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.
Emmet Scott dispenses with the ignorant post-modern myth of the Muslim ‘Golden Age’ in Spain. In reality it was a period of slavery, Christian persecution, endless raids north into the Christian enclaves of northern Spain and France (even into Switzerland), despotism, high taxes and the neutering of technology and innovation (the Blast Furnace was invented by Christians in Catalonia in the 12th century, a series of discoveries that Muslims never made, anywhere in the world, and this is one example out of hundreds). Islamic Spain was a squatter’s empire, squalid, splendid for the few, an evil nightmare for the many.
Muslims invaded Spain in 711 A.D. and within a few years had conquered the Arian-Catholic and very wealthy Visigothic empire, with only a few redoubtable Christian states holding out in the north, clustered along the Pyrennes. Don Pelayo and his small band of Christian fighters memorably saved Spain and probably most of France with their improbable and dramatic victory at Covadonga in 722 A.D. I am sure this miraculous defeat of Muhammad’s cult will soon be rewritten as a display of White Catholic racism and intolerance toward liberators and enrichers.
An example of an egregious lie is the myth that Cordoba was the richest, grandest city on earth during the Muhammadan occupation. A city of great vastness, teeming with all sorts of 'inventions', superseding the 'dark age' Visigothic city. In actual fact Cordoba was never a megapolis. Archaeology reveals that the Muhammadan city was no bigger than it was under the Visigoths. Perhaps a new wall, some new structures, or a new suburb may have been built, but in essence it remained a city of 50.000, not 500.000 as given by Arab chroniclers and anti-Christian post-Enlightenment commentators. Technology would have been neutered given the dogmatic totalitarian strictures of Sharia, still evident and on display in today’s Muhammadan world. The Jewish-Christian craftsmen and literate society would have been the basis of any Muhammadan construction or culture; non-citizens who paid the Jizya and whose men and women were open to rape, torture, enslavement or forced labour. A paradise it was not.
But a very different picture of the Spanish Caliphate has been painted by other writers. Consider for example the statement of Richard Fletcher, an author very well-disposed to Islam and its culture: “Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch.” Indeed! One would never suspect from the descriptions of Messrs Briffault, Lewis, and many others, that Islamic Spain was the center of a vast slave-trading empire whose rulers believed it was their religious duty to wage ruthless war against their Christian neighbors to the north on an annual or even twice-yearly basis.
Muhammadans endlessly persecuted the Christians from 711 to 1492 A.D. History’s longest war (the Reconquista), but also its longest foreign subjugation and destruction of a people and culture.
Harsh reprisals with mutilations and crucifixions would sanction the Mozarab (Christian dhimmis) calls for help from the Christian kings. Moreover, if one dhimmi harmed a Muslim, the whole community would lose its status of protection, leaving it open to pillage, enslavement and arbitrary killing.” ferocious persecution of both Jews and Christians which occurred in Spain in the thirteenth century during the rule of the fanatical Almohads. equally fanatical predecessors, the Almoravids, who caused havoc in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.
Louis Bertrand, writing in 1945, before the epoch of political correctness: “From the outset of the Almoravid invasion the destruction of Christian churches had begun. Among them was destroyed a very old and very curious basilica in the neighbourhood of Granada, the church of Gudila. The faquis commenced to persecute the Christian Mozarabs [Christians under Muslim rule] so intolerably that they begged the King of Aragón, Alfonso the Warrior, to come and deliver them. The Aragonese did not succeed in taking Granada. When they retreated, the faquis avenged themselves on the Mozarabs in the most merciless fashion.
Christians were not tolerated. Under Sharia they paid heavy taxes, had to perform duties and obligations in time and labour for their Muslim masters, had their women raped and many sent to harems, had no legal rights, were not able to openly practice their religion, could not build new churches and indeed saw thousands of churches and Christian built edifices converted into Mosques or simply torn down. They were also expelled and forced out of Spain by their Muhammadan overlords on many occasions.
“Already ten thousand of them had been compelled to emigrate into the territory of Alfonso to escape their enemies’ repression. The remainder were deprived of their property, imprisoned, or put to death. Many of them were deported to Africa. They were established in the neighbourhood of Salé and Meknes, where oppression of all kinds compelled them to embrace Islam. Ten years later there was a fresh expulsion. The Christians were again deported to Morocco en masse.”
The impact on Catholic-Spanish culture, by the Muhammadan fascist savagery and intolerance must have been immense. The only way to eject the Muhammadan invaders was to be more ruthless, more intolerant, harder, tougher and more militaristic than they were.
“Finally, it was not without contagion that the Spaniards lived for centuries in contact with a race of men who crucified their enemies and gloried in piling up thousands of severed heads by way of trophies. The cruelty of the Arabs and the Berbers also founded a school in the Peninsula. … Whilst I do not necessarily endorse Bertrand’s opinion (I feel he has slightly overstated the case), it is nonetheless true to say that their long contact with Islam most certainly did not foster the development of humanitarianism in the Spanish character.
Far from a Golden Age, Muhammadan Spain was a disaster. It stopped progress, effaced technology and trade, enslaved and killed literally millions of people over 800 years and deformed Catholic culture in Spain. It also exhausted the resources, energies and foci of Catholics for 800 years, obstructing the creation of innovations and discoveries and retarding the growth of civilisation.