I found a Raymond
Ibrahim post on FrontPageMag.com
that writes about the poisonous propaganda spewed by Left-Wing Multiculturalist
and Islamic Apologists brainwashing susceptible Western minds for decades. You
should read to discover if YOU are a victim or a collaborator of said
brainwashing.
Blog Editor: Rather than
capitulate to Facebook censorship by abandoning the platform, I choose to post
and share until the Leftist censors ban me. Recently, the Facebook censorship
tactic I’ve experienced is a couple of Group shares then jailed under the false
accusation of posting too fast. So I ask those that read this, to combat
censorship by sharing blog and Facebook posts with your friends or Groups you
belong to.
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Motives Behind the False Narrative on Islam and the West
How -- and why -- reality was turned upside down.
By Raymond Ibrahim
December 2, 2019
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David
Horowitz Freedom Center.
Any honest and objective appraisal of Islam’s historic jihad
on the Christian world must be eye-opening, to say the very least. In the
first century of its existence (between 632-732) Islam permanently conquered,
Arabized, and Islamized nearly three-quarters of the Christian world, thereby
permanently severing it. Europe came to be known as “the West” because it
was literally the remaining and westernmost appendage of Christendom not
to be swallowed up by Islam.
For roughly a millennium thereafter, Arabs, Berbers, Turks,
and Tatars—all of whom called and saw themselves as Muslims—launched raid after
raid, all justified and lauded as jihads, into virtually every corner of
Europe. They reached as far as Iceland and provoked the U.S. into its first war as a nation. The
devastation was indescribable; some regions in Europe, particularly in Spain
and the Balkans, remain uninhabitable due to the incessant raiding. Some 15 million Europeans were enslaved
during this perennial jihad and, according to contemporary records, treated horrifically.
In short, “if we … ask ourselves how and when the modern
notion of Europe and the European identity was born,” writes historian Franco
Cardini, “we realize the extent to which Islam was a factor (albeit a negative
one) in its creation. Repeated Muslim aggression against Europe between
the seventh to eighth centuries, then between the fourteenth and the eighteenth
centuries … was a ‘violent midwife’ to Europe.”
Here the inevitable question arises: How could such a long,
well-documented history of unmitigated Islamic aggression that had immense
repercussions on the development of Western civilization now be presented as
the antithesis of reality?
The answer revolves around a number of modern
philosophies—from the Enlightenment to moral/cultural relativism—that have each
contributed to an all-pervasive “Narrative” concerning the historic
relationship between Islam and the West. In presenting the West as aggressor and Islam as victim—hence
the latter’s ongoing “grievance”-based animosity—this history is as entrenched
as it is the reverse of reality.
To understand this, one must first understand that, despite
its many manifestations, permutations, and emphases over the centuries, the Narrative’s
unspoken driving force has largely been the same: to demonize and thus justify
a break away from Europe’s traditional heritage, religion, identity, and
mores. If this sounds farfetched, consider: whereas by any objective
standard the West is responsible for practically every boon taken for granted
today—from scientific, technological, economic and medicinal advances, to the
abolition of slavery and anti-discrimination laws—today no people of any race
or civilization despise their heritage except Western people.
Clearly something is amiss.
Or consider how leftists/liberals/progressives who forever
whine against any vestige of Western traditionalism, habitually make common
cause with Islam—despite the latter’s truly oppressive qualities. Thus feminists
denounce the Western “patriarchy”—but say nothing against the Muslim treatment
of women as chattel; homosexuals denounce Christian bakeries—but say nothing
against the Muslim execution of homosexuals; multiculturalists denounce
Christians who refuse to suppress their faith to accommodate the religious
sensibilities of Muslim minorities—but say nothing against the entrenched and
open Muslim persecution of Christians.
The reason for these discrepancies is simple: “The
enemy [Islam] of my enemy [Christianity] is my friend.”
From here, how and why such a formally well-known history of
Muslim aggression against Europe was not merely suppressed but reversed should
start making sense: of all non-European, non-Christian peoples, only Muslims
lived alongside and interacted with (that is, constantly encroached and warred
on) Europe for over a millennium; this made Muslims the only people—the only
foil—that could be used to support the Narrative’s argument against premodern
Europe. But first an intellectually satisfying way of casting Muslims as
victims not conquerors was needed.
Enter literary professor Edward Said’s 1978 book, Orientalism.
Its central thesis is that the Orientalists—the Europeans who began the
academic study of the East centuries ago—were not writing objectively about
Muslims and their history, but rather intentionally slandering and stereotyping
them in order to justify dominating them during the colonial era.
This made perfect sense—but only because the postmodern
Western mind had already been primed for it. For if, as Marxist
Materialism teaches, ideas/religions have no influence on history (and thus,
economic want, not “jihad,” caused Muslims to expand); if, as Relativism and
its spawn Multiculturalism teach, there are no absolute truths, religious or
otherwise (and thus no culture or civilization is “better” than another); if,
as pop psychology teaches, violent and negative behavior is always a product of
societal injustices (and thus the more Muslims behave violently, the more that
only proves they are frustrated victims)—then what does one make of the
aforementioned centuries of European writings that
uniformly depict Muslims as ideologically driven by violence and lust?
Simple: dismiss them all as bigoted and hypocritical lies by
nefarious Europeans intent on demonizing a superior, more tolerant faith and
civilization. Thus a whole new academic approach to Islam—stripped
of all historic writings not conforming to the Narrative—was born.
History would no longer shape ideas and attitudes; rather, preexisting ideas
and attitudes—wishful thinking—would shape history.
Bernard Lewis, himself a target of Edward Said’s Orientalism,
summarized this new approach—or “pseudo history”—well:
According to a currently
fashionable epistemological view, absolute truth is either nonexistent or
unattainable. Therefore, truth doesn’t matter; facts don’t matter.
All discourse is a manifestation of a power relationship, and all knowledge is
slanted. Therefore, accuracy doesn’t matter; evidence doesn’t
matter. All that matters is the attitude—the motives and purposes—of the
user of knowledge, and this may simply be claimed for oneself or imputed to
another. In imputing motives, the irrelevance of truth, facts, evidence,
and even plausibility is a great help. The mere assertion suffices” (Islam
and the West, 115).
Orientalism’s success lay less in anything intrinsic
to it—American classicist Bruce Thornton characterizes it as an “incoherent
amalgam of dubious postmodern theory, sentimental Third Worldism, glaring
historical errors, and Western guilt”—and more because it fit the West’s
prevailing zeitgeist (which, of course, thrives on “dubious postmodern
theory, sentimental Third Worldism, glaring historical errors, and Western
guilt”).
Nor does the Narrative predominate today because people are
well read or pay attention to academe; as French historian Marc Ferro
demonstrated in his Cinema and History (1988), the overwhelming majority
of Western people’s knowledge of history comes from movies. And almost
any major film dealing with premodern Europeans and Muslims—Robin Hood (1991),
Kingdom of Heaven (2005), etc.—contrasts hypocritical, intolerant, and
fanatical Christians with sophisticated, advanced, and tolerant
Muslims. Commenting on such films back in 1997, Lewis wrote, “The
misrepresentation of the past in the cinema is probably the most fertile and effective
source of such misinformation at the present time…”
Twenty years later the Narrative has only metastasized and
infected all aspects of public life, including politics and so-called
“mainstream news.” Meanwhile, social and other media giants—YouTube, Google, Facebook,
Twitter—increasingly censor material that contradicts the Narrative.
Such is how a previously well-known history was turned
upside down and used to weaken the West—the greatest sin of which is ever again
to think or behave like its “awful” ancestors did concerning
Islam.
For more on the true history between Islam and the
West, see the author’s recent Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam
and the West
+++++++++++++++++++++
Blog Editor: Rather than
capitulate to Facebook censorship by abandoning the platform, I choose to post
and share until the Leftist censors ban me. Recently, the Facebook censorship
tactic I’ve experienced is a couple of Group shares then jailed under the false
accusation of posting too fast. So I ask those that read this, to combat
censorship by sharing blog and Facebook posts with your friends or Groups you
belong to.
_______________________
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