrahim Weekly Standard Review of\u00a0The Mind of Jihad\u00a0by Laurent Murawiec (Cambridge, 350 pp.) For some time now there has been a raging debate regarding what fuels Islamic terrorism \u2014 whether grievances against the West have caused frustrated Muslims to articulate their rage\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3100,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/were-conquered-christians-really-liberated-muslims\/","url_meta":{"origin":6603,"position":3},"title":"Were Conquered Christians Really Liberated Muslims?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim FrontPageMagazine.com Imagine if a top American historian appeared on the MSM insisting that the only reason Europeans conquered the Americas was to \"defend\" the Native Americans \u2014 who somehow had adopted Christianity centuries\u00a0before\u00a0Jesus was born \u2014 from being persecuted by heathen tribes. While that would create a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/religion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":915,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-historical-reality-of-the-muslim-conquests\/","url_meta":{"origin":6603,"position":4},"title":"The Historical Reality of the Muslim Conquests","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch Because it is now almost axiomatic for American school textbooks to whitewash all things Islamic (see\u00a0here\u00a0for example), it may be instructive to examine one of those aspects that are regularly distorted: the Muslim conquests. Few events of history are so well documented and attested to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1144,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/offensive-jihad-the-one-incontrovertible-problem-with-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":6603,"position":5},"title":"Offensive Jihad: The One Incontrovertible Problem with Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media A\u00a0recent\u00a0MEMRI\u00a0report titled \"Arab Columnists: Stop Talking About Offensive Jihad,\" alludes to the ultimate problem between Islam and the non-Muslim world: offensive jihad, or\u00a0jihad al-talab\u00a0\u2014 the Islamic imperative to subjugate the world. The report opens by saying \"One dominant theme during Ramadan in the Arab world\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6603"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6605,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6603\/revisions\/6605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}