By of explanation, next week I'll be starting a new course at SNHU -- HIS-117, World Civilization, Prehistory to 1500. The term paper for this course asks that the student write a paper on intercultural interaction, so I decided to return to a topic I started researching a few years back in hopes of perhaps writing novel (I didn't) -- the Muslim invasion of Sicily in 827 CE and the subsequent founding of the Emirate of Sicily. Today I made a tentative timeline for the period, which is below. More to follow.
652: First Arab attack on Sicily
732: Battle of Tours
739: Berber Revolt
750: Abbasid (Shia) Revolution
800: Aghlabids given rule of Ifriqiya
827: Battle of Trapani
831: Emirate of Sicily proclaimed
902: Conquest of Sicily complete
909: Rise of Fatimids (Shia)
948: Kalbid dynasty established
973: Zirids take control in Ifriqiya
1048: Zirids become independent in Ifriqiya
1053: Last Kalbid dies
1061: Norman conquest begins
1071: Normans conquer Sicily
1121: Almohads in Ifriqiya
1146: Norman attack Ifriqiya
1171: Ayyubids conquer Cairo
1229: Hafsids in Ifriqiya
1240: Last Muslims expelled from Sicily
1250: Mamluks conquer Cairo
1261: Abbasids reinstated in Ifriqiya
1300: Liquidation of Lucera
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Monday, November 23, 2015
On Slavery
The institution of slavery had broad implications far beyond the obvious result of millions of sub-Saharan Africans being forcibly recollected to the western hemisphere. These implications were political, cultural, and economic in nature and can be seen throughout the eighteenth century. They include the catalyzing of the independence movement in the British colonies of North America, the racial intermarriage and the resultant institutionalization of racism in Europe and the Americas, and the emergence of a triangular trans-Atlantic trade among the Americas, Africa, and Europe.
Politically, a major event in the eighteenth century was the emergence of the United States of America in the aftermath of a war for independence fought by British colonists in North America against the monarchy. Although the role of slavery in this independence might not be immediately apparent, slavery did play a key role. Although slavery had been legal for some time in the British colonies, it had particularly grown in the southern colonies, which had developed a plantation economy and therefore relied rather heavily on slavery for their economic viability. Fernandez-Armesto writes that the ruling by a judge in the United Kingdom in 1772 outlawing slavery, while welcomed in some of the colonies, was viewed with suspicion and fear by those colonies that relied on slavery for their well-being. He notes further than virtually the whole black population of the colonies sided with the British in the war for independence, likely as a result. While it is likely that the colonists would have sought independence for other reasons, slavery nevertheless contributed in a significant way to the desire for independence.
Culturally, the mere presence of a substantial black population in places where they had not lived before led to changes. In much of the western hemisphere, the intermingling of racial groups gave rise to large populations of people of mixed race. Along with this demographic change came significant linguistic changes. African languages, native American languages, and European languages melded first into pidgins to facilitate trade and then into full-fledged creole languages. However, at the same time that racial intermingling began, laws against such relationships were passed, although Fernandez-Armesto stipulates that these laws often sought to preserve sexual inequality as much as racial inequality. In Dutch Surinam, he reports, women were subjected to corporal punishment for fornication with black men, but not vice versa. Racism ultimately increased as both a cause and an effect of fear of the corruption of white womanhood.
Economically, slavery likely had the greatest impact of all, with this impact taking on a truly intercontinental scale. People of European descent in the western hemisphere operated plantations that required slave labor for their economic viability. Western Africa served as the reservoir for slave labor, and Europeans who operated the slave stations along the coast of western Africa became wealthy through the slave trade. This wealth, in turn, greatly enriched the nations from which those Europeans came -- primarily the United Kingdom but also the Netherlands and France. As a result, these countries grew in their economic influence, not to mention their military and political influence. By the time the eighteenth century ended, a well-established triangular trade with stations in the Caribbean, western Europe, and west Africa, with slaves transported from Africa to the Caribbean, agricultural products transported worldwide from the Caribbean, and money earned from trading in slaves transported to Europe. Although, as noted above, the British began to intimate a move away from slavery in the 1770s, it was largely as the result of expanded colonial endeavors, primarily in India, that the British were able to finally abolish slavery in the 1830s.
In conclusion, it is clear that slavery had widespread political, cultural, and economic consequences. From its important role in inspiring British colonists in North American to seek independence to the rise of a multiracial population in much of the western hemisphere, the backlash against this so-called miscegenation, and the increasingly economically lucrative interrelatedness of Europe, Africa, and the Americas, slavery was a truly transformative factor in the eighteenth century. Although slavery would be abolished in most of these places by 1890, its consequences can still be felt today.
Politically, a major event in the eighteenth century was the emergence of the United States of America in the aftermath of a war for independence fought by British colonists in North America against the monarchy. Although the role of slavery in this independence might not be immediately apparent, slavery did play a key role. Although slavery had been legal for some time in the British colonies, it had particularly grown in the southern colonies, which had developed a plantation economy and therefore relied rather heavily on slavery for their economic viability. Fernandez-Armesto writes that the ruling by a judge in the United Kingdom in 1772 outlawing slavery, while welcomed in some of the colonies, was viewed with suspicion and fear by those colonies that relied on slavery for their well-being. He notes further than virtually the whole black population of the colonies sided with the British in the war for independence, likely as a result. While it is likely that the colonists would have sought independence for other reasons, slavery nevertheless contributed in a significant way to the desire for independence.
Culturally, the mere presence of a substantial black population in places where they had not lived before led to changes. In much of the western hemisphere, the intermingling of racial groups gave rise to large populations of people of mixed race. Along with this demographic change came significant linguistic changes. African languages, native American languages, and European languages melded first into pidgins to facilitate trade and then into full-fledged creole languages. However, at the same time that racial intermingling began, laws against such relationships were passed, although Fernandez-Armesto stipulates that these laws often sought to preserve sexual inequality as much as racial inequality. In Dutch Surinam, he reports, women were subjected to corporal punishment for fornication with black men, but not vice versa. Racism ultimately increased as both a cause and an effect of fear of the corruption of white womanhood.
Economically, slavery likely had the greatest impact of all, with this impact taking on a truly intercontinental scale. People of European descent in the western hemisphere operated plantations that required slave labor for their economic viability. Western Africa served as the reservoir for slave labor, and Europeans who operated the slave stations along the coast of western Africa became wealthy through the slave trade. This wealth, in turn, greatly enriched the nations from which those Europeans came -- primarily the United Kingdom but also the Netherlands and France. As a result, these countries grew in their economic influence, not to mention their military and political influence. By the time the eighteenth century ended, a well-established triangular trade with stations in the Caribbean, western Europe, and west Africa, with slaves transported from Africa to the Caribbean, agricultural products transported worldwide from the Caribbean, and money earned from trading in slaves transported to Europe. Although, as noted above, the British began to intimate a move away from slavery in the 1770s, it was largely as the result of expanded colonial endeavors, primarily in India, that the British were able to finally abolish slavery in the 1830s.
In conclusion, it is clear that slavery had widespread political, cultural, and economic consequences. From its important role in inspiring British colonists in North American to seek independence to the rise of a multiracial population in much of the western hemisphere, the backlash against this so-called miscegenation, and the increasingly economically lucrative interrelatedness of Europe, Africa, and the Americas, slavery was a truly transformative factor in the eighteenth century. Although slavery would be abolished in most of these places by 1890, its consequences can still be felt today.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
On the Columbian Exchange
The period of global interaction inaugurated by Columbus's arrival in the Western hemisphere lay the groundwork for much of the social, cultural, and political changes worldwide in the 16th and 17th centuries. These changes were either developments resulting from this interaction or reactions against it. Specific examples include demographic changes Brazil, the political transformation of Russia, and the closing of Japan to the west.
Slavery was a major driver of demographic change in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Fernandez-Armesto discusses at length how the need for agricultural labor in the tropical regions of the western hemisphere with pre-existing ability to tolerate extreme heat and humidity drove the slave trade to increase exponentially over the period under discussion. In Brazil, the influx of black slaves from sub-Saharan Africa by nominally Christian plantation owners, under the careful eye of Catholic missionary organizations, resulted in a syncretic effect on black religious belief. The confraternities that arose, which Fernandez-Armesto calls "lay brotherhoods" dedicated to "black artistic vocations and religious devotion … centered on the cult images."[1] The author then goes on to describe how, rather than having a placating effect on slaves, Black Catholicism was a motivating force for self-empowerment even within the obviously strict confines of slavery.
Politically, global interaction affected the role of government in Russia under the guiding hand of Tsar Peter the Great. Fernandez-Armesto notes that Peter modeled his political reforms on what he observed in central and western Europe while traveling incognito, modeling his new capital city of St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea on the rapidly growing cities of Amsterdam, Paris, and London. Not coincidentally, these cities were all capitals of metropoles of large empires that enriched themselves through colonialism. Peter observed the influx of wealth into these cities and countries and, in emulating them, introduced Russia permanently into the community of European nations, both as member of military alliances and as a trade partner.
However, as noted, not all of the changes wrought by global interaction were marked by positive reactions. Fernandez-Armesto discusses how, unlike in the Americas, where Christianity was largely embraced by the population, Christianity was unsuccessful in penetrating Japan because the Japanese leadership suppressed its practice. He mentions this suppression in the context of both an increasing closing of Japan to the west, reporting that the government "practically forbade its subjects to travel overseas,"[2] as well as Japan's resultant embrace of Buddhism and its melding withindigenous ancestor worship. Fernandez-Armesto nevertheless notes that Japan's rejection of the west and westerners did not negate its imperial endeavors or economic growth. The latter factor transformed Japanese politically, such that the power of the samurai declined, while the shogunate emerged, with the shoguns playing roles similar to the empowered nobility of the European monarchies or the mandarins of the late Ming Dynasty in China.
Clearly the global exchange of the post-Columbian period had enormous effects worldwide, politically, socially, and culturally. Politically, economic transformation as a result of colonialism resulted in the tsardom of Peter the Great in Russia and the shoguns in Japan. Socially and culturally, the rapidly shifting demographic nature of the western hemisphere resulted in the rise of a unique form of Christianity that stood in contrast to its European original, while the same religion was rejected in Japan in favor of more "authentic" Asian forms of belief. While it cannot be conclusively stated that these changes would not have occurred without the global exchange following 1492, it is unlikely to have happened as rapidly and pervasively without it.
=====
[1] Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The World: A History, vol. 2, 3rd ed. (New York: Pearson, 2015), 511.
[2] Ibid, 446.
Stuff I'm Reading
The Shaping of Modern America: 1877-1920, Vincent P. DeSantis
The Muslims of Medieval Italy, Alex Metcalfe
Stuff I'm Reading
The Shaping of Modern America: 1877-1920, Vincent P. DeSantis
The Muslims of Medieval Italy, Alex Metcalfe
Sunday, November 15, 2015
On "1491" by Charles C. Mann
By way of explanation, I'm current taking a course at the Community College of Philadelphia for transfer to the history program at SNHU. The course is Global History II, which covers 1492 to the present. The below is my short paper for the first week of class.
The assigned reading (see footnote 1 below for the link) was an essay published in The Atlantic in 2002, in which the author, Charles C. Mann, fleshed out some of the concepts that would eventually appear in his 2006 book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
=====
In his article "1491,"[1] Charles C. Mann attempts to demonstrate the extent to which our typical assumptions about pre-Columbian life in the Americas might be wrong. To prove his points, he brings to bear mostly the opinions of experts in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and history, discussing the largely academic controversies that have arisen over the course the last half-century in determining, among other factors, the native population figures of the continent, the causes of the fates of these peoples, and the extent to which the ecology of the Western Hemisphere interacted with native Americans. He also uses some personal experiences to make his points. Mann is ultimately successful in making his case, although it is unclear whether his representation of opposing points of view is complete or wholly accurate.
The assigned reading (see footnote 1 below for the link) was an essay published in The Atlantic in 2002, in which the author, Charles C. Mann, fleshed out some of the concepts that would eventually appear in his 2006 book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
=====
In his article "1491,"[1] Charles C. Mann attempts to demonstrate the extent to which our typical assumptions about pre-Columbian life in the Americas might be wrong. To prove his points, he brings to bear mostly the opinions of experts in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and history, discussing the largely academic controversies that have arisen over the course the last half-century in determining, among other factors, the native population figures of the continent, the causes of the fates of these peoples, and the extent to which the ecology of the Western Hemisphere interacted with native Americans. He also uses some personal experiences to make his points. Mann is ultimately successful in making his case, although it is unclear whether his representation of opposing points of view is complete or wholly accurate.
For instance, Mann's article engages the academic controversy over population data immediately, as he sets the point of view of the archaeologists Clark Erickson and William Balée that "Indians were here [in the Beni province of Bolivia] far longer than previously thought … and in much greater numbers"[2] against that of the anthropologists Betty J. Meggers and Dean R. Snow, who argue that the former's arguments lack evidence and are based on wishful thinking. The essay culminates in the dispute over the origins of the Amazon rain forest, with Meggers's position of native Amazonian societies dependent on soil with poor yield and thus limited in population size for Malthusian reasons compared to Anna C. Roosevelt's conclusion that the rain forest was both exploited for its rich soil (which Roosevelt, an archaeologist, excavated) and partially created by the choice of native people to plant orchards rather than more regularly rotated crops.
Mann's own position in this ongoing debate is not overtly stated but can be gleaned from certain details in the essay. For instance, it is with the aforementioned Balée and Erickson that Mann visits Beni himself, and he provides a firsthand account of Painted Rock Cave to present Roosevelt's opinion and that of the anthropologist/botanist Charles R. Clement, who agrees with her. In contrast, Meggers's opinion, while presented in direct quotations, does not benefit from such a specific setting, which seems to validate more the reports of Roosevelt. To his credit, Mann presents Meggers's rebuttal of Roosevelt as well meaning, motivated in part by conservationism,[3] but his emphasis of the negative tone of her rebuttal -- at turns calling Roosevelt's work "extravagant" and "defamatory"[4] -- leaves the impression that her argument is overly emotional and, thus, inferior.
If nothing else, Mann provides in "1491" a solid overview of the battleground that has arisen over these opposing claims. In this sense, the essay is enormously successful. Moreover, as a person with some interest in pre-Columbian cultures, I found the essay downright fascinating. In the end, however, I was left to wonder whether the presentation was entirely fair. The impression finally left, as well written and gripping as the article might be, is that the positions of scholars such as Meggers and Snow are outdated and, more importantly, that their resistance to new ideas is mean-spirited and petty. While this impression does not detract from the overall entertainment value of the essay, it does leave open the question of how well Meggers's and Snow's argument might succeed if assessed a bit more fairly.
=====
[1] Charles C. Mann, "1491," The Atlantic, March 2002, accessed October 27, 2015 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/
[2] Ibid.
[3] Not stated by Mann directly but likely unavoidable to perceive given her surname is that Roosevelt is the great-grand-daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, who made no small contribution to conservation.
[4] Mann, ibid.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
On Paris and History
One of the moral dicta of history is the famous one from George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The advice is clear: history is told in part to teach of what went wrong in the past so we can avoid it in the present (and future). So far, so good.
The terrorist attacks yesterday in Paris afford us an unfortunate opportunity to consider Santayana's famous advice. The right and left have lined up in response to this outrage with their respective chants of closed borders, anti-Muslim rhetoric, Eurocentric panic, etc. (the right), and religion of peace, not all Muslims, look-at-Syria-what-do-you-expect, etc. (the left). I virtually always come down on the side of the left, and even in this case, in which I think it's obvious that Islam as a religion has the capability of being exploited for its inherently violent content -- just like, it absolutely bears mentioning, Judaism and Hinduism -- I still tend to come down that way. I would hate to see Muslim refugees turned away at the borders of Europe, and I would also hate to see Europe experience a wave of right-wing nationalism in the face of attacks such as these.
At the same time, I recognize that, at least for those people who perpetrated the attacks and their sympathizers, their values are deeply at odds with the hard-won standards of the west, and I don't apologize for believing that, in a struggle between maintaining those standards and helping people in need, the former is more important than the latter in the long term. That said, I do believe that this position is a liberal one -- individual rights and freedoms are sacrosanct. You have the right to say what you want and no right not to be offended. But I digress.
What does history tell us about Muslim fundamentalist terrorist violence against the west? Curious about this particular question, I did some Googling to see what I could find. Among the first sources -- and, it turns out, more reliable -- I found was one from the PBS web site, which indicated that the current problem of terrorist committed by Muslims against western people and targets didn't begin very long ago; rather, PBS dates its advent to 1968, with the vast majority of terrorist acts committed by members of one national group -- Palestinians -- against civilian and government targets in western Europe. The problem with viewing these attacks as Muslim fundamentalism is that the groups carrying out these attacks all began as part of the PLO, which is an explicitly secular organization. In fact, one of the key militant Palestinian leaders during this period -- George Habash, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- was Christian.
So at least part of the equation we're seeking to solve doesn't fit here. Yes, there were Muslims committing acts of terrorism against the west in 1968, but they weren't doing so as Muslims, and that's an important distinction. Also, given the sheer amount of global unrest in 1968, it ends being somewhat unsurprising that there was Palestinian violence in this year -- and it becomes doubly less surprising when one considers that Israel had begun its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem the previous year.[1]
The PBS site makes clear that there was not the onset of terrorism committed against western targets and westerners until 1979, which is a bit of a watershed year in the history of Muslim fundamentalism, since it was the year in which the Islamic Revolution occurred in Iran, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, was seized by guerrillas. Since 1979, there have been relatively regular attacks on the west by actors expressly wanting to be considered Muslim. Since 1991, coincident with the power vacuum created by the collapse of the USSR, it has intensified. Since 2001, it has intensified further. So we're not talking about a long and involved history of Muslims attacking the west in terrorist attacks. We're talking about less than fifty years. That alone should indicate something about whether Islam is inherently in a conflict of civilizations with the west. Clearly, if it were, we'd have had a big problem a much longer time ago -- the religion itself is more than a thousand years old.
The other side of the equation concerns Muslim emigration to Europe. Bearing in mind that, for hundreds of years, there have been Muslim-majority countries in Europe (Bosnia and Albania), if we consider the countries with the largest Muslim populations today that did not have indigenous Muslim populations a hundred years ago -- Germany, France, the U.K., Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Greece,[2] Austria, Sweden, and Denmark all have populations that are both at least 2% Muslim and that number at least 200,000 Muslims -- it's not as if there is some one-to-one correlation between having Muslims living as a notable minority in one's country and suffering from terrorism.
On top of that, it's not as if Muslim immigration to Europe is a brand new thing. It began with decolonization, which began (in the case of the U.K. with Pakistan) 68 years ago. It picked up in the 1950s and 1960s (Algerians emigrating to France, e.g., with continued decolonization), in part to meet labor needs (e.g., Turks emigrating to Germany). Following a bit of a clampdown on immigration after 1974, since 1988, emigration to Europe of Muslims has increased again, contributing to the current levels.
If it seems there's a connection between increased terrorism beginning in the late 1980s to early 1990s and increased Muslim immigration to Europe during the same period, that's because there is. The problem with assuming a cause-effect relationship between the two is that these two phenomena are both effects -- the cause was the collapse of the Soviet Union. The key thing to remember is that correlation does not imply causation.
To summarize, Muslims have been immigrating to Europe for a long time -- much longer than there has been a specific issue of terrorism committed by Muslims "in the name of Islam" against westerners. If the mere presence of Muslims in the west were the core of the problem, it would have been a problem decades ago. This is not to say that there are not Muslims currently living in the west with values radically different from those of most westerners, and that fact is not limited to those who actually act on their ideologies and that this is not something of a problem. But it is to say that anyone offering a "clear solution" like stopping Muslims from immigrating to Europe isn't looking at the bigger picture. Nor, for that matter, are they bearing in mind Europe's own home-grown "Christian" terrorists who, while perhaps less theatrical in their actions, were no less deadly.[3]
What happened yesterday is a terrible, awful thing for which there is no explanation or excuse. We ought not compound that horror by enacting policies that don't make sense.
====
[1] It's also not very surprising because 1968 was the year that Yasir Arafat arose as the primary figure in the Palestinian leadership, although he would not official become the leader of the PLO until the following year.
[2] Greece has always had a Muslim minority, but it's become more notable in recent years.
[3] I think here of the actions of certain Irish republicans, the Basque Euskadi ta Askatasuna, etc.
The terrorist attacks yesterday in Paris afford us an unfortunate opportunity to consider Santayana's famous advice. The right and left have lined up in response to this outrage with their respective chants of closed borders, anti-Muslim rhetoric, Eurocentric panic, etc. (the right), and religion of peace, not all Muslims, look-at-Syria-what-do-you-expect, etc. (the left). I virtually always come down on the side of the left, and even in this case, in which I think it's obvious that Islam as a religion has the capability of being exploited for its inherently violent content -- just like, it absolutely bears mentioning, Judaism and Hinduism -- I still tend to come down that way. I would hate to see Muslim refugees turned away at the borders of Europe, and I would also hate to see Europe experience a wave of right-wing nationalism in the face of attacks such as these.
At the same time, I recognize that, at least for those people who perpetrated the attacks and their sympathizers, their values are deeply at odds with the hard-won standards of the west, and I don't apologize for believing that, in a struggle between maintaining those standards and helping people in need, the former is more important than the latter in the long term. That said, I do believe that this position is a liberal one -- individual rights and freedoms are sacrosanct. You have the right to say what you want and no right not to be offended. But I digress.
What does history tell us about Muslim fundamentalist terrorist violence against the west? Curious about this particular question, I did some Googling to see what I could find. Among the first sources -- and, it turns out, more reliable -- I found was one from the PBS web site, which indicated that the current problem of terrorist committed by Muslims against western people and targets didn't begin very long ago; rather, PBS dates its advent to 1968, with the vast majority of terrorist acts committed by members of one national group -- Palestinians -- against civilian and government targets in western Europe. The problem with viewing these attacks as Muslim fundamentalism is that the groups carrying out these attacks all began as part of the PLO, which is an explicitly secular organization. In fact, one of the key militant Palestinian leaders during this period -- George Habash, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- was Christian.
So at least part of the equation we're seeking to solve doesn't fit here. Yes, there were Muslims committing acts of terrorism against the west in 1968, but they weren't doing so as Muslims, and that's an important distinction. Also, given the sheer amount of global unrest in 1968, it ends being somewhat unsurprising that there was Palestinian violence in this year -- and it becomes doubly less surprising when one considers that Israel had begun its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem the previous year.[1]
The PBS site makes clear that there was not the onset of terrorism committed against western targets and westerners until 1979, which is a bit of a watershed year in the history of Muslim fundamentalism, since it was the year in which the Islamic Revolution occurred in Iran, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, was seized by guerrillas. Since 1979, there have been relatively regular attacks on the west by actors expressly wanting to be considered Muslim. Since 1991, coincident with the power vacuum created by the collapse of the USSR, it has intensified. Since 2001, it has intensified further. So we're not talking about a long and involved history of Muslims attacking the west in terrorist attacks. We're talking about less than fifty years. That alone should indicate something about whether Islam is inherently in a conflict of civilizations with the west. Clearly, if it were, we'd have had a big problem a much longer time ago -- the religion itself is more than a thousand years old.
The other side of the equation concerns Muslim emigration to Europe. Bearing in mind that, for hundreds of years, there have been Muslim-majority countries in Europe (Bosnia and Albania), if we consider the countries with the largest Muslim populations today that did not have indigenous Muslim populations a hundred years ago -- Germany, France, the U.K., Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Greece,[2] Austria, Sweden, and Denmark all have populations that are both at least 2% Muslim and that number at least 200,000 Muslims -- it's not as if there is some one-to-one correlation between having Muslims living as a notable minority in one's country and suffering from terrorism.
On top of that, it's not as if Muslim immigration to Europe is a brand new thing. It began with decolonization, which began (in the case of the U.K. with Pakistan) 68 years ago. It picked up in the 1950s and 1960s (Algerians emigrating to France, e.g., with continued decolonization), in part to meet labor needs (e.g., Turks emigrating to Germany). Following a bit of a clampdown on immigration after 1974, since 1988, emigration to Europe of Muslims has increased again, contributing to the current levels.
If it seems there's a connection between increased terrorism beginning in the late 1980s to early 1990s and increased Muslim immigration to Europe during the same period, that's because there is. The problem with assuming a cause-effect relationship between the two is that these two phenomena are both effects -- the cause was the collapse of the Soviet Union. The key thing to remember is that correlation does not imply causation.
To summarize, Muslims have been immigrating to Europe for a long time -- much longer than there has been a specific issue of terrorism committed by Muslims "in the name of Islam" against westerners. If the mere presence of Muslims in the west were the core of the problem, it would have been a problem decades ago. This is not to say that there are not Muslims currently living in the west with values radically different from those of most westerners, and that fact is not limited to those who actually act on their ideologies and that this is not something of a problem. But it is to say that anyone offering a "clear solution" like stopping Muslims from immigrating to Europe isn't looking at the bigger picture. Nor, for that matter, are they bearing in mind Europe's own home-grown "Christian" terrorists who, while perhaps less theatrical in their actions, were no less deadly.[3]
What happened yesterday is a terrible, awful thing for which there is no explanation or excuse. We ought not compound that horror by enacting policies that don't make sense.
====
[1] It's also not very surprising because 1968 was the year that Yasir Arafat arose as the primary figure in the Palestinian leadership, although he would not official become the leader of the PLO until the following year.
[2] Greece has always had a Muslim minority, but it's become more notable in recent years.
[3] I think here of the actions of certain Irish republicans, the Basque Euskadi ta Askatasuna, etc.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
So I'm Blogging Again
After 15 years out of graduate school and nearly a decade of not blogging, I've decided to take up blogging again as a way of working out ideas as I pursue a bachelor's degree in history at Southern New Hampshire University, where I have taught as an adjunct in the Literature Department for a couple of years.
To some extent, I've been studying history for a long time already. In 2000, I was invited to become a board member of the Holocaust History Project, which was established by the late Harry W. Mazal, OBE, to aid Prof. Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University in defending herself against a spurious libel suit brought against her by David Irving for her having stated in her book Denying the Holocaust that Irving is a Holocaust denier. (She won.) I had apparently attracted the attention of some of the existing board members debating Holocaust deniers in Usenet.
Since then, I earned something of a reputation as a person who refutes (and fights with) Holocaust deniers. I'm now reformed (more or less), and when I feel the need to respond to deniers, I'll do so here, perhaps simu-blogging over at Holocaust Controversies, where last I blogged. But I'll also be using this blog to post assignments for my coursework (once graded), respond to stuff I'm reading, etc. So if that kind of things interests you, then please come back.
Stuff I'm Reading:
The Indians in American Society, Francis Paul Prucha
Finland's War of Choice, Henrik O. Lunde
Hitler's Spanish Legion, Gerald R. Kleinfeld
To some extent, I've been studying history for a long time already. In 2000, I was invited to become a board member of the Holocaust History Project, which was established by the late Harry W. Mazal, OBE, to aid Prof. Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University in defending herself against a spurious libel suit brought against her by David Irving for her having stated in her book Denying the Holocaust that Irving is a Holocaust denier. (She won.) I had apparently attracted the attention of some of the existing board members debating Holocaust deniers in Usenet.
Since then, I earned something of a reputation as a person who refutes (and fights with) Holocaust deniers. I'm now reformed (more or less), and when I feel the need to respond to deniers, I'll do so here, perhaps simu-blogging over at Holocaust Controversies, where last I blogged. But I'll also be using this blog to post assignments for my coursework (once graded), respond to stuff I'm reading, etc. So if that kind of things interests you, then please come back.
Stuff I'm Reading:
The Indians in American Society, Francis Paul Prucha
Finland's War of Choice, Henrik O. Lunde
Hitler's Spanish Legion, Gerald R. Kleinfeld
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