When white slavery is an ideal of “tolerance”
Special to Western Voices
Al-Andalus, a musical ensemble led by Tarik and Julia Banzi, is currently touring part of the US. Performing at liberal churches and similar venues, Al-Andalus play music related to the “hybrid” Jewish and Muslim Moorish cultural mix of http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4661 (Al-Andalus), the southern Spanish region occupied by Islam from AD 711 to 1492. (Andalusia is named for the Vandals, a Germanic group which invaded Spain in AD 409).
The message of the band Al-Andalus is more than just musical, and echoes current politically correct historical fashion, which touts the Muslim occupation as a cultural high point of civilization, a spark of light in the otherwise Dark Ages then supposedly shrouding Christian http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2390 in superstition and ignorance. According to a statement from the musical group, “Al-Andalus was a unique moment in world history known as [an outstanding model of tolerance and functioning multiculturalism[. Al-Andalus was…known for its mutually beneficial symbiosis among peoples which resulted in remarkable artistic, educational, and cultural enlightenments.” The paragraph is a perfect summation of the politically correct view of this part of Europe’s experience.
In actual fact, the politically correct myth of Al-Andalus as a paradise of “tolerance” is not that new, going back to at least the Reformation, and is part of a narrative called “La Leyenda Negra,” the Black Legend. Promulgated by defeated Muslim and Jewish polemicists, as well as by extreme Protestant propagandists in the heat of war, the Black Legend is a racist revision of history which holds Spain to have been uniquely repressive and hateful. Modern ideas common among many white people with roots in Protestant northwestern Europe about the Inquisition, the Spanish treatment of the Indians, and other cultural notions about the legacy of the Spaniards flow out of the Black Legend, which has since morphed into a more generalized form of racial vilification attached to how most white people view our history.But those http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1245 of Medieval and Early Renaissance Spain that were ruled by Christians saw in fact a flowering of European civilization, and after consolidation eventually exported European values, economic development, know how and technology around the globe, freeing millions of people from comparative poverty and backwardness. “Modern” ideas like abolitionism began in Medieval Christian Spain, with whole religious orders formed to redeem, either by force of arms or financially, the thousands of Christians held in bondage by Jewish and Muslim owners. The experience of Islamic slave raiding and ownership led to a number of Crusading expeditions to free slaves from the Muslims, such as the pan-European naval and marine campaigns of AD 1113 to 1115 against the Balearic Islands, then a Muslim pirate’s nest.
The Spain of 1492 was no more repressive than any other European state of its size at the time, and, compared to non-European norms, was far ahead. Given its history, Spain of the period was actually surprisingly quite tolerant. Having just thrown off seven centuries of nonwhite enslavement the Spaniards displayed unequaled fairness, by Medieval standards, to their defeated oppressors, allowing them to remain if they converted to the Christian faith. Many Jews and Muslims pretended to become Christians, and often rose through the ranks of society to attain their exalted positions once again. While the Inquisition is now usually thought of as a ruthless institution hunting down innocent heretics and Jews, it actually had no legal power over non-Christians, only those who claimed to be Christians and cynically took advantage of their Christian neighbors. In modern terms, the Spanish Inquisition was what we would now call a national security measure. Even the infamous Torquemada, leader of the Inquisition, had a Jewish family background.
And just as the legacy of Christian Spain has been twisted, so too the legacy of Al-Andalus is now distorted for politically correct purposes. The “mutually beneficial symbiosis” cheered by the band Al-Andalus was founded on the looting of Spanish lands and the mass rape and sex slavery of white http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3976 if they dare mention the “problem”).
The Moorish invasion of 711 was only one part of a whole http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2743 England and Iceland, where Islamic slave raiders would pillage and plunder coastal towns.
Though the modern Muslim http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4984.
In recent times, Jews have joined Muslims to demand the “return” of their various land holdings lost through the Reconquista, or at least reparations or even “official acknowledgment” by Spain that it was wrong to throw off the Islamic yoke. Colonel Gadaffi is one Muslim who has taken an interest in the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2635, such claims have yet to be made.
Interestingly, just as in 711, white Spanish sellouts have joined the fray on the side of the invaders of today. “Conversos,” ethnic Spanish converts to Islam like Manzur Escudero, the president of the Spanish Islamic Council, squired Gadaffi around Andalusia, and continue to demand various concessions, while the (secular) Socialist government has worked hard to demolish Spain’s Christian identity through stunts like making the blood drenched Eid al Adha an http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=6186, openly called for the implementation of Sharia law in the United Kingdom.
The link between the purpose of the performances of the group Al-Andalus and the politics associated with the Black Legend is clear. The leading musician pushing this kind of music is Yasmin Levy, a Sephardic Israeli who is showered with praise for her revival of “Ladino” music. (Ladino is the Spanish Jewish dialect, analogous to Yiddish in Central Europe). Levy sees her project, which also incorporates Arab and Spanish music from Andalusia, as a “‘musical reconciliation’ of history” between the various elements dispersed by the victory of 1492.
The danger of such distorted history was seen in the 11M attacks on Madrid. On March 11, 2004, a series of bombs exploded in the Spanish capital, leaving 191 people dead and 1,800 wounded. The Islamist cell which planted the explosives did so in pursuit of a return of the Muslim http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3396. According to Islamist teaching, any place once ruled by Islam continually belongs to Islam, and the attacks were an attempt to re-assert Muslim control over Spain.
Those of us who are independently minded enough to recognize agenda advocacy and Orwellian doublethink disguised as history have long known that politically correct “tolerance” actually represents INtolerance. This fact was openly admitted by Karl Popper, scion of an Austrian Jewish family and one of the architects of political correctness: “We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant,” Popper wrote. And who would define what was “tolerant” and “intolerant,” and how that “intolerance” should be “tolerantly intolerated”? Why, Popper and his co-thinkers, of course. As part of this goal, history, our collective memory, must be re-evaluated, facts turned on their head. Only through this kind of manipulation could a horrendous legacy of slavery and imperialism like that of Andalusia now be re-classified as a shining beacon of “diversity” and “tolerance.”
Image: “The Harem” by John Frederick Lewis. Centuries of Muslim sexual enslavement of white women and boys have left a lasting folk memory in the collective Western mind. In the Balkans, white boys were taken as a form of “blood tax” by Ottoman overlords. The legacy of Islamic domination of Europe is now spun as an epoch of “diversity” and “tolerance.”
*(The main Christian enemies known to the Muslims up to that point were the Greek Byzantines, hence the reference to “Greek maidens.” Turks often still use the word Rûm (Roman) to refer to white people in general, as the Byzantines were the Eastern Romans. The common Arab word “Ferengi” for whites means “Franks,” and came much later when they encountered the Western Christian Crusaders.)