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.
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.
Developed during the 11th century, the Cathedral school of Chartres was a seminal innovation in Western civilisation and the development of real science (not the faux science of materialism, fraudulent data and metaphysics). Inspired by the work of the polymath and scientist Pope Sylvester in the late 10th century, Chartres provided a foundation for scientific excellence during the 11th century under the leadership of Fulbert a former student of Sylvester. During the 11th and 12th centuries this school at Chartres was at the forefront of naturalist and scientific inquiry.
Fulbert and other academics at Chartres were versatile and fluent in the areas of medicine, logic, mathematics, and astronomy. Pagan concepts along with more modern Christian innovations suffused the school. In the western façade at the Cathedral of Chartres one can still see today the liberal arts as taught in the 11th century, reflected in the statues of Aristotle, Boethius, Cicero, Euclid, Ptolemy, and Pythagoras. This façade was created by Thierry of Chartres in the 1140s, to represent the influence, learning and education from the ancients and pagans. There was no conflict between Christianity and science, either ancient or modern.
This school along with many others built during the 12th century, pursued the quadrivium as part of the seven core courses. The quadrivium included arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. The patterns of God’s perfect creation and the natural laws of perfect harmony were investigated, pursued and contemplated. The trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic, comprising the rest of the 7 core courses, made the expression of thoughts and conclusions from the study of these patterns, possible and intelligible. Man was invited to understand and glory in God’s created cosmos.
One of the most important contributions by Chartres was its systematic appraisal of nature as an autonomous creation, operating to fixed natural laws. Natural causations were to be utilised to explain how nature functioned. Gone were the gods and spirits of rocks, planets and movements (Aristotle, pagan naturalism). In their place scientific explanations had to be offered for the physics of nature, the movement of objects, the patterns of weather and seasons and the obvious design and cycles of life one could see in nature itself. It was a gigantic movement away from the incorrect physics of the ancients and polytheists to a rational investigation of reality and nature. This rational approach only appeared in Catholic Europe.
The famed scientist and philosopher Adelard of Bath (1080-1142) was a student at Chartres. He commented that rationality is what makes us human. The rational beauty of the universe pace Adelard demands an appreciation and understanding. Knowledge was a gift from God. William of Conches another student and scientist at Chartres agree emphasising that natural phenomena must be understand without recourse to the invocation of the supernatural. This attitude is why Christianity built modern science and the pagans and naturalists failed in the same endeavour.
Thierry and his successors at Chartres thankfully dispensed with the pagan notion that celestial bodies were divine. The Muslim Al-Lah for example, is historically an idol representing moon and celestial worship, common in the Near East reflected in the name Baal found in the Old Testament and associated with evil. The schools at Chartres believed that the planets were formed of material substances, not semi-divine characteristics and that they served a purpose in the firmament that needed to be discovered. Under Thierry and his successors, we can see the beginnings of true science and physics.
‘Averroists’, or those who followed the incorrect philosophy of Averroes the Muslim philosopher, were also dealt with by the Chartres school. Averroes believed that Aristotle was correct in his belief that the Earth was eternal. This contravenes common sense and the Bible, in which the Earth and the universe must have been created. Saint Thomas Acquinas, basing his work in part on the output from Chartres reconciled Aristotle with Catholicism, providing in essence scientific and logical proofs in his synthesis to prove the existence of God and the created universe.
After Acquinas’ death the Bishop of Paris issued the Condemnation of 1277, books and works that professors at the University of Paris were forbidden to teach. The condemnations targeted erroneous Aristotelian beliefs. Pierre Duhem the great historian of science believed that the Condemnations opened the path for real science to flourish. It forced academics and thinkers to break out of the prison walls of Aristotelian belief and pursue new and fresh paths of discovery. This energy and vitality led to the astronomy, physics and laws of inertia and motion developed in Paris and Chartres by Robert Grosseteste (13th century) and Jean Buridan (14th century), amongst many others.
The age of naturalist science was born in the 11th century in Western Christendom. This epochal achievement is seldom recognised or understood.
Exemplary physicist and science-historian Pierre Duhem traced the development of modern science and methods back to at least the 14th century. The Church’s role in the creation of science and mathematics was fundamental and crucial. Father Stanley Jaki, the prize-winning historian of science with doctorates in theology and physics, has analysed Duhem’s work and the history of Catholic science. Duhem and Jaki both prove that the Church was the main actor in the creation of real science (not to be confused with the modern world’s non-science or Scientism).
Catholics believe, premised on the Old and New Testaments, that the universe is orderly and rational. God, the great intelligence, created the universe, the world and natural phenomena, in a perfect harmony, full of beauty, wonder, and order. This universe is endowed with lawfulness, reason and purpose. In Wisdom 11:21 God instructs man that he has “ordered all things by measure, number, weight.” Christians have always sought to undertake a quantitative process of discovery and to measure ‘all things’.
No other civilisation has ever believed in a rational, ordered and non-cyclical universe. All other systems including the Greek and Roman were irrational, usually circular, mystical, with some (Hinduism, Buddhism) even denying that there is a reality or a world of the 5 senses. The birth of science, indeed universities and school systems, is a byproduct of a Christian worldview in which a rational creator has created ex-nihilo, a universe for humans to be lived in, discovered and understood.
This philosophical disposition allows Christians to pursue the functional of natural and physical laws. Other civilisations simply viewed the Earth as a gigantic organism of nature, dominated by nature pantheism, many deities, and endless cycles of birth, death and rebirth. This animism destroys rational pursuits of the physical and theoretical since it denies reason and order. Created beings on the other hand, will use their own mind and wills to explore, discover, and understand fixed patterns and logic.
Christianity rightly and rationally rejects animism and pantheism. God, his only begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit are immanent and universal. Other cultures can and have of course contributed to the development of science, but never in a sustained and scientific manner. Christian scientific inquiry stretched over 700 years – an unprecedented length of time in the journey to acquire knowledge and understanding.
Ancient civilisations including the Chinese, Greek, Babylonian, were unable to believe in the laws of nature or the rationality of creation. Aristotle, in a common ancient view for instance, ascribed the circular motion of planets as an ‘affection’ for that kind of travel. For the ancients, all natural phenomena was personal, generated by a deity or deities. For science to succeed, phenomena had to be de-personalised and the only group in history to do this was the Christian Schoolmen or Scholastics.
Scholastics believed in the rationality and reasonableness of God. Saint Anselm (11th century) for example maintained that God not only revealed himself and his moral order through Christ, but in nature itself has also shown that there exists a rational, logical universe. God expects the human to investigate and understand this rational and physical universe. As Saint Thomas Acquinas and many others expressed, God did not create a universe of chaos and incomprehension. The world and our cosmos are predictable and intelligible and can only be discovered through rational inquiry and importantly, mechanical experimentation which was only developed and sustained in Catholic Europe.
Jean Buridan and many others in the 14th century developed the laws of motion (inertia) which was picked up by Descartes, Galileo and Newton. Without the ‘Paris school’ and other Catholici universities the creation of modern physics would never have occurred. Contrary to myth therefore, our modern ideas of science can be found in copious writings and experiments dating back to the 1300s.
It should be noted that Descartes, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton and others took great care to ‘erase’ all references and historical actors from their notes. Darwin, Einstein and many others have followed suit. They believe that by effacing their progenitors they will claim credit and boost their own egotistical importance. All they really claim is the appellations of fraud and plagiarism. It should be noted that Darwin, Einstein and many others never performed physical experiments and are not scientists but philosophers. Science took a wrong turn in the 19th century when philosophy and maths triumphed over reality and experimentation. We have never recovered from that colossal wrong turn.