October 12, 2005

The Memento Syndrome: Humanity’s Short-Term Memory

In the 2000 movie, "Memento", the protagonist suffers from short-term memory loss. He can only remember the most recent 15 minutes. Anything that happened before that is gone from his recollection. For example, he finds himself in a foot chase and says something like, "I'm chasing somebody. Cool!" When the person shoots at him and he finds himself unarmed he says something like,  "Oh -- he's chasing me. Not cool!"

Humanity suffers from a similar situation: we can't remember anything that happened over 100 years ago. From The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades), by Robert Spencer (chapter 9):

Virtually all Westerners have learned to apologize for the Crusades, but less noted is the fact that the Crusades have an Islamic counterpart for which no one is apologizing and of which few are even aware. The first large-scale contact of Muslims with the Western world came not with the Crusades, but 450 years before them. When the forces of Islam united the scattered tribes of Arabia into a single community, the newly Islamic Arabia was surrounded by predominantly Christian lands -- notably the byzantine imperial holdings of Syria and Egypt, as well as the venerable Christian lands of North Africa. Four of Christendom's five principal cities -- Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem -- lay within striking distance of Arabia. The Byzantine Empire's great rival, Persia, also had a significant Christian population.

Say what? Egypt and Syria were predominantly Christian, and North Africa and Persia (Iran) had significant Christian populations? What happened?

But for centuries now, the Middle East, North Africa, and Persia (Iran) have been regarded as the heart of the Islamic world. Did this transformation take place through preaching and the conversion of hearts and minds? Not at all: The sword spread Islam. Under Islamic rule, the non-Muslim majorities of those regions were gradually whittled down to the tiny minorities they are today, through repression, discrimination, and harassment that made conversion to Islam the only path to a better life.

You know what language they used to speak in Egypt? Egyptian. You know what language they speak today? Arabic. It didn't happen peacefully. Spencer quotes a contemporary account from the year 642:

Then the Muslims arrived in Nikiou. There was not one single soldier to resist them. They seized the town and slaughtered everyone they met in the street and in the churches -- men, women and children, sparing nobody. Then they went to other places, pillaged and killed all the inhabitants they found.... But let us now say no more, for it is impossible to describe the horrors the Muslims committed when they occupied the island of Nikiou.  

In 650 the Muslims attacked Cappadocia. Spencer quotes a Medieval account:

They [the Taiyaye, or Muslim Arabs] moved in Cilicia and took prisoners...and when Mu'awiya arrived he ordered all the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no one escaped. After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures] that had been hidden. The Taiyaye led everyone into slavery -- men and women, boys and girls -- and they committed much debauchery in that unfortunate town; they wickedly committed immoralities inside churches.

By 711 the Muslims had conquered Christian North Africa. 

Early 700's: "Muslim forces... pressed into what are now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India..." 

715: Muslim conquest of Spain is almost completed -- the Muslims held Spain for over 700 years.  

732: In France, Charles Martel, "The Hammer," finally stops the Muslims at the Battle of Tours.

792: Hisham, the ruler of Muslim Spain, calls for jihad against France. Muslims from many countries rallied to the religious call and attacked France. France repelled them.

827: "...the warriors of jihad set their sights on Sicily and Italy. The commander of the invading force was a noted scholar of the Qur'an who forthrightly cast the expedition as a religious war. They pillaged and looted Christian churches, all through these lands, terrorizing monks and violating nuns. ... they held Sicily until 1091 -- when the Normans drove them out." 

848: Another Muslim army attacked France and was repelled. 

920's: "In Jerusalem ... More persecutions in 923 saw additional churches destroyed, and in 937, Muslims went on a Palm Sunday rampage in Jerusalem, plundering and destroying the Church of Calvary and the Church of the Resurrection." 

960's: Finally somebody wakes up and realizes that the Muslims are seeking to conquer them: "In reaction to this persecution of Christians, the Byzantines moved from a defensive policy toward the Muslims to the offensive position of trying to recapture some of their lost territories."

1001: Byzantine emperor Basil II concludes a truce with Muslim opponent, the Fatimid caliph. 

1004: The Fatimid caliph breaks the truce.  "Over the next ten years, thirty thousand churches were destroyed, and untold numbers of Christians converted to Islam simply to save their lives."

1090's: The Byzantine emperor calls for help to drive back the invading Muslim armies -- initiating the Crusades, which were fought as a defensive action.

1095 - 1291: Crusades temporarily halt Muslim advances into Europe.

1395. "A large Crusader force was defeated in Nicopolis, a town on the Danube, in 1395. All of Europe now lay open to the Turks, with virtually nothing standing in the way of their conquest of Rome, Paris, or even London."

1402: The Mongols make common cause with the Europeans and help drive back the Turks.

1453: The Turks conquer Constantinople.   "After weeks of resistance, the great city finally fell to an overwhelming Muslim force -- which, as we have seen, brutally massacred those inside."

1456: "The Turks besieged Belgrade in 1456 and even tried to get to Rome, but at this point they were turned back. Finally, the tide was starting to change."

1500's: The Muslims attempt to take Malta and Vienna and are repelled.

1600's: Muslim forces take much of the Ukraine but are driven out within 10 years.

1683: Muslim forces besiege Vienna and are driven back.

The recent spread of Islamic Shari'a law in Muslim nations; murders committed worldwide by terrorists in the name of Islam; and the mass immigration of Muslims -- who then refuse to assimilate -- into European nations -- show that this centuries-long tradition of Islamic jihad against non-Muslims continues today -- as called for in the Koran.

Last night in Los Angeles, a panel discussed these matters. On the panel were Robert Spencer; editor of Muslim World Today, Tashbih Sayeed; and Rabbi David Eliezrie.

Tashbih Sayeed, who has just returned from Pakistan, said:

Jihad has many meanings. But none of them is peaceful.

It's said everywhere in the Muslim world that whereas Muslims want to die, non-Muslims are afraid to die. 

Radical Islam can only fool people who have had no experience with evil.

In 1622 the Jews were massacred by Muslims at Medina -- proving that the jihad is not about Iraq or Israel -- Israel didn't even exist then. 

Rabbi Eliezrie said he had recently been in Paris, and found that he could not walk down the street, with his beard and yarmulke, without being loudly and offensively yelled at -- not by the French -- but by the Muslim immigrants to France.

Robert Spencer: 

One of my books was in process of being distributed in French. There were death threats and the translation was stopped. 

Spencer noted that the Koran guarantees entrance to heaven only to those who have killed for Islam or who have been slain in the name of Islam. Nobody else gets in.

My note: this appears to contradict claims that Islam is the "religion of peace."

When asked what to do to oppose the encroachment of Islam in the United States, Spencer responded:

• Monitor the mosques.
• Control immigration.
• Call on American Muslims to back up their claims that they are against killings committed in the name of Islam.
• Tie foreign aid to a policy that nations who receive it must halt the teaching, in their schools, of hate and violence. 
  

An audience member asked if Islamofascists are worse than Hitler. My note: Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews. The Islamofascists want to exterminate the Jews, the Christians, the Hindus, and everybody else who's not a Muslim. In that sense, the Islamofascists are worse.

The Internet will end the millennia-long period of history in which humanity suffered from "The Memento Syndrome."