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“minarets will one day rise over oxford university”[1]
“Why
is 1492 an important year to remember in terms of the current struggle
in the war on terror? In 1492, Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in
Andalusia, Spain, fell to Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella
during the Spanish Reconquista thus ending the Moorish rule. Ironically,
it was also the year that Ferdinand and Isabella funded Columbus’
auspicious journey to the New World. Now Fast forward to ''Operation
Death Trains'' carried out in Madrid on March 11. Muslim terrorists
with ties to al Qaeda claimed responsibility. A letter published in
a London-based Arabic newspaper explained the possible motive: ''The
Death Brigades penetrated into the European Crusader heartland, and
struck a painful blow at one of the foundations of the Crusader coalition.
This is part of a settling of old accounts with Crusader Spain, the
ally of the U.S., in its war against Islam.'' Spain might find it easy
to blame George W. Bush for her current troubles but Ferdinand and Isabella
have a high level of culpability as well. Maybe Prime Minister-elect
Zapatero should consider offering Granada to al Qaeda in a show of good
faith and reparations of a 512-year-old debt.”
“The
approaching general elections in Spain in March must be exploited
to the extreme," announced an online manifesto that has been appearing
on jihadist Web sites associated with Al Qaeda since December. The manifesto
went on to predict that attacks on Spain would virtually guarantee a
Socialist victory along with the jihadist objective of seeing Spanish
troops leave the American-led coalition. If jihadists make the connection
between "terrorism" and Iraq, why can't we?”
“The
terrorists had more than one reason to strike against Spain. Islamists
have been obsessed for years with the demise of al-Andalus, the 800-year
medieval Islamic caliphate of Spain, which they consider the zenith
of their Golden Age. They believe that the historic humiliation that
the West inflicted on Islam started with the end of that period in the
15th century, and the Catholic conquest of Granada. In 1984, I had a
long talk with a high-ranking Sunni cleric in the Omeyad Mosque in Damascus.
He was very friendly when he learned that I was Spanish. After two hours
of conversation about politics and theology, which are very much intertwined
in that part of the world, he said to me: "Don't worry. We will
liberate Spain from Western corruption." I understood then, that
if even a moderate cleric was expressing this kind of thinking, then
Spain's -- and Europe's -- main problem in the 21st century would be
radical Islamism and the terrorism practiced in its name.
“Apostasy is a fundamental concept in Islam, which not only authorizes
the destruction of apostates, but also requires this from its adherents.
This has become for Islamic fundamentalists one of the most important
excuses to justify violence and terrorism against their enemies. These
fanatics consider Spain to be an apostate country, since we were once
part of the ummah, and, in their view, "abandoned" Islam.”
- Summary
of bankrupt leftist/jihadist propaganda:
- “Instead we have pledged $87 billion to secure and rebuild Iraq
— one of the largest direct-aid programs since the Marshall Plan.
Tens of thousands of brave Americans risked their lives — and
hundreds have died — to end the genocide of Saddam Hussein, alter
the pathological calculus of the Middle East, and cease the three-decade
support of terrorism by Arab dictators.
End note
- This ‘quote’ is cited in over 300 items
on the net, and seems to trace back to one Niall Ferguson. Some sources
refer to Decline and fall (1776-1778), but none of the
words minaret, minoret nor minorets appear
anywhere in Decline and fall as far as I can see.
Minarets appears once only in the following context:
The
decline and fall of the Roman empire
table
of contents
“In the new character of a mosque, the cathedral of St. Sophia
was endowed with an ample revenue, crowned with lofty minarets, and
surrounded with groves and fountains, for the devotion and refreshment
of the Moslems. The same model was imitated in the jami, or royal mosques;
and the first of these was built, by Mahomet himself, on the ruins of
the church of the holy apostles, and the tombs of the Greek emperors.
On the third day after the conquest, the grave of Abu Ayub, or Job,
who had fallen in the first siege of the Arabs, was revealed in a vision;
and it is before the sepulchre of the martyr that the new sultans are
girded with the sword of empire. ^81 Constantinople no longer appertains
to the Roman historian; nor shall I enumerate the civil and religious
edifices that were profaned or erected by its Turkish masters:......”
There have been other ‘enhancements’ to the ‘quote’,
and I have yet to be able to trace any of those beyond said N.F.
either. Here
is what N.F. said:
“In order to illustrate my argument, I want to take you back very
far in time. In fact, I want to take you back to the year 732. In Gibbon's
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in Chapter 52, Part 2, he describes
what might have happened if the Muslim that had invaded across the Straits
of Gibraltar and invaded Spain and then France in the year 711 had won
what became known in the West as the Battle of Poitiers. So let me quote
Gibbon, that much greater Oxford historian.
"A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand
miles from the Rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition
of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of
Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable
than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed
without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps"--and
here is the quintessential Gibbon--"perhaps the interpretation
of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits
might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of
the revelation of Mahomet." ”
N.F. finishes the item thus:
“...Well, I have good news for him. Long before the mariachis
play in Harvard Yard, long before that, there will be minarets, as Gibbon
foretold, in Oxford. Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, there already is
one.”
|
28.03.2004 |
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