The Reporting of Information of Events associated with Islam

Cultural Enrichment in Sydney, Australia



Heavily pregnant mother whose husband is in jail for terrorism and her son arrested for attempting terror enjoying ur welfare taxes

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Tony Bermanseder ‏@sirebard

Its the diversity of an intolerant culture!​

Cultural Enrichment in Sydney, Australia
Btw the islam march is to honour a 7th century muslim called Hussein. Ask any Australian as to who that might be and what Hussein's relevance to Sydney, Australia might be???

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hbJykcZZA8 …

 

Islamic Multiculturalism and Diversity

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Qasim Almani

October 22 at 10:41am
When He shall gather you all for the Day of Gathering, that will be the Day of loss and gain and whoever believe in God and does good deeds shall be forgiven their sins and admitted to gardens through which rivers flow where they shall dwell for ever. that is the supreme triumph. But those who denied the Truth and rejected our signs shall be inmates of the fire there to remain- what an evil destination !

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Serpentina Dove Who is" He ".?

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Qasim Almani God.

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Tony Bermanseder G=7 and O=15 and D=4 so its 26

Allah=26+8=34=One and Abba=6=Baab
DEVIL=LIVED=52=26+26=GOD+DOG=EARTH=HEART=...2=26+26=GOD+DOG=EARTH=HEART=...

Ahura Mazda loves dogs, but allah hates them, implying allah hates femininity as defined in Daniel 11:37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.

The female genital mutilation and burka chastity exposed in the Torah as islamic plagiarisms and exploitative obfuscations

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Hugh Fitzgerald: Those Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes “Soaring to Their Highest Levels” Since 2001


SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 12:10 AM BY HUGH FITZGERALD58 COMMENTS



The Sunday New York Times for September 18 carried a story by Eric Lichtblau about a “study” by “researchers” at the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at the San Bernardino campus of California State University, purporting to show that “hate crimes against US Muslims are not just “on the rise” but have “soared to their highest levels since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.” While the FBI’s hate-crime statistics are not going to be released until November, data from this center, which is compiled from police reports, suggest that “hate crimes” against Muslims have risen 78% in one year. Some “scholars” of the subject believe that the anti-Muslim animus cannot be linked to the attacks all over the place, in Europe and America, by Muslim terrorists, nor to the attacks carried out in the Middle East – in Syria, Iraq, and Libya – by members of the Islamic State, nor to the aggressive, often criminal, behavior, of so many Muslim migrants in Europe, with the constant stream of news about gang rapes, mob violence, property crimes large and small. No, it’s all the fault of some remarks of Donald Trump about the need to keep out, or at least vet more thoroughly, Muslim migrants. It’s not what Muslims do, it’s not what anyone can read in the Qur’an and Hadith, it’s what people like Trump say that supposedly explains the rise in these “hate crimes” against Muslims.

The Times article never mentions the scandal surrounding reports of “hate crimes” against Muslims, which is that more than a few such reports have later turned out to be false. And even were we to accept at face value every one of those claimed to be an anti-Muslim “hate crime,” for 2015 it amounts to 260, that is, five a week, less than one a day, in a country with 325 million people. Does this really constitute a “soaring” rate? And the evidence suggests that we have a right to be doubtful about some of those counted as “hate crimes.”

Here are a few examples: a fire supposedly set at a Texas Islamic Center in February 2015 turned out to have been set near the mosque, by a homeless man, Quba Ferguson, just trying to keep warm. In New Jersey, a Muslim man, Kashif Parvaiz, exploited the willingness of people to believe that there is murderous and rampant Islamophobia, claiming that an anti-Muslim killer had shot his wife in front of their son, screaming “terrorist” as he did so. It turned out that the man’s mistress was the killer, put up to it by him so he could rid himself of his wife and marry her. Nothing “anti-Islamic” about it.

Qur’ans were burned at an Islamic Center, and the Center’s imam, calling for restrictions on “free speech” (meaning anti-Islam speech), was joined by the media, all in a frenzied state about this supposed “hate crime.” Eventually it turned out that the book-burner was one Ali Hassan Al-Assadi, a Muslim angry with people at the local mosques, who said he burned the Qur’ans in retribution.
Want more? There’s the University of Texas Muslimah who claimed that “a gunman followed her to the campus and threatened her.” She finally admitted to making up the whole story.
Or yet another story of mosque vandalism, this time in Fresno where, after CAIR went wild with claims of yet another “hate crimes,” it turned out to have been prompted by a private grievance by one Asiuf Mohammad Khan against a Muslim woman and her family.

Google away, and you’ll find many more examples of crimes first reported as anti-Muslim “hate crimes” that turn out to have been the work of Muslims, or of non-Muslims whose motive had nothing to do with Islam.

And sometimes the original false story of a “hate crime” refuses to die, and for many becomes the accepted version of what happened, even if the investigators long ago concluded otherwise.
There was, most notably, the killing of three young Muslims in Chapel Hill, by a neighbor in the same apartment complex. This was immediately reported as a “hate crime.” But the man had a long history of being agitated about parking spaces, and no history at all of being anti-Muslim. His Internet postings showed, rather, antipathy to Christianity. As to the parking spaces, he had fought with both Muslim and non-Muslim neighbors over who could park where.

But because the three people Craig Hicks killed were Muslims, at the time of the murders Muslims immediately swung into action, declaring that of course Hicks’s motive could only have been a deep-seated hatred of Muslims. Nihad Awad of CAIR was quick off the mark: “Based on the brutal nature of the crime, the past anti-religion [but they were all anti-Christian!] statements of the alleged perpetrator, the religious attire of two of the victims, and the rising anti-Muslim rhetoric in American society, we urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to quickly address speculation of a possible bias motive in this case.” Linda Sarsour, a well-known Muslim activist, insisted that the murders sent “a message to other young people in the Muslim community that the fear [of anti-Muslim hate crime] is valid.” There was much more in this vein from various Muslim activists, not one of whom could point to a single anti-Muslim statement or act by Craig Hicks. But if Muslims were killed, who cared if it was all about a parking space? It was about a parking spacefor Muslims. And that made it about Islam.

What everyone who came into contact with Craig Hicks knew was that he was very angry, but what he was very angry about was not Islam but the quality of life at his apartment house. And what enraged him – the neighbor from hell – were such commonplace problems as too much noise coming from other apartments. One of the Muslim survivors said that the first complaint they ever had from Hicks was over the level of noise he and his friends made while they were playing “Risk”: “You were too loud, you woke up my wife.” But what really exercised Hicks were disputes over parking. Sometimes other residents would have more visitors than they had visitors’ permits for; sometimes those visitors, or the residents themselves, parked in places not designated for them. All of this was fodder for the lunatic Hicks. But he was as incensed with non-Muslims over parking problems as he was with Muslims.

Hicks’ wife of seven years testified: “I can say with absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion of the victims, but it was related to a longstanding parking dispute that my husband had with the neighbors.” Not once in their seven years of marriage had Hicks ever mentioned any hatred of Muslims. But about parking spaces, he had plenty to say. And U.S. Attorney Ripley Rand was equally certain: “The events of yesterday are not part of a targeting campaign against Muslims in North Carolina…..there was no information this is part of an organized event against Muslims.”
Yet, in the just-published story in the New York Times, Eric Lichtblau includes this:

The statistics almost certainly understate the extent of the problem [of anti-Muslim “hate crimes”], researchers say, because victims are often reluctant to report attacks for fear of inflaming community tensions, and because it is sometimes difficult for investigators to establish that religious, ethnic or racial hatred was a cause.​

In the killing last year of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill, N.C., for instance, the authorities did not bring hate crime charges against a neighbor who is charged with murdering them, despite calls from Muslims who said there were religious overtones to the violence. The police said that a parking dispute, not bigotry, may have led to the killings.​

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Why does he report with such bland certainty that the “statistics understate the extent of the problem” when we have so many cases of Muslims falsely reporting “hate crimes” (e.g., a man followed and threatened me, a man set fire to our mosque, a man burned a stack of Qur’ans, a man called my wife a “terrorist” and shot her, a woman mocked my hijab) for various reasons, and when we know that CAIR encourages such reporting and makes an enormous fuss over every case? Are there really examples of victims being “reluctant to report attacks”? Where does this information come from? All the evidence goes the other way. CAIR doesn’t fear “inflaming community tensions,” but wants to exaggerate the level of anti-Muslim hate crimes; it positively relishes every “hate-crime” it can add to its growing portfolio of victimhood.

In the next paragraph, Lichtblau appears to suggest that there was something wrong when the “authorities did not bring hate crime charges against” the killer in Chapel Hill. Note Lichtblau’s use of “for instance,” which means that he thinks the Chapel Hill killings were an example (a “for instance”) of a police department not bringing “hate crime” charges because “it is sometimes difficult for investigators to establish that religious, ethnic or racial hatred was a cause.”

But this was an absolutely clear case. Yet Lichtblau writes that “a parking dispute, not bigotry, may have led to the killings.” “May”? No, a parking dispute did lead to the killings. That was what the police investigation concluded. Why, at this point, does he still cast doubt by writing “may”? There was no evidence, it needs to be repeated, of any anti-Muslim feeling by Craig Hicks. He did, online, express animus toward Christianity. About Islam he expressed no antipathy. Quite the contrary: he wrote that “knowing several dozen Muslims, I’d prefer them to most Christians.” His parking space rage was directed at Muslims and non-Muslims alike, as neighbors testified, a source of constant disputes and agitation.

Eric Lichtblau has no reservations about the reporting of anti-Muslim hate crimes, or rather, he sees under-reporting where others, actually looking at the claims made initially about hate crimes, might conclude there has been too quick a willingness to label something a “hate crime.” He ignores the role that CAIR plays in egging Muslims on to report these “hate-crimes.” Naturally some of them will conclude that fabricating such crimes must help the cause of Islam. Lichtblau might at least have acknowledged that there have been cases where Muslims have falsely reported “hate-crimes” and given his readers a dozen examples.

And he is flatly wrong to hint that the Chapel Hill Police were not able to bring a “hate crime” charge against Hicks only because it was “difficult for investigators to establish that” motive. It was not “difficult,” but “impossible,” because there was not the slightest evidence to support such a charge.
What was it that prevented Eric Lichtblau from telling the truth about the Chapel Hill case? He ought to have written:

“The statistics on hate-crimes against Muslims remain controversial, for each year there are a number of such charges that have then turned out to be false. Take, for example, the murders of three Muslims in Chapel Hill. Despite all the evidence that Craig Hicks was consumed with anger about a number of things, about parking spaces and noise, and Islam was never one of them. Yet CAIR and many Muslims continue to insist that the Chapel Hill murders were motivated by anti-Muslim hate, and no amount of evidence that something else explains his rage will, it seems, convince them.”

That’s how Eric Lichtblau might have injected a salutary note of skepticism about Muslim reports on “hate crimes.” He chose not to. And that is a pity, not just for those who are trying to understand all the ways and means of the Stealth Jihad, but also for Eric Lichtblau himself, who in this case did not do what the New York Times claims it always does — that is, to publish all the news that’s fit to print.

Coda: It’s been ten days since Eric Lichtblau published his piece about the “under-reporting” of attacks on Muslims. How many attacks on Muslims by non-Muslims in this country have there been in that time? None. And how many attacks on non-Muslims by Muslims have there been in the same time? Oh, there was Ahmad Khan Rahani, who planted bombs in New York and New Jersey. He studied at a pro-Taliban seminary in Pakistan; he made reference to ISIS in his journal. His motives are still being investigated. And there was a Somali man who stabbed ten people at the Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota. His motives are still unclear, but there’s been an awful lot of racial tension, according to the Associated Press, and “several Somalis said they saw pickups driving through predominantly Somali neighborhoods the night after the attack, waving confederate flags and honking.” So as of now the most likely explanation, according to authorities, is that Dahir Ahmed Adan was getting even for a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest that hasn’t yet been pulled down from its plinth in Pickpocket Woods, South Carolina (courthouse, cannon, a hero on a horse). And there was Arcan Cetin, a Turkish Muslim who murdered five people at a Macy’s store in the Cascade Mall in Washington State, and posted at Tumblr “Say SubhanAllah” (Glory to Allah)” and praised al-Baghdadi and Khamenei. But the police are still “no closer to determining the motive.” And there was the Muslim, Amjad Hussein, who made death threats to a SUNY professor, but no one as yet can figure out why.

And as for under-reporting on a monumental scale, it is only thanks to a leak that we all learned, a few days ago, that in one year the FBI had 7,712 “terrorist encounters.” None of them were reported to the American public until now. How many attacks by Muslims have been foiled, all over the Western world, that we will never hear about? Eric Lichtblau, please take note.


Robert Spencer in PJ Media: 'Redemptive Jihad': New York, Minnesota Terrorists Were Cleansing Their Sins
After two jihad attacks in NYC in September, de Blasio names September 25 "Muslim Parade Day"

 

Hugh Fitzgerald: Teaching About Islam In Tennessee

OCTOBER 2, 2016 11:22 AM BY HUGH FITZGERALD64 COMMENTS

For nearly a year some Tennessee parents have been up arms about the teaching of Islam to seventh graders in their public schools. They are disturbed that more attention has been given to “studying” Islam than to Christianity or Judaism. And they especially were upset that the students were asked to recite and write out the Shehada, in a unit on the Five Pillars of Islam: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.” Some called it “indoctrination.” And the Tennessee State Board of Education, in response, has decided to omit the section “Islamic World, 400 AD/CE-1500s” from the seventh-grade social studies curriculum. Instead, the schools will, in a “streamlined” form, still teach 7^th graders about Islam, but now in a history section titled “Southwest Asia and North Africa: 400-1500s,” and omitting subjects previously taught, such as “the origins of Islam” and “the life of its founder Muhammad.”

It is easy to imagine how this played out in the mainstream press. Tennessee, the buckle on the Bible Belt, where less than a century ago a certain Mr. Scopes was put on trial for teaching evolution, is at it again. A bunch of narrow-minded parents in Maury County, rubes right out of central casting, pitchforks at the ready, have managed to show just what prejudice and Islamophobia can do, and have forced an end to seventh-graders in Tennessee from learning all about the “religion of 1.6 [sic] billion people.” One of the photographs accompanying an article about the parents’ protest shows the hand of a student pointing to a page in an open Qur’an; the caption underneath reads “Parents fear their kids will know too much about this book.”
But was this really a victory for the Know-Nothings, the haters of diversity, the right-wing Christian fundamentalists who don’t want their children to learn anything about the faith of more than a billion people? Or did those parents have a point? And if they had a point, might there be another way of making it?

The teaching of Islam, if done rightly, would not eliminate but, rather, reinforce, any sensible Infidel’s deep doubts about the “religion of peace.” What the students were taught was comically superficial, but they no doubt came away thinking that they had learned something about Islam, and discovered there was nothing to worry about. After all, these are 7^th graders.
They learned that Muslims are monotheists, just like Christians and Jews. A comforting thought. But they did not learn that Muslims are taught to regard those fellow monotheists as the “vilest of creatures,”and Muslims as the “best of peoples.” They did not learn that Islam divides the world uncompromisingly between Muslims and non-Muslims, and that a permanent state of war exists between them, and will continue to exist, until Islam everywhere dominates, and Muslims rule, everywhere. They learned that, as one of the fill-in-the-blank questions given to them asked, “the Muslim word for God is Allah.” But they did not learn that the Muslim God is different in almost every respect from the Christian one. They did not learn that the expression “Allahu akbar” does not mean that “God is great,” but that “Our Muslim God is greater than yours,” and that it is a war-cry.
They did learn to write down the Five Pillars of Islam: Shehada, Salat, Zakat, Sawm, Hajj, but what did they find out about what those words mean?

They not only wrote out but recited the Shehada, the declaration of the Oneness of God: “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.” They learned that the Shehada is what non-Muslims recite in order to become Muslims, to join the faith, the community, the umma of Islam. But they were not told that once you become a Muslim, you can’t get out, that the punishment in Islam for apostasy is death. So these American kids recite and write out the Shehada in class, you can imagine with what naïve solemnity (or on the playground, as they talk about it later, hilarity), and begin to think that “Wow, I could be a Muslim now if I wanted” or at home, reciting it to annoy their parents, “See Ma, I said it and nothing happened. I didn’t turn into a terrorist, I didn’t start throwing bombs. Chillax.” The parents are annoyed, of course, but do not think to ask their children if they realize why anyone can become a Muslim merely by reciting the Shehada, when to become a Christian or a Jew requires extensive study. The reason, they could tell their children if they knew it themselves, is that Muslims want to make it easy for non-Muslims to convert, for these converts are seen not so much as individuals learning about, and wrestling with, theological matters of moment, but regarded more like recruits to an army – just recite here — the Army of Islam.

When the students were taught about the Second Pillar of Islam, Salat, they learned that it is the ritual prayer said five times a day by all Muslims. They may have been impressed with how devoted Muslims must be. But they did not learn the contents of those prayers. How many Americans know that every Muslim, in saying his daily prayers, is denouncing the Kuffar – Christians and Jews — seventeen times a day? Do you think the teachers in Tennessee knew this? Do you think, if they learned it, they would dare to mention it to their classes? Wouldn’t that get them in trouble with a cheerfully denying local member of CAIR (“who told you this nonsense”?), or with some self-righteous journalist who insists that this cannot possibly be true, it’s one more Islamophobic canard? Of course it would.
Of what conceivable value is memorizing the word “Salat” and learning “Muslims pray five times a day” unless students find out what those prayers contain, and especially what they say about Infidels? As with the Shehada, something very important has been left out.
Robert Spencer explains what is in the five canonical prayers:

In the course of praying the requisite five prayers a day, an observant Muslim will recite the Fatihah, the first surah of the Qur’an and the most common prayer in Islam, seventeen times. The final two verses of the Fatihah ask Allah: “Show us the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast favoured; not the (path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.” The traditional Islamic understanding of this is that the “straight path” is Islam — cf. Islamic apologist John Esposito’s bookIslam: The Straight Path. The path of those who have earned Allah’s anger are the Jews, and those who have gone astray are the Christians.
This is not my interpretation; it comes from the classic Islamic commentaries on the Qur’an. The renowned Qur’anic commentator Ibn Kathir explains that “the two paths He described here are both misguided,” and that those “two paths are the paths of the Christians and Jews, a fact that the believer should beware of so that he avoids them.The path of the believers is knowledge of the truth and abiding by it. In comparison, the Jews abandoned practicing the religion, while the Christians lost the true knowledge. This is why ‘anger’ descended upon the Jews, while being described as ‘led astray’ is more appropriate of the Christians.”
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Students learn that Zakat is the charitable giving required of Muslims. Admirable, they think, good for Muslims. But what is not said is that in the giving of Zakat, the recipients of that charity are only other Muslims. It would make no sense for Muslims to support those who have not accepted Islam. As Quran 8:55 puts it: “Surely the vilest of animals in Allah’s sight are those who disbelieve” And the Quran (28:86) adds: “Never be a helper to the unbelievers.” The Quran (48:29) also says: “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard (ruthless) against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves.”
How many of those students in Tennessee do you think were told that “Zakat” can only go to fellow Muslims? Or, even more unlikely, how many might have had that practice explained to them by reference to 8:55 and 28:86 and 48:29? Why none, of course. The students will learn, and their teachers too may well think, that Muslims are unusually generous because one of Islam’s Pillars is this required giving of alms. But the alms are only intended to support and promote Muslims, not to help humanity.

The last two pillars – Sawn and Hajj — are in themselves inoffensive. But piquant details connected to their observance could have been added.
Sawm is the dawn-to-dusk fasting, during the month of Ramadan. Some liken it to Lent, though it requires refraining, during the day, from food altogether, and not, as for Christians at Lent, giving up this or that pleasurable practice (e.g., drinking wine, smoking, eating a particular food). Do you think the students knew that Ramadan is associated with an upsurge in violence by Muslims? Or learned that Muslims have been known to attack, and even kill, Infidels for eating during Ramadan?
Hajj is the fifth pillar of Islam. Muslims are required to make, at least once in their lives, the pilgrimage to Mecca, to circumambulate the Ka’aba seven times widdershins, and perform certain other rituals, such as the flinging of pebbles at the Devil, represented by three pillars in Mina. Muslims of every race and sect, make the hajj. But beneath the outward display of unity, sectarian strife continues, even in regard to the hajj. The Iranian government, for example, this year did not permit its own citizens to make the hajj, as a way of expressing displeasure with the Saudis. And the Saudis have always forbidden Ahmadis, whom they regard as not real Muslims, from making the hajj. Was any of this mentioned?

The objection to the teaching about Islam should not have been that students learn too much about Islam, but that they learn too little. The recital of the Shehada, as we noted above, is a quick and easy way to swell Muslim ranks. But having these American students recite the Shehada, and merely pretend to “be Muslims,” is not without consequences. They may have imprinted on their young brains an impression of a harmless Islam that later will be hard to dislodge. Some people think, for example, that Obama’s memories of being a child in Indonesia, where he was taken with the muezzin’s call to prayer (“the call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset”) may partly explain his consistently sympathetic – and wildly inaccurate – descriptions of Islam.
But what else has been left out? Why, in what is effectively an “Introduction to Islam” unit, was the duty of Jihad apparently not mentioned? Shouldn’t Islam be described properly as a “fighting faith”? How did Islam spread, so rapidly, across North Africa, and through the Middle East? What happened to the many non-Muslim peoples subjugated by conquering Muslims? And if Jihad was mentioned after all, was the word glossed as “an internal struggle to be a better Muslim” or as what it is, a real war for territory, to enlarge Dar al-Islam, and to subdue the Infidel? Of course not.

We are told that the “life of Muhammad” was taught to students in Tennessee. But what about his life was taught? That he raided camel caravans, and received messages from Allah through the angel Gabriel? Do you think the students were also told that he took part in dozens of military campaigns? That he observed with pleasure the decapitation of several hundred bound prisoners? That he led a raid, for women and loot, on the inoffensive Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis? That he consummated his marriage to little Aisha when she was nine years old? That he was delighted when his followers killed Asma bint Marwan and Abu ‘Afak for mocking him? That – despite or because of this record — Muhammad is considered the Model of Conduct (“uswa hasana”) and Perfect Man (“al-insan al-kamil”) for all Muslims, and for all time? Parents should demand not that the life of Muhammad be omitted from the curriculum, but that it be taught in greater detail.

If you are not Muslim, what would you most want to know about Islam? Surely you would want to find out what is said about non-Muslims in the Qur’an and Hadith. Students should not be shielded from the many passages in the Qur’an that denounce the Unbelievers; they have a right to know, and teachers a duty to teach, this aspect of Islam, rather than have it remain unremarked, or deliberately hidden. It is not too late for the parents to draw up their own syllabus, one that they should make public, in order to force discussion of all of these unpleasant but indispensable matters. Instead of allowing themselves to be caricatured as the “parents who fear their kids will know too much about this book”— the Qur’an — the parents in Tennessee might consider demanding a fuller study of Islam in the schools, “because we want our children to be able to answer such questions as these”: Why is it so easy to convert to Islam by reciting the Shehada? And why is it so hard – and so dangerous — to leave Islam? Why is Zakat limited only to other Muslims? Why, in the five required daily prayers, is an imprecation against Jews and Christians repeated seventeen times? Why does Islam still permit slavery? Who are the “vilest of creatures”? Who are the “best of peoples”? Who was Aisha? Who was Asma bint Marwan? What is “Jihad”? What is a “dhimmi”? What is “jizyah”?

That’s a start.
What can CAIR and its willing collaborators respond?

John Podhoretz to Robert Spencer: "You piece of sh*t"
Pakistan: Muslim leader calls for jihad against India, vows its "destruction"

 

Hugh Fitzgerald: What Do French Textbooks Teach About Islam? (Part I)

OCTOBER 5, 2016 12:54 PM BY HUGH FITZGERALD39 COMMENTS


The historian Barbara Lefebvre took it upon herself to find out what is taught about Islam to students in French middle and secondary schools. What she discovered was not surprising, but deeply disturbing nonetheless. And her close analysis may encourage others — in Germany, in Great Britain, in Sweden, in the U.S. – to engage in a similar examination of what young people in the West are now being taught about Islam.
It takes the form of a detailed answer to a question posed by the leading center-right newspaperLe Figaro:

What is the purpose of the history taught in schools? Is it to teach us to “live together” or to instruct pupils?
Barbara LEFEBVRE: History as taught in our schools, defined by the official curricula and faithfully transcribed in textbooks, is not history as taught in the universities. It is not a history in which the present-day historiographical debates, often virulent, are treated. It is the story of the past reflecting the state of research where there is academic consensus. History in the schools serves a positive goal: to transmit to pupils factual knowledge, based on critical analysis of the sources. One hopes, possibly naively, that later on the students will exercise their critical reason and think for themselves. Yet this discipline is most often used to impose value judgments on pupils. Today the problem is aggravated because of the crisis of identity and of massive de-culturation.

It is interesting to study the new history syllabus that the present government wants to impose, the major themes of which are, however, recycled from previous syllabi. A lot of noise for nothing? Not really, for France is now at a breaking point on the question of national identity. How history is presented in the schools is a sensitive area on which we can have an effect, and though the fire has been simmering since 2000, with the attacks of 2015 and the grotesque business of the burkini, the pressure-cooker is really beginning to whistle. The tension is due to the pressure exercised by a tyrannical minority of political Islamists, some of whom who are being presented as “moderates” and thus legitimized by the government, who treat with opprobrium a silent majority of Muslims who are often non-observant or even non-believers, but who are used for political ends. The teaching of religion, in this case Islam, has never been as necessary and as demanding. Now if one wishes to fight, as is claimed, against a politico-religious ideology, it is especially important not to hide troublesome things under the rug, which leads us to teach a history of Muslim civilization without any warts, sometimes bordering on apologetics, all in the service of dogmatically glorifying this whole business of “living together.”

I base my observations on the 2016 programs of study and the official resources to be found online, and then I’ve observed how these programs have been transposed in the school textbooks for the 7^th grade that are most in use [published by Hachette, Belin, Bordas, Hatier]. What do these programs say?
“The study of religion… allows pupils to better situate, and understand, present-day debates,” with an approach which must not be too fixated on such a long period. That’s it. To approach the question with notions of theocracy and of “contact” between the Western and Byzantine Christians and Islam is judicious, but one has a right to be disturbed by the explicit intent of these programs to spend more time on “peaceful contacts” such as commerce and the sciences, rather than the warring contacts, that is to say, the Crusades and the Jihad. The war between Christians and Muslims dominates the history of the Middle Ages and even beyond, in the form of Muslim raids on the Mediterranean shores of Europe. Minimizing the effect not just of these facts, but of their social and cultural effects in the two civilizational spaces, Muslim and Christian, reveals the political message here: “relations between the Christian and the Muslim worlds are not limited to military clashes,” the curricula insist.

On the question of contacts, the official instructions call for teachers to “balance things, by not giving too much weight to the “study of events that put too much emphasis on bellicose contacts.” And thus one proceeds to the construction of social and cultural representations, and in this the 2016 school program is scarcely different from that favored by the Third Republic and its famous “our ancestors the Gauls,” regarded with such contempt by today’s educational establishment. The only difference being that present-day school history presumes to represent an objectivity in the service of multicultural progressivism, an aim that the Third Republic did not have, for it wanted to create a French people, from its various elements, without distinguishing origin or social class. I want to raise another point: the creators of this history curriculum, who defend a “global approach to historical facts,” a constant leitmotiv in the official instructions, want very much to offer a “mixed history.” By that is meant that “the conditions and actions of women and men of a certain period will be treated in the same way.” But curiously, about the condition of women under medieval Islam, silence reigns. In fact, none of the textbooks say anything about women [Belin] in Islam except for one regent of the Ayyoubide dynasty in the 13^th century, as if this singular exception could be used to describe the place of women in Islam. What would one think of a historian who described the condition of women in France at the end of the 16^th century by giving the example of Catherine de Medici?
The liberty accorded to teachers is a liberty of how to teach, one must remember, not what to teach. It is not a liberty of interpreting the curriculum as one pleases. The official curricula insist on a historiographical orientation: thus one is required to treat the battle of Poitiers as less important than it was, almost as if it were an anecdote, and in fact, some of the textbooks no longer even mention it. At the same time, teachers are required to study the friendship between Charlemagne and the Abbassid caliph al-Rashid, whose name is associated with the Thousand and One Nights, where he appears as the perfect caliph. This is an idealized version of the reign of the Al-Rashids, dating from the 8^th and 9^th centuries, since the historians today distinguish the myth of the ideal Caliph presented by Arabic literature with the historical record showing that he weakened the power of the Abbasid caliphate, as the recurrent uprisings during his reign testify, and the troubles on the edges of his empire, and the violent civil war that followed his reign. Besides, his so-called “friendship” with Charlemagne was only a diplomatic friendship, motivated by the shared desire to oppose the Byzantine Empire and the Omayyad emir of Cordoba.

Certainly, in a school textbook, one doesn’t expect to go into detail about the academic debates on the historicity of Mohammed, and the reliability of the facts of his life, but nonetheless it is surprising how little there is about him in the textbooks. Let me sum up what the pupil is told about Mohammed: he was a merchant, who travelled by camel caravan, received a visit from the angel Gabriel in about 610, and founded the first Muslim community and firmly established monotheism with the taking of Mecca from the pagan Arabs in 630. Everything seemed to happen without any major obstacle: Islam spread itself through conquest and everyone was happy to submit! One of the textbooks, the one that is published by Belin, doesn’t even present Mohammed as a head of state and commander of the armies of Islam. However, the figure of the Prophet, the unsurpassable model of the Perfect Muslim, surely merits a closer look at his manner of living, all the more so since his private life was made public by his disciples,and held up, in the Qur’an and the Hadith, as a model to be followed. His life is well known to all practicing Muslims, but students in French schools will not learn what all Muslims know of the exemplary life of Mohammed. Perhaps this absence of biographical information is to be explained by the difference between Western notions of what constitutes an irreproachable man of faith and head of state, and the Muslim view of the Prophet as the Perfect Man?

But everything is a matter of interpretation, and the life of Mohammed, most human in its darker side, should be placed in his historical context, precisely to counter the narrative of political Islam that produces these Jihadists, who hammer home the notion that nothing in the Qur’an is to be “interpreted” away, and tell fellow Muslims that they should live “like the Prophet.” It would be salutary to stop this practice of not talking about certain things in order not to offend the delicate sensibilities of certain pupils and their families, and instead, to deal with the facts and place them within a rational framework rather than filter them through the demands of an ideology.
The way that the conquests of Mohammed and his successors are presented [in the history curriculum] reveals the indulgence with which the politico-juridical side of Islamic history is treated. Every possible means are employed to “balance” the story and to avoid a “violent” presentation of the Muslim conquests. But the series of abridgements and outright omissions in the textbooks leads to historical falsehood. For example, when one reads that in 630 Mohammed and his followers “re-took the city of Mecca” [Bordas], using that verb suggests to pupils that Mecca in some sense already belonged to the Muslims, that what they did was only a legitimate re-taking of what had been theirs. But Mohammed before 630 was never in possession of Mecca; he even had to flee the city in 622 with his 70 followers, accused of disturbing the public order in pagan Mecca.

Yet another illustration of an abridgement that constitutes a falsehood is the way that Mohammed’s capture of cities and territories is presented as having occurred without any resistance. All of the history textbooks for French pupils now suggest that the Muslim conquest was so rapid because it was easy. If the conquest of Arabia was so rapid, it is because Mohammed had only to capture an oasis, which would then give him control of all the territory – hundreds of kilometers in every direction – that depended on that oasis. Similarly, in the Middle East and North Africa, internal divisions among the locals, including both political and theological disputes, allowed the Arab armies to quickly take possession of centers of power. Nonetheless, there was popular resistance [to Mohammed] in Arabia, where resistance by the Jews, in particular, is known from Arab sources, as well as in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Only the textbook published by Hatier attempts to offer – just a little — about the military dimension of Islam’s conquests.

The objectives of the Muslim conquerors are never made clear to pupils, though territorial conquest and the birth of Islam go hand-in-hand, and Mohammed’s statements in the Qur’an and Sunna are unambiguous: Islam is a proselytizing religion, with the vocation of enlightening humanity, and territorial conquest is the principal means to that end. This fusion of the political and the religious ought to be emphasized if one wants to make sense of certain statements by today’s fundamentalists, in order to deconstruct them. Here the concept of Jihad should be addressed: it has, since the beginnings of Islam, provided religious justification for conquest of the imperialist type – at the time entirely commonplace – consisting of pillaging, massacres, and colonization. The work of Sabrina Mervin is used many times to describe the conquest, but what she wrote was not factual history. It is, rather, intended to be a study of Islamic doctrines through history and the present. In Mervin’s preface, she emphasizes that her book does not claim to trace “the political or social history of the Muslim world,” but that is exactly what excerpts from her book are used for in the textbooks, distorting her work. The excerpts that were taken from her book depict Islam as a perfect theocratic project, realized without any obstacle, and describes a “social representation” of this project by Muslim theologians. In the Hachette textbook, there is even worse: “The Muslim caliphs took control of vast territories peopled by nomads. In order to better control these nomads, they developed cities ruled by emirs.” Now in what sense were the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East in the pre-Islamic period [of Judaism, Christianity, or the Persian or Roman Empires], who for centuries had lived a settled existence, having developed a high level of urban civilization – in what sense were any of these “nomads” comparable to the Bedouin tribes of Arabia Islamised by Mohammed? Alexandria, Jerusalem, Damascus, Yarmouk, Cairo, Mosul and many other cities, were not, to my knowledge, founded by Arab conquerors. The Muslim conquerors did redesign some aspects of the urban landscape in order to better Islamize its inhabitants, but did not found any of these cities that retained many traces, especially archeological, of their glorious pre-Islamic past. It is errors like this in the textbooks that leave one perplexed.

Hugh Fitzgerald: What Do French Textbooks Teach About Islam? (Part II)

OCTOBER 11, 2016 10:44 AM BY HUGH FITZGERALD21 COMMENTS


Historian Barbara Lefebvre continues her investigation of how Islam is taught in France:
There is much to say about the way that the wars between Christianity and Islam are depicted in the treatment of the Crusades. Most startling, in the Hatier textbook, one finds in the chapter titled “The violence of holy wars” that the authors discuss only the Spanish Reconquista and the Crusades, focusing on such crimes of the Crusades as the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Not a word about Jihad in this sub-chapter, even though this is the chapter on “Holy Wars.” Jihad is to be found, however, only in the chapter on Islam!

In this undertaking to show that Islam is open and tolerant, the theme of “peaceful co-existence” on the model of Andalusia has become routine. Despite the work of historians, and despite the Arabs themselves, describing the social and economic life of the dhimmis [Jews and Christians living in Dar al-Islam], pupils are presented not only with an “angelic” history, but one based on distortion. The school textbooks, without exception, insist on the warm welcome the conquered peoples supposedly offered to the Muslim conquerors, all on the basis of Arab sources alone, of debatable objectivity. How often, after all, does the victor depict himself unfavorably? A critical look at sources serves to avoid anachronisms! In the textbooks, it appears that in Arabia, after 632, everyone became Muslim, as if by magic, without any military pressure whatsoever. To claim that is to leave out the fact that the conquest resulted in a choice between conversion or death for the pagans and for certain Jewish tribes. Many converted in order to survive, and it was the same in all the areas around the Mediterranean conquered by the Arabs, from the Judaized Berbers and the Syriac Christians to the Zoroastrians, condemned to disappear. It is disconcerting to see the textbooks all rely uncritically on the same Muslim source, to offer an idyllic view of the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. One finds texts by different medieval Arab authors that the pupils must simply accept. For example, this quotation from Al-Baladhuri dating from the ninth century is used in several textbooks and depicts Jews and Christians accepting the Muslim invasion of Syria as a blessing. “The inhabitants opened wide their doors [to the Muslims], came out with musicians and singers who began to play, and paid the Jizyah.”
The only question pupils are asked is: “How were the Muslims welcomed?” The pupil has to paraphrase the author, taking what he says as truth, a “truth” that will be applied more generally later on in the same lesson.
It’s as if one were to learn about the life of Charlemagne only from the Chronicle of Eginhard! Many other Arab texts are used that present the conquest of Jerusalem first by Omar, and then by Saladin, as a liberation from Byzantine oppressors or as an act of pacification. The textbooks pass over in silence that for the Christians, the main population in these lands during the High Middle Ages, the Islamic conquest meant the loss of sovereignty, and for the many Jewish communities it meant passing from one oppressor to another. So when one reads “in the territories dominated by the Arabs, the populations converted little by little to Islam” [Belin, Hatier], one has the feeling that nothing is done to enlighten the pupil as to the true conditions of this Islamisation, which, just like other conquests in the ancient or medieval worlds, meant depriving those conquered of their sovereignty, their property rights, and imposing on them both social and cultural submission. In Spain, for example, the Christians resisted, as at Toledo in 713, and the reprisals [by the Muslims] were ferocious, with mutilations and public crucifixions. The way in which the manuals evoke a supposed “coexistence” among the three religions, under Muslim domination, is, if not outright false, at best incomplete, for in speaking of “coexistence,” the conditions of that coexistence – submission by Christians and Jews – are not mentioned.

The pact of the dhimma [a contract of submission] that Mohammed imposed in 628 on the Jews of Khaybar subsequently served as a model for all Arab conquerors. It is this notion of the dhimmi that must be grasped if we want to comprehend how the collective representations of the non-Muslims were forged throughout the centuries in the Islamic world. It is the legal, social, and economic framework,based on a theological foundation, of a perfect society. It is a contract of protection that the Muslim conquerors offer to Jews and Christians. Muslim society is based on juridico-theological discrimination,with Muslim Arabs at the top of the social and political pyramid, then the Islamised Berbers, then the muwalladun, that is, the non-Arab converts to Islam, and lower down, but above the slaves, one finds the dhimmis, whose situation, according to one textbook’s simplification, is this: “They are free to practice their religion, in return for payment of a tax.”

Another textbook relies on a text of Al-Tabari from the 9^th century to note the pact of dhimmi, but without defining it or explaining its discriminatory aspect, which prevailed throughout Muslim lands until its abolition in 1856. Those who were dhimmis lived in a state of perpetual uncertainty, subject to a Caliph’s whims or to those of a Sultan sterner than his predecessor, who might exaggeratedly raise the capitation tax on non-Muslims, the Jizyah, in order to pressure more of them to convert, or to ransom their co-religionists, as the Jews and some Christians of Hebron in the 19^th century. If the Jizyah was a graduated tax, it was also demanded of widows, of orphans, and even of the deceased. If many Jews and Christians managed to avoid conversion by paying the Jizyah, historians have shown that through the centuries, there were also many who decided to convert so as to be better integrated and to avoid being pariahs, inferior both socially and legally. Could one talk quite so easily about “peaceful coexistence” if the textbooks told the truth about the treatment of dhimmis, as for example the humiliating requirement that they wear identifying marks on their clothes, a practice which the Church copied in the 13^th century when it required Jews to wear similar marks? Also forbidden to dhimmis were collective prayers said aloud, the building of churches or synagogues taller than mosques (when the building of such structures was not forbidden outright). Dhimmis could not ride horses or carry arms. In court, the testimony of a dhimmi was worth less than that of a Muslim, and different sanctions were imposed according to the religion of the guilty party. These rules, fixed by the Islamic law, or Sharia, were applied everywhere in the Islamic world, with more or less rigor depending on the rulers. To sum up the dhimmi condition as the “protection of religious minorities” upon payment of a tax is either a semi-truth, or a semi-lie, depending on your preference.
For years now, in the certainly praiseworthy aim of showing that there is more to Islam than its present-day politico-religious obscurantism would suggest, we hear constantly repeated as an obvious truth that the West benefited from the Muslim presence in Andalusia, that without Arab scholars we would have forgotten our Greek heritage. I note that the myth of Andalusia has spread far and wide, now applied to all the lands under Arab or Muslim domination. The West is supposedly in debt to medieval Arab science – that’s what emerges from these textbooks unanimously describing Islamic civilization as “brilliant.” Obviously, this isn’t a matter of calling into question the reality of a civilizational crossroads under Islam in the Middle Ages, which did transmit knowledge, but to question the simplistic way in which facts are presented and used to construct certain commonplaces that flatten out our study of history, a matter of academic consensus.

The discourse about the golden age of medieval Arab civilization, flattering and a little naïve, serves to sift the facts and to favor the image that is judged most beneficial for today’s needs, that of an “enlightened Islam.” But this ideological project ill serves both scientific thought as well as the intellectuals (Muslim) who are fighting in their own countries for the emergence of a objective and rational discourse about the Muslim past. But we see the history of medieval Arab science being rewritten for our (French) pupils, not to put it on the same plane as other civilizations, but above them, and thereby giving credit to Islam, even though religion has no place in this matter. Would one attribute the Copernican Revolution to Christianity? Einstein’s theory of relativity to Judaism?

In one of the textbooks [Hachette], an Arab chronicler of the 11^th century, Said Al-Andalusi, is cited, without any critical distance supplied to the pupil, who will thus learn that before the arrival of the Arabs, “this country knew nothing of science and those who lived here knew no one who was noted for his love of knowledge.”
Then comes a passage on the contribution of the Arabs to the sciences both ancient and modern, through the translation of Greek texts. This apologetic reading is further supported by an assignment for the pupil: “Show how the presence of Muslims in Andalusia promoted the development of science and philosophy in the West,” and by the lesson that repeats that “the texts of ancient authors were rediscovered in the West thanks to their Arabic translations.” Passed over in silence is an important fact: many of these translators were users of Arabic, but were neither Arabs, nor Muslims.

Jews such as Maimonides, Ibn Tibbon and Yossef Kimhi, and especially Christians, mainly Syriac, were the translators of these texts from classical antiquity that then made their way to the West. One knows from different sources that caliphs such as Mahdi or al-Rashid ordered Syriac Christians to translate ancient texts, such as, for example, those of Aristotle. The Arab historian Ibn Khaldun recalled that the Caliph Al-Mansour in the 8^th century asked the Byzantine emperor to send him treatises on mathematics and physics by Greek authors. Avicenna, Al-Farabi, Sohravardi were all Persians, inheritors of pre-Islamic lore from this (Persian) civilization in contact with both Asia and the Middle East. We know that most of the Arab knowledge about algebra came directly from Greek, Indian, and Babylonian sources. As to medicine, the textbooks all try to teach students that Arab doctors were more modern (than non-Arabs), but here again there is no mention that many of these “Arab” doctors were neither Muslims nor Arabs. For example the famous doctor Ibn Ishaq of the 9^th century, who translated Galen, Plato, and Aristotle, first into Syriac and then into Arabic, and whose discoveries in ophthalmology were so important, was a Nestorian Christian. Ibn Masawayh, who in the 9^th century translated and edited many scientific tracts into Arabic, was a Christian. As for knowledge of astronomy among the Arabs, it comes directly from Greek, Chaldean, and Babylonian sources. The textbook by Hatier is an exception, in that it admits that a great number of scientific works by Arabs, and transmitted to the West, were based on Chinese sources.

Arab philosophy is never discussed without mention of Averroes, a native of Spain, and a symbol of the intellectual openness of Islam in its golden age. But carefully left out is mention of how the jurist Al-Ghazali, the contemporary of Averroes, refuted the latter’s rational vision, which led to Averroes’s banishment for heresy, and his books being burned. It is because of translations of his works into medieval Latin that Averroes’s thought survives, and for Muslims to rediscover him and make him, at present, a symbol of their intellectual openness! In another manual [Hatier] there is an edifying extract from the writer Amin Maalouf: “in every branch of learning the Western Christians followed the Arabs, in Syria, as in Spain and Sicily,” and there follows a list of subjects first sown by Arab learning. And the pupil learns nothing of what the Westerners provided by way of learning to the Arabs and will wrongly conclude “No doubt there is nothing,” and the title of this lesson, “Cultural Exchanges,” makes no sense, because apparently the civilizational benefits are one way only, from the Arabs to the West. The textbooks salute the real talent of those who transmitted knowledge from the learned of the Islamic world, and who were able to develop established fields further, or to make use of the translations of ancient authors, but one expects a work intended for the schools will be more exact: to transmit the knowledge of conquered peoples is not the same as being either the author, or the inventor, of such knowledge.

Aside from the textbook published by Belin, that contains a brief except from Al-Yacoubi that mentions in passing the “black slaves” attached to the service of the Caliph Al-Mansour, (though without drawing attention to this matter in any of its related exercises), none of them treats of the Arab slave trade. As the historian Marc Ferro noted as long ago as 1992, “while the crimes committed by Europeans occupy whole pages [in the school books], people’s hands begin to tremble even at the mere mention of the crimes committed by the Arabs.” It should be pointed out that the story of the African slave trade would change considerably the image of medieval Islam that the official curriculum and the textbooks wish to impose on students. The Arab trade in African slaves began in 652 with the treaty that Ibn Said forced on the Sudanese of Darfur, until the 20^thcentury, and it is difficult to find any trace of Arab Muslim abolitionists, whereas Europeans did fight against their contemporary slavers for the abolition of this inhumane trafficking in humans. The Arab slave trade, according to eminent historians, involved at least 17 million people. Some were African girls used as domestic and sex slaves, a practice authorized in the Qur’an [33:52, 5:43, 4:2, 23:1, 33:02, 5:29].

One aspect of the Arab slave trade that is rarely remembered is that it involved castration. Seven out of 10 captives were castrated so as to serve as eunuchs, but most of them died from the effects of the operation. This vast enterprise of castration explains in part how little was the demographic trace these Africans left in the Muslim societies, while millions of slaves in the Atlantic slave trade did have descendants all over the New World. One would have hoped that this subject would be treated later on in the curriculum, but no, there is nothing about it. The whole history of sub-Saharan African slavery over the centuries thus becomes reduced to the Atlantic slave trade. Here again, one sees that history as taught in our schools is very different from the claim made that it aims to create an enlightened citizenry, and to develop the critical spirit of students through the analysis of the historical sources, rather than to impose on them the reigning orthodoxy.


Huffington Post: "Islam Isn’t Just Compatible With Western Values, It Fully Endorses Them"
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Video: Robert Spencer on Barack Obama's Fantasy Islam

 

Hugh Fitzgerald: May God Save “God Save The Queen”

OCTOBER 15, 2016 3:39 AM BY HUGH FITZGERALD74 COMMENTS


A Muslim student at King’s College London, and an officer of its Student Union (3 of its 5 top officers are Muslims), one Mahamed Abdullahi, has called for “God Save the Queen,” Great Britain’s national anthem, to be omitted from the school’s graduation ceremonies. He claims the song is “outdated” and “not reflective of the global values the college espouses.” Abdullahi – who is, by the way, a Danish citizen, though not exactly a Dane – insists that this anthem is dangerous “in the context” of the “increasing far-right nationalism across Europe and the legacy of the British Empire.” His obscenity-filled rant can be read here.
What makes “God Save the Queen” outdated? Has the monarchy fallen out of favor with the people of Great Britain? Or is their interest and enthusiasm for the Queen and the idea of the monarchy perfectly understandable, for the Royals are a human symbol of stability and national identity, in a world more dizzyingly in flux than ever before? Look at the British popular press, which appears to devote half its space to Kate Middleton’s children, and another quarter to the Queen. Clearly the British people have no wish to jettison their monarchy. If there were no royal family on which to focus, popular attention might instead be given, as in the United States, to empty celebrities, such as the Kardashians, or to the mix-n’-match couplings and uncouplings of assorted jolies and pitts.
“God Save The Queen” is mild in its winsome expression of national fervor (compare, for example, the martial theme of La Marseillaise); the first two verses go like this:

God save our gracious Queen!
Long live our noble Queen!
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the Queen.
O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall;
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all!

There is nothing conceivably “far right” about these sentiments. I doubt if Mahamed Abdulllahi comprehends the useful role of the constitutional monarch in Great Britain as a focus of national identity, unity, and pride, providing the British with a sense of continuity and stability. What enrages him is the very idea that the British people in this deuteroelizabethan age should permit themselves to have feelings of national pride, and what’s more, to express them. For Abdullahi, that is enough to constitute “far-right nationalism.” When your child pledges allegiance “to the flag and to the republic for which it stands” and wishes “liberty and justice for all,” is he being “far-right”? At a baseball game, do you feel part of a “far-right” crowd because you listen to, or even join in singing, “The Star-Spangled Banner”? Of course not.
Is there any expression of pride in a national identity that Mahamed Abdullahi would find acceptable? I don’t think so. I think that the only kind of “identity” he approves of is that of the supranational umma, or Community of Muslim Believers, and that he obscurely senses that a shared sense of affection and pride in one’s own nation (as expressed in England in many ways, including singing “God Save the Queen) is also, nowadays, a part of the West’s psychological defense against the encroachments of aggressive Islam. For Mahamed Abdullahi, that’s enough to make it “far-right” nationalism.
What about the charge that “God Save the Queen” carries with it the “legacy of the British Empire”? (The anthem itself was first published in 1745, before there was much of a British Empire to celebrate.) Perhaps Abdullahi objects to the fact that many former colonies, once part of that Empire, are now enthusiastic members of the British Commonwealth, keeping up ties to Great Britain, and delighting in receiving visits from Queen Elizabeth II and younger members of the Royal Family. It is not just Canada and Australia and New Zealand that are thrilled, but India, Singapore, Uganda, Nigeria, Jamaica, indeed every country in the Commonwealth (save for Rwanda and Cameroon, but only because they are the latest to join, and the Queen hasn’t yet fit them into her schedule), eager to bask in the reflected glory of a royal visit.
Apparently very few of those actually in the Commonwealth share Mahamed Abdullahi’s sour vision of the “legacy of the British Empire.” Mahamed Abdullahi may have forgotten that even Yassir Arafat once hoped that his future state of “Palestine” would be allowed to join the Commonwealth.

But since he contemptuously dismisses the “legacy of the British Empire” without discussing it, perhaps we should ask: just what was that legacy? First, the English language, which has been perhaps the greatest gift to colonized peoples anywhere, the language that has served as a lingua franca for many different peoples in Africa and in the subcontinent; and the spread of English has allowed them entrée into the worlds of science, technology, business, sport, entertainment, and that same English brings with it, of course, an unrivalled literary heritage. Among the former British colonies in Africa, the spread of English now permits Nigerians to talk to Tanzanians and Kenyans to talk to Ghanaians. And in India, with a multitude of tongues — Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, and Punjabi being the most widely used – the educated in every state can communicate with each other, and with those similarly educated throughout India, in English. It is the English language that, paradoxically, unifies India.

Second, the British introduced the rule of law, specifically the Common Law, including what had been built up through centuries of cases as contract and property law, and rules of civil and criminal procedure. Third, public works – roads, bridges, canals, railroads – that the British built in so many of their colonies, and that promoted economic development.
Fourth – modern medicine, including vaccinations for many previously untreatable diseases. Fifth – free trade within the Empire, stimulating economic growth. Sixth—universal schooling, from elementary grades all the way up, in many of the colonies, to universities. And seventh, the abolition first of the slave trade, and then of slavery. The slave trade that the British abolished first was that vast and cruel enterprise conducted by Muslim Arabs in East and Central Africa and involving 17 million black Africans, many of them young boys castrated where they were captured and, if they survived the operation (only 20% did), were then brought to the slave markets of Islam, to be sold as eunuchs. It was the Royal Navy that finally stamped out that slave trade, preventing the Arab slavers from landing with their cargo on the Arabian peninsula.
Mahamed Abdullahi has nothing good to say about “legacy of the British Empire,” but we have a right and a duty to remind him of that positive legacy (language, law, public works, medicine, free trade, education), and particularly to remind him that it was the British who ended the brutal slave trade conducted by Muslim Arabs.
Finally, Mahamed Abdullahi claims that the British national anthem is “not reflective” of the “’global values’ the college espouses.” What are those “global values”? Would they include such values as equal treatment of all, including minorities and women, before the law? Would they include the free exercise of any religion or the right to believe in none? Would those “global values” include the right to change one’s religion? Would they include the right of both sexes to equal education?

Would they include the right to criticize religions, even if that offends some believers? Would they include the right of children not to be treated as their parents’ chattel? These are not so much “global” values, in fact, as values originating in the countries of the advanced West, and especially Great Britain and its political offspring, the United States. The university’s administrators, who had initially (and shamefully) shown themselves willing to discuss Abdullahi’s nauseating proposal, have fortunately been forced by public outrage to backtrack. Perhaps they need to be reminded – Mahamed Abdullahi can bring them up to snuff — on the Muslim version of “global values” espoused by such models of religious freedom and legal equality as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Libya, Syria, Iraq, the Sudan, and many dozens of other Muslim countries. And then he might also explain what the “legacy” of the Muslim Empire has been for so many different lands and peoples. That should prove most instructive.
And meanwhile, may God save “God Save The Queen.”



Mitri Raheb Occupies the Bible
UNESCO passes resolution declaring Temple Mount Muslim, not Jewish

 

UNESCO passes resolution declaring Temple Mount Muslim, not Jewish

OCTOBER 14, 2016 8:31 PM BY CHRISTINE WILLIAMS134 COMMENTS
The UN has long been against Israel and proved it in a virulent way in Durban I, right before 9/11; since then, it has continued working toward the ultimate goal of delegitimizing Israel and ultimately destroying it, which is, of course, also the dream of jihadists.
UNESCO has now passed an expected anti-Israel resolution which denies “Jewish connections to the Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem,” despite abundant archeological evidence proving Israel’s connection to Jerusalem.

24 UNESCO member states voted in favor of the resolution, 26 abstained, and only six countries voted against.​

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Donald Trump weighed in, declaring that the resolution is a:

“one-sided attempt to ignore Israel’s 3,000-year bond to its capital city” and “further evidence of the enormous anti-Israel bias” at the United Nations.​

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Trump further stated that:

under his potential administration, “the United States will recognize Jerusalem as the one true capital of Israel” and that “Israel will have a true, loyal, and lasting friend in the United States of America.”​

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Christianity is also a priority on the hit list of jihadists, with a similar impulse to erase all the traces of the conquered religion. Back in 2012, Saudi Arabia’s highest Islamic authority said: “No Christian churches should be allowed in the Arabian Peninsula.”

“Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the Saudi grand mufti, said it is “necessary to destroy all the churches in the region.”​

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Abdullah further “cited an Islamic hadith quoting the prophet Mohammed on his deathbed, who said, ‘there are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula,’ meaning only Islam can exist there.”


“Only six countries vote against contentious resolution claiming Temple Mount is sacred only to Muslims”, i24 News, October 13, 2016:

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on Thursday passed a contentious anti-Israel resolution denying Jewish connections to the Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem.​

24 UNESCO member states voted in favor of the resolution, 26 abstained, and only six countries voted against.​

The proposal, put forth by the Palestinians, along with Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and Sudan, condemns Israel on several issues related to Jerusalem and its holy sites.​

The draft resolution, a copy of which was obtained by Ha’aretz, acknowledges that the city of Jerusalem is holy to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity but says the Temple Mount holy site is sacred only to Muslims and fails to mention its significance to Jews.​

An entire section of the proposal dedicated specifically to the Temple Mount complex refers only to the site’s Muslim names (Al-Aqsa Mosque and Haram al-Sharif) and fails to mention its Hebrew or English names (Har HaBayit or Temple Mount).​

​

The resolution refers also to the Western Wall plaza by its Muslim name (al-Buraq plaza) and only mentions its Hebrew-Jewish name (Hakotel Hama’aravi) later in quotation marks.​

The flashpoint complex is considered Judaism’s holiest site, once the site of the first and second Temples, and is the third holiest to the Muslim faith.​

Israeli politicians, led by President Reuven Rivlin, were quick to condemn the vote on Thursday, slamming the resolution even before the vote had taken place in Paris.​

“No forum or body in the world can come and deny the connection between the Jewish people, the Land of Israel and Jerusalem – and any such body that does so simply embarrasses itself,” he said at an event in his Jerusalem residence. “We can understand criticism, but you cannot change history.”​

Agricultrure Minister Uri Ariel sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling on him to act by encouraging nations to end funding for the UN.​

“We in the government in general, and you as the foreign minister, should demand that the nations of the world condemn these anti-Semitic decisions, and immediately stop funding the UN,” he wrote.​

He also called for the government to “strengthen the Temple Mount, and to to increase the control and Jewish presence in the holiest place for Jews — the Temple Mount.”​

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog said UNESCO is giving a “bad name to diplomacy.”​

“Whoever wants to rewrite history, to distort fact, and to completely invent the fantasy that the Western Wall and Temple Mount have no connection to the Jewish people, is telling a terrible lie that only serves to increase hatred,” he said. “On this matter there is no disagreement among the people of Israel, and I urge UNESCO to withdraw this bizarre resolution and to engage in protecting, not distorting, human history.”……​

France was among the 33 countries that backed the resolution in the 58-member body causing a diplomatic spat which resulted in French President Francois Hollande pledging that France would not support such measures in the future.​

​

Israeli diplomats have over recent weeks attempted to convince UNESCO member states to oppose or at least abstain during the vote.​

Israel’s foreign ministry published a brochure featuring archaeological findings providing evidence of Jewish connections to Jerusalem generally and specifically to the Temple Mount complex.​

In a letter submitted to UNESCO’s executive board, Israel’s ambassador to the world cultural organization wrote that, without undermining other religions’ ties to Jerusalem’s holy sites, the archaeological findings “leave no doubt…of the deepest and longest Jewish presence in Jerusalem since ancient times,” according to Ha’aretz.​

He wrote that the initiative challenging the Jewish people’s ties to Jerusalem “is an attempt to rewrite history in a dangerous, unfair and one-sided manner.”​

Hugh Fitzgerald: May God Save “God Save The Queen”
Monroe, NY: Muslim known to FBI arrested for bomb threat against LaGuardia airport

 

Hugh Fitzgerald: Keeping Jihadis From Jihad

OCTOBER 19, 2016 3:19 PM BY HUGH FITZGERALD43 COMMENTS

“Why is so much time, money and effort spent in these cases? Why not just let them go?”

A High Court judge has questioned if an “extraordinary level” of state intervention was justified in stopping a 17-year-old boy from travelling to Syria amid fears he would wage jihad.
Mr Justice Hayden said he had wondered whether or not the “huge resources” deployed in the case were “proportionate”.
He said people often asked why time and taxpayers’ money was spent preventing teenagers from joining terror groups in the Middle East, adding that he considered the argument: “Why not just let them go?”
But the judge concluded that in the case of the boy, who had an uncle held in Guantanamo Bay, a young man’s life had been saved by the local authority’s intervention.
Mr Justice Hayden last year barred the teenager from travelling abroad following a hearing in the Family Division of the High Court after police and social workers raised concerns about him heading to Syria.
He made the teenager a ward of court – a move which bars him from leaving the jurisdiction of England and Wales.
And the judge said he has analysed the benefits of state intervention after reviewing the case at a follow-up hearing in London.
Mr Justice Hayden had been told that the boy’s two elder brothers had been killedwaging jihad in Syria.
He said the teenager, who has joint Libyan and British nationality, could not be named.
But he said the local authority that had applied for the teenager to be made a ward of court was Brighton and Hove City Council.
​

Mr. Justice Hayden decided that it was right that vast amounts of time and money were spent on the case of a 17-year-old Muslim boy who apparently wanted to join the Al-Nusra Front – a branch of Al Qaeda — in Syria. The money, the time, the attention were all worth it, he said, because the boy’s life “was saved.”
And how was it saved? Not by changing his mind on the duty of Jihad, that is, fighting the Infidels, nor about the glory of dying while conducting Jihad, as had his two older brothers (while a third brother, though severely wounded, survived), fighting with the Al-Nusra front in Syria.

No, the boy’s life has been “saved” by Mr. Justice Hayden’s insistence that the boy be made a “ward of court,” and not allowed to leave the jurisdiction of England and Wales, and thus prevented from emulating his “martyred” brothers in Syria. And for how long can he remain a ward? Until he turns 18, or 21? For the rest of his life? The news accounts do not say, but one assumes he cannot be a “ward” forever. But while he is a ward, in order to prevent him from leaving the country, he will have to be watched around the clock, which will require at least four or five policemen to conduct the surveillance necessary. And that’s just for one potential Jihadi. For the British taxpayer, that’s an expensive proposition.
And it is reasonable to think that this boy, far from having his enthusiasm for Jihad dampened, will be even more eager to join the Al-Nusra Front precisely because the Infidels (British Division) are trying to stop him, and if he isn’t allowed to conduct it in Syria, he will attempt to conduct Jihad where he can, that is, in England or Wales? There is no reason to think he will be grateful for having his life “saved,” but rather, he will be furious that Infidels are preventing his “martyrdom” in Syria and all the good things, beginning with those dark-eyed houris, that Muslims are promised as a result.
The very few cases where Muslim terrorists have changed their minds have occurred not when they were prevented from taking part in violent Jihad, but when they did participate, saw the Al-Nusra Front, or the Islamic State, or similar groups, up close and personal, and became disenchanted because of the atrocities they witnessed. A handful of these ex-terrorists even became ex-Muslims as a result. But the boy here is not being given that chance. He will continue, one suspects, to idolize, and attempt to emulate, his three older brothers and his uncle (still in Guantanamo). At some point the boy will be deemed too old to be kept as a “ward.” And if he hasn’t already conducted some form of violent Jihad in Great Britain by that point (and been imprisoned or killed as a result), he will certainly head off somewhere – to Syria or Iraq or even family’s native Libya – to wage Jihad against those he considers to be Infidels.

Does the British government have a duty to save the lives of people whose sole reason for being is to kill Infidels? Mr. Justice Hayden is not alone in thinking that it is a good idea to keep this boy, whose desire to take part in violent Jihad is deep, in Great Britain, and under surveillance, in order to keep him and others like him alive. But this boy, and those others like him, are the very people who, if they could, would kill Mr. Justice Hayden and all other Infidels. It’s a kind of madness, a diseased sympathy, shared by those governments in the West that try so hard to save the lives of murderous Jihadis by preventing them, the truest of true believers in their midst, from going off to Syria or Iraq to conduct Jihad. Will their remaining in Western Europe make them less of a threat?
Why, when there exists the perfect honey-pot of the Islamic State (or other variations on the fanatical theme, such as the Al-Nusra Front) to attract the most dangerous Muslims, those most eager for “martyrdom,” should any Infidel of sense want to prevent these Muslims from joining such groups? Wouldn’t you be delighted to hear that a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand Muslims from your country had gone off to join the Islamic State, or the Al-Nusra Front? Wouldn’t you want them to attain their desired end, to become “martyrs” for the cause, whether disposed of by Syrian or Russian bombs, or by Kurdish fighters, or from the bullets of any of a dozen rival Islamist groups?

Mr. Justice Hayden, again: “Why is so much time, money and effort spent in these cases? Why not just let them go?” But he was wrong to be satisfied with the answer his inquiry provided, that “at the end of the day…they [these huge resources] have saved a human life.” That is the kind of sentimentalism, where distinctions between the life of a potential killer and a likely victim of that killer are effaced, that creates moral confusion.
The Al-Nusra Front, and the Islamic State, have helped attract so many dangerous Muslims to Syria (and Iraq), where they have participated in martyrdom operations and achieved their desired end. They will disturb us no longer. Far from trying to keep people from leaving Western Europe on such missions, we should quietly cheer them on and at the very least, certainly do nothing to stop them. They want to die as “martyrs,” and we Infidels should hope that far from Western Europe, and ideally at the hands of others like themselves, they will get their wish. It’s not “lives” we want to save, but the “lives of Infidels.” There is, Mr. Justice Hayden should try to understand, a difference.


Los Angeles: Muslim gets 30 years for attempting to aid the Islamic State
Video: Robert Spencer on why non-devout Muslims sometimes turn to jihad terror

 

Hugh Fitzgerald: Hillary, George Washington, and Islam

OCTOBER 23, 2016 5:24 PM BY HUGH FITZGERALD48 COMMENTS



In the second Presidential debate, Hillary Clinton made a curious claim about Islam’s place in the history of America: “We’ve had Muslims in America since George Washington.” Many in the television audience of tens of millions must have thought that surely she had evidence for this, and quietly accepted her statement, while others, better prepared, and thus less easily fooled, were not inclined to swallow this latest example of nunc-pro-tunc backdating of Muslims in American history.
Let’s start with Mount Vernon itself. Is there proof of Muslims among Washington’s slaves? The Mount Vernon historian Mary Thompson writes that “the evidence” for the practice of Islam is to be found in the “names of some of the slaves.” That is a peculiar way to state that the only evidence, if it is indeed to be taken as evidence, is that provided by three proper names of four of the slaves (two of them had the same name), out of a total of 318. No evidence of any other kind for Islam at Mt. Vernon is presented. There are no surviving Qur’ans, or the slightest evidence that there ever were any, no records of anyone, slave or master, having seen a “Muslim” slave prostrate and facing Meccawards, praying five times – or even once — a day, not a single report of the recital of the Shehada.
What we get instead is this:

Much of the evidence for the presence of Muslim slaves at Mount Vernon comes from naming practices as well as individual histories. The names of at least three female slaves at Mount Vernon indicate an Islamic influence on the Estate, if not the actual practice of Islam, over a period of roughly thirty years. Two women, presumably a mother and daughter, named “Fatimer” and “Little Fatimer” were included on a 1774 tithables list at Mount Vernon, a document prepared for local authorities listing the people whom George Washington was responsible to pay taxes for. These names appear to be a variation of the popular Muslim woman’s name Fatima, meaning “Shining One” in Arabic, and the name of the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter.
​

But the name “Fatima” is the slenderest evidence of some Muslim connection, given that the names slaves bore were often given by their owners, or by the men who ran the slave-markets, or by those who brought the slaves over from Africa by ship. Many slaves in America were given Biblical names, or names associated with ancient Rome, but that is hardly evidence of these slaves having any connection to the ancient Israelites or to ancient Rome.
And when the Mt. Vernon historian Mary Thompson refers to “an Islamic influence on the Estate, if not the actual practice of Islam,” this is so vague as to be meaningless. What kind of “Islamic influence” was detected? Expressed how? Why not tell us more? Or is it merely a way of asserting what is not susceptible of proof: to wit, that the name “Fatimer” should be taken as evidence of an “Islamic influence” because “Fatima” is an Arabic name? It might well reflect nothing more than a name some slave-master found appealing.
The second name that is adduced as “evidence” for “some knowledge of Islamic tradition or a familiarity with Arabic” near (but not at) Mt. Vernon is just as unconvincing:

Late in 1800 a young, unmarried mixed race woman named Letty who lived at Washington’s Muddy Hole Farm gave birth to a girl she called “Nila.” This name is a known variant of an Islamic woman’s name “Naailah,” which means “someone who acquires something” or “someone who gets what they want.” [“Nila” is also a name once popular among non-Muslims, and both Hebrew and Indian, but not Arabic, origins for the name are given.] Even if no one was actually practicing Islam at Mount Vernon by this time, this child’s name provides evidence that some knowledge of Islamic tradition or a familiarity with Arabic could still be found in the larger African-American community in Fairfax County or Alexandria, if not at Mount Vernon itself, at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
​

A slave child’s name, without more, is hardly evidence of a“knowledge of Islamic tradition.” Letty might merely have found the name “Nila” appealing and given it to her daughter. Since there is no evidence at all for the name “Letty” being Muslim, isn’t that more plausible than claiming that “Nila” here must be a shortened form of an Arab name Naailah (unproven) and therefore must have an Islamic significance (also unproven)?
The third bit of “evidence” for “Islam at Mount Vernon” concerns a male slave named Sambo:

The documented history of an African-born carpenter at Mount Vernon known as Sambo Anderson suggests that he was a practicing Muslim…Sambo Anderson was described as having mahogany-colored skin, with high cheekbones, and a stout build. His face was marked by both tribal cuts and tattooing, and he wore gold rings in both ears. Interestingly, Sambo told several people that he was of royal birth, and that his father was a king.
​

What is it about the “documented history” of Sambo Anderson that “suggests he was a practicing Muslim”? In fact, there is nothing, but the writer keeps up a patter, piling on irrelevant details to make you think some connection to Islam has been made. Of what relevance to being a Muslim is the description of Sambo Anderson’s mahogany-covered skin, high cheekbones, and stout build? Mary Thompson also claims the name “Sambo” must be related to the West African name “Sambou,” and makes the further claim that that name was traditionally given to second sons by the Islamized Hausa tribe. But several authorities on names describe “Sambou” instead as a Hebrew diminutive of “Samuel.” Whom should we believe? Furthermore, she describes Sambo Anderson as having a tattoo on his face; ordinarily that would be evidence not for, but against his being a Muslim, given that in Sunni Islam permanent tattooing is forbidden, haram.
On Sambo’s supposed connection to Islam, Thompson says:

One of the things Sambo probably brought with him to Mount Vernon was Islam. The ethnic group from which he most likely came, the Hausa, was heavily influenced by both the Arabic language and Islamic religion, which spread to them from Mali beginning in the late fourteenth century.
​

Again, on what basis are these claims made: this “probably-brought-with-him”and “group from which he most likely came”? The tentative speculations presented as firm claims continue to disturb. Did anyone at the time see Sambo perform his ablutions (wudu), ever see him, even once, prostrate in prayer while turned Mecca-wards? Did anyone ever hear a syllable of Muslim doctrine from him, a recital of the Shehada, anything at all? Even just a mention of “Allah”? Don’t you think if there had been any such evidence, a single report, say, by the slave-master or by a fellow slave, that “Sambo was seen prostrating himself in prayer” or “Sambo spoke of ‘Allah’” or of “someone named ‘Muhammad,’” then this Mt. Vernon historian would have adduced it?
So what we have is the flimsiest possible evidence for Islam at Mt. Vernon, all semidemihemi quavering suggestion and maybe-perhaps-might-be speculation:

1. “Much of the evidence for the practice of Islam is to be found in the names of some of the slaves” should read: “the only evidence for the practice of Islam is to be found in the names of a handful of slaves – four – out of 318 at Mt. Vernon — and even the supposed Islamic significance of all three names (with two of the three names being of likely Hebrew origin) — is doubtful.”
2. “These names [Fatimer, Little Fatimer] indicate an Islamic influence on the Estate, if not the actual practice of Islam, over a period of roughly thirty years.” What kind of Islamic influence? If there is no “actual practice” of Islam, then what is left? These names, without more, hardly constitute evidence of “an Islamic influence.” “Fatima” is not only a name of Muhammad’s daughter, but then became an Iberian toponym, that could have been chosen by non-Muslims, including slave-traders and slave-owners, for its mellifluousness alone… ..
3. “Even if no one was actually practicing Islam at Mount Vernon by this time, this child’s name provides evidence that some knowledge of Islamic tradition or a familiarity with Arabic” was to be found at Mount Vernon or in Fairfax County “at the beginning of the nineteenth century.” Again, there is the admission that “no one was actually practicing Islam,” but then comes the attempt to obliquely suggest it nonetheless by insisting that the name “Nila” provides “evidence” of “some knowledge of Islamic tradition,” when “Nila,” as noted above, has in the past been a popular name for girls among non-Muslims, and the name is believed to be not of Arabic but of Hebrew and, in a different line of lexical descent, Indian origin.
4. “The documented history of an African-born carpenter at Mount Vernon known asSambo Anderson suggests that he was a practicing Muslim.” Nothing, in fact, about Sambo that this Mt. Vernon historian has provided convincingly “suggests” that he was a practicing Muslim. And it is a confusing claim given that in the preceding paragraphs, Mary Thompson has repeatedly admitted that “no one was actually practicing Islam at Mount Vernon by this time.” So which is it? That “no one” was practicing Islam at Mount Vernon? Or that the “documented history suggests that Sambo Anderson was a practicing Muslim”? Both statements cannot be true.

The basis on which this assertion – “Sambo as a Muslim” – rests is that the name “Sambo” mighthave some connection to the name “Sambou,” although “Sambo” was widely used as a slave name, not to indicate a Muslim background, but for those of mixed – African and Indian – descent.
Again, this argument for the presence of Islam from three names is weak. As we have seen, among the favorite sources of slave names (often given by slave-traders or slave-masters) were those from the Old Testament, such as Moses and Samson and Delilah (which no one would adduce as evidence that the slaves were from some Wandering Tribe of Israelites) and, especially, from Roman history, as Pompey, Caesar, Cassius, Cato, Nero, Phoebe, Venus (which do not indicate any Roman descent).
“One of the things Sambo probably brought with him to Mount Vernon was Islam.” Why? This is simply asserted, demanding our adherence, followed by another unproven assertion about “the ethnic group from which he most likely came.” So he “probably” brought Islam, though there is not the slightest evidence for it, and he “most likely came” from the Hausa, though there is no evidence for that, either, and that is how this “history” of Islam at Mount Vernon proceeds, by asserting one unproven thing after another, and the reader is overwhelmed by a series of“suggests” and “most likelies” and “indicates” that these names show Islamic influence, though Mary Thompson repeats that there is “no evidence of anyone practicing Islam at the time.” The reader is left thoroughly bewildered, but inclined to think that why yes, those slave names must mean something, and it’s only now that we’re able to recognize the truth that had been suppressed for so long by those who have denied Islam its rightful place in the American story. At long last we have that pseudo-evidence – the names Fatima, Nila, and Sambo — to prove otherwise.

But it is not the lack of evidence that Islam was “present” at Mt. Vernon or in the young American Republic that is the main point. In fact, while exaggerated claims for their numbers need to be rejected, let’s agree that there is evidence that a small number of slaves did have Muslim backgrounds. Without mosques, or Qur’ans, and living in an entirely Christian environment, however, they were soon Christianized.
What merits our attention and concern is the obvious attempt by so many in power (as Obama, and now Hillary Clinton) to convince us that Islam “has always been a part of the American story.” This attempt has been going on for some time. It began with a State Department spokesman, Phyllis McIntosh, who in a press release in 2004 entitled “Islamic Influence Runs Deep in American Culture,” which claimed that “Islamic influences may date back to the very beginning of American history. It is likely that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America in 1492, charted his way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an Arab navigator.”
Nota bene the absence of a definitive statement: “May date back”….”It is likely that.” There isno evidence – none – for this, but there is plenty of evidence of Christian prayers being said on board Columbus’s ships, his deep Catholic faith, the claiming of his discoveries for the very Catholic Ferdinand and Isabella, “los reyes catolicos” (the Catholic king and queen). For it was Ferdinand and Isabella, who had successfully completed the Reconquista, driving the Muslims from Grenada, their last foothold in Spain, who were then willing to support the deeply Catholic Columbus in his attempt to find a sea route for the Christians of Europe to the Indies, given that Muslims had sealed off the land route from Europe to Asia when they conquered Constantinople in May of 1453 (only in that sense should Muslims receive some credit for Columbus’s voyage).
As for Phyllis McIntosh’s claim that Columbus had the help of “an Arab navigator,” this is simply pulled out of the air at Foggy Bottom. It is flatly untrue; there was one member of Columbus’s crew who did know Arabic, but he was a Jewish convert to Christianity, not an Arab. After making her astonishing statement, Phyllis McIntosh fell silent – she never answered her critics, to whom she owed an apology for her travesty of history. For many who only read her original statement, and who would be inclined not to question authority – gosh, the State Department must know whereof it speaks — the damage had been done, the myth of Muslims in Columbus’s crew now set in motion. It would not be surprising to see this fable resurrected in the future, with a putative stamp of authority: “as the State Department long ago recognized.”

Obama, in his quite unnecessary paean to Islam in his 2009 Cairo speech (a speech that ought to be held up for dissection in history classes), said: “I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story.” It isn’t true. Some “possible” Muslims, even thousands, have been convincingly reported among the millions of slaves, but they were swiftly Christianized. In what way were they an important “part of America’s story”? Muslims played no visible role in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Battle of San Juan Hill, World War I. The first recorded mosque in this country dates from 1929 (a tiny building in Ross, North Dakota); the second, in Iowa, only from 1934. No Muslims contributed noticeably to the literature, art, or music of this country, to its scientific, medical, and technological achievements, or to its political institutions, until recent decades. Muslims played no role in the writing of our Constitution, and especially no role in composing the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments that in every important respect – think of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and the free exercise and Establishment clauses — which the Sharia, the holy law of Islam, with its rules on blasphemy and apostasy, does not countenance. Freedom of thought and expression and religion, central to the American polity, are all flatly contradicted by the principles of Islam.

Islam punishes those Muslims who speak ill of Islam or appear to mock it. It punishes those who wish to leave Islam, either for another religion, or for none at all. Islam does not recognize the equality of the sexes. Islam does not recognize that non-Muslims are to be treated as equal to Muslims. How could Muslims be expected to do that, when the Qur’an, tells them that non-Muslims are the “vilest of creatures” and Muslims the “best of peoples”?
Yet this concerted effort to make us believe that Islam has “always been part of the American story” continues. In this counterfactual narrative, Muslims served on Columbus’s crew, were to be found among Washington’s slaves, were served the first Iftar Dinner by President Jefferson back in 1805 (it was not an Iftar Dinner but a regular dinner, pushed ahead by a few hours to accommodate the wishes of the Muslim guest, an envoy from Tripoli.
This history makes much of the fact that Jefferson owned a Qur’an (which has been misleadingly taken to mean that he approved of its contents!), and relies on feelgood unsubstantiated claims that during two hundred years of history, from roughly 1800 to 2000, Muslims supposedly continued to be “part of the American story,” as Barack Obama likes to say, without actually making much of an appearance anywhere at all. It is only on September 11, 2001 that Islam really enters American history, with a series of exploding planes, two at each tower of the World Trade Center, one at the Pentagon, and a fourth on a Pennsylvania field. And in the fifteen years since 9/11, Muslims in America keep reminding us of their existence in a way that Hillary and Obama would prefer we forget– at San Bernardino and Fort Hood, at Chattanooga and Orlando. That is certainly how Islam has put itself, but not in a good way, on the main stage of American history, as it is being made today.

The next time a politician claims that “Islam has always been part of America’s story” (out of office, Obama will take up this theme with a vengeance), don’t accept that assertion, nor pass over it in silence, but challenge that claim. Ask when the first Qur’an appeared in the New World, when the first mosque was built (and then the second), and what evidence there is that some of the African slaves had Muslim backgrounds and — if so – how many? Demand to know what the evidence is for Muslim contributions to “America’s story” since 1787, to its political and legal systems, its art, music, literature, science. Make the apologists think twice before they play fast and loose with our history. You will be helping defend against a propaganda campaign that has until now gone largely unchallenged. But there is, thank goodness, time to set the record straight. Islam, whatever else it is, has hardly ever until the last few decades, “been part of America’s story.”


UK government puts up 15-foot screens so arriving Muslim migrant "children" can't be seen
UK: Migrant's foster mother finds he isn't 12-year-old "refugee" but 21-year-old jihadi