Breakpoint
Author: John Stonestreet and Dr. Timothy D. Padgett
In a recent substack, Ayan Hirsi Ali pointed to something that former President Barak Obama once said, that “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance,” which “we see . . . in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba.” President Obama was referring to the time between 711 and 1492, when Islam conquered and ruled a region of modern-day Spain, Portugal, and parts of southern France. Hirsi Ali then quoted Osama Bin Laden. Responding to American retaliation for the 9/11 attacks, the terrorist leader proclaimed, “We shall never accept that the tragedy of Andalucia would be repeated in Palestine.” He was referencing the end of that nearly 800 years of Muslim rule.
Islamists have a longer commitment to historical memory than the West does. Most Americans and Europeans are not familiar with events from the fifteenth century or what they have to do with current conflicts. For Muslims, that time of Islamic rule within the West is remembered as a golden age of progress, tolerance, and enlightenment. And that is the story repeated by an increasing number of Western academics. The example of Andalucia is often trotted out in response to the violent history of Islam or Christianity’s role in building the West.
As Hirsi Ali noted in her article:
This story is presented as an established fact in Western textbooks and popular media; it pervades museums and the pattern of tour guides across southern Spain. It is the first story Western liberals reach for when arguing that Islam is a “religion of peace,” eminently tolerant of other faiths.
It is also a complete fiction.
One of the strangest ironies of contemporary discourse about religion and history is that Christianity is scorned as imperialistic, theocratic, and intolerant. Islam, however, gets a pass. It’s related to another strange irony, one more contemporary; what’s come to be called the Red-Green alliance. For reasons that match neither history nor current reality, far-Left groups—including Marxists, feminists, and transgender activists—embrace Islamists as fellow champions of “liberation.”
These agitators know neither history nor Islam. Whereas the first three centuries of Christianity, and nearly all of Jewish history, were defined by persecution against Christianity, the first 300 years of Islam were characterized by militarism, conquest, and slavery by Islam. By the time of his death, Mohammad had captured nearly all of Arabia. A century later, the ancestors of the French were fighting against Muslims in Western Europe, and Muslim armies were making their way into what’s now Pakistan and India. As late as 1683, Muslim Turks laid siege on Vienna.
Anywhere they conquered, an absolute theocracy was established. There was no democracy, much less any separation between Mosque and state. Pagans and idolators were given the choice of conversion or death. Christians and Jews were tolerated, but only barely. They were allowed to live under frequent persecution, but only if they paid a jizyah tax for their own occupation. In many cases, it was Christian and Jewish second-class citizens who built a reputation for scholarship and administration, which was then assumed by Muslim leaders.
Christians who conquered and oppressed others did so in defiance of the teachings of Christ as reported in the Bible. The Muslims who attempt to conquer the world for Allah are obeying the tenets of their faith as taught in the Qur’an. Basically, every one of the evils that secularists blame on religion is true, not only about many Muslims but also about Islam within the Islamic worldview. When these accusations are true of Christians, they are in contradiction with Christ and the Christian religion.
If secularists hope to engage religion, especially a reemerging Islam, they must get the historical facts straight. The lived and academic experience of someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a great place to begin.