Tag Archives: Muslim

Commentary

Correcting four myths about the history of the Crusades

6 Comments
Crusader
Crusader

Here is an interesting article from First Principles Journal.

Intro:

The verdict seems unanimous. From presidential speeches to role-playing games, the crusades are depicted as a deplorably violent episode in which thuggish Westerners trundled off, unprovoked, to murder and pillage peace-loving, sophisticated Muslims, laying down patterns of outrageous oppression that would be repeated throughout subsequent history. In many corners of the Western world today, this view is too commonplace and apparently obvious even to be challenged.

But unanimity is not a guarantee of accuracy. What everyone “knows” about the crusades may not, in fact, be true. From the many popular notions about the crusades, let us pick four and see if they bear close examination.

The four myths:

  • Myth #1: The crusades represented an unprovoked attack by Western Christians on the Muslim world.
  • Myth #2: Western Christians went on crusade because their greed led them to plunder Muslims in order to get rich.
  • Myth #3: Crusaders were a cynical lot who did not really believe their own religious propaganda; rather, they had ulterior, materialistic motives.
  • Myth #4: The crusades taught Muslims to hate and attack Christians.

Here’s the most obvious thing you should know. The Crusades were defensive actions:

In a.d. 632, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were all Christian territories. Inside the boundaries of the Roman Empire, which was still fully functional in the eastern Mediterranean, orthodox Christianity was the official, and overwhelmingly majority, religion. Outside those boundaries were other large Christian communities—not necessarily orthodox and Catholic, but still Christian. Most of the Christian population of Persia, for example, was Nestorian. Certainly there were many Christian communities in Arabia.

By a.d. 732, a century later, Christians had lost Egypt, Palestine, Syria, North Africa, Spain, most of Asia Minor, and southern France. Italy and her associated islands were under threat, and the islands would come under Muslim rule in the next century. The Christian communities of Arabia were entirely destroyed in or shortly after 633, when Jews and Christians alike were expelled from the peninsula.6 Those in Persia were under severe pressure. Two-thirds of the formerly Roman Christian world was now ruled by Muslims.

What had happened? Most people actually know the answer, if pressed—though for some reason they do not usually connect the answer with the crusades. The answer is the rise of Islam. Every one of the listed regions was taken, within the space of a hundred years, from Christian control by violence, in the course of military campaigns deliberately designed to expand Muslim territory at the expense of Islam’s neighbors. Nor did this conclude Islam’s program of conquest. The attacks continued, punctuated from time to time by Christian attempts to push back. Charlemagne blocked the Muslim advance in far western Europe in about a.d. 800, but Islamic forces simply shifted their focus and began to island-hop across from North Africa toward Italy and the French coast, attacking the Italian mainland by 837. A confused struggle for control of southern and central Italy continued for the rest of the ninth century and into the tenth. In the hundred years between 850 and 950, Benedictine monks were driven out of ancient monasteries, the Papal States were overrun, and Muslim pirate bases were established along the coast of northern Italy and southern France, from which attacks on the deep inland were launched. Desperate to protect victimized Christians, popes became involved in the tenth and early eleventh centuries in directing the defense of the territory around them.

If you asked me what are the two best books on the Crusades, I would answer God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades by Baylor professor Rodney Stark and The Concise History of the Crusades by Professor Thomas F. Madden. If you get this question a lot from atheists, then I recommend you pick these up. Anything by Rodney Stark is useful for Christians, in fact.

News

UK judge sentences radical Islamist imam who lived on welfare to 20 years in prison

Leave a comment
Democrats think that the real threat to America is not radical Islamic terrorism
Democrats think that the real threat to America is not radical Islamic terrorism

This story is from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

A senior judge has challenged Islamist extremists who live on benefits while claiming to “despise” Western democracy, as he sentenced hate preacher Anjem Choudary to five-and-half years in prison.

Choudary has lived on benefits in the UK for the past 20 years, during which time it is understood he has claimed up to £500,000 from the state.

While living off the state – dubbing his benefits ‘Jihadiseekers’ Allowance’ – Choudary became one of the country’s most notorious radical preachers – professing hatred against the West.

But he managed to avoid a criminal conviction until he was charged last year with drumming up support for a terrorist organisation by pledging allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (Isil).

On Tuesday he was sentenced alongside fellow radical Islamist Mohammed Mizanur Rahman after both being convicted of inviting support for the terrorist group.

[…]The judge said Choudary had invited support for Isil while it was “engaged in appalling acts of terrorism”.

He said: “At no point did either of you say anything to condemn the violent means by which [Isil] claimed to have established a caliphate.”

The UK had Labour Party rule for well over a decade, and they opened up their immigration policy to import many, many unskilled immigrants from countries with a significant presence of radical Islam. The idea of the secular leftists was that they would be able to buy the votes of unskilled workers with welfare money paid by the people who actually had jobs. And it worked. Well, there are some problems: they have gangs of Muslims raping and sex-trafficking children, but the strategy of importing anti-conservative voters worked.

I think that a lot of Western countries with welfare states and open-borders immigration policies often have problems like the UK does. And in especially leftist countries that have weakened marriage by redefining it, you get even more welfare fraud.

In Canada, polygamous Muslims can already collect multiple welfare checks for their multiple wives.

Excerpt:

Hundreds of [Greater Toronto Area] Muslim men in polygamous marriages — some with a harem of wives — are receiving welfare and social benefits for each of their spouses, thanks to the city and province, Muslim leaders say.

Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, said wives in polygamous marriages are recognized as spouses under the Ontario Family Law Act, providing they were legally married under Muslim laws abroad.

“Polygamy is a regular part of life for many Muslims,” Ali said yesterday. “Ontario recognizes religious marriages for Muslims and others.”

He estimates “several hundred” GTA husbands in polygamous marriages are receiving benefits. Under Islamic law, a Muslim man is permitted to have up to four spouses.

However, city and provincial officials said legally a welfare applicant can claim only one spouse. Other adults living in the same household can apply for welfare independently.

The average recipient with a child can receive about $1,500 monthly, city officials said.

Note that expanding the welfare state and increasing unskilled immigration from countries with anti-Western populations is a central plank in leftist political parties such as our own Democrat Party. The Democrat Party itself is very much in favor of expanding welfare (Obama repealed the 1996 welfare reform policy) and are also in favor of weakening border security.

More details emerged today in the Wall Street Journal about the payments that Obama sent to Iran: (H/T Ari)

The Obama administration followed up a planeload of $400 million in cash sent to Iran in January with two more such shipments in the next 19 days, totaling another $1.3 billion, according to congressional officials briefed by the U.S. State, Treasury and Justice departments.

The cash payments—made in Swiss francs, euros and other currencies—settled a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal dating back to 1979. U.S. officials have acknowledged the payment of the first $400 million coincided with Iran’s release of American prisoners and was used as leverage to ensure they were flown out of Tehran’s Mehrabad on the morning of Jan. 17.

[…]The Obama administration briefed lawmakers on Tuesday, telling them that two further portions of the $1.3 billion were transferred though Europe on Jan. 22 and Feb. 5. The payment “flowed in the same manner” as the original $400 million that an Iranian cargo plane picked up in Geneva, Switzerland, according to a congressional aide who took part in the briefing.

The $400 million was converted into non-U.S. currencies by the Swiss and Dutch central banks, according to U.S. and European officials.

The Treasury Department confirmed late Tuesday that the subsequent payments were also made in cash.

Do you ever wonder where your taxpayer money is going? Obama is using it to prop up dangerous Islamic regimes who sponsor terrorism and kill our troops on the battlefield in Iraq. That’s what every Democrat voter voted for, as well. They are responsible, whether they intended these consequences or not.

News

European countries generously fund terrorism suspects with welfare

1 Comment
Muslim populations in Europe
Muslim populations in Europe

This is from the Washington Free Beacon.

Excerpt:

Several terrorist suspects were collecting Belgian welfare benefits while plotting attacks in Paris and Brussels, according to investigators.

Belgian authorities concluded that at least five of the suspected conspirators in the Brussels and Paris terrorist attacks were partly financed by the nation’s social-welfare system, receiving in total about $56,000, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Surviving Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam collected about $21,000 in unemployment benefits until three weeks before the November assaults. Abdeslam, who was a manager and part owner of a Belgian bar at the time, should have been ineligible for public assistance, officials said.

Numerous suspected terrorists involved in a thwarted Belgian attack had also received welfare benefits, according to a judge who sentenced more than a dozen people who were part of an Islamic State cell to prison last month.

Tom Keatinge, director of the Center for Financial Crime and Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said the European benefit system was “vulnerable to abuse for terrorist financing purposes.”

Keatinge suggested that European governments offer benefits as vouchers or take a closer look at how people are spending their benefits.

“If you’re paying benefit to people in certain parts of Brussels, maybe you need to be a little more observant about who you’re paying to, and what they might be doing with it,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

The Paris and Brussels terrorist suspects who collected welfare were citizens of the European Union. Current Belgian law prohibits benefits from being suspended until an individual is convicted of terrorism or the suspect leaves the country.

ISIS issued a 2015 manual called “How to Survive in the West: A Mujahid Guide” that included a section advising jihadists,“If you can claim extra benefits from a government, then do so.”

While Belgium, France, Netherlands, and Denmark have collectively severed hundreds of people from welfare who traveled to Syria to fight with ISIS, European countries have struggled to find a longstanding solution because of generous social-welfare systems.

This is interesting:

Fred Cauderlier, the Belgian prime minister’s spokesman, defended the nation’s welfare system.

“This is a democracy,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “We have no tools to check how people spend their benefits.”

No, that’s not democracy, that a socialist welfare state – the kind favored by our own Democrat party. And the Democrat party actively resists attaching any kind of accountability or work requirement to welfare payments. After all, this is how they buy the votes of their favored groups, and they need those votes. They need those votes bad enough to import them, too. And so what if a few of you taxpayers have to die in terrorist attacks so that our Democrat betters can get the votes they need to seize power? The important thing is that they are seen as generous and they get to tell you how to live your life.