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.
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).
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.
Beginning on the evening of December 23 and continuing till the morning of Christmas Day, Fulani Islamist militia groups systematically slaughtered scores of Christians in co-ordinated attacks in two districts of Plateau State, in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim Middle Belt. The dead were mostly women and children, and included a number of physically challenged individuals who were unable to run and who were therefore burnt alive.
Statistics gathered by Barnabas Fund have set the total death figure at nearly 300, the worst anti-Christian violence seen in Nigeria in years.
The carnage was unimaginable. Some 25 remote and widely scattered villages were targeted. In total more than 1,500 homes were burnt, eight churches destroyed, many hundreds of people injured and 30,000 displaced. This was one of the darkest days in recent Nigerian history.
Witnesses said that it took up to 12 hours after the attacks started for help to arrive. A former Nigerian chief of army staff said this was because government troops were working alongside the attackers. A number of others were killed in other northern Nigerian states during the same Christmas season.
Most of us did not hear about the more recent massacre until well after Christmas Day, and many of us not till after New Year’s Day, the main reason being that it received next to no coverage in the British mainstream media.
The Guardian was one of the few UK newspapers that reported on the mass killings. However, like almost all other secular news media that bothered to pick up on the story, it failed to note that the victims were mainly Christians.
The absence of television coverage has been more notable still. Major channels like ITV, Sky and Channel 4 failed to notify its viewers concerning the massacre. As did the BBC, who, while living up to its policy of almost never covering Islamic attacks against Nigerian Christians on its television news broadcasts, might at least have been expected to include a short report in its online news forum, if only for the purpose of counteracting anyone daring to raise a complaint for non-coverage.
The Guardian, like Reuters and the German newspaper Die Zeit, partially blamed climate change for the murders, stating that ‘Competition for natural resources between nomadic herders and farmers, intensified by rapid population growth and climate pressures, has exacerbated social tensions and sparked violence.’
But those with a deeper understanding of the Nigeria scenario insist the timing had clear religious undertones. Attacks against Christians during major celebrations such as Christmas and Easter are not uncommon in northern Nigeria. The chairman for the Plateau chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria said the assailants sent letters to the villages in advance, warning them they ‘will not celebrate Christmas, but run away with their rice’. He expressed surprise that security was not able to act on such prior warning.
The chairman of the Para-Mallam Peace Foundation also expressed exasperation with secular explanations. ‘A terrible genocide is taking place in Plateau State, but it is being window-dressed to look like a clash between farmers and herders,’ he said. ‘Sadly, false and misleading narratives are created while rivers of blood continue to flow.’
A Roman Catholic priest who heads a charity helping Christians start small businesses in areas where they have been heavily persecuted, mainly by Muslims, said that blaming the attacks on climate change ‘is the narrative of the post-Christian globalist West. How could they dare admit there is a genocide going on in Nigeria perpetrated by Muslims against Christians—it would demand action.’
The recent atrocities follow a number of other mass killings over the past two years in Nigeria. Across the Middle Belt, at least 2,600 people were killed in 2021 alone. It is estimated that in the last 14 years, more than 52,000 Christians have been murdered in Nigeria because of their faith.
In addition to murders, a recent report claims that as many as five million Christians in Nigeria have been displaced or moved to internal refugee camps within the country and at least 18,000 churches across the country have been set on fire, along with over 2,200 Christian schools.
If such widespread slaughter were being perpetuated against any other religious or ethnic minority in the world – especially a Muslim minority – one might expect widespread media alarm and news coverage. It is of course, a different story when Christians are the victims, and especially so when Muslims are the perpetrators. Then it becomes a politically incorrect incident the world conveniently prefers to ignore. A curious blend of media muteness, disinformation and communication censorship.
Update January 10, 2024
Tragically, the brutal massacre of Christians that started at Christmas has carried over into the new year. Over the past couple of weeks, the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria has been an almost daily occurrence. Yet still the world fails to acknowledge this heinous massacre.