Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West by Spencer Robert

Author:Spencer, Robert [Spencer, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781621571162
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2013-02-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

THE MODERN MYTH OF ISLAMIC TOLERANCE

The Fact of Modern Islamic Intolerance

Muslim Spain: the myth

MUSLIM SPAIN IS A BEACON of hope in a fractious and frightened world. Karen Armstrong, the author of Islam: A Short History, wants us to “remember that until 1492, Jews and Christians lived peaceably and productively together in Muslim Spain—a coexistence that was impossible elsewhere in Europe.”1

This is no new idea. In 1897, historian Stanley Lane-Poole wrote, “for nearly eight centuries, under her Mohammedan rulers, Spain set to all Europe a shining example of a civilized and enlightened state. . . Whatsoever makes a kingdom great and prosperous, whatsoever tends to refinement and civilization, was found in Moslem Spain.” By contrast, the Catholic Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella gave rise to “the abomination of desolation, the rule of the Inquisition, and the blackness of darkness in which Spain has been plunged ever since.”2 Almost a hundred years later Anthony Burgess lamented the vanished “beauty, tolerance, learning and good order” of the Emirate of Cordoba.3 Even the U.S. State Department, heralding the opening of a museum devoted to Islam and Muslims in that jewel of Islamic culture, Jackson, Mississippi, proclaimed that “during the Islamic period in Spain, Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived together in peace and mutual respect, creating a diverse society in which vibrant exchanges of ideas took place.”4

By now all this has passed into the popular consciousness. Andalusia under Islamic rule was a proto-multiculturalist paradigm, all the more appealing to modern post-Christian Westerners because this paradise of tolerance was not constructed under the auspices of Christianity, thereby seeming to vindicate their long insistence that all cultures are equal and that some—particularly non-Christian ones—are more equal than others. And at the opposite end of the political spectrum, National Review marveled at al-Andalus as “a plush region on Spain’s Mediterranean coast with a vibrant economy and an adventurous intellectual community, ruled by a benign Islamic monarch whose Jewish right-hand man helps bring about a mutually beneficial relationship with Orthodox Christians.”5

It’s a potent idea in these post-September 11 days: Osama bin Laden and other terrorists have allegedly given Islam’s detractors a fresh excuse to vilify Islam as a violent religion—but al-Andalus shows us a very different, and most inviting, Muslim reality in history. Edward Said, whose Orientalism and Covering Islam are the twin towers of today’s academic Islamophilia, complained early in 2003 that “for almost a year American politicians, regional experts, administration officials, and journalists have repeated the charges that have become standard fare so far as Islam and the Arabs are concerned. Most of this predates September 11 [2001]. To today’s practically unanimous chorus has been added the authority of the UN human development report on the Arab world, which certified that Arabs dramatically lag behind the rest of the world in democracy, knowledge, and women’s rights.” Said decries all this as “vague, recycled Orientalist clichés repeated by tireless mediocrities such as Bernard Lewis” and sneers at “the clash of civilizations that George Bush and his minions

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