In a New York Times article exposing the horrific barbarism of ISIS in its systematic rape of Yazidi girls and booming sex trade, you might think that America’s original sin would go uncommented upon.
But then you would be underestimating The Grey Lady.
The idea of a monolithic hatred of Muslims by the outside world is utterly laughable: from President Obama saying "The future must not belong to those who insult the prophet"
(source: Remarks by the President to the UN General Assembly | The White House)
in his official capacity as President, to the deliberate blind eye turned by authorities in Yorkshire to the sexual abuse and torture of pubescent girls by Pakistani immigrants (e.g. teenage girls being doused with petrol and threatened with being burned alive if they told others of their sexual abuse)...not to mention the deafening silence from women's rights activists about forced clitorectomies...
or to mention the Islamists in Iran executing homosexuals by hanging, or by throwing them off of buildings. For some reason, the American left prefers to pelt Catholic Bishops with condoms, rather than confront open, explicit, filmed executions of homosexuals.
Or, if you want to control for the variable of *time*...recall that Islam started in the 600s. Prapagandists or know-nothings like to portray the Crusades as wild-eyed fanatical Christians laying waste to peaceful Muslims seeking only to mind their own business-- when in fact the situation was nearly the exact *opposite*: Islam was founded in (roughly) AD 600 in the Middle East: and yet, recall that the Muslims were defeated *militarily* in FRANCE -- quite far away from the Middle East -- in the Battle of Tours in 732. (Thank you Charles Martel !)
In other words, about 300 years after the sack of Rome by the Visigoths, the Muslims were trying to take over France. Long, long before the Crusades.
And recall also, nearly a THOUSAND years later, the Ottoman Empire (again, Muslim) nearly overran VIENNA -- you know, home at one time or another, to Brahms, Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart -- in 1683, being stopped by the Poles (thank you Jan Sobieski !)
Let that sink in, mmm'kay?
732 -- the Muslims have taken Spain and nearly overrun France.
1683 -- the Muslims nearly overrun Vienna. This is AFTER, for instance, Columbus, AFTER Martin Luther, AFTER Shakespeare, AFTER the Pilgrims land a Plymouth Rock.
Aw, Hell, get this. AFTER the founding of Harvard. Yes, the *real* Harvard.
Oh -- you might also want to note. ISIS/ISIL taking captives as ransom, is hardly a new thing in Islam. You may recall -- or not -- the US Marine Corps anthem...
"From the halls of Montezuma
to the shores of Tripoli..."
That latter, the shores of Tripoli -- refers to the Barbary Pirates.
These were pirates of Muslim outposts in Northern Africa, who captured merchant vessels and ransomed or sold the crews as slaves. In 1795, Algeria ransomed 115 captured Americans, for over $1 *million*. Yes, in 1795 dollars. This was about 1/6 of the entire US government budget at the time.
The continuing, hmm, "peskiness" of the Barbary states, was what led to the formation of the US Navy.
One or two more tidbits.
In March 1785, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went to London to negotiate with Tripoli's envoy, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman (or Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja). When they enquired "concerning the ground of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury", the ambassador replied:
It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise.
Ummm. Yeah.
THAT Thomas Jefferson.
You know, The Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self evident..." and all that stuff.
Hardly a Medieval dead-and-gone thing.
NOTE: some of this material was copied from Wikipedia (The details on the Barbary Pirates, for example, tho' I knew of their existence and Jefferson having dealt with them, on my own); some paraphrased, some knowledge of my own.
You have to admit, the Order of the "Sword Brothers" is pretty good as names go ;)