Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Reviewing the Spanish Inquisition

Some say that Islam will eventually take over Europe. Some say that if the extremists and jihadists can be eradicated, the others can be assimilated. Others say that more drastic action is needed.

FrontPage essay:

Islam in Europe: Lessons from Medieval Spanish

Why all of Macron’s measures against “extremism” are doomed to failure.

A critical question arises in light of the recent spate of fatal terror attacks in France and other European nations: How do you once and for all eradicate “extremism” from Muslim communities living in the West? ...

Consider the historical experiences of France’s neighbor, Spain. In the eighth century, Muslims from Africa invaded and brutally conquered the Iberian Peninsula. Christians were massacred and subjugated; churches were destroyed and/or converted to mosques. By the late fifteenth century, however—after centuries of wars to liberate Spain from Islam (AKA, the Reconquista)—Christian rule finally extended to every corner of the peninsula. ...

Fed up with this “enemy within,” the Spanish crown finally decreed in 1501 that all Muslims had two choices: convert to Christianity or leave Spain. The motivation was less religious and more political; it was less about making Muslims “good Christians” and more about making them “good citizens.”

Most people probably think that the Inquisition was some sort of Medieval narrow-minded Christian dogmatism that fortunately no one believes in anymore. Nope. It was a matter of survival for Spain. Read the article.

Here is a NY Times op-ed:

I am angry. All the time. I’ve been angry for years. Ever since I began to grasp the staggering extent of violence — emotional, mental and physical — against women in Pakistan. Women here, all 100 million of us, exist in collective fury.

“Every day, I am reminded of a reason I shouldn’t exist,” my 19-year-old friend recently told me in a cafe in Islamabad. ...

When I step outside, I step into a country of men who stare.

Wow, she is obviously mentally disturbed. I hope that she stays in an Islamic country, and we stop trying to import these problems into the USA.

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