Terror from the North

(Perfect timing alert: With all the heat I've been taking today from the Canucks for my FPM article (discussed below), I thought the announcement today that Iraqi Shiite Ayatollah Sistani has issued a fatwa telling Muslims not to attack Canada to be very timely. Do you believe he did this because the Canadians are more friendly, or less friendly, to America's cause? Needless to say, I think it's the latter. )

My new article, Terror from the North, headlines today at FrontPageMag.com. It describes the Canadian complicity in the al-Qaeda Millennium plot to blow up LAX. I also had another Canadian-related terrorism article published last week I never mentioned here, Canadian Blindness to Terror. It discusses the connection between the men arrested two weeks ago in the Toronto area who had purchased three tons of ammonium nitrate (more than three times that used in the Oklahoma City bombing) to wage jihad, and the Khadr family, described by some experts as the "First Family of Canadian Terrorism".

UPDATE: Thanks to the National Terror Alert Resource Center for the plug.

Rome Getting It Right on Islam, Part 2

Back in April I posted a note, Rome Getting It Right on Islam, regarding Pope Benedict's efforts to raise awareness about the growing Islamist threat. Then in May, there were several reports about comments made by the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, in a speech he delivered to a group in Naples, Florida, challenging the supposed tolerance in Islam, saying that "In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down the invocations to violence. There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages." Of course, the obligatory charges of "Islamophobia" and accusations of inciting "fear and hatred" were immediately forthcoming, but his comments even received the backing of Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

But now Archbishop Pell has upset the apple cart yet again in an interview he gave two weeks ago to the National Catholic Reporter (the whole interview is worth the read). Pell is not only restating his charge that the Koran incites violence against unbelievers, but he is also questioning whether so-called "moderate" Muslims can be faithful to the Koran and challenging one of the chief doctrines of the "Golden Age of Islam" myth by claiming that "[i]t's difficult to find periods of tolerance in Islam. I'm not saying they're not there, but a good deal of what is asserted is mythical."

To the priests of multiculturalism, this is heresy. To Muslims, it is inflammatory and makes Pell deserving of death. But Archbishop Pell is telling the truth. God bless him for it. And those who know me would testify that I am one of the last persons on the planet to be heaping praise on the Church of Rome.

That said, I am curious about the silence of US Roman Catholic officials. Why has there been no American Catholic cardinal willing to speak so bluntly about one of the primary global issues of our day? And throwing a few stones at my own glass house, why since Franklin Graham received a presidential rebuke after his "insensitive" comments about Islam after 9/11, saying that it is "wicked" and "violent", have Evangelical leaders been just as silent? Are they more concerned about currying favor with the White House and Congressional leaders, or speaking the truth to a world awash in confusion?

To his credit, Graham has been unwilling to back off his previous statements. But it seems these other so-called Evangelical leaders are willing to blather on about just any other topic than delivering the message about Islam that the world desperately needs to hear. The example of Pope Benedict and Archbishop Pell should be an example to them all.

The "Golden Age of Islam" Myth

You probably first heard it in school: Islamic civilization was flourishing when Christendom was in the Dark Ages. Most of the innovations enjoyed by Westerners today were really the developments from Muslims scientists, mathematicians, astronomers, physicians, poets and philosophers. The great works of Greek philosophy destroyed by the book-burning zeolots of the early Christian Church returned to the European world through Arabic translations. Muslims invented the scientific method, birthing the Renaissance. Islamic scholars invented the numerical concept of "zero", giving rise to the digital age. Etc.

At best, these are all half-truths. More accurately, they are nothing more than fairy tales, but very popular ones defended by top scholars today.

I got thinking about the myth of the "Golden Age of Islam" after reading an article at The American Thinker by Dr. Jonathan David Carson published this past Friday, Islam, Christianity, Classical Civilization, and Modernity. The article is short, but he does make a good point about the ability of Christianity to adapt their thinking while Islam has intellectually "frozen".

But digging a bit further, I came across two additional articles by Carson:

Hyping Islam's role in the History of Science (07/29/05)

The not-so-golden age of Islamic Philosophy (08/19/05)

In the first of these articles, he offers this important quote by Bernard Lewis, the recognized dean of Islamic studies, from his book, The Muslim Discovery of Europe:

We know of no Muslim scholar or man of letters before the eighteenth century who sought to learn a western language, still less of any attempt to produce grammars, dictionaries, or other language tools. Translations are few and far between. Those that are known are works chosen for practical purposes [philosophy being considered a practical discipline] and the translations are made by converts [who knew western languages before conversion] or non-Muslims.

Carson notes that not a single translation of Aristotle from Arabic to Latin was performed by a Muslim. Instead, they were prepared by Christian and Jewish scholars. However, most of Aristotle's corpus in Latin did not come through Arabic, rather, they were translated directly from the Greek. And for Plato, the only work of his to be translated into Arabic (The Republic), was never translated back into Latin from that source.

In the second cited article, he says:

Access “for western scholars to the great classics of Greece and Rome by their translation into Arabic, from which they were rendered into European languages” almost always means access to a Latin translation of an Arabic translation of a Syriac translation of a Greek text. Sometimes it means access to a Latin translation of an Arabic translation of a Hebrew translation of a Greek text. It can even mean access to a Latin translation of a Hebrew translation of an Arabic translation of a Syriac translation of a Greek text. Only on rare occasions does it mean access to a Latin translation of an Arabic translation of a Greek text.

This is an important discussion. Carson provides detailed evidence that refutes the post-modern scholars who are attempting to rewrite history in an effort to discredit medieval (and thus, current) Christianity.

One modern Muslim scholar, Yasser Latif Hamdani, has written a short article, Myths about the Golden Age of Islam, directed at other Muslims who are hoping to revive a supposed "Golden Age of the Caliphs" - one of the ideological selling-points of radical Islamist groups, like al-Qaeda and Hizb-e-Tahrir. This addresses some of their revisionist history as well.

More on this issue later.