Last week,* Newt Gingrich released a Newt Direct statement at Newt.org concerning the project. As you may have heard, he's somewhat opposed to it. And to explain why, he offered this history lesson:
The proposed "Cordoba House" overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks - is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex. [...I]n fact, every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest. It is a sign of their contempt for Americans and their confidence in our historic ignorance that they would deliberately insult us this way. [emphasis mine]
...So what should modern Christians think when they hear a Muslim use the word "Cordoba"? Well, I know that Newt hasn't been a Catholic for very long now, but maybe his priest ought to direct him to read a little thing called "The Catholic Encyclopedia". Allow me to quote from the 1917 edition (which has the virtue of being in the public domain and easily searchable) and its entry on Cordoba:
In 786 the Arab caliph, Abd-er Rahman I, began the construction of the great mosque of Cordova, now the cathedral, and compelled many Christians to take part in the preparation of the site and foundations. Though they suffered many vexations, the Christians continued to enjoy freedom of worship, and this tolerant attitude of the ameers seduced not a few Christians from their original allegiance. Both Christians and Arabs co-operated at this time to make Cordova a flourishing city, the elegant refinement of which was unequalled in Europe.
Above quote From article :
Professor Newt's Distorted History Lesson by Got Medieval Monday, August 02, 2010
Newt Gingrich, Pam Geller, Sarah Palin misrepresent the building of an Islamic community center called the Cordoba Center as being a matter of triumphalism on the part of Muslim Americans. In fact building such a center in New York near to Ground Zero 9/11 attack site is one of community outreach and religious tolerance representing America's most cherished values.
According to the conspiratorial thinking and fear mongering of these Islamophobes the building of the center is a not so subtle symbol of Islamic dominance in America.
Gingrich and others claim even calling the Center Cordoba House is to remind Muslims of their conquering Spain.
But this is not historically true but when did facts ever deter those with deeply held bigoted views of other religions or peoples.
Andalusia Spain for over four hundred years under Islamic rule showed a tolerance for other religions ie Judaism and Christianity which was unheard of in European Christendom where Jews were persecuted and Muslims not permitted inside Christendom's borders.
Newt Gingrich et al are therefore in a battle to reject any form of religious tolerance when it comes to Muslim Americans.
Once one opens this door to intolerance where does it end by making Muslim Americans into second class citizens with no guarantees that their rights civil and otherwise should be protected.
ADL vs. Mosque at Ground Zero? That's Bullsh*t by Sam Seder at Huffington Post, August 5, 2010
I went downtown to visit Ground Zero and the proposed site for the Cordoba House yesterday to find out when Abe Foxman and the Anti Defamation League are going to release the grid which shows just how far from Ground Zero Muslims are allowed to build community centers.
I didn't find out, but i did shoot this video...
and : Ground Zero Mosque Opponents Must Not Have Heard About Muslims At The Pentagon by Jason Linkins via Huffington Post,August 6, 2010
One of the best ways of demonstrating that the frantic slavering over "Ground Zero mosques" is nothing but a ridiculous display of pearl-clutchery is to point out that the proposed Cordoba House would actually be the second mosque in the vicinity of "Ground Zero." But over at Salon, Justin Elliott does me one better by unearthing this 2007 Washington Times article:
Navy imam Chaplain Abuhena M. Saifulislam lifted his voice to God as he called to prayer more than 100 Department of Defense employees Monday at a celebration of Ramadan at the Pentagon.
God is most great, sang the lieutenant commander and Islamic leader, in Arabic, as iftar -- the end of the daily fast began.
Uniformed military personnel, civilians and family members faced Mecca and knelt on adorned prayer rugs chanting their prayers in quiet invocation to Allah.
When it comes to Muslims praying at Ground Zero, it doesn't get much Ground Zeroier than that! As Elliott observes:
Yes, Muslims have infiltrated the Pentagon for their nefarious, prayerful purposes -- daring to practice their religion inside the building where 184 people died on Sept. 11, 2001. They haven't even had the sensitivity to move two blocks, let alone a mile, away from that sacred site.
Oh, my stars and garters! These Muslims at the Pentagon probably even have security clearances! (Because they are Department of Defense employees who protect America from al Qaeda death cultists, I'm guessing.)
Newt Gingrich and the anti-Islam Islamophobes erroneously equate Islamic Terrorists ie Al Qaeda as representing all Muslims including all Muslim Americans . Gingrich et al believe calling the Community Center in New York Cordoba House is a nod to Islamic extremism and supremacism that the center is according to these ill-informed bigots a matter of Muslim triumphalism. What is really disturbing is how the lies and propaganda of these anti-Islam bigots has gone mainstream .
Gingrich it appears will be stirring the hate , fear,& ignorance about the religion of Islam in order to appeal to the GOP's Tea partying racist who are against religious tolerance and would like nothing better than to tear down all the Mosques in America and restrict the rights of Muslim Americans who in their view are not "Real Americans".
The talking points should be familiar to anyone who has read the rants and diatribes and Pseudo /Faux history of Islam written by the likes of Pam Geller and Robert Spencer etc.
They mischaracterize Islam as a religion of hate and violence while characterizing and demeaning the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud , a womanizer, a pedophile , a murderer , an anti-semite and anti-Christian .
Muhammad believed that he was a part of the Abrahamic tradition which began with the Israelites and then continued by Jesus and his followers. He referred to Jews and Christians as people of the book who must be respected.
Ground Zero Mosque Opposition: The Paranoia About Sharia Law by jason Linkins at Huffington Post, August 3, 2010
Adam Serwer points out today that the very name of the planned Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan has led the most paranoid members of society to believe that it is an explicit announcement of the intention to impose Sharia law on the United States. Serwer points out that this is "cartoon-villain stupid." So it makes sense that leading the charge here is Newt Gingrich, who divines the magic forces at work thusly:
"The true intentions of [Faisal Abdul] Rauf are also revealed by the name initially proposed for the Ground Zero mosque --"Cordoba House" -- which is named for a city in Spain where a conquering Muslim army replaced a church with a mosque. This name is a very direct historical indication that the Ground Zero mosque is all about conquest and thus an assertion of Islamist triumphalism which we should not tolerate."
Serwer notes that the Cordoba Initiative has announced ideals of its own, chief among them being a restoration of "the atmosphere of interfaith tolerance and respect that we have longed for since Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in harmony and prosperity eight hundred years ago."
As Serwer goes on to say, this basically boils down to whether you accept that Faisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" -- after having a long career building interfaith bridges with the stated intention of out-competing Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda death cult for the hearts and minds of young Muslims -- has now accidentally tipped his hand to the secret plot to destroy America that he's been hiding all along. (If only he'd been smart enough to call the proposed center "The Newt Gingrich House of Pancakes!")
and for a more scholarly critique of Gingrich et al's mischaracterization of The Cordoba Mosque in Islamic Spain in the middle ages here are some bits from an article at the Blog "Got Medieval" :
Professor Newt's Distorted History Lesson by Got Medieval Monday, August 02, 2010
Last week,* Newt Gingrich released a Newt Direct statement at Newt.org concerning the project. As you may have heard, he's somewhat opposed to it. And to explain why, he offered this history lesson:also see:
The proposed "Cordoba House" overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks - is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex. [...I]n fact, every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest. It is a sign of their contempt for Americans and their confidence in our historic ignorance that they would deliberately insult us this way. [emphasis mine]
It's that appositive phrase there buried in the middle of my quote that is the problem. In these twenty-five words, Newt offers the final word on medieval Cordoba: "the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world's third-largest mosque complex." This fact, the transformation of a church into a mosque, is the only thing we should think of when we hear a modern Muslim use the word "Cordoba," according to Mr. Gingrich.
Notice how carefully he's phrased his claim to give the impression that during the medieval conquest of Spain the Muslims charged into Cordoba and declared it the capital of a new Muslim empire, and in order to add insult to injury seized control of a Christian church and built the biggest mosque they could, right there in front of the Christians they'd just conquered, a big Muslim middle finger in the heart of medieval Christendom. Essentially, they've done it before, they'll do it again, right there at Ground Zero, if all good Christians don't band together to stop them.
The problem is, in order to give that impression of immediacy, Newt elides three hundred years of Christian and Muslim history. Three hundred years. The Muslims conquered Cordoba in 712. The Christian church that was later transformed into the Great Mosque of Cordoba apparently** continued hosting Christian worship for at least a generation after that. Work on the Mosque didn't actually begin until seventy-odd years later in 784, and the mosque only became "the world's third-largest" late in the tenth century, after a series of expansions by much later rulers, probably around 987 or so.
Then there's the matter of the two odd verbs in Newt's summation of Cordoba's history: "transformed" and "symbolized". Surely, a mosque as great as The Great Mosque of Cordoba has symbolized a lot of things to a lot of people over the years. But Muslim historians writing about the Great Mosque don't point to it as a symbol of Muslim triumph over Christians; rather, they treat it primarily as a symbol of Muslim victory over other Muslims.
Keep in mind that when ground was broken on the Great Mosque, the vast majority of the men who had been personally responsible for conquering the Iberian peninsula were long dead and most of their sons were dead, too. Sure, a few extremely ancient grey beards might have been present as very, young men, and a few older men might have been able to talk about what their fathers had done during the Conquest, but Muslim control of Spain was simply a fact of life for them, not something they felt they had to justify to the Christians.
The mosque was indeed begun in the wake of a Muslim conquest--just not the conquest of the Christians. Rather, it was ordered built by the Umayyad emir Abd-ar-Ramman I, probably in part to commemorate his successful conquest of Cordoba in the 750's, fought against other Muslim chieftains loyal to the rival Abbasid Caliphate, and his successful repulsion of subsequent Abbasid attempts to dislodge him by force throughout the 760's.*** This is, incidentally, probably why the Great Mosque--unlike almost every other Mosque in the Muslim world--is built facing south. Usually, Mosques are built facing Mecca, as Muslims are meant to pray towards the holy city. But the Great Mosque is oriented as if it were actually built in Damascus, the original capital of the Umayyads and the city from which abd-ar-Ramman had had to flee in exile when it was conquered by the Abbasids. Damascus is north of Mecca, while Cordoba is much further west. By pointing his Mosque south, Abd-ar-Ramman I was telling his Muslim rivals, "This exile to Iberia is a temporary thing; you may hold Damascus for now, but in the eyes of our god, my family still controls it."
...So what should modern Christians think when they hear a Muslim use the word "Cordoba"? Well, I know that Newt hasn't been a Catholic for very long now, but maybe his priest ought to direct him to read a little thing called "The Catholic Encyclopedia". Allow me to quote from the 1917 edition (which has the virtue of being in the public domain and easily searchable) and its entry on Cordoba:
In 786 the Arab caliph, Abd-er Rahman I, began the construction of the great mosque of Cordova, now the cathedral, and compelled many Christians to take part in the preparation of the site and foundations. Though they suffered many vexations, the Christians continued to enjoy freedom of worship, and this tolerant attitude of the ameers seduced not a few Christians from their original allegiance. Both Christians and Arabs co-operated at this time to make Cordova a flourishing city, the elegant refinement of which was unequalled in Europe.
The article then discusses the persecution of the Christians under Abd-ar-Ramman II, which included the martyrdom of St. Eulogius. Then it continues with the rule of those rulers who expanded the Mosque:
In 962 Abd-er Rahman III was succeeded by his son Al-Hakim. Owing to the peace which the Christians of Cordova then enjoyed [...] the citizens of Cordova, Arabs, Christians, and Jews, enjoyed so high a degree of literary culture that the city was known as the New Athens. From all quarters came students eager to drink at its founts of knowledge. Among the men afterwards famous who studied at Cordova were the scholarly monk Gerbert, destined to sit on the Chair of Peter as Sylvester II (999-1003), the Jewish rabbis Moses and Maimonides, and the famous Spanish-Arabian commentator on Aristotle, Averroes.
So it's easy to see why a group of Muslims creating a community center in the heart of a majority Christian country in a city known for its large Jewish population might name it "The Cordoba House" They're not, as Gingrich hopes we would believe, discreetly laughing at us because "Cordoba" is some double-secret Islamist code for "conquest"; rather, they're hoping to associate themselves with a particular time in medieval history when the largest library in Western Europe was to be found in Cordoba, a city in which scholars of all three major Abrahamic religions were free to study side-by-side.
Fareed Zakaria Returns Award; Puts Final Nail in ADL’s Reputation Over Muslim Center Fracas by joshua holland via Alternet.org, Aug 6, 2010
Joe Conason Aug. 4 at TruthDig Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich Need a History Lesson
Embodying The Values We Cherish Most by David Saperstein Via Huffington Post, August 8, 2010
and related news on Civil Rights & liberties and freedoms in Israel ie Freedom of Speech, freedom to dissent , freedom to protest etc. all under attack by designating any criticism of the governments policies re:Palestinians, Gaza, Arab and Muslim Israelis as being traitorous and as giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
If Israel can pass such anti-human rights legislation so can other nations including all Western Nations making the West less tolerant of dissent or of criticisms by their own citizens or by the Media even when justified .
Meanwhile even President Obama appears to reject freedom of speech , government transparency , openness and the Public's Right to know when it comes to leaked information from the Pentagon or US Military or the EPA or Coast Guard etc.
If the public is not given all the related information on an issue whether military or environmental how is the public going to respond in an intelligent and informed manner???
President Obama like Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld & Karl Rove et al seems to have bought into the notion that it is up an elite group to decide what the public should or should not know
Israel: Withdraw Legislation Punishing Human Rights Activists Measures Threaten Israel's Civil Society at Human Rights Watch ,July 25, 2010
(Jerusalem) - Israel's Knesset should reject proposed legislation that would weaken the country's vibrant civil society, Human Rights Watch said today. Recent proposed bills would penalize human rights groups for critical reporting and advocacy, including publicizing information on war crimes, expressing support for boycotts, or helping refugees and asylum seekers.So it appears that Israel is giving the Green Light to all other nations to create more laws to restrict the rights of their citizens and especially of the Media so that the public kow tows to the government's agenda whatever it happens to be.
These developments take place against a backdrop of other official statements and actions that have created an increasingly threatening atmosphere for human rights defenders in Israel. There are numerous signs that the government considers the nongovernmental organizations themselves, rather than the human rights problems they expose, to be the problem.
Four bills and amendments are pending that would seriously restrict the rights of Israelis to criticize the policies and actions of their government, Human Rights Watch said. One would shut down groups that communicate information that could be used in charges filed in other countries against members of the Israeli government or army for violations of international law. A second would penalize organizations and individuals who express support for, or participate in, boycotts against Israel. A third would impose onerous and immediate reporting requirements on any group that accepts any amount of funding from a foreign government for any purpose, and the fourth would punish anyone who assists refugees after they illegally cross into Israel.
We can then conclude that Saddam in Iraq and the Mullahs in Iran or the Military rule in Burma or Honduras are all justified in attacking dissidents and any & all critics of their respective government's policies. So the USSR the Soviet Union had it right all along ???
and so it goes,
GORD.
No comments:
Post a Comment