The roots of anti-Muslim bigotry (Boston Globe)

Boston Globe ^ | April 4, 2011 | James Carroll

[reaganaut1]

... [P]ervasive negative attitudes toward Islam go far deeper into the American psyche even than these manifestations suggest, for contempt toward the religion of Mohammed is a foundational pillar of Western civilization. That it is unacknowledged only makes it more pernicious.

European Christian imagination jelled — as European, as Christian, and as imagination — around the mythic 732 triumph of Charles Martel over “infidel’’ Muslim forces in a battle near Poitiers, France. That may seem like an eternity ago and a world away, but still-powerful attitudes that show up in suspicions of widespread Muslim “radicalization’’ were generated then. In epoch-shaping chansons de geste celebrating Charles Martel, Islam was portrayed as nothing less than the anti-Christ. So resonant was its defeat, that Charles Martel was empowered as the effective founder of cohesive European social structures, with his lineage (through his grandson Charlemagne) extending even to present-day royalty.

Edward Gibbon famously shuddered at the thought that, but for Charles Martel, the Koran would be taught to the “circumcised’’ at Oxford instead of the New Testament. (It seems not to have occurred to Gibbon that, had the Poitiers battle gone the other way, Oxford, which dates to 1167, might have been founded years earlier — by, say, disciples of the great Muslim scholar Avicenna, who died in 1037.) From early on, Western civilization understood itself positively against the negative foil of Islam, a polarity that was institutionalized during the decisive centuries of the Crusades. That Christendom failed to liberate the Holy Land from infidel control only made permanent the fear and hatred of Islam.

Meanwhile, as is always true of bigotry, Europeans knew very little about actual Muslims.

[Diogenesis]

The Boston GLOBE is more for obeying the New York Times's
agendae than for reporting the News.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana

When the Founding Fathers Faced Islamists

"Back in 1784, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had to decide whether to appease or stand up to armed Middle Eastern pirates. Sound familiar?

.... The Middle East, a term coined by Alfred Thayer Mahan, one of McCain’s boyhood idols, is where both American warfare and American diplomacy began in the late 18th century, as our infant republic faced its first post-Revolutionary struggle against the evocatively named Barbary States of the Ottoman Empire.

The regencies of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers (future homes of Muammar Qaddafi, Yasser Arafat, and the Islamic Salvation Front, respectively) had been hosting and sponsoring Islamic piracy since the Middle Ages. Scimitar-wielding corsairs would regularly interrupt the flow of trade and traffic along the coasts of North Africa, seizing European vessels and taking their crews into bondage. Cervantes wrote his first play, in the 16th century, about the dread corsairs, and by the 18th, the American colonies had a minor seagoing presence in the Mediterranean protected by the redoubtable British Navy. But the Crown was reluctant to war against so petty an antagonist, preferring to pay “tribute” to the Barbary States instead, as a shopkeeper would protection money to the mafia. After the U.S. broke away from England and became its own nation, however, the geopolitical dynamics changed, as did the American equanimity with doing business with pirates.

In 1784, corsairs attacked the Betsy, a 300-ton brig that had sailed from Boston to Tenerife Island, about 100 miles off the North African coast, selling her new-made citizens as chattel on the markets of Morocco. The U.S. was not free of its own moral taint of slavery, of course, but it would be impossible to hasten the industrial development that would eventually render the agrarian-plantation economy obsolete if merchant ships could not be assured of safe conduct near the Turkish Porte. Other vessels, such as the Dauphin and Maria, were also seized, this time by Algiers, and the horrifying experiences of their captive passengers relayed back home were the cause for outrage. James Leander Cathcart described the dungeon in which he was being kept as “perfectly dark…where the slaves sleep four tiers deep…many nearly naked, and few with anything more than an old tattered blanket to cover them in the depth of winter.”

In response, Thomas Jefferson, then the Minister to France, suggested a multilateral approach of what we would now term “deterrence.” He asked that Spain, Portugal, Naples, Denmark, Sweden and France enter into a coalition with America to dissuade the regencies from their criminal assaults on life, liberty and the pursuit of international commerce. As Michael Oren, in his magisterial history Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to Present relates, “By deterring, rather than appeasing, Barbary, the United States would preserve its economy and send an unambiguous message to potentially hostile powers.” Jefferson thought it would impress Europe if America could do what Europe had failed to do for centuries and beat back the persistent thuggery of Islamists. “It will procure us respect,” said the author of the Declaration of Independence. “And respect is a safeguard to interest.”

This sober judgment fused the cold calculations of latter-day “realism” with the morality behind revolutionary interventionism: not only would America protect its citizens from plunder and foreign slaveholding; it would ensure that other countries under “Christendom” were similarly protected.

Though Jefferson found a stalwart Continental ally in a former one, the Marquis de Lafayette, France squelched the idea of a NATO made of buckshot and cannon. While waiting for funds that would never come from Congress for the construction of a 150-gun navy, the sage of Monticello resigned himself to further diplomacy with the enemy. In 1785, he dispatched John Lamb, a Connecticut businessman, to secure the release of hostages in Algiers, held by its dynastic sovereign Hassan Dey. Lamb failed ignominiously.

At the same time, John Adams, then minister to England, agreed to receive the pasha of Tripoli, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Ajar, in his London quarters to discuss a possible peace deal. Adams described his interlocutor as a man who looked all “pestilence and war,” a suspicion that was soon confirmed by the pasha’s demand of 30,000 guineas for his statelet, plus a 3,000 guinea gratuity for himself. He also did Adams the favor of estimating what it would cost the U.S. to broker a similar deal with Tunis, Morocco and Algiers — the total price for blackmail would be about $1 million, or a tenth the annual budget of the United States.

Adams was incensed. “It would be more proper to write [of his meeting with ‘Abd al-Rahman] for the… New York Theatre,” he thundered. He agreed with Jefferson that a military response was increasingly likely, but Adams doubted his country’s economic ability to sustain it. For the short term, he thought it better to offer “one Gift of two hundred Thousand Pounds” rather than forfeit “a Million annually” in trade revenue, which the pirates were sure to disrupt. Not long thereafter, Jefferson joined him in London to prevent the “universal and horrible War” and reach an accord with the refractory envoy from Tripoli. Both gentlemen of the Enlightenment, and comrades in revolution, affirmed America’s desire for peace, its respect for all nations, and suggested a treaty of lasting friendship with the regency. ‘Abd al-Rahman listened well, but his reply was one that would shock modern ears less than it did those of the two Founding Fathers:

“It was… written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged [the Muslims’] authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon wheoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Though a period of paying tribute and douceurs (or “softeners” — expensive trickets and toys) to Islamic pirates would continue, the words of ‘Abd al-Rahman Adams were chilling enough to leave Adams and Jefferson in no doubt as to the sanguinary and messianic nature of their adversary. “An angel sent on this business,” lamented Jefferson, “could have done nothing” to placate such men. He called them “sea dogs” and a “pettifogging nest of robbers.” The episode preceded further acts of piracy against American vessels and the imprisonment and sale of its crews and passengers, and was enough to get Jefferson to overlook his wariness of federalism and agree to a Constitution with a strong central government capable of building and keeping a powerful navy. Adams, as it turned out, was more worried that American opinion wouldn’t rally for war, or accept its dire consequences. But the Philadelphia convention that drafted our national covenant in 1787 was hastened, and its welter of opinions unified, by the Barbary question. As the historian Thomas Bailey wrote, “In an indirect sense, the brutal Dey of Algiers was a Founding Father of the Constitution.”

Barbary Pirates torture western prisoners

America still sued for peace. The Betsy’s release had been negotiated, albeit abjectly, and to the accompaniment of America’s first diplomatic accord, the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Ship-Signals, signed with Morocco in 1786. But no sooner was the ship let go and its captives freed than it was recaptured by Tunis and renamed the Mashuda. Also, Washington at one point found itself spending 20% of its annual revenue in paying blackmail to a loose confederation of terrorists on the high seas. Under Jefferson’s presidency, the first era of American military predominance was inaugurated, with men like William Bainbridge, William Eaton and the Byronic swashbuckler Stephen Decatur, becoming folk heroes.

....Santayana got it backwards, in fact: even those who remember history are still doomed to repeat it."

---

[Noumenon]

Oh, and that ‘invention of the zero’ thingy? Stolen from the Dravidian culture by the ‘religion of peace’ whilst in the process of committing literal and cultural genocide.

[patriot08]

.

Bigots??? You want to talk about bigots??
Do you really want to go there?

Christians will be burned in the Fire. 5:72

Whoever says Muhammad was black must be killed…(Ash-Shifa, Tr. Aisha Abdarrahman, 2004)

Ahmad ibn Abi Sulayman, the companion of Sahnun said, “Anyone who says that the Prophet was black should be killed. (ibid, p.375)

In one Hadith, Mohammed referred to Blacks as Raisn Heads (Sahih Al Bukhary vol. 1, no. 662 and vol. 9, no. 256), and as pug nosed slaves in Sahih Moslem vol. 9 pages 46 and 47.

Christians are wrong about the Trinity. For that they will have a painful doom. 5:73

Give tidings (O Muhammad) of a painful doom to the rich and greedy Christian monks and Jewish rabbis.9:34

Jesus was not the Son of God. Those who say he was (Christians) are going to hell. 19:35-37

Scourge adulteresses with 100 stripes. Do not show them any pity. Have a party of believers watch the punishment. 24:2

EVIL-CRUELTY
Those who die fighting for Allah will go to heaven. 3:195
Those who make war with Allah and his messenger will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. That is how they will be treated in this world, and in the next they will have an awful doom. 5:33
The transgressors will roast in the Fire and be forced to drink boiling liquids followed by ice cold drinks. 38:55-9

HOW’S THAT FOR A DEBUNKING???

____________________

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[WayneS]

By the way, I thought Jim Carroll died in September of 2009.

“...Those are people who died, died
Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they DIED!”

[DJ MacWoW]

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[fhayek]

Charles Martel defending his homeland and his faith was the start of ‘bigotry’? I guess he should have just rolled over and surrender.

[Fantasywriter]

For the first time since he was banned, I miss the nasty, uber-liberal troll, Jamese(777). He lectured me on the need to respect Islam, and told me flat out Christianity is not superior to Islam in any way whatsoever. I would have enjoyed pinging him to this thread.

I take it back. I don’t really miss him. He was a blight on FR. Good riddance, Troll-bot.

[crosshairs]

I’m guessing the author figures, if he’s nice to the muzzies, they’ll kill him last.

[Marty62]

Hey writer. Have you EVER heard of the atrocities and ignorance of the Ottoman Empire.

[PogySailor]

He is comfortable in dhimmitude.

[GOPJ]

Ignorant Western assumptions about Islam’s inherent slant toward violence still undergird the prejudice that defined preoccupations in Congress last month.

Something like 23 out of 27 wars going on in the world involve Muslims. That's telling.

I don't like the Charles Manson 'family'... BECAUSE of their actions. The fact that people are prejudiced against the Manson family doesn't make them 'good' or worthy. Same with Muslims. Conservatives not caring for the religion doesn't grant it the patina of 'goodness'.

Unless a Muslim culture is sitting on a pool of money (oil) they're usually poor, violent and oppressive. And if they are sitting on a pool of money - they're still violent and oppressive. Muslim women are treated badly - in spite of what Muslim elites tell liberal elites... and labor in Muslim countries is as close to slavery as any civilized person would want to see...

Do facts matter to liberal elites? Or is it just feelings? Do they see Arabs as so inferior that they're not held to the same standards as 'whites who are liberal and elite'? It's OK for the animals to kill their daughters because what can we expect from those kind of people?

Then again liberal elites give passes to inner city blacks, and most dark skinned people. Seems liberals enjoy looking down on most of us... They also give passes to members of any religious group EXCEPT Christians. If I were Muslim, I would take a second look before accepting the 'charity' of liberals...

If the writer thinks differently about the reality of Muslim culture, I'll like to see a few facts...

[2ndDivisionVet]

I’m betting that James doesn’t live in a Moslem neighborhood or country, have any Moslem friends or ever thought of marrying a Moslem. Sounds like a bigot to me.

[null and void]

The roots of anti-Muslim bigotry

Bitter, repeated experience, maybe???

[dfwgator]

This good enough for you, James?

[sauropod]

Many Americans have since learned to be self-critical about the visceral Islamophobia that followed upon 9/11.

Screw this guy.

I had a friend of mine burn to death (or was crushed, don't know which) in the basement of the E-ring in the Pentagon. There's no reason to be "self-critical". Muslims *are* violent in many areas of the world.

[sauropod]

Many Americans have since learned to be self-critical about the visceral Islamophobia that followed upon 9/11.

Screw this guy.

I had a friend of mine burn to death (or was crushed, don't know which) in the basement of the E-ring in the Pentagon. There's no reason to be "self-critical". Muslims *are* violent in many areas of the world.

[null and void]

The average American never even thought about Islam until Islamic terrorists starting blowing us up.

Heck, I still don't think much of them...

[PapaBear3625]

The bulk of the comments on boston.com are pretty scathing towards the author and Islam in general. I’d like to have seen the ones that boston.com’s moderators removed.

[Jack Hammer]

Waste of time to debunk this pompous and wrong-headed crap.

[alstewartfan]

My guess is that the beheadings have something to do with it.