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Progressive News & Views (since 1982)
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Short History of Islamic Conquest
".......from the seventh century when Islam appeared the Prophet Mohammed
lived and taught and died and the Koran was promulgated...From then until
the 17th century they were always advancing somewhere...Now, it is true
that they suffered losses here and there. They lost, they failed, finally,
in their 800-year-long attempt to conquer Spain and use it as a base for
further advance in Western Europe. They failed to hold on to Russia, which
was rule by the Islamist (ph) Tartars there for a while. But where it
mattered, as they saw it, in the center, they were advancing.....And
remember, as late as the 17th century, there were still Turkish pashas
governing Budapest and Belgrade, the Turkish armies besieging Vienna and
Barbary corsairs from North Africa raiding the coasts of England and
Ireland, and even as far as Madera and Iceland on occasion. So, they
seemed to be doing very well..." Tony Snow, "Interview with Bernard Lewis"
(04-18-2003)
The Fall
"Then came the second Turkish siege of Vienna. The first one in the 16th
century ended with what in sporting language you might call a draw or in
chess language, a stalemate. They were bogged down for a century and a
half. Then 1683, comes the second Turkish siege of Vienna, which is an
unmitigated disaster that resulted in a total rout of the besieging
Turkish forces and undignified retreat through the Balkans.....And a
Turkish historian at the time, whose name was Celistar Patar (ph); he says
in his contemporary chronicle of these events, he says this is the
greatest catastrophe that we have suffered since the foundation of the
Ottoman State. And one must admire the candor of the 17th century
historian for which I have been able to find no parallel in 20th century
historians." (Lewis)
Catastrophe
The second _greatest "catastrophe" for _Muslims_ was to see the rise and
_revival_ of a Jewish state in the middle of Muslim Arabia. It must be
remembered that to the Arabs there were no separate places (fabricated
nation-states) which were as important as the entire Arab conquest and it
seems to them that creating a State of Israel, for the Jews, in the middle
of the pan-Arab territory was a terrible calamity and it becomes their
greatest modern catastrophe. It has also led to a revival of radical Islam
because the imams preach that this happened to them not because they were
weak or Israel was smarter or stronger, but because it was Allah's will
because they were not faithful enough. They believe _why else_ would Allah
allow this catastrophe to happen to them?
(See Bernard Lewis, "What Went Wrong" and more recently,
"The Crisis of Islam's Holy War and Unholy Terror.")
British Hostility
If the British had their way there would not have been an Israel. While
charged with the _Mandate_ there was an influential view in Britain that
their alliances should have been with the more powerful Arabs.
The British did all they could to have Israel fail. The British also
prevented Jewish immigration when it was most needed. They are directly
responsible for the death of many Jews who might have been saved if not
for British colonial and military interests to the contrary.
"The British government was privy to the Arab plans for invasion (in
1948), and on every diplomatic front, and especially in the United Nations
and in the United States, it pursued a vigorous campaign of pressure and
obstruction to hinder and prevent help to the embattled Zionists and to
achieve the abandonment of the plan to set up a Jewish state. When the
state was declared nevertheless, the British government exerted every
effort to bring about its defeat by the invading Arab armies. it was not
by chance tha one of the last operations in the war between Israel and the
Arab states in January 1949 was the shooting down on the Sinai front of
five British RAF planes that had flown across the battlelines into
Israeli-held territory. This was the culmination of a policy developed and
pursued by the British throughout their administration of the
Mandate--surely not the least of the great betrayals of the weak by the
strong in the twentieth century. The policy of the Foreign Minister Ernest
Bevin, who was severely criticized, was no more than the logical, if
extreme, evolution of the policies of Anthony Eden, who inspired the
creation of the Arab League in 1945; of Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial
Secretary who presided over the declaration of death to Zionism in the
White Paper of 1939, and of their predecessors who shaped the `Arab
Revolt' of 1936, who made possible the `disturbances' of 1929, and who
were responsible for the pogrom in Jerusalem in 1920." (Samuel Katz,
"Battle-Ground.." 1973/1985 - page 45)
Arbiter
"One of the great objects of British diplomacy as the conflict in
Palestine deepened during the Mandate period was to create the image of
Britain as an honest arbiter striving only for the best for all concerned
and for justice. In fact, Britain was an active participant in the
confrontation. She was indeed more than a party. The Arab `case' in
Palestine was a British conception. It took shape and was given direction
by the British military administration after the First World War. The
release in recent years of even a part of the confidential official
documents of the time has strengthened the long-held suspicion that the
Arab attack on Zionism would never have begun had it not been for British
inspiration, tutelage, and guidance." (Samuel Katz - page 45)
"In the end, it is true, British sympathy, assistance, and cooperation
came to be auxiliary to Arab attitudes and actions. Those attitudes,
however, had their beginnings and their original motive power as a
function of British imperial ambitions and power. The two intertwined
progressively throughout thirty years, until their open cooperation after
1939. At the last, in 1947-1949, they consummated an imperfectly concealed
alliance for the forcible provention of the establishment of the Jewish
state." (Samuel Katz - page 45,46)
In a letter to Lord Hardinge (August 26, 1915), Elie Kedourie, describes
and quotes from the Wingate Papers:
"Early in the First World War, after the defeat at Gallipoli, a group of
senior British officials serving in the countries on the fringe of the
Ottoman Empire---in Egypt and the Sudan--conceived the idea of bringing
the vast Arab-speaking areas of the Ottoman Empire under British control
after the war. In the words of the then Governor General of the Sudan, Sir
Reginald Wingate, they envisaged `a federation of semi-indepndent ARab
States under European guidance and supervision...owing spirtual allegiance
to a singel Arab primate, and looking to Great Britian as its patron and
protector." (Professor Kedourie, outstanding historian from the School of
Oriental Studies, Durham University, England)
Pawn
Hussein ibn Ali was the British pawn in their colonial scheme.
"He was King of the Hejaz and founder of the modern Hashemite dynasty.
Emir (grand sherif) of the Muslim holy city of Mecca, at the start of
World War I he sided with the Turks and Germany. However, T E Lawrence
persuaded him, in 1916, to join an Arab Revolt against Turkish rule, when
he was proclaimed the independent King of the Hejaz region of Arabia. In
1919 he proclaimed himself king of all the Arab countries. This led to
conflict with Ibn Saud of the neighbouring emirate of Nejd. Hussein
accepted the caliphate in 1924, but was forced to abdicate in 1924 by Ibn
Saud. He took refuge in Cyprus and died in Amman, Jordan.... One of his
sons, Ali ibn Hussein, succeeded him as ruler, but was deposed within a
year by Ibn Saud, who proclaimed himself king of Hejaz. Another son,
Abdullah ibn Hussein, became king of Jordan, while another, Faisal I,
became king of Iraq. Hussein was the great-grandfather of King Hussein ibn
Talal of Jordan." (Hutchinson Enclyclopedia)
So if you had to wonder how a Hussein became King of Jordan was handed
most of Palestine, it started with British imperial ambitions and the
Turks.
"The early disaster of British arms in the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915
provided the impulse. The British government called on its agents with
contacts in the Arab-speaking countries to make an effor to detach the
Arabs from the Turks. The men on the spot in Cairo and Khartoum decided
that Hussein ibn-Ali Sherif of Mecca, Guardian of the Moslem Holy Places,
a semit-autonomous chieftain in Hejaz (Arab proper), was the suitable
candidate for levering all the Arabs out of the Turkish war machine. While
London was interested in immediate military relief, the Arabists in Cario
and Khartoum contrived to setter and manipulate the relations with Hussein
toward their own more grandiose schemes. Hussein asked a high price for
his participation in liberating his people from Turkish rule, even at one
stage threatening to fight on the side of the Turks. He demanded all the
territory in Asia that had ever been in the Moslem Empire. He was, of
course, employing the accepted Oriental gambit in a bout of bargaining; he
asked for much more than he expected to get. Moreover the negotiators were
warned from London that the British government had made other commitments
in the area, concerning Palestine, Lebanon, and the Mosul area in
Mesopotamia (Iraq). In return for the promise of liberation in his own
territory and the gift of part of the other Arabic-speaking areas,
together with vast sums of money (in gold) and considerable quantities of
arms, Hussein launched his revolt, led in the field by his son Faisal.
(Lewis)
The revival of Judea as the State of Israel was against all odds and Arab
opposition. Jews were outgunned and outnumbered yet they persevered
because they had to; there was no alternative and failure was never an
option. There was no State of Palestine and there was no national interest
for establishing a Palestinian nation-state. Arabs rejected the idea. What
they objected to was Israel for Jews. To Arabs it was _all_ Arab land.
Palestine was merely the excuse. There was no Palestine. And the British
romanticized the nomadic Arabs and wanted them to be "their Arabs" but
just as Jews survived the Crusades, the Inquisition, the blood libels,
pogroms, and after losing 6 million in the Holocaust, and being prevented
from fleeing the Nazis by the British, the Americans, and all other "good"
people, Jews were not going to lose the only refuge they had.
Hank Roth
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