Erdogan's Turkey Goes for Teaching "Good Jihad"

If you are one of those who dislike President Trump, however much you may dislike him, remember all of Obama's kind gestures, his love of peaceful Islam, his friendship with Erdogan, his thwarted efforts to put the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Egypt and to keep it there, and so on. And you may mellow on Trump.

Obama was notoriously close to Erdogan in the first few years of his regime, so much so that he and Erdung were called BFFs [best female friends]. Obama was apparently in cahoots with Erdung over the Mavi Marmara siege-breaking affair [2010], among other things. Now the would-be sultan of a restored Ottoman Empire is introducing "good jihad" into Turkish schools. Excerpt translated below with original:

Starting with the return to school in September, the concept of "jihad" will be taught in most schools in the country, according to the new curriculum conceived by the Islamo-conservative government and made public on July 18. It is not a matter of learning holy war but rather "the good jihad," the jihad that exalts "love of the fatherland", Ismet Yilmaz, minister of national education, hastened to clarify. "Jihad exists in our religion and it is one of the duties of the ministry of education to see to it that this concept is taught in a correct and appropriate manner," he insisted.

À partir de la rentrée scolaire, en septembre, le concept de « djihad » sera enseigné dans la plupart des écoles du pays, selon le nouveau programme conçu par le gouvernement islamo-conservateur et rendu public mardi 18 juillet. Il n’est pas question d’apprendre la guerre sainte mais plutôt « le bon djihad », celui qui exalte « l’amour de la patrie », s’est empressé de préciser Ismet Yilmaz, le ministre de l’éducation nationale. « Le djihad existe dans notre religion et il est du devoir du ministère de l’éducation de veiller à ce que ce concept soit enseigné de façon juste et appropriée », a-t-il insisté.

Marie Jego, Istanbul, for Le Monde 7-28-2017

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More on Erdogan: here & here & here & here

The role of Qatar and Washington insiders in the Mavi Marmara affair here

Quality Turkish Education? Whither? [here]

Islamic Roots of Arab Terrorism -- Kamel Daoud

non sia giusto identificare islam con la violenza
Pope Francis [Papa Francesco], the other day

Just the other day, Pope Francis said that: It would be unjust to identify Islam with violence.

On other occasions, Francis has said that social-economic conditions like poverty and unemployment lead or cause terrorism. Yet, here comes an Arab-Muslim writer, Kamel Daoud, a columnist with a daily paper in Oran, Algeria, and he tells us just how profound is the tie between Islam and jihad terrorism. The frustrated Arab who is poor and out of work is attracted by jihad, by death as a mujahid, a shahid. That sort of death will bring him to Paradise where he will enjoy his 72 perpetual virgins and live in material prosperity and luxury. For millions of Muslims, Paradise beyond this life has taken the place of the socialist/communist utopia.

Aha, but this would be jihadi martyr wants material prosperity and abundant sex in his paradisiacal afterlife, which he does not have in this life, the dunya. So is the Pope right after all about material and socio-economic causes? No, because many quite prosperous Muslim young men have undertaken jihadi murder attacks. Think of Bin Laden, the son of a billionaire. Think of Muhammad Atta of 9/11 fame or illfame. Think of the group of prosperous young Muslims in Dhaka, Bangladesh, who massacred a group of foreigners within the last two weeks. Furthermore, do you hear of poor people generally who are not Muslims who blow themselves up, also killing other poor people, killing women and children and elderly people out of frustration with their socio-economic condition? Of course not. Only do this kind of thing. They are following the Islamic precept of "Killing and being killed, the highest joy in Islam." Both Arafat the Sunni and Khomeini the Shiite stated this principle.

Paradise, the New Muslim Utopia

Lire en français (Read in French)

Contributing Op-Ed Writer
By KAMEL DAOUD AUG. 2, 2016

Credit Edel Rodriguez

ORAN, Algeria — Future writing project: a topography of paradise in the medieval Muslim imagination. But not only medieval, for among Muslims today paradise is also at the center of political discourse, sermons and the contemporary imagination. Paradise as a goal for the individual or the group has gradually replaced the dreams of development, stability and wealth promised by postwar decolonization in the so-called Arab world. These days, one imagines happy tomorrows only after death, not before.

“Paradise decks itself in delights,” an editorial writer mused in an Algerian Islamist newspaper during the most recent Ramadan, the month of fasting. The declaration was followed by descriptions of the charms, the delights, the joys that await the faithful after death. This fantasy of paradise, amply depicted as a place of pleasures, with sex and wine, golden adornments and silk apparel, is the opposite of earthly life — and of the frustrations experienced in Arab countries afflicted by economic failures, wars and bloody dictatorships.

Firdaus (a remote ancestor of the word “paradise,” derived from the Persian) was promised by the Quran and has been abundantly described in religious literature for centuries. But in recent years, paradise has also become the country dreamed of by the poor, the unemployed, the believer — and the jihadist, thanks to certain religious elites who promote it as a means of recruitment.

This is a fascinating renewal of the concept of happiness that was dominant a half-century ago. Back then, the countries of the Maghreb and the Middle East — born out of decolonization often violently wrested from occupying forces that had imposed on them war, poverty and misery — advocated for a vision of the future based on independence, egalitarianism, development, wealth creation, justice and coexistence.

That vision of utopia within human reach, which was taken up by the socialist or communist elites and even some monarchies, was a shared political dream, and it gave legitimacy to those new regimes in the eyes of both their own peoples and foreign governments. Decolonization was the era of grand slogans about the advancement of peoples and modernization through massive infrastructure projects.

But that dream has aged badly, because of the bloody-mindedness of those authoritarian regimes and the political failures of the left in the Arab world.

Today, one has to be a Muslim – by faith, culture or place of residence – in order to experience the full weight of the new post-mortem utopia of the Islamosphere circulating on the internet and the media. It conditions people’s imaginations, political speech, coffee-shop daydreams and the desperation of the younger generations. Paradise has come back into fashion, described in mind-boggling detail by preachers, imams and Islamist fantasy literature.
Its main selling point: women, who are promised in vast numbers as a reward for the righteous. The women of paradise, the houris, are beautiful, submissive, languorous virgins. The idea of them feeds a barely believable form of erotico-Islamism that drives jihadists and gets other men to fantasize about escaping the sexual misery of everyday life. Suicide bombers or misogynists, they share the same dream.

What about the women allowed into the eternal garden? If men can have dozens of virgins, what of the women, especially considering the machismo of those earthbound dream-makers? The preachers’ responses can be amusing: The woman’s heavenly reward is to be her husband’s happy wife throughout eternity, the two of them destined to enjoy perpetual conjugal felicity, at the symbolic age of 33 and in good health. And if the woman is divorced? A preacher replies that she will be remarried to a dead man who was also divorced.

Curiously, this dream of a Muslim paradise finds itself confronted with another dream at once antagonistic and similar: the West. Generating passion or hatred for the Muslim believer and the jihadist alike, the West and its indulgences represent another facet of the post-mortem Muslim paradise. One dreams of going there, whether as migrant or as martyr. One dreams of going to the West and of living and dying there, or of subjugating and destroying it.

The new Muslim utopia weighs heavily on today’s Arab world. What motivates the masses, gives sense to their despair, lightens the weight of the world and compensates for sorrow no longer is the promise of a rich and happy country, as was the case after decolonization; it’s a vision of paradise in the afterlife. But this fantasy of eternal bliss also causes uneasiness: For however much one wishes to ignore this, the fact remains that in order to get to heaven, one first has to die.

Kamel Daoud, a columnist for Quotidien d’Oran, is the author of the novel “The Meursault Investigation.” This essay was translated by John Cullen from the French.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/opinion/paradise-the-new-muslim-utopia.html?ref=opinion

Background to Mumbai -- More than 1370 years of Arab & Muslim assaults on India

UPDATING 11-30-2008 at bottom

The Mumbai terrorist assault of the past few days can be added to previous Islamist atrocities, including the Mumbai commuter trains [2006], the London bus & subway bombings of 2005, the Madrid commuter train bombings [2004], and Bali and Istanbul and Baghdad [over and over], and last but not least, 9-11. Since the usual suspects and other culprits have already started the "root causes" game, that is, that the "real" cause is either Israel or Indian discrimination against Muslims or whatever, it is necessary to go back into history in order to see that Arab and other Muslim assaults on India go back to the earliest days of Islam. Andrew Bostom provides the historical perspective so often missing in the Mainstream Mass Media. An excerpt from Bostom's article follows below:

Rarely understood, let alone acknowledged, however, is the history of brutal jihad conquest, Muslim colonization, and the imposition of dhimmitude shared by the Jews of historical Palestine, and the Hindus of the Indian subcontinent. Moreover, both peoples and nations also have in common, a subsequent, albeit much briefer British colonial legacy, which despite its own abuses, abrogated the system of dhimmitude (permanently for Israel and India, if not, sadly, for their contemporary Muslim neighboring states), and created the nascent institutions upon which thriving democratic societies have been constructed. Sir Jadunath Sarkar (d. 1958), the preeminent historian of Mughal India, wrote with admiration in 1950 of what the Jews of Palestine had accomplished once liberated from the yoke of dhimmitude. The implication was clear that he harbored similar hopes for his own people.

"Palestine, the holy land of the Jews, Christians and Islamites, had been turned into a desert haunted by ignorant poor diseased vermin rather than by human beings, as the result of six centuries of Muslim rule. (See Kinglake's graphic description). Today Jewish rule has made this desert bloom into a garden, miles of sandy waste have been turned into smiling orchards of orange and citron, the chemical resources of the Dead Sea are being extracted and sold, and all the amenities of the modern civilised life have been made available in this little Oriental country. Wise Arabs are eager to go there from the countries ruled by the Shariat. This is the lesson for the living history." [1] [quote from Sarkar]

Earlier, I reviewed at length the legacy of Muslim jihad conquest and imposition of the Shari'a in historical Palestine. The current essay provides a schematic overview of the same phenomena in India, focusing on the major periods of Muslim conquest, colonization, and rule.

A Millennium of Jihad and Dhimmitude on the Indian Subcontinent

The 570 year period between the initial Arab Muslim razzias (ordered by Caliph Umar) to pillage Thana (on the West Indian coast near Maharashtra) in 636—637 C.E., and the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate (under Qutub—ud—din Aibak, a Turkish slave soldier), can be divided into four major epochs: (I) the conflict between the Arab invaders and the (primarily) Hindu resisters on the Western coast of India from 636—713 C.E.; (II) the Arab and Turkish Muslim onslaughts against the kingdom of Hindu Afghanistan during 636—870 C.E.; (III) repeated Turkish efforts to subdue the Punjab from 870 C.E. to 1030 C.E. C.E. highlighted by the devastating campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni (from 1000— 1030 C.E.); and finally (IV) Muhammad Ghauri's conquest of northwestern India and the Gangetic valley between 1175 and 1206 C.E. [2]
[read more of this article in the American Thinker]
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See more by Bostom on the ideological background of Judeophobia among Indian Muslims.
Srdja Trifkovic on the history of Arab & Islamic assaults on India.
Andrew Bostom's response to the philistine conventional media coverage of the Mumbai atrocity. He reviews much of the history of jihad in India and draws parallels with the oppression of Jews in the Land of Israel. Here are Bostom's comments on media coverage in a letter sent to me:

The "coverage" of the Mumbai massacre(s) has been an appalling spectacle of IGNORANCE, denial, and scapegoating--of the victims. If Hindus and Jews (and in the end, all potential non-Muslim victims of jihad) don't realize their shared predicament--targeting by jihad hatred-- after these events, then they never will, possibly hastening their separate destruction.

Destruction of these peoples means the end of civilization. The MSM seem quite comfortable with such an eventuality.
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Coming: More on Obama's lies about the economy, Part II of "Barak Obama's Evil Genius," propaganda analysis, psychological warfare, etc.

Buruma denies our time's resemblance to the 1930s

Ian Buruma is one of those fashionable academics who gets his opinion pieces published in the New York Review of Books and HaArets. He may be longer on opinion than on fact but that of course does not trouble the NYRB or HaArets. He pontificates on today's vital topics, war, peace, the Iranian bomb, Islamism, etc. His academic seat is Bard College in upstate New York where he teaches --God help us-- "human rights." That human rights may be his academic subject matter does not mean that he either knows what those rights are or that he respects them.

Buruma dropped an op ed at HaArets a few days ago. Richard Landes at Augean Stables did a well-deserved fisking job on it. I commented too and here is my comment, somewhat more polished and furnished with several references:

The kindest thing to say about Buruma is that he is in denial. In fact, his strong insinuation that concern about a future Holocaust is paranoid or stupid [I, Buruma, am too smart for that!!] is very offensive.

the term “Islamofascism” was not coined for nothing. It invites us to see a big part of the Islamic world as a natural extension of Nazism. Saddam Hussein, who was hardly an Islamist, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is, are often described as natural successors to Adolf Hitler. And European weakness, not to mention the “treason” of its liberal scribes, paving the way to an Islamist conquest of Europe (”Eurabia”) is seen as a ghastly echo of the appeasement of the Nazi threat.

. . . Revolutionary Islamism is undoubtedly dangerous and bloody. Yet analogies with the Third Reich, although highly effective as a way to denounce people with whose views one disagrees, are usually false. No Islamist armies are about to march into Europe - indeed, most victims of Revolutionary Islamism live in the Middle East, not in Europe

It seems to me that even a prof of “human rights” ought to know more than a superficial smattering of history. The Ba’ath Party of Saddam Hussein and of the Assads, still ruling in Syria, was founded in conscious imitation of Nazi and fascist ideology. Even as hopeless a Bolshevikoid Islam-lover as Eric Rouleau admitted that. We also have the personal testimony of Sami al-Jundi, one of the Ba`ath founders. "We were racialists. We were fascinated by Nazism, reading its books and the sources of its thought. . ." [See quote in Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times, Philadelphia, 1991, p 106]. To be ignorant of all this is to be truly defective in knowledge of modern history. Richard Landes asserts that Stalin, not Hitler, was Saddam’s hero. There’s no problem here if we can set aside the silly left-right dichotomy of ideologies, the so-called “political spectrum.” Hitler too admired Stalin. Further, during the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Soviet paper, Izvestya, declared that Nazi ideology was “a matter of taste” [November 9, 1939]. Moreover, Soviet Communists & Nazis joined in declaring a “struggle for peace” mere weeks after their joint invasion of Poland. So much for the distinction between Nazism & Communism. But buruma apparently has not studied that crucial and revealing period of almost two years of the Nazi-Soviet pact [August 1939 to June 1941]. His noxious essay seems to imply that somehow “Communism” or “leftism” is different from Nazism & fascism. He reminds me of the Commies of that time in the West who loudly proclaimed that Nazism was NOT a danger. Rather the danger was Anglo-French or Anglo-French-American imperialism. Recall that Commies in the French parliament opposed French rearmament in the 9/1939-5/1940 period.

Omitting another major historical fact, relevant to the fears of intelligent, sensitive and loyal Jews, is the Arab collaboration with the Nazis and in the Holocaust [read works by and about Sadat & Haj Amin el-Husseini, here and here]. Buruma’s omission of this issue makes him into an ignoramus. One might defend him by saying that this subject has not gotten and does not get the attention it deserves. But Buruma presumes to be omniscient enough to dismiss the fears that he attributes to “neocons,”

Still, Islamist rhetoric, adopted by Ahmedinejad among others, is deliberately designed to stir up memories of the Shoah. So perhaps the existential fear of some Western intellectuals is easier to explain than their remarkable, sometimes fawning trust in the U.S. government to save the world by force. . .

The explanation of this mysterious trust may lie elsewhere. Many neocons emerged from a leftist past, in which a belief in revolution from above was commonplace: “people’s democracies” yesterday, “liberal democracies” today.

Be that as it may, the "Neocon" label is a straw man that Buruma employs in order to avoid admitting that any knowledgeable, intelligent Jew should have these fears. This does not mean that it is wise to trust the US Govt or any other major power to save the world from IslamoNazis, Islamofascists, or a potential Holocaust. But that still leaves us with the problem of Islamic fanaticism, which repeats many of the Nazis' arguments, especially against Jews. Consider the Hamas Charter, which endorses the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" --both a plagiarism & a forgery-- and the widely reported remarks of Ahmadinejad.

Buruma makes a fool of himself by another argument, which I have encountered from others. The tyranny of Saddam or Ahmadinajad is laughable and of no importance since they are “weak.” But if Ahmadinajad gets the bomb then he’ll be strong. What asininity!!!

Ahmadinejad, his nasty rhetoric notwithstanding, does not have a fraction of Hitler’s power.

This “weakness” argument was not habitually used in defense of Franco in Spain, or Salazar or the Rumanian Iron Guard, or of Mussolini. And surely it could have been used to favor Mussolini since he had trouble conquering Ethiopia [a conquest supported by Saudi Arabia].

It turned out that Hitler’s Germany was not as strong as the US-USSR-UK-French coalition. Nor did he have the A-bomb, as RL points out. Were we supposed to feel sorry for his relative weakness???

By the way, in the late 1920s to 1941, Communists often portrayed Germany as the victim of Anglo-French imperialism. The French CP echoed Hitler’s own revindications of his territorial claims, although there was zig-zagging during the 1930s.
See link here.

Another curiosity in Buruma’s tract is that he accuses “neocons” of “sometimes fawning trust” in US power to save Jews and the world. Not so many years ago, post-Zionists and anti-Zionists were accusing Israelis and Zionists outside Israel of wanting to go it alone, of believing that “the whole world is against us,” of defying the peace loving international community, of harboring suspicions of the USA, of the UK, France, the Vatican, and the USSR. And this drivel too was published in HaArets. What those who belabored Israel for suspicion of the world powers’ goodness and those –like Buruma– who accuse Israel of trusting in American power have in common is that both belittled the Arab threat. As if Israel only faced an Arab threat.

Now, let’s take a “leftist” tangent and recall Lenin’s definition of imperialism. According to him, it was finance capital, essentially. But don’t Arab powers possess huge amounts of capital nowadays? Don’t Arab sheiks and princes own much stock in Western capitalist corporations and much real estate in Western lands? So portraying the Arabs as weak from the angle of capital possession is simply false today. Hasn’t buruma noticed??

This essay is contemptible. That’s what is to be expected from HaArets.
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Coming: More on James Baker & US policy, Milka Levy-Rubin on population transfer upon the Arab Conquest, Jews in Jerusalem & Hebron, propaganda, peace follies, etc.

How the Arabs Treated the Europeans before Israel Was Reborn

The Judeophobic paranoia of some people in the West gets the better of them from time to time, overcoming their reason, although it is hard to say that it overcomes their knowledge of history which is probably minuscule in any event. We are often told nowadays by politicians in Europe and the USA [Carter, Baker, etc] that the West's problems with Arabs derive from alleged EU or American support for Israel. But being ignorant as they are about history, and perhaps not caring at all to know the historical truth, knowing mainly whom they don't like and cultivating their own Judeophobia, they do not support their claim with any historical perspective. Indeed, the Barbary pirates of the North African coast regularly attacked European shipping in the Mediterranean, as well as the coasts of Italy, France, and Spain, as well as sailing as far as Cornwall in southwestern England, and Ireland, and even Iceland. They were seeking to capture slaves among the kufar [kaffirs = unbelievers; or harbis = enemies]. Cesar Famin pointed out in 1853 that this was not simple piracy but was religiously motivated, was part of jihad.

More recently, a British researcher has published the account of an English boy taken captive by the Barbary Pirates --also called Sally Rovers by the British-- hundreds of years ago, while Michael Oren has published his book on the history of United States relations with the Arab-Muslim world going back to the time of American independence more than 200 years ago [Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, 2006. Oren's book supplies abundant details about the jihad piracy of the 18th and 19th centuries.]

Here is an account by a French Catholic author of the impact on France of this piracy:

From Tripoli to Mogador, the Barbary provinces of the Ottoman Empire lived in semi-independence, presenting an inhospitable coast to the Western Mediterranean, a dream haven for piracy. Every year, European fleets paid heavy tribute in goods and men to the Muslim corsairs. It is estimated that at the beginning of the 17th century, three thousand Frenchmen were held as slaves at Algiers and the same number at Marrakesh.

Meanwhile, we had been in diplomatic relations with Algiers since 1564, with Fez and Marrakesh since 1577, with Tunis starting from 1582. But our consuls in these different cities were practically without influence in dealing with the Turkish authorities, [who were] derelict in their duty, and our treaties made with them remained dead letters. Only piracy made the law. If politics was powerless to prevent enslavement, charity [by churchmen] was used to alleviate the fate of the slaves, even to ransom them. [Jean-Marie Sedes, pp 26-27; see data below]

De Tripoli a` Mogador, les provinces barbaresques de l'Empire ottoman vivaient dans une quasi-independance et presentaient, face a la Mediterranee occidentale, une cote inhospitaliere, repaire reve' pour la piraterie. Chaque annee, les flottes europeennes payaient un lourd tribut en marchandise et en hommes aux corsaires musulmans. On estimait au debut du XVIIe siecle, que trois mille Francais etaient retenus comme esclaves en Alger et autant a Marrakesh.

Nous etions cependant en relations diplomatiques avec Alger, des 1564, avec Fez et Marrakech depuis 1577, avec Tunis a partir de 1582. Mais nos consuls dans ces differentes villes etaient pratiquement sans influence aupres d'autorites turques defaillantes, et nos traites passes avec elles demeuraient lettres mortes. Seule, la piraterie faisait la loi. Si la politique etait impuissante a empecher l'esclavage, la charite s'employait a soulager le sort des esclaves, voire meme a les racheter. [Jean-Marie Sedes, Histoire des Missions francaises ("Que Sais-Je" Paris: PUF 1950), p 26-27, aussi pp 54-55]

NOTE that Barbary means North Africa, the region from Libya to Morocco of today, presumably named after the indigenous Berber people, whose remnants today are subject to Arab states.
Sally Rovers was a British name for the Barbary pirates, specifically referring to the port of Sale' on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Morocco, by the way, was never part of the Ottoman Empire as the author, Sedes, mistakenly indicates. It was an independent kingdom with its own sultan and various local rulers. The rulers of the pirate ports --Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, Marrakesh, etc.-- were Muslims, they were not necessarily Turks, although the word Turk used to be used to apply to Muslims generally. The Barbary Coast rulers could be Arabs, Berbers, Turks, or other Muslims.

Note also that France --as well as other European states-- did little to free their subjects enslaved by the pirates, although there was a flourishing business in arranging ransom for pirate captives whose families had the means to pay. The recent capture by Iran of British sailors fits the older pattern. Iran and Britain have been at peace and have diplomatic relations. So jailing them and not letting British diplomats in Iran meet with them is a violation of international law. Most likely, the Iranian government wants to bargain with them to alleviate or cancel the embargo voted by the Security Council. Yet, international law requires that states at peace allow diplomats to visit their prisoners who are citizens of the other state. The capture by Hamas and Hizbullah of Israeli soldiers and holding them incomunicado fits the pattern too, although Israel has been at war with these terrorist groups that do not formally or officially represent states [albeit both Hamas & Hizbullah are funded and guided by Iran].

International law requires states at war to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross [IRCR] to visit prisoners, bring them and take from them messages for their families, plus give them personal supplies [i.e., toothpaste]. Yet Hamas, which is part of the government of the "Palestinian Authority," and Hizbullah, which has been part of the Lebanese government, have not allowed the ICRC to visit the Israeli prisoners. Three Israeli prisoners [one of them a Muslim Arab himself] were captured by Hizbullah in 2000. They were killed in captivity, although later their bodies were returned to Israel in exchange for the release of hundreds of Hizbullah prisoners in Israel's hands. These violations of international law which victimized Israel do not seem to bother either the major Western powers [which finance the Hamas' "Palestinian Authority"] or the International Committee of the Red Cross itself, which just happened to have collaborated in the German Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and the associated Holocaust.

Cesar Famin's explanation of Barbary piracy was insightful, although some later writers seem to lack his understanding of the phenomenon. Famin clearly saw it as an expression of jihad, of an unending Muslim war on the Dar al-Harb, those parts of the world not under Islamic rule.
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Coming: more on Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron, more on James Baker, peace follies, propaganda, etc.

Angel Ganivet on the Threat of Islamic Jihad and How to Deal with It -- Angel Ganivet sobre la Amenaza del Yihad Islámico y Cómo Hacer Frente a El

What is the danger of Islamic Jihad or militant Islam --or political Islam? And how should the civilized world deal with the problem? These are vey live questions that many people throughout the civilized world, in the East and the West, the South and the North, are asking today. Angel Ganivet considered the issue more than 100 years ago.

Angel Ganivet [1865-1898] was a famous Spanish novelist and essayist who died more than one hundred years ago. He is considered a forerunner of the Generation of 1898, and was concerned in his Idearium Español with the spiritual identity of Spain. As a diplomat, he had a perspective on the world that few other Spaniards had in his time when Spain tended to be somewhat intellectually isolated from the rest of Europe and more backward.

Ganivet obviously knew of the continuing conflict between Spain and the Arabs after the last Moorish kingdom was defeated by Spanish forces in 1492. Muslim jihad warriors at sea, often called the Barbary Pirates, raided the coasts of Spain and southern Italy especially, as well as France, Britain, Ireland, even Iceland, in quest of booty and slaves --who were ordinary people taken captive in these raids. But the Barbary Pirates were conscious of a religious jihad mission, and were not merely eager for material gain, much of which went anyhow to the governments of their home ports in North Africa which sent them off on jihad.

Up till the late 18th century when the famous Spanish minister of state Floridablanca made a deal with Moroccan rulers, huge tracts of the low-lying southeastern coastal region of Spain were depopulated and uncultivated, because of fear of the Barbary Pirates' raids. Depopulating and discouraging cultivation are some of the things that Jihad warriors do. Consider in this regard southeastern Anatolia that was long depopulated and uncultivated in the Middle Ages on account of the continual jihad warfare perpetrated by jihad bands making razzias [ghazw = raids] out of northern Syria. In the Crusader period, Armenians penetrated this area and set up an Armenian kingdom there, which was in fact land claimed by the Byzantine Empire. This Armenian kingdom was eventually subdued by the Turks. The period of continual jihad warfare was dramatized in the Greek epic poem, Digenis Akrites.

Ganivet recognizes the danger of Islamic jihad, although the two passages quoted do not use the word. However, he seems divided in his attitude toward it. On one hand, he wants Islam to be checked, to be hemmed in, divided, prevented from uniting or being aggressive toward the rest of the world, particularly towards Europe. On the other, he does not want Islam to be destroyed, because it has a sort right of age and tradition, since it exists it has the right to continue existing.
Here are two passages from Idearium Español. Note that Ganivet was writing prophetically more than one hundred years ago about the threat of Islamic jihad:

1) Mohammedan power is always terrifying, however sunken down it may seem. It is like the sea: it withdraws and comes back; but this is not a reason for destroying it.

p 136 El poder mahometano es siempre terrible, por muy hundido que se halle; es como el mar: se retira y vuelve; pero esto no es razón para que se le destruya.

2) Islam is dangerous if it is allowed to dominate large territories united among themselves and constituted in a religious federation; because Islam does not propagate itself one individual at a time, but rather in the form of quick, violent bursts in several directions, within its natural geographic boundaries, sometimes crossing over them and attacking foreign peoples. Thus, a renewal of Islam's forces would be possible if any of the sects that are constantly born out of it were free to spread itself in all directions and succeed in rebuilding the unity necessary for combat. A European policy with foresight ought to set out to divide Islam, to intercept those currents, setting up centers of power at various intermediate points that would serve to isolate independent Muslim states from each other, but never completely destroying the political independence of Islam, that, due to the fact that it exists, has a perfect right to maintain autonomous political power. . .

p138 El islamismo es peligroso si se le deja dominar grandes territorios unidos entre sí y constituidos en federación religiosa; porque el islamismo no se propaga individualmente, sino en forma de irrupciones violentas, rápidas, en diversas direcciones, dentro de su demarcación natural geográfica y a veces traspasandola y acometiendo a pueblos extraños. Así, una renovación de las fuerzas del Islam sería posible si cualquiera de las sectas que continuamente nacen de él tuviera libertad para extenderse en todos sentidos y llegara a reconstituir la unidad necesaria para el combate. Una política Europea previsora debe de encaminarse a fraccionar el Islam, a interceptar esas corrientes, fijando en diferentes puntos intermedios centros de poder que sirvan de aisladores entre estados mahometanos independientes, pero nunca a destruir por completo la independencia política del islamismo, que por el hecho de existir tiene perfecto derecho a mantener poderes políticos autónomos. . .

ANGEL GANIVET--Idearium Español (vol 1 de Obras Completas, Madrid, Suárez, 1944) [b. 1865- d. 1898]
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Coming: more on the problematics of peace and peace-making, more on Jews in Jerusalem and Hebron, etc.