Until the advent of materialism and 19th c. dogma, Western Civilisation was superior to anything Islam had developed. Islam has not aided in the development of the modern world; in fact civilisation has only been created in spite of Islam. Proof of this resides in the 'modern' world and the unending political-economic and spiritual poverty of Muslim states and regions. Squatting on richer civilisations is not 'progress'. Islam is pagan, totalitarian, and irrational.
Harold Berman’s ‘Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition’, clearly credits the medieval Church for building the foundations and structures of Western secular law. From the time of Constantine to the 11th century, the legal constructs of church and state were intermingled. There was no clear separation between the ecclesiastical and the secular.
This changed in the 11th century with Pope Gregory and the ‘Gregorian’ reforms. Pope Gregory identified that a King was a lay person and had no power to interfere with church affairs including appointing bishops or priests. The boundaries between church and state were clarified. Out of this division, based on a common foundation, arose separate legal edifices.
Church law possessed the most coherent body of legal codes in the world, much of it based on the 6th century Byzantine emperor Justinian and his ‘codex’. From the 5th to 11th centuries however, church law could not be termed a systematic and comprehensive legal code. It was instead a set of scattered commentaries, Biblical references, various exhortations, papal demands and it was regional in nature.
Over time, church canon law was produced to regulate ecclesiastical affairs and this in turn became the model for secular laws. Western church canon law became systematised after the Gregorian reforms in the 12th and 13th centuries. Prior to this creation of canon law in the high middle ages, legal codes per se did not exist in a coherent or logical manner in Europe. In most areas law was intimately linked with custom and even pagan practices (eg trials by fire or water).
By the 12th century canon law was taking shape. The monk Gratian produced ‘A Concordance of Discordant Canons’, written around 1140. This was the first systematic legal code in Western Europe. It was an enormous body of work. Gratian’s work was premised on reason and conscience, along with natural law and God-granted rights. These principles allowed a coherent legal structure to be shaped.
From Gratian and succeeding works, all aspects of society came under canon laws. Property, marriage, inheritance, rational trials, the discontinuance of pagan rites such as trial of ordeals by fire or water, the development of equality before the law, protection given to the poor and dispossessed, can be found in Gratian’s work. In essence the barbaric ‘law codes’ of Western Europe were replaced by canon law based on principles and reason. Universities which began in the 12th century had departments dedicated to the law and these scholars began to construct national legal codes based on canon law.
Canon lawyers were produced who used the canons to determine the criminality of a particular act, using legal principles still in use today. These lawyers were concerned with the intent of the act, various kinds of intent, and with moral implications of acts. Extenuating factors in criminal acts were also developed, including insanity and intoxication. Accidental and deliberate actions were separated. Contract law was also developed which is still with us today, enshrining and enforcing the legality of contractual consent.
Criminal law was another area of innovation during the 12th and 13th centuries within canon law and served as the basis for the secular equivalent. These were also deeply impacted by Saint Anselm’s 11th century exposition Cur Deux Homo, where he explains the rationality in the mediation of the God-man ending in atonement for our sins through the crucifixion. This doctrine of atonement rested on the concept that a violation of the law was an offense against justice and the moral itself. Punishment was necessary to restore both. Atonement is a central feature of all modern legal systems.
There is no doubt that the entire corpus of Western law is based on the medieval canon law. Almost every area of modern jurisprudence can trace its lineage to the canon law of the 12th century. The very foundation of Western law in its philosophy, is entirely Christian and Catholic including the principles of law, punishment, atonement, forgiveness, morality and justice.
In the early 4th century, during the reign of Constantine, at the time of Christianity’s great expansion, a famine struck the Roman world. About 30-40% of the population might have been Christian in AD 320. The famine caused plague to spread. The Romano-Christian response was charity. Without discrimination and with great energy, Christians brought food and medicine to the afflicted. What sort of religion would be so selfless thought non-Christian Romans? Many converted once they understood the faith.
Catholic charitable works would take several volumes to express. The list of those involved includes parishes, dioceses, monasteries, convents, monks, friars, nuns, and a long list of lay organisations. There is no peer in world history to Catholic charity. In fact, it is an obvious truism to state that Catholics invented the entire concept of charity and welfare. Stoicism for example, which contains echoes and similarities with Christianity never established any sort of charity and welfare. It demanded emotionless detachment and acceptance of fate. It was a fatalist philosophy.
Oblations to the poor developed at the very beginning of Church history. In the early church offerings to the poor were placed next to the altar at mass. On certain fast days there was a collection for poor relief. Fasting often induced wealthier Christians to invest money in poor relief. Saint Justin the martyr commented that the rich were not only converting but becoming ‘poor in spirit’ by sacrifices and donations to the poor.
Saint Augustine established a hospice for pilgrims, one of thousands in the Romano-Christian world. The early church ransomed slaves and had clothing ‘banks’ for the poor. Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Ephrem organised relief efforts during the waves of plague and famine. Christians, unlike pagans, never left the sick and wounded during times of plague, including burying the dead. Widows and orphans were taken care of by the early church, along with hospitals being built for the sick in the 3rd century AD.
Eusebius the 4th century ecclesiastical historian comments that the Christian's great deeds for the poor, sick and dispossessed led to many conversions. The pagans wondered what animated Christians to such works of charity and gentleness. The would make ‘inquiries about a religion whose disciples are capable of such disinterred devotion.” Julian the Apostate the mid-3rd century Roman emperor who persecuted Christians admitted, “These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them to their agapae, they attract them, as children are attracted with cakes.”
By the 4th century the church began to sponsor the large-scale deployments of hospitals. Every major city possessed a hospital. They served two purposes, namely to take care of strangers and pilgrims; and to treat the sick and suffering. This ministering to human needs and illness on such a scale was absolutely unique in world history.
In places like Rome the Christian woman Fabiola, would go into the streets looking for the poor and sick and take them to the first large public hospital ever seen in Rome – the one she founded. Saint Basil the great in the 4th century established a hospital for lepers in Caesarea. No such institution had existed before anywhere in the pagan world. Throughout the mediterranean, monasteries played the role of medical institution and pharmacy. They became sites of medical learning and scholarship.
Catholic military orders like the Hospitallers became famous during the crusades and after for the size of their hospitals and the quality of their care – given to anyone Christian or not and free of charge. In Jerusalem alone, the Hospitaller hospital contained over a thousand beds, arguably the largest hospital ever constructed in a single location until the 19th century. The Hospitallers and other orders placed a premium on the care for the sick and injured. Their hospitals came to resemble the modern equivalent and delivered babies, surgeries, daily care, physician visits, food, baths and a regime of hygiene that would not be replicated until Semmelweis in the mid-19th century, namely cleanliness, the washing of hands and the endless changing and washing of sheets and bedding.
The entire premise of Western civilisation’s ‘welfare state’ is based on the Catholic Church’s massive investment in hospices, hospitals, orphanages, leper sanitoriums and the like. The scale and scope of the investment over 2000 years is unknown but it is certainly the largest investment in history by an institution until the modern welfare state. Lives were saved, souls converted, and society humbled and softened. The entire ethos of Western culture was improved. Yet, few if any today could be bothered to credit the Catholic church with this most important legacy and innovation – charity, love, succour and support.
“The word “virus” is derived from the Latin word for poison. Viruses are associated with all forms of life (bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes). Viruses are infectious, obligate intracellular parasites whose genomes consist of either DNA or RNA. Virus genomes direct their own replication and the synthesis of other viral components, using cellular systems in appropriate host cells. Virus particles (known as virions) are formed by assembly from newly synthesized components within the host cell. Virions are the vehicle for transmission of the genome to the next host cell or organism.”
(Pellett et al, ‘Basics of Virology’, 2014, offering the standard description of a ‘virus’)
Note: Viruses are 250-400 nanometers in size. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter…a small fraction of a bacteria. Not a single isolated and purified virus can be shown. To satisfy your own curiosity you can send FOI requests to various health and governmental agencies and demand to see an example of a purified, isolated virus. They will reply that they don’t have such examples to show you.
One of the claims to support the worldview that ‘contagious diseases’ are spread by ‘germs’, is the ‘genocide’ of Ameri-Indians post-Columbus. It has long been established that the evisceration of Ameri-Indian culture, society and people was perpetrated through a mixture of war, slavery, and disease. Depending on your source, the weighting of war, slavery and disease in this catastrophe varies. ‘Virus hunters’ routinely invoke the post-Columbine era of Ameri-Indian civilisational destruction as ‘proof’ of ‘contagious’ diseases, passed on by White humans and their livestock, to Ameri-Indian natives. This theory is most certainly wrong and is entirely unproven and unsupported by facts or common sense.
Since the 1990s, it has become standard fare to vastly inflate the numbers of pre-Columbine (before 1492) Ameri-Indians in North and South America. The more rancid and extreme population estimates now range between 80-100 million Ameri-Indians in the Western hemisphere pre-1492 A.D. with a general scholarly agreement that 60 million might be a correct estimate. This number is however a conjecture and given the paucity of proofs, more likely a fiction, generated to impress and overawe the reader with the colossal scale of human genocidal destruction, initiated by Christian Europeans upon pagan Ameri-Indians. In this story some 50 million or more Ameri-Indians perished mostly through ‘germs’ over 3 centuries, or the same number who died in Europe from the Black Death in the 14th century, a plague caused by bacteria.
In the 18th and 19th centuries the estimate of the pre-Columbine population in the Western Hemisphere was 8-12 million. This is a more reasonable figure and less tainted by political motives and secular theology than post-modern estimates which provide no proof of numbers ranging from 60-100 million. Ameri-Indian society was a stone-age culture, with settled agriculture existing only in parts of Central America and the Andes ranges. There was no possibility that Central and South America, with a somewhat limited and primitive agricultural base, or North America, with a hunter-gatherer-foraging culture absent of urban centres, could have supported 60-100 million people. Claiming such population figures is unreasonable and unproven.
By contrast Europe in 1500 was a far wealthier, more advanced, civilised and agriculturally innovative culture and possessed maybe 60 million people. The 14th century episode of the Black Death or bubonic plague had erased about half the population. Even despite this catastrophe, it is unreasonable to posit that in 1492, the primal societies of the Western Hemisphere had a similar or even a greater population than a Europe which was littered with small-scale cities and complex agriculture and trade. The less advanced, pre-modern societies of the Americas could never have supported such a mass of people.
The best estimates are that maybe 1 million natives existed north of the Rio Grande pre-1492, some 3-5 million in Mexico and Central America and a further 4-5 million in South America. No cities or advanced agriculture existed north of the Rio Grande. The Aztec and Incan empires were slave-empires, with conurbations comprising the capitals of Tenochtitlan and Cuzco. Advanced agriculture outside of the capital territories were sparse and would never have supported some 50-90 million people. Contrary to historical rewriting there is no proof that massive farming or agriculture was endemic in the Western Hemisphere in the pre-Columbine period.
The Spanish conquered the Aztec and Inca empires with fewer than 1000 men. The annihilation of the Aztecs for example, was accomplished by the Spanish leading a ‘native’ army who had tired of Aztec tyranny, slavery, human sacrifice and exploitation. A few hundred men with guns cannot unseat an empire of some 5 million, or for the revisionist Marxist, the false claim of 30-40 million people. The same was true of the Spanish destruction of the Inca’s, a much-hated elite-aristocratic group, famous for brutality and savagery. It is simply not credible that a handful of Spaniards overthrew a region teeming with neo-Marxist figures of 30 millon or more people. The population of the Americas must have been in the 8-12 million range. ‘Native’ revolts as much as Spanish steel and guns overthrew the two principal empires of the Americas.
Guns and steel were important, but they can’t explain a population reduction of some 75-90% or 6-10 million, over a few centuries. The ‘consensus’ is that disease destroyed these societies far more completely than war and anarchy. For the ‘virus’ hunters the Ameri-Indians were decimated by ‘contagious’ diseases and are thus a totem and proof for the virus faithful. In this belief system, the Whites brought ‘new’ and novel ‘pathogens’ which the Ameri-Indians had no defence against, and they perished en-masse allowing the Spanish to seize power as the population was reduced and enfeebled through contagion.
As colonisation progressed, the carnage by disease accelerated until by 1900 only 10-25% of the baseline pre-1492 Ameri-Indian population remained. It is thus believed and promoted that ‘germs’ effaced 75-90% of the native populations. In particular the smallpox ‘virus’, along with flu and measles explain why the Ameri-Indians were largely exterminated.
Do any parts of these ‘agreed narratives’ make any sense? Did the advent of Whites, with their horses, cows, pigs and ‘infectious’ diseases really initiate ‘smallpox’ and other ‘great killers’, or were other factors at work? Have we got the entire history of ‘disease’ wrong? Do smallpox ‘viruses’ even exist for example? If not, what happened in the post-Columbine Americas?
According to ‘The Science’, the origination of the smallpox ‘virus’ is from bovines or cows, though the quack Jenner believed that ‘horse grease’ from the hoofs of horses, passed to cows from farm workers, was to blame. We are told that ‘influenza’ (Corona viruses) jumped from pigs to humans. Birds and fowl are also alleged to spread ‘influenza’, named ‘bird flu’. It is agreed that horses generated the ‘tuberculosis virus’. Livestock thus creates contagious diseases. When these were introduced into the Americas, so the theory states, contagions were unleashed on the native populations.
The theory around smallpox is:
· Bovines including dairy cows, supposedly suffer from Cowpox
· The ‘cowpox’ in the cow is a part of the genus orthopoxvirus
· The cowpox virus is zoonotic, meaning that it is transferable between species
· This ‘virus’ is supposedly related to the vaccinia virus causing ‘smallpox’ in humans
· In humans the smallpox ‘virus’ is called the variola virus
· Humans contract ‘variola virus’ from exposure cows in any form (milking, farming, slaughtering)
Smallpox has always been seized upon as a great killer of the Ameri-Indians. Smallpox as a virulent disease was supposedly passed on from bovines to humans through the activity of farming, including milking. Close contact is believed to be sufficient for the ‘orthopox virus’ to ‘jump’ species. Ingesting meat, dairy, skin, urine, faeces, or any animal detritus can lead to ‘smallpox’ in humans. Signatures of the disease include pustules or poxes on the hands and face.
For many with immature or compromised immune systems including young children, death can follow. The infection-to-death rate in the 19th century in the slums of the UK from ‘smallpox’ was low at around 0.4-1%. As many doctors commented in the 18th and 19th centuries, smallpox was not a particularly deadly disease if proper non-chemical treatment was given. Why then would the Ameri-Indians die in such numbers? The answer is always ‘lack of immunity’ due to not spending thousands of years with cows. Is this theory validated?
More here
According to modern propaganda, ‘economic thought’ as a discipline, arose only in the 18th century through the work of men such as Adam Smith, or David Ricardo. The ‘Enlightenment’, so goes the myth, generated ideas about ‘free markets’, individual pursuit of ‘liberty’ and economic exchange, and somewhat complex ideas about economics worked at the regional, national and international levels. Without such ‘genius’ and ‘innovation’ modern ‘economics’ would never have been birthed. So goes the fable.
Joseph Schumpeter, an economic historian of the last century, wrote a ‘History of Economic Analysis’ in 1954. In this book he pays homage to the medieval Scholastics who created almost all of what is later found in the ‘Enlightenment’ on economic theory.
“It is they (the scholastics or schoolmen), who come nearer than does any other group to having been the founders of scientific economics.”
There is nothing much ‘scientific’ about economics. Gross Domestic Product, developed by Kuznets in the 1930s and used today to gauge economic strength or vitality is a poor metric to assess a country’s economic output. GDP is just a spending algorithm, with public spending and state spending included which in essence is a false accounting, since state expenditure is either tax or debt. So much for ‘scientific economics’.
Schumpeter’s assessment is joined by other economic historians including Murray Rothbard, who in his celebrated books, stated that the schoolmen were brilliant social thinkers and economic analysts. The economic concepts of the schoolmen reached their conclusion in the ‘Austrian’ school of economics, dedicated to free market and libertarian ideals – the very opposite of what the Church is often accused of supporting. The Austrian school includes Carl Menger, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek who won a Nobel in economics in 1974.
The foundations of ‘modern’ economic analysis can be traced back to the 13th - 14th centuries. Jean Buridan (1300-1358), as Rector of the University of Paris, made very important contributions to the understanding of money and inflation. It was Buridan and those before him who first described money as a medium of exchange, a market-driven necessity, and not a state-produced product. Voluntary exchange and not government interdicts were the foundation of monetary value. The scholastics first described money as portable, divisible, durable with a defined value per unit weight that could not be debased.
Nicholas Oresme (1325-1382), a student of Buridan’s, is called the founding father of monetary economics, outlining a comprehensive regime of money creation and management in his, ‘A Treatise on the Origin, Nature, Law and Alterations of money’. This book is the most comprehensive approach to monetary analysis until the 19th century. It contains for example what is now called, ‘Gresham’s law’, which is the fixed value ratio between 2 units (gold, silver), or 2 currencies. If the government artificially undervalues one unit over time against the other, it will disappear from circulation. An example would be that if initially 15 silver units were equal to 1 gold unit, but this was changed to 10, the market would naturally stop using gold and use instead the now artificially created higher value of silver. Thus, the destructive effects of inflation were well known by the 13th and 14th centuries.
Spanish scholastics and theologians were well acquainted with the reality of high inflation. The quantity theory of money was formed by Martin de Azpilcueta (1493-1586), who wrote a history of the inflationary effects of American gold and silver on the Spanish economy, a key factor which led to Spain’s decline as an economic and military power, “Thus we see by experience that in France, where money is scarcer than in Spain, bread, wine, cloth, and labour are worth much less.”
Cardinal Cajetan (1468-1534) in 1499 wrote ‘De Cambiis’ or ‘On Exchange’, which vindicated the foreign exchange market from a moral standpoint. He also wrote that the current value of money is affected by its perceived future value and the predictions of future market strength. War, poor harvests, a looming state bankruptcy, extravagant public spending, rumours of large tax increases, an expanding or declining empire, disease, government competence or incompetence, a succession crisis, all these and many more would affect the currency’s value. This is now termed ‘economic expectations theory’.
Subjective value economics was also developed by the Church. This concept states that the real value of money is based on perception as much as real value. Also confidence plays an important role. Pierre Olivi (1248-1298) proposed a value theory based on subjective utility. He and others in the 13th century argued that the value of a good is derived from the subjective analysis of its utility or desirability. A pearl for example has a much greater perceived value than the utilitarian, practical working horse, due only to desirability and perception. Further elaboration of these ideas was developed by San Bernardino of Siena, a notable economic thinker in the 15th century and Cardinal Juan de Lugo (1583-1660), in the 17th.
Subjective value is an extremely important economic insight. It is not found in Smith’s works, where he attributes a good’s value to its labour content. This theme was picked up by Marx to elaborate his apocryphal analysis of economic Communism. The value theory of economics is the right approach to understand a unit’s value, not the labour theory of exchange. Smith and Marx have everything backwards. A good does not derive its value from the labour cost, but the labour expended on the good, derives its value from the customer’s valuation of the final product. Hence the pearl and horse analogy.
Alejandra Chafuen in, ‘Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics’ (2003), meticulously proves that the scholastics and medieval thinkers developed the ideas around free markets, free exchange, goods valuation, monetary policy, inflation and currency values. From prices and wages to money and value theory, the Scholastics anticipated all of the ‘Enlightenments’ propositions. Such Catholic innovations are well known to many scholars, but are deliberately kept out of the media, educational systems and textbooks.
Today in history, on June 15, 1094, one of the most remarkable feats in the long war between Islam and Christianity took place: the great kingdom of Valencia, which had been under Muslim control for more than 350 years, capitulated to the warlord Roderick Díaz of Vivar — better known to posterity as “the Cid” (from the Arabic honorific al-sayyid, “the lord”).
In the late eleventh century, the Almoravids, a North African group committed to jihadist teaching, began to pour into Spain from Africa to aid their Spanish counterparts, the Moors, against the Reconquista—the centuries-long Christian attempt to liberate Spain from Islam. The Cid’s premiere modern biographer, Professor Ramón Menéndez Pidal (d. 1968), summarizes the mood and stakes as follows:
With the Almoravid invasion, the struggle between the two civilizations had reached its height… [W]ith the invasion of the desert races and the recrudescence of Islamic fanaticism, a new chasm opened out between the two. And, on the Christian side, it was the Cid who, as the leader of the resistance against the victorious invaders, showed himself the most determined to carry on the war without giving or seeking quarter. … [I]t was upon the Cid that the task devolved of resisting, unaided, the whole might of Islam.
Toward the end of the year 1093, a secret plot between the Almoravids and the Moors of Valencia, which had only recently become tributary to the Cid, resulted in the overthrow of its king, Yahya al-Qadir, who had “increased their [Valencians] hatred by being a friend to the Christians” — that is, by being a vassal to the Cid. During the uprising, fanatical Muslims discovered al-Qadir trying to abscond out of Valencia dressed in and concealed by a woman’s burqa. To cries of “Allahu akbar,” the mob slaughtered him as an apostate and hurled his body into a camel dung pit.
On learning of the Valencians’ treachery and murder of his vassal, the Cid’s “anger was kindled, and his soul was inflamed,” writes the Muslim chronicler al-Maqqari. Like a fierce storm, he came and with extreme violence thrashed the Valencian countryside, taking all the castles and suburbs up to the city’s very walls. He “fought so fiercely,” writes Ibn al-Qama, who was present in Valencia, “that the Moors were terrified at the havoc he played among them.”
Months passed, and mass starvation soon plagued the besieged Moorish kingdom, but the Muslims continued to hold out on the conviction that their Almoravid allies would eventually come to their rescue. At long last, an immense host of Almoravids was espied marching to Valencia’s relief.
Acting fast, the Cid, who was camped outside the walls of Valencia, destroyed all of the bridges leading to the city and flooded the countryside with water from the canals, so that only one strip of land, which he now controlled, was dry. Done none too soon, a massive dust storm heralded the arrival of the Islamic hordes of North Africa.
[Now] when the news came that the Africans had arrived at Alcira, the Valencians, frantic with joy, rushed to the walls to scan the horizon for signs of their saviors and watch by night the twinkle of the numberless fires of the Almoravid bivouacs… And all the time the citizens prayed unceasingly for Allah’s aid against the Cid and agreed in council to plunder the Christian camp and the stores and hostels of the suburb when the battle reached the wall.
When morning came, the Cid and the Valencians awoke to a strange sight: empty fields. The jihadist saviors of Valencia had retreated in the dark over the flooded plains, abandoning the city to its fate. A contemporary chronicle allots two sentences to this ignominious event: a large “army of Moabites [Almoravids], swiftly on its way to relieve the siege, approached Valencia. But they did not dare to commit themselves to battle with Roderick. Greatly fearful of him they dispersed by night and retired to their bases in confusion.”
Black despair now fell on the Moors of Valencia: “they were like drunkards who understand not one another,” wrote Ibn al-Qama; “they became as one that falls into the sea.” Their mood was not helped by the Cid’s army. Completely unopposed, it now surrounded the city’s walls and loudly reviled the oath-breaking Muslims with vows of unrestrained vengeance. Topping it all off, the famine had reached the point that “the poor were driven to eating the flesh of human corpses.” With no hope, Valencia finally surrendered to the Cid — “may the curse of Allah fall on his head!” to quote al-Maqqari — on today’s date, June 15, 1094, after a nearly nineteen-month-long besiegement, and Roderick Díaz of Vivar became its undisputed lord — literally, its sayyad, Cid.
Although it did not ostensibly concern them, even Europeans outside Spain rejoiced at this outstanding feat — for “the conquests by the Cid” were seen as “a barrier protecting, not only Spain, but the whole of Western Europe from the Moslem peril.”
The Cid’s conquest of Valencia is important for another reason: a contemporary document drawn out following that event underscores that the Cid—who most modern historians portray as a callous, irreligious mercenary—was in fact a committed Christian and “propagator of the Christian religion.” He further lamented how Spain had “endured sudden destruction … through the cruel sword of the sons of Hagar”—a reference to Islam’s invasion and conquest of Spain in the eighth century—and saw his struggle against the Muslims as an existential war against “the traps of our enemies both visible and invisible,” to quote from said document, signed by Roderick in 1098.
Although there is much more to say about the Cid’s exploits against the jihad, it is perhaps his conquest of Valencia that, when closely examined, truly underscores his remarkable nature. As Roderick’s modern biographer, Pidal, explains:
It savors of madness that a single man, unsupported by any national organization and lacking resources even for a single day, should appear before [the walls of] Valencia determined upon restoring a rule that had been overthrown this second time by an enemy [the Almoravids] who had proved irresistible to the strongest power in Spain [Emperor Alfonso VI]: that he should dream of doing what the Christian Emperor had failed to do, and in the teeth of the Moslem Emir’s opposition [and succeed is] … the most extraordinary achievement ever performed in Spain by anyone but a king.
This article was abstracted from Raymond Ibrahim’s Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam (Chapter 2 of which is dedicated to the Cid).
When the ‘New World’ was discovered by Columbus, conflict between an advanced civilisation and a pagan, primitive culture was guaranteed. Millions of Ameri-Indians over 4 centuries were killed by Whites, through war, enslavement, and mostly disease. Some 10 million are thought to have perished in about 400 years. The fiction that the Ameri-Indians were peace-loving environmentalists developing an advanced stone-base civilisation is now accepted within education and the anti-White, anti-Western paper mills called ‘journals’ and ‘academic writings’. It is ridiculous.
In any given year during the 15th century the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru would sacrifice 150.000 humans to their pagan nature gods, including celestial worship (Venus, the Moon, the Sun), and fertility cults. This entails over 1 million people per decade were murdered to spill their blood to appease the fantasy-spirits of the natural and celestial world, and to guarantee rain, harvests, victories in war, or the continued aggrandizement of the pagan priestly elite. Over a century there could have been more than 5-10 million murdered by the Aztecs and Incas.
This atavistic savagery does not include those who were killed during the endless wars between tribes and states; nor those who died in slavery. The Mayan and other ‘civilisations’ were famously destroyed through eco-devastation as trees were cut down to produce lime and whitewash for the grand temples and pyramids. The collapse of the eco-system ensured the self-immolation of the Mayan empire in the 10th century.
When the Spanish began the subjugation of the Ameri-Indians, we can see that as early as 1511 in sermons and letters by de Montesinos in Haiti and others, laments on the brutal treatment of the natives. Spanish policy was condemned for its barbaric attitude towards the natives, its violence, enslavement and disregard of property rights and natural law rights of the native people. Out of Christian conscience was born international law. There is no evidence that native Ameri-Indians spent any time reflecting on such rights and ideals. Their culture was perfectly at ease with the barbarism of human sacrifice and slavery.
Through these efforts the Spanish Church produced the Laws of Burgos (1512) and of Valladolid (1513) which governed how Spanish officials were to interact with the ‘natives’. These legal codes were premised on natural law and property law and rights. De Vitoria and other jurists used St. Thomas Acquinas’ system of natural law rights to argue that the native Ameri-Indians had a God-given right to their land, their bodies and their families. De Vitoria argued that ‘just war’ did not exist because some Ameri-Indians rejected the gospel or that they lacked ‘reason’ or civilisation. Their inherent natural law rights negated those arguments.
Las Casas shared Vitoria’s position on native natural law rights, and that the natives should be dealt with kindly, with patience and that the Spanish abandon the Aristotelian-Greek-Roman concept of slavery as being part of the natural order. God given natural law rights made slavery an illegal and immoral practice. By 1550 many Spanish theologians had developed a code of international law and concepts designed to protect the rights of any people or group including the Ameri-Indians. International law would build on these foundations and find detailed expression in the 17th century through Christians such as Grotius and many others.
The main point is that during the 16th century Christian Spaniards viewed their civilisation’s activities in the ‘new world’ and found many of them to be without merit, wanting and un-Christian. Ideas on reform, changes to legal texts and codes and binding instruments of agreement and principles, issued by the Spanish state as well as the Vatican were pursued and created. No other culture or civilisation has ever done this namely analysed itself, its actions and their outcomes and decided that a great change was mandatory.
The ‘Renaissance’ period as a clear cleavage and dividing line from the medieval does not exist. The ‘Renaissance’ is simply a continuation of the ‘Medieval’, the names themselves meaning little and entirely contrived. Is 1453 and the end of the ‘100 years’ war’ a ‘Medieval’ or a ‘Renaissance’ event. No one in 1453 called the era either of these concocted and specious names. 1453 was part of the same era, culture and history as 1353, 1253 or 853. Henry VI who lost the English possessions in France would never have understood why his era was the beginning of a ‘Renaissance’ as it was embroiled in a quite medieval civil war.
These arbitrarily divided categories are quite obviously part of the same process of development, cojoined in a millennium of history and culture. If the ‘Middle Ages’, did not exist, there is no ‘Renaissance’ or rebirth, the new birthing of something which is never defined, except for the usual hoary myth of a return to ‘Roman splendour’, a military empire, founded upon white slavery, which was outside of public works, technologically primitive, a society where 1/3 were slaves and most of the rest poor and illiterate. ‘Classical civilisation’ has much to condemn it.
The ’Renaissance’ usually starts at the time of the Musulman destruction of Constantinople in 1453. Years before this cataclysmic debacle and the erasure of the Christian capital of the Christian Eastern empire, a migration of the educated, the elite, the merchant class and those with means and money from Constantinople to the West and especially Italy, the birthplace of the ‘Renaissance’, had occurred. The ‘rebirth’ of the ill defined ‘classicism’ was the product of a Christian wave moving East to West, bringing with them the money, technology, treasures and libraries of Eastern Christendom. If this migration of Christians and their knowledge and money had not occurred, the ‘Renaissance’ would not have existed.
It was not a ‘rebirth’ from the immaterial, pace the Western ‘histories’, nor a recrudescence from darkness into light. It was a showering of Christian Byzantine education and influence into Italy, itself richer and more prosperous from trade and eras of internal peace, protected from the Musulman Jihad by the fast-ebbing empire of Byzantium and the Christianised Balkans which fought against the Ottoman hordes, preventing a complete seizure of central Europe. Petrarch the ignorant knew little about what prompted an increase in learning or sophisticated ‘intellectual’ pursuits, many of those then as now, as sterile and useless and any sophistry in the days of Plato. It was ironically Christian civilisation which produced the ‘Renaissance’.
We see this in the art and architecture of the ‘Renaissance’ which carried on the same themes as that of the Medieval period, finding an apogee in the Catholic Baroque, itself the most quintessentially religious art ever produced. Giotto, Cimbabue and countless others in the 14th century anticipate Renaissance art and set the foundation for the development of techniques and paintings in the 15th. There was little that was new in the 15th or 16th centuries regarding art or architecture.
Secularism as a 16th century trend was self-evident in every country and region long before 1450, with the ‘reformers’ of the 14th century and many of their followers quite secular, material and often irreligious. The Church itself and its hierarchy of dignitaries were criticised during many centuries for their materialism, pomp, corruption and secular attitudes, ruling as Barons in some cases, controlling armies and engaging in political and military disputes. All of this led to ‘reforming’ tendencies and outbreaks.
In science there is a retrogression in the 16th century. Copernican theory has still not been mechanically proven (which shocks the bien pensant but is entirely true) and was a philosophical not a scientifically premised theory. Many other theories explain natural and celestial phenomena. Alchemy, astrology, a belief in witches all witnessed fantastic growth during this period. Even during the ‘scientific revolution’ of the 17th century, Galileo’s achievements were premised on centuries of work by others dating back to the 13th century, as were Newton’s, structured on medieval Scholastic experimentation.
Kenneth Clark the atheist art historian remarked in his ‘Civilisation’ about the 16th century:
“Guercino spent much of his mornings in prayer, Bernini frequently went on retreats…Rubens went to Mass every day…Saint Ignatius Loyola the visionary soldier turned psychologist…(a Catholic culture) for a half century that could produce these great spirits.”
During the 16th century Popes Julius II and Leo X invested enormous sums into art and architecture, often taxing Catholics into outrage and rebellion to fund the endeavours. Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael and scores of others have left the world richer and more civilised for it. Some of the greatest works of human conception emanated from the deeply religious of the 16th century and their patrons. The printing press was created in 1450, along with dozens of sundry other inventions. Dissemination of writing, ideas, treatises and broadsheets is a decidedly medieval invention, taking generations to find expression in the technology and automation of Gutenberg.
The myth that the ‘Renaissance’ was a rebirth of something is utter bunk. This era was the continuation of the Medieval, impelled by the fleeing Christians of Byzantium and the capital of medieval Italy created through trade and commerce.
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What is left of the decaying corpulent carcass of Western Civilisation, owes its art and architecture to the Catholic Church, along with its greatest music (classical). Churches, minsters, Cathedrals, paintings, sculpture, mosaics, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts and building facades, provided inspiration, admiration and imitation across the centuries. The created world and Catholic themes were the most important innovative factor in art and architecture in world history.
The Catholic Church’s official opposition to iconoclasm or the destruction of any image which was related to Christ and God cannot be overemphasised. By rejecting this Eastern heresy the beautiful pietas of Michaelangelo and many others were sculpted, the Madonnas of Raphael chiselled, the wonderful elegiacal facades carved, and the endless arrays of technically advanced paintings were developed.
This stupendously powerful and evocative view of representational religious art is unique in the world. The Muhammadan cult does not allow any religious artwork. The Byzantines spent almost 200 years mired in the iconoclastic controversy where all depictions of Christ or religious themes was forbidden. Protesters aka Protestants attacked, burned and defiled priceless religious works of art, smashing statues, altarpieces, stained-glass windows and priceless treasures. This was called a ‘Reformation’.
The greatest Catholic innovation in art and architecture, surpassing the public works of Rome, was the Cathedral, called Gothic by the 18th century self-proclaimed ‘Enlighteners’. Gothic was utilised as a pejorative, associating the majestic genius of Cathedral building to the Germanic and uncivilised Goth tribes. This association was determined by men wearing wigs who could not build a home garden. These Cathedrals are simply the greatest works of art in history.
The ’Gothic’ style grew out of the Romanesque architecture of the 10th and 11th centuries. Originating in France, Romanesque churches were much larger than the existing smaller wooden and stone churches and minsters found in Northern Europe. The Gothic style, which commenced in the 12th century, built on the Romanesque, greatly increasing the width and height, employing flying buttresses, the pointed arch, and the ribbed vault, along with stained glass windows to let in the light and illuminate the realm of God on Earth and to enlighten the minds of men and remove the pagan past and the evil of nature worship. These were and are, engineering masterpieces. It is unlikely we have the skills today to build a Gothic cathedral from the beginning, without the aid of CAD or digital programs.
(Salisbury Cathedral)
Each Cathedral was mathematical in its planning. There is an impressive geometric coherence to the Gothic style based on Saint Augustine and his reference to Wisdom 11:21, where God has ordered all things by measure, number and weight. This ancient Catholic belief informed the construction of these gigantic edifices. God and his creation were in part linked by mathematics – a belief held by the ancient Greeks and in particular Pythagoras.
The geometric proportionality of these constructions is simply remarkable. Salisbury Cathedral in England, with one of the tallest spires in the world, is an example. This Cathedral’s central crossing is 39 feet by 39 feet. The central crossing is where the transept intersects the east-west axis. This primary dimension becomes the basis for the rest of the Cathedral’s construction. Both the length and the width of each of the nave’s ten bays is 19 feet six inches – or half the length of the central crossing. The nave itself consists of 20 identical spaces measuring 19 feet six inches square, and another 10 spaces measuring 19 feet six inches by 39 feet. It is geometrically exact.
(inside Salisbury Cathedral)
Everything about these buildings reveals a supernatural inspiration. The upward reach of the spire, the massive columns and stone, the light pouring into the nave, the grand entrance into a holy place, the brilliance and colour of the sanctuary, the decorations, the embossing of gold, the ceremony and pageantry of a mass; all of this and much more overawes the human with the greatness of the divine. Far from being a ‘dark age’, this was an age of rationalism leading to engineering brilliance, an age of belief developing the underlying cultural fabric of Western civilisation, including its laws and mores.
Could the Dutch lead a restoration of Europe? 'Far Right' is an appellation given by the brain dead and ignorant. Anything that is not dystopian, fascist or communal is now 'far right'.
(source)
After six months of negotiations that seemed foredoomed to failure, The Netherlands will have a new government that will attempt to do something novel and strange in Europe (and North America): it’s going to put its own people first. In a development that has implications far beyond the Netherlands, populist politician Geert Wilders, whose party became the country’s largest in last November’s elections, has reached an agreement with three other parties on the right to form a new government. Wilders won’t be prime minister, but his tough anti-mass migration agenda will be implemented. Or at least that’s the plan.
Breitbart reported Thursday that the Netherlands “will finally get the right wing government its people voted for, and some of the toughest border control in the Western World.” Wilders himself was ebullient, saying: “The sun will shine again in the Netherlands… The Netherlands will be ours again.” Will Wilders manage to Make the Netherlands Great Again? That is certainly the goal of the provisional agreement he and his coalition partners have hammered out.
The agreement, which is entitled “Hope, Courage, and Pride,” stipulates that Wilders will not be prime minister, despite being the leader of the country’s largest party. This was a concession that was necessary in order to form a coalition at all, and it could mean that the whole thing could go down in flames.
But maybe not: in theory, the prime minister won’t be an ideologue opposed to the coalition’s program but someone who understands that his or her job is to implement that program. “It appears,” says Breitbart, that “the ministry positions and Prime Ministership will be held by ‘technocrats’ — non-politicians and typically academics and economists — who would implement the government programme as dictated by the four.”
Could this work? Could it actually result in an effective government? It has about as much chance of doing so as a hereditary monarchy or the rule of the majority, both of which have produced some great governments and some disastrous ones, so it’s worth a try.
Meanwhile, the agreement is audacious in scope, aiming at doing nothing less than reversing the Netherlands’ slow and steady Islamization; if successful, this could transform the entire trajectory of Europe as a whole. The agreement states that “concrete steps are being taken towards the strictest admission regime for asylum and the most comprehensive package to control migration ever. The entire asylum and migration system is being reformed.”
Read the rest here.
Ignatius Loyola started the Society of Jesus in the early 16th century. Their dedication to science was an early principle and activity. The list of their accomplishments is impressive and without equal across any civilisation or religious group. A partial recitation of Jesuit scientific accomplishment includes:
Development and discovery of pendulum clocks; pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes, microscopes, magnetism, optics, electricity, astronomy, solar physics, physics in general, Jupiter surface observations, the Andromeda nebulae, Saturn’s rings, lunar effect on tides, moon containing the same material as the Earth, geomagnetism, meteorology, seismology, blood circulation (independent of Harvey), theoretical models to support flight, wave-like nature of light, star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood controls, plus and minus signs for mathematics, to name a few.
It is well known that the single most important collective contributor to experimental physics in the 17th century (the ‘Scientific Revolution’) was the Society of Jesus. Optics, maths, astronomy and many other areas so important to modern life were utterly dominated by Jesuits for centuries. Massive encyclopaedias were written, recording their data and allowing the spread of scientific research across Europe. The Jesuits were the main drivers of scientific collaboration. Charles Bossut in the early 19th century composed a list of history’s most eminent mathematicians. Out of the 303 listed, 16 were Jesuits or 5%, even though Jesuits had only existed for 2.5 centuries.
The Jesuits introduced Western science into China, Japan and India. In these geographies the Jesuits presented a wide array of mathematical and mechanical tools to better understand physical reality and the universe, including Euclidean geometry which made planetary movements somewhere understandable. Enormous effort was made to translate the dynamism of Western science into local languages and to teach and offer support for learning to local populations.
Important Jesuit scientists include: Father Riccioli, the first person to determine the rate of acceleration of a falling body (early 17th century), and created an enormous encyclopaedia on astronomy (1640); Father Kirchner who built the foremost astronomical departure from Aristotle in history (1651); Fathers Grimaldi and Francesco (17th century) observations and detailed experiments of pendulums, and Grimaldi and Riccioli’s accurate moon scape depictions; Father Grimaldi’s discovery of light refraction; Father Roger Boscovich who was a polymath accomplished in atomic theory, optics, maths, and astronomy who discovered sunspots, the transit of mercury, differing effects of gravity on different places on Earth amongst many other achievements; and Father Cassini who confirmed elliptical orbits (17th century). This is just a small list of some prominent Jesuits in Science.
Few know much if anything about the above facts. The Catholic Church put more money and investment into science, than any other institution in history. Without this funding and support modern science would not have developed. The Jesuits played a vital role in all of this.
A committed Muslim Jihadist who has never worked in the real world and is a committed Globalist has won the Mayorship in London for a record 3rd straight time. The 2 cults – Muhammadanism and Globalism – are certainly not mutually exclusive. They are indeed complementary. One based on the Koran believes in a world-wide caliphate with each nation, including the UK being subordinated to the Musulman Umma. The second, Globalism, is a technocratic fascism, evinced through the Corona scamdemic which seeks the destruction of White Western civilisation and its Christian heritage, subsumed by a global technocratic fascism. For this cult, the Muhammadan ethos of church and state being unified into one governance structure, is simply an opportunity and complementarity.
Sad Sadiq Khan as Mayor of London has been an utter failure but when only 40% of the population vote, it does not take much to win. In fact just 17% of the total vote was enough to win:
Population of Greater London: 8.8 million
Voting age population: 6.5 million
Total number of Votes: 2.75 million
% of voters who voted: 40%
Number who voted for Khan: 1.1 million
% of votes for Khan: 44%
% of votes for Khan as a % of those who can vote: 17%
This is not a ‘democracy’. 40% of the population felt compelled to vote. 60% did not care or thought there was no choice. The ‘Conservative’ or rather ‘Convict’ candidate, the party of the Corona Fascism and Lockdowns is hardly an alternative to a Globalist-Muslim Jihadi. When you look at London’s demographics on the ground, anyone who lives there knows that 30-35% of the population is Muslim. Most of these voters will vote and only vote for a Muslim panhandler or a waste vessel such as Jihadi George Galloway. Another 30% in any metro-area is hard-core socialist, Globalist-EUist and will never vote for any person of any colour who does not follow the narratives. About 1/3 remain who are not brain dead and may do the right thing and vote for the preservation of religion, culture, heritage and reality. But this 1/3 rump is a minority and greatly demonised.
The UK has Muslim mayors in: Birmingham (2nd largest city), Leeds, Blackburn, Sheffield, Oxford, Luton, Rochdale, and Oldham. Unsurprisingly these centres have large minority or slight majority Musulman populations. There are nearly 2000 mosques in the UK and 56 areas of Sharia barbarism. In the real world, and not the world of a faux census which hides the Muslimification of the UK, the UK probably has a population including illegals, of 75 million, with 20% of that total being followers of mad Muhammad, or 15 million. Greater London with a population of 9 million is in many places (Tower Hamlets, Hounslow), majority or near majority Muslim and probably contains circa 3 million Muslims based on the mosque density and capacity in the city. By 2040, the 15 million Muslims in the UK will have doubled to 30 million or 40% of the population. By 2060 Muslims will be a majority in the UK. If 2060 is 'too early' it won't be much past 2080 when Muslims will be the majority.
Tell me again that this is not cultural and civilisational suicide. Tell me again, it is not planned and intended. Destroy the nation state, destroy the indigenous White-Christian culture and replace it with a compliant Musulman Umma, which will be guided into a global fascism and technocracy.
When Muslims in Gaza chant Death to Israel and glory in their Jihad's attacks against the Israeli state, they are echoing a very old theme which dates back 80 years. Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and most Muslim Jihad groups have links to both the Nazis and Soviets.
Allied reluctance to contradict Nazi propaganda also points to Axis success. Fearful of alienating Middle Easterners, the Allies stayed humiliatingly silent about the genocide taking place against the Jews; failed to refute allegations about Jews dominating London, Washington, and Moscow; did not dispute the distorted Koranic interpretations; and shied away from endorsing Zionism. Merely to dispute Nazi accusations, the Allies worried, would only confirm Nazi claims about Britain, America, and Russia being stooges of Jewish power. An internal U.S. directive in late 1942 acknowledged that "the subject of Zionist aspirations cannot be mentioned, in as much as … [this] would jeopardize our strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean."
Sound familiar ? The mindless beat of defeatist apathy or the too-clever-by-half technocratic Orwellianism.
Nazism and Islam[ism] share many characteristics as reported in many places on this site [see here for example]. Both are universal cults which ignore reality and which subdue the individual into a communal. Morality, ethics, grace and tolerance are entirely cult and tribal based. Those who are on the 'outside' of the cult are evil. Those within the cult are pre-ordained for both worldly and other-wordly triumph and success. Quaint notions about democracy, free-will, the golden rule, respect, responsibility, individuality, and rationality, simply do not exist in either Nazism or Islam [ism]. Both are worlds of pagan-fascism. Both were allies in World War II. What a surprise.
A review from an excellent book outlining the Nazi influence on post 1945 Moslem development in the Middle East is below. Mein Kampf is still an Arab-Moslem best-seller and the Nazis are fondly remembered by many Moslems as exemplars of what needs to be done to the Jews.[emphasis, bold etc. mine]
“Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World by Jeffrey Herf focuses on an earlier time, the 1930s-40s, and the major effort by Hitler and his minions to transmit their ideas to the Middle East. After reading Küntzel and Herf, I realize that my education about the modern Middle East was lacking a vital ingredient, the Nazi one.
A specialist in modern German history at the University of Maryland, Herf brings a new corpus of information to light: summary accounts of Nazi shortwave radio broadcasts in the Arabic language that were generated over three years by the U.S. embassy in Cairo. This cache reveals fully, for the first time, what Berlin told the Arabs (and to a lesser extent, the Iranians). As page after page of Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World establishes in mind-numbing but necessary detail, the Germans above all pursued two themes: stopping Zionism and promoting Islamism. Each deserves close consideration.
Nazi propaganda in Arabic portrayed World War II, history's largest and most destructive war, as focused primarily on the sliver of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. This interpretation both flattered Arabs and extended Hitler's grand theory that Jews wanted to take over the Arab countries and eventually the whole world, that the Allied powers were but pawns in this Zionist conspiracy, and that Germany was leading the resistance to them.
Palestine was the key, according to these broadcasts. If Zionists took it over, they would "control the three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. Thus they will be able to rule the whole world and spread Jewish capitalism." Such an eventuality would lead to Arabs oppressed and Islam defunct. "Should Bolshevism and Democracy be victorious," announced Nazi radio, "the Arabs will be dominated forever and all traces of Islam will be wiped out." To avoid this fate, Arabs had to join with the Axis.
As the war progressed, Berlin's incitement became ever more furious. "You must kill the Jews before they open fire on you. Kill the Jews" went a July 1942 broadcast. Herf notes the bitter irony: "At this moment of complete Jewish powerlessness, the Arabic broadcasts from Berlin skillfully adapted the general Nazi propaganda line about Jewish domination of the anti-Hitler coalition to a radical Arab and Islamic view."
At the same time, the Nazi regime developed an approach to Muslims that largely ignored the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf, and other European sources in favor of selected passages from the Koran.
Hitler's propagandists assured Muslims, first, that Axis countries "respect the Koran, sanctify the mosques, and glorify the prophet of Islam." It cited the respectful work of German Orientalists as an important sign of goodwill. Second, it argued for what Heinrich Himmler called the "shared goals and shared ideals" of Islam and National Socialism. These included monotheism, piety, obedience, discipline, self-sacrifice, courage, honor, generosity, community, unity, anti-capitalism, and a celebration of labor and warfare.
In addition, Muslims were told that they and the Nazis were purportedly both fighting a "great struggle for freedom" against the British, the most important colonial power in the Middle East. The regime drew a parallel between Muhammad and Hitler and presented the umma as roughly analogous to its own notion of a totalitarian Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community").
Nazis portrayed Islam as an ally and, accordingly, called for its revival while urging Muslims to act piously and emulate Muhammad. Radio Berlin in Arabic went so far as to declare "Allahu akbar! Glory to the Arabs, Glory to Islam." The Germans held that Muslims who were not righteous enough (i.e., not following the Nazi ideological model) were causing the umma to languish: "Muslims, you are now backward because you have not shown God the proper piety and do not fear him." And not just backward, but also "invaded by merciless tyrants." Specifically for Shi'ites, the Nazis hinted at Hitler being the awaited Twelfth Imam or the Muslim eschatological figure of Jesus, who will fight the anti-Christ (namely, the Jews) and bring on the end of days.
The Nazis noted the parallel between sayings from the Koran (Sura 5:82, "You will meet no greater enemy of the believers than the Jews") and the words of Hitler ("By resisting the Jews everywhere, I am fighting for the Lord's work") and turned the Koran into an anti-Semitic tract whose primary purpose was to call for eternal hatred of Jews. They even falsely claimed that Muhammad ordered Muslims to fight the Jews "until they are extinct."
In the Nazi telling, Jewish-Muslim enmity dated back to the 7th century. "Since the days of Mohamed, the Jews have been hostile to Islam" went one broadcast. "Every Moslem knows that Jewish animosity to the Arabs dates back to the dawn of Islam" declared another. "Enmity has always existed between Arab and Jew since ancient times" insisted a third. The Nazis built on this premise to establish the basis for a Final Solution in the Middle East, instructing Arabs to "make every effort possible so that not a single Jew … remains in Arab countries."
Herf emphasizes the remarkable symbiosis of German and Middle Eastern elements: "As a result of their shared passions and interests, they produced texts and broadcasts that each group could not have produced on its own." Specifically, Arabs learned "the finer points of anti-Semitic conspiracy thinking," while Nazis learned the value of focusing on Palestine. He describes the coming together of Nazi and Islamic themes in Berlin as "one of the most important cultural exchanges of the twentieth century."
Having detailed Nazi propaganda in Arabic, Herf then traces its impact. He begins by documenting the great energy and expense devoted to these messages—the quality of the personnel devoted to it, their high-level Nazi patronage, the thousands of hours of radio transmissions, and the millions of pamphlets.
He then rounds up assessments of the Axis impact, all pointing to its success. Allied estimates from 1942, for example, found that "the people were saturated with Axis talk," that "upwards of three-fourths of the Moslem world are in favor of the Axis" and that "90% of the Egyptians, including their government, believe that the Jews are mainly responsible for shortages and high prices of essentials." A report from 1944 found that "practically all Arabs who have radios … listen to Berlin."
Allied reluctance to contradict Nazi propaganda also points to Axis success. Fearful of alienating Middle Easterners, the Allies stayed humiliatingly silent about the genocide taking place against the Jews; failed to refute allegations about Jews dominating London, Washington, and Moscow; did not dispute the distorted Koranic interpretations; and shied away from endorsing Zionism. Merely to dispute Nazi accusations, the Allies worried, would only confirm Nazi claims about Britain, America, and Russia being stooges of Jewish power. An internal U.S. directive in late 1942 acknowledged that "the subject of Zionist aspirations cannot be mentioned, in as much as … [this] would jeopardize our strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean."
Thus, when two leading U.S. senators, Robert Taft of Ohio and Robert Wagner of New York, proposed a resolution in 1944 endorsing a Jewish national home in Palestine, Berlin radio in Arabic called this an attempt "to erase Islamic civilization" and "to eradicate the Koran." Panicked, the entire weight of the Executive Branch came down on the senators, who felt compelled to withdraw their resolution. Clearly, Nazi offerings resonated deeply in the Middle East.
They continued to do well after the Nazi collapse and the war's conclusion. The defeat of Nazi General Erwin Rommel's aggressive push into North Africa meant that Nazi ambitions in the Middle East, in particular the Final Solution to annihilate its million or so Jews, were never implemented. But years of hate from radio and pamphlets and the repetitive, grotesque, ambitious, anti-Semitic, and Islam-based message detailed by Herf had taken root. Not only did the Middle East's Nazis emerge nearly invulnerable to prosecution, but they also prospered and were feted. An example: in 1946, Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brethren, lavished praise on Hitler's favorite Arab, Haj Amin el-Husseini, calling him "a hero … a miracle of a man." Banna added for good measure: "Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin el-Husseini will continue the struggle." Acknowledging el-Husseini's exalted status, a British officer in 1948 described him as "the one hero in the Arab world."
Ideas the Nazis spread in the Middle East have had an enduring twofold legacy. First, as in Europe, they built on existing prejudices against Jews to transform that prejudice into something far more paranoid, aggressive, and murderous. One U.S. intelligence report from 1944 estimated that anti-Jewish materials constituted fully half of German propaganda directed to the Middle East. The Nazis saw virtually all developments in the region through the Jewish prism and exported this obsession.
The fruits of this effort are seen not only in decades of furious Muslim anti-Zionism, personified by Arafat and Ahmadinejad, but also in the persecution of ancient Jewish communities in countries like Egypt and Iraq, which have now shriveled to near-extinction, plus the employment of Nazis such as Johann van Leers and Aloïs Brunner in important government positions. Thus did the Nazi legacy oppress Jewry in the Middle East post-1945.
Second, Islamism took on a Nazi quality. As someone who has criticized the term Islamofascism on the grounds that it gratuitously conflates two distinct phenomena, I have to report that Herf's evidence now leads me to acknowledge deep fascist influences on Islamism. This includes the Islamist hatred of democracy and liberalism and its contempt for multiple political parties, preference for unity over division, cult of youth and militarism, authoritarian moralism, cultural repression, and illiberal economics.
Beyond specifics, that influence extends to what Herf calls an "ability to introduce a radical message in ways that resonated with, yet deepened and radicalized, already existing sentiments." Although a scholar of Europe by training, Herf's detective work in the U.S. archives has opened a new vista on the Arab-Israeli conflict and Islamism, as well as made a landmark contribution more broadly to an understanding of the modern Middle East.”
Islam and Nazism. It proves that Islam is peace, love, compassion and civilization......And when Muslims in Gaza attack Israel, through the Jihad proxy called Hamas or another Muslim Jihad group, make sure you side with the Muslims and not the 'Jews'. Slaughtering all Jews and chanting Death to Israel denotes sophistication, intelligence and gravitas in the modern clown world we live in.
Must be the Easter Season, the Muslim Jihad proceeds at speed in Nigeria.
Twenty-five Christians were killed and more than 3,000 displaced during attacks by Fulani Islamist extremists on four communities in Nigeria’s Plateau State between April 12 and 19. Please pray for comfort for the bereaved, healing for the injured and that the needs of the displaced will be met.
These most recent attacks took place in Bokkos Local Government Area (LGA) and Mangu LGA
More than 50 armed terrorists descended at night on the villages of Mandung-Mushu and Kopnanle in Bokkos Local Government Area (LGA) on April 12, targeting the unarmed residents as they slept. Twelve people were killed in the assault when the terrorists “set fire to homes and a place of worship, mercilessly gunning down fleeing civilians”, said barrister Farmasum Fuddang, chairman of Bokkos Cultural Development Council.
Another 12 Christians were killed on April 19 during an attack in Pushit, Mangu LGA. was killed when Fulani Islamists attacked Chikam community.
Many sustained injuries and are being treated in medical facilities in Mangu. Community leaders in the affected villages estimate that the total death toll may reach as high as 30.
Fulani Islamists have attacked the Christian community in Nigeria before. For example, they were responsible for the deaths of more than 295 Christians during a wave of attacks spanning December 23, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day 2023, in Plateau State. They also carried out an attack at Easter 2024, when they killed ten Christians in the Middle Belt, including a pregnant woman and her unborn baby.
Only in Christianity do we find distinct markers of piety and intelligent rationality, mixed together in a great pot-pourri of intellectual and emotional ferment. The organisation and both immaterial and material concerns of monks and nuns is one such marker. A second is the role of the priest as a scientist during the Middle Ages. Few if any cultures can boast one, none can reference both. We take it for granted in our modern world suffused in material wealth, much of it concentrated with the few, saturated as it is with debts both present and future; that everyone throughout history has had the time and leisure to become educated, explore and discover. This is obviously a fiction. ‘Learning’ and naturalist investigation was always the prerogative of the rich and idle.
What is unique in the Western experience is the role of the scientist-priest. Running a church and a parish is a full-time job. It involves the spiritual and religious guidance of the laity, but also, the management of buildings, finances, people, and material affairs. It is in effect, the equivalent of running a business. Seen from this viewpoint there was not much time for idle-intellectual speculation or forays into complicated naturalist endeavours. Yet throughout the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church produced a vast quantity of learned priests who transformed world history through intellectual, social, scientific, mathematical and mechanical innovation.
Sadly, much documentation pre-dating the 1200s has been destroyed through arson, war, pillage or natural decomposition. Tonnes of Latin manuscripts also lie unread in various crypts and archives across Europe waiting for translation. What we do know is that the 13th century was a cauldron of sophisticated education and inquiry, surely built on previous centuries of experimentation and effort. Roger Bacon a Franciscan who taught at Oxford, was greatly admired for his work in maths and optics. He developed a scientific method and emphasised the importance of experiment and observation. He identified that long standing customs and popular opinions were too often, obstacles to truth.
Saint Albert the Great (d.1280), was a Dominican monk educated in Padua, who taught in Germany and at the University of Paris. One of his students was St. Thomas Aquinas. Besides teaching Saint Albert was the Bishop of Regensburg for 2 years and led the German Dominicans for many years. Albert was justly famous for his naturalistic investigations, experimentation and applied mathematics. As with Roger Bacon he developed a coherent method of investigation which focused on mechanical proofs. Outputs from Saint Albert traversed the areas of physics, logic, metaphysics, biology, psychology, and natural science. He refused to accept scientific ‘authority’ at face value, an attitude completely missing in our ‘modern world’.
Robert Grosseteste was another famed monk and chancellor of Oxford as well as a Bishop of Lincoln in England. He was deeply influenced by the school at Chartres and by Thierry in particular. He was probably the first priest-scientist to codify and write down his scientific experiments and the steps taken within each experiment. These methods and approaches were passed on down and were duly copied by scientists in the 17th century.
There are dozens of similar priest-scientists that are of great importance but rarely mentioned in history books. Father Nicholas Steno (d 1686) defined the science of geology, an area which is still suffused with problems and incorrect assumptions. In particular he scientifically examined fossils, rocks and geological strata, overturning the existing myths and a priori conclusions through careful research and applied experimentation. He was the first person we know of who believed that the Earth’s history could be known from its rocks.
The Jesuits as a religious order, until the advent of their subversion in the modern era were famous throughout the world for scientific, mathematical and astronomical observations. Father Matthias Rici became, circa 1610, the de-facto Chancellor of China through his demonstration of Western science, astronomy, maths and geographical knowledge. He was famous within China for teaching Chinese scholars not only scripture but advanced scientific ideas, including astronomical observations and calculations. Many Chinese converted to Catholicism due to Rici’s piety, Christian virtues but also due to the scientific achievements that the Christianised West could display to the pagan East.
The priest as scientist, academic and innovator is a Christian only invention. For 1000 years from the demise of Rome and its takeover by the German tribes, to 1600, the Catholic Church was at the vanguard of every important development in Western Europe. From its moral salvation, to responsible citizenhood, to the rise of the welfare state including hospitals, poor relief, orphanages; to ending both White and Black slavery; to the creation of universities and the foundations of maths and science; to the grander of faith and life expressed in art, architecture literature, learning; to its centrality in industry, technology and agricultural revolutions; the priest as savant is what enabled and ennobled Western civilisation.
