So sayeth this review of The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise. (h/t Vox Populi) And yes, the reviewer is an Orthodox priest, if you want to ready your ad hominems, and he is positively scathing regarding the myth, even working in a Gone With the Wind reference. As Fernandez-Morera’s book points out, the picture of a tolerant Islam… Read More No, Islamic Spain was Not Tolerant
That’s a pretty obvious statement, but Michael Totten’s article about the End of Hezbollah (his lips to God’s ears) underlines it wonderfully: Part of Hezbollah’s support used to come from the fact that they were perceived as not being corrupt, but that’s over now, too. “Even my family members who are big Hezbollah supporters are… Read More We Do Not Understand the Middle East
So sayeth American Infidels. It’s all about deception, and it’s called taqiyya. While many Muslim spokesmen today maintain that taqiyya is solely a Shi’ite doctrine, shunned by Sunnis, the great Islamic scholar Ignaz Goldziher points out that while it was formulated by Shi’ites, “it is accepted as legitimate by other Muslims as well, on the authority… Read More “Islam is Alone in having a War Strategy”
Medieval Musings is the kind of blog that I would like to write, if it didn’t already exist. The Middle Ages continues to fascinate, both for its seeming atavistic structure (men who work, men who fight, men who pray!) and the constant, chaotic change. Western Civilization went from seeming collapse to being poised to take… Read More Arabia Before Islam at Medieval Musings
Alcohol? That’s a paddlin’. And by paddlin’ we mean 40 lashes with an electrical cable. I know a few Muslims here and there, and I once heard one tell me that the Koran only prescribes “becoming drunk” not the actual imbibing of spirits. But I suppose that’s another area open to interpretation. Which may be… Read More Sharia Law in Australia
Not merely with regard to radical Islam: (h/t: Instapundit) We flatter ourselves into believing that we are more liberated than our stuffy ancestors. A sobering corrective to modern self-satisfaction is to realise that an ex-Muslim novelist would never now dare do what Salman Rushdie did with The Satanic Verses and write a book that said the life… Read More The Cowardice of the Intellectuals
Content Blues 