The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement Blog

Issue 48

Issue 48 [@48:00]: Beit Ye’or – There have been in fact two big waves of Jihad, the Ahab wave which started in the seventh century and in the course of one century [on the map – Alexandria conquered 641 AD] only Islam had Islamized huge [on the map – Sicily conquered 666 AD] territory [on the map – Carthage conquered 698 AD], mainly Christian territory [on the map – Southern Spain conquered 711 AD], from Portugal till Armenia [on the map – Narbonne Conquered 720 AD, Battle of Poitiers – Muslim Advance Halted 732 AD], but also Islamized Persia [on the map – Jerusalem conquered 637 AD, Damascus conquered 635 AD] which was not Christian, was mainly Zoroastrian [on the map – Battle of Basra 684 AD] except for Iraq which was mainly Christian [on the map – Ctesiphon conquered 636 AD] in the north and the Jewish and Christian in the south [on the map – Kabul conquered 670 AD].

The second wave of Islamization started in the eleventh century with the Turkish tribes [map – Battle of Manzikert 1071 AD, Armenia conquered 1064 AD] as those region so of Eastern Europe [map – Nicaea conquered 1331 AD] Greece, Anatolia [map – Constantinople conquered 1453 AD] which is now Turkey [map – Bulgaria conquered 1393 AD] was the seat of Christian Byzantine empire [map – Greece conquered 1460 AD], and Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania [map – Battle of Kosovo 1389 AD] were integrated into Dar-il-Islam [map – Belgrade conquered 1521 AD], which is the land of Islam [map – Siege of Vienna, Muslim Advance Halted 1638 AD]. So all the countries around the Mediterranean [map – Christian civilization shown in red in Europe and Mediterranean; Syria, Iraq, Armenia, Central Asia and Persia in Purple], which once had been Christian became the Islamic Empire [map – Muslim empire shown in Green stretching from Spain/Portugal, Northern Africa, Eastern Africa along Red Sea including Somalia, Arabian Peninsula, Turkey, Balkans, Southern Russia, Central Asia, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of India]. This Turkish wave lasted from the eleventh century till the seventeenth century where the Turkish army was stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683.

Rebuttal 48: The documentary cleverly gives a “fly through” of a map and enumerates the modern day countries under the then Islamic rule and maliciously guises all the Muslim expansion under the word Jihad, if nothing else, to create fear and hate in their audience of “Muslims are coming.” Jihad is not aggressive war (see – Muhammad Ali (Issue 27), Pickthall (Issue 27) , Zahid Aziz (Issue 33), Nooruddin (Issue 36) and G.W. Leitner (Issue 37)). The documentary includes every scrap of land to add to the Muslim conquest, but one country it singularly does not mention and that is Indonesia. It is the country with largest Muslim population and it never saw a Muslim invader on its shores. Then how did Islam spread to it? Islam spread to Indonesia and beyond by the Jihad of Arab merchants and personal example of the Arab sea traders. Islamization of Indonesia proves what Jihad means, which is none but striving in the cause of truth and righteousness in daily secular and spiritual endeavors, both within the personal and community life. The movie tries to detract the present for the past where the producers think they can have a free hand. Facts of history if taken literally are exactly the opposite. The number of countries in the current issue diminish when compared to the later Christian colonization. Listed below are the countries and regions (– consisting of many present day countries) under European Christian subjugation:

British colonies: Aden, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Ascension Island, Australia, Bahamas, Basutoland, Bechuanaland, British East Africa, British Guiana, British Honduras, British Somaliland, Burma, Canada, Ceylon, Egypt, Ellice Island, Falkland Islands, Fiji Island, Gambia, Gold Coast, India, Ireland, Malaya, New Zealand, Nigeria, Northern Rhodesia, Oman, Papua, Sarawak, Sierra Leone, South Rhodesia, St. Helena, Swaziland, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Union of South Africa

Dutch colonies: Dutch East Indies, Dutch Guiana

French colonies: Algeria, French Guiana, French Equatorial Africa, French Indochina, French Somaliland, French West Africa, Guadeloupe, La Réunion, Madagascar, Martinique, Morocco, New Caledonia, Tunisia

German Empire colonies: Cameroon, Caroline Islands, Eritrea, German New Guinea, German East Africa, German South West Africa, Gilbert Islands, Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, Togo

Portuguese colonies: Angola, Goa, Mozambique, Port Guinea

Before one counts the above colonies, it is important to take into consideration that some of the names have many countries embedded in them e.g. Dutch West Indies = Aruba, Bonaire, Klein Bonaire, Curaçao, Klein Curaçao, Bovenwindse Eilanden Virgin Islands, Sint Maarten, Saba, Sint Eustatius. India = India, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc.

Trivia – Which is the ONLY country in Africa that was not colonized by Europe? Answer: Liberia. It is shameful for Christian Europe either way – either they failed to colonize all of Africa or their colonization was so complete that only one country escaped its misery. Exception of Liberia prevented an entry in Guiness Book of World Records. It was the one that got away.

Only eleven countries besides Liberia in the world escaped European colonization – Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, North and South Korea. This list also includes Japan, but it was a colonizer itself of countries that includes the Koreas and Thailand.

Lets not forget the fundamental fact of history, that is, the Islamic “Empire” naturally expanded into adjoining areas to their borders which were a source of ongoing skirmishes. Like Europeans, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia was theirs to take, but Muslims did not for the mere fact that they were not occupiers. Compare that with the European Christian Empires which expanded to far flung areas of the globe that were no threat to their homelands, nor shared a common border. The sole driver for Christian expansion was the “In the name of the Father” coupled with their moral deprivations based upon a guaranteed salvation in the “blood of the Christ.” Yes, it was ultimately the same blood that they extracted from humanity in every corner of the world at the altar of their deity, the Father. With a God like that, who needs the Devil. Every conceivable exploitation and plunder of land and human resources was a fair game. 12 million slaves left the African continent between the 15th and 19th century and 10 to 20% died on board the ships i.e. 1.2 – 2.4 millions tossed overboard into the Atlantic en-route to Christian homelands or their colonies [Wikipedia: Atlantic Slave Trade – Human Toll]. African continent is still reverberating to this day from the shock of slavery and colonization.

This fundamental moral deprivation of Christian West persists to this day – “At the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, African nations demanded a clear apology for slavery from the former slave-trading countries. Some nations were ready to express an apology, but the opposition, mainly from the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States blocked attempts to do so. A fear of monetary compensation might have been one of the reasons for the opposition. As of 2009, efforts are underway to create a UN Slavery Memorial as a permanent remembrance of the victims of the Atlantic slave trade.”[Wikipedia: Atlantic Slave Trade – Apologies]

In contrast to the slavery, even today the whole of Christian Europe and America carries the guilt of Holocaust in Second World War. They carried this guilt even while in United States the Blacks could not use the same urinals as Whites and they were made to sit at the back of the bus into 1960s. What to talk of schools, even drinking water fountains and restaurants which were “White Only.” Germany and Switzerland have been made to make amends as outlined in Encyclopedia Britannica:

The defeat of Nazi Germany left a bitter legacy for the German leadership and people. Germans had committed crimes in the name of the German people. German culture and the German leadership—political, intellectual, social, and religious—had participated or been complicit in the Nazi crimes or been ineffective in opposing them. In an effort to rehabilitate the good name of the German people, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) firmly established a democracy that protected the human rights of all its citizens and made financial reparations to the Jewish people in an agreement passed by parliament in 1953. West German democratic leaders made special efforts to achieve friendly relations with Israel. In the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the communist leaders attempted to absolve their population of responsibility for the crimes, portraying themselves as the victims of the Nazis, and Nazism as a manifestation of capitalism. The first gesture of the postcommunist parliament of East Germany, however, was an apology to the Jewish people. At one of its first meetings in the newly renovated Reichstag building in 1999, the German parliament voted to erect a Holocaust memorial in Berlin. The first state visitor to Berlin after its reestablishment as capital of a united Germany was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the history of the Holocaust continued to be unsettling. The Swiss government and its bankers had to confront their role as bankers to the Nazis and in recycling gold and valuables taken from the victims. Under the leadership of German prime minister Gerhard Schröder, German corporations and the German government established a fund to compensate Jews and non-Jews who worked in German slave labour and forced labour programs during the war. Insurance companies were negotiating over claims from descendants of policyholders killed during the war—claims that the companies denied immediately after the war by imposing prohibitive conditions, such as the presentation of a death certificate specifying the time and place of death of the insured. In several eastern European countries, negotiations addressed Jewish property that the Nazis had confiscated during the war but that could not be returned under the region’s communist governments. Artworks stolen during the war and later sold on the basis of dubious records were the subject of legal struggles to secure their return to the original owners or to their heirs. The German government continued to pay reparations—first awarded in 1953—to individual Jews and the Jewish people to acknowledge responsibility for the crimes committed in the name of the German people.

If postwar Germany can apologize and rectify for its history of Holocaust, even thought modern Germany has no role in what Hitler did, then why cannot the White Christians apologize to the non-Whites for the atrocities inflicted on the latter? Is it the matter of skin color? Is this Christianity? Answer is yes to both these questions. If the European Jews can be compensated, then why not the descendent of African Black Slaves, who probably now are their own Christian brethren. Lip service of “40 Acres and a Mule” or the sermon from the pulpit does not suffice:

Pope John Paul II today apologized to black Africa for the involvement of white Christians in the slave trade. The Pope’s remarks came in an address to Cameroon intellectuals on their tasks in society and on the importance of integrating the Christian message with African culture. John Paul said the task of Christians involved ”healing and compassion” because ”the man who is in need, on the side of the road, is their brother, their neighbor.” He continued, ”In the course of history, men belonging to Christian nations did not always do this, and we ask pardon from our African brothers who suffered so much because of the trade in blacks.” [New York Times, August 14, 1985, Wednesday]

In the same breath and on the same moral plane, is it not the same White Christianity that aids and abets apartheid in Palestine? Why? Can the makers of this documentary answer this blatant moral dichotomy of both Christianity and Judaism? If this is not the very definition of bigotry as proven by this documentary, then what would be?

Below is a brief list showing the scale of Global Plunder by the Christian Empires of modern ‘enlightened’ times from which the documentary makers draw their moral roots as well. Each line in the list has the link to the map of the empire, era, % of world land mass, % of world population under their occupation. Note the areas under control of these empires are non-overlapping in time and region (with minor exceptions), implying their concurrent and global occupations and plunder:

Europe took the world and its people as heavenly manna that they could gobble any way they chose without any qualms of morality that this documentary instead wants to malign Islam with. White Christianity singularly stands for the practical example of ‘might is right’. For example, in October 1935, Italy with tacit approval of Great Britain and France invaded Ethiopia with mustard gas and occupied and expanded it into Italian East Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia). It is the same Italy on whose soil is the Holy See where the Pope dwells, whose sermons are more ceremonious than sincere. It is the same institution that factually ‘Wholly could not See’ the emergence of Colonization, Slavery, Nazism, Fascism and Communism right under its own nose and nor the Holocaust in its backyard. How could it ‘See’ when it has its own skeletons of Inquisition and Crusades in its closet. It can ‘See’ with 20/20 vision any hat passed around globally for donations but what it cannot ‘See’ is the immorality that it itself swims in the human history. A classical case of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ while selling salvation.

Not to be left behind in the above free for all, i.e. a plunder free from morality and consciousness:

Japanese Empire year 1942, 04.97%, 05.90%

United States came to the Empire game a little late, but it is catching up fast and has the whole world under its military grip by its five regional commands enforcing neocolonialism. Ask the people of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine (via its proxy) etc. Each one of them has a story to tell from their living memories and not from the pages of history. While mentioning Afghanistan and Iraq, include NATO and Australia as well to the list of neo-colonists. As to who is the next victim of this power intoxicated Christianity, minus its hollow teachings of “love,” only time will tell. Every square mile of the earth has been scorched or exploited in one form or the another at the hands of hegemonic Christianity. A point came in recent history that they did not even spare each other and the world suffered World Wars I & II. What stops WW-III at their hands? Neither the Bible, neither their Popes who were silent through all this. The four letter word “love” is now only found in the empty homilies from the pulpit with empty pews, or its cousin “lust” in the minds of marriage-less soap operas of the Main Street or its relative, the omnipresent “greed” in the Wall Street. Christianity hood winked the world for too long by selling “love” to enlist parishioners, who in turn did not take long to change into “Perishers” of the humanity, once they realized that guaranteed salvation is only a verbal belief in a five letter word, the myth of “Three.” Thus, Christianity not only erased from the human mind the fundamentals of morality and in doing so it also unfettered it for global exploitation. It even got its math wrong of 3=1 and 1=3. No wonder Galileo had to recant his mathematical challenge to heliocentric Vatican, the Holy UnSee. The cross carrying Christian Jihadists of a White God in recent Christian history are brought to light by the following summation:

Historians have traditionally looked at Christian missionaries in one of two ways. The first church historians to catalogue missionary history provided hagiographic descriptions of their trials, successes, and sometimes even martyrdom. Missionaries were thus visible saints, exemplars of ideal piety in a sea of persistent savagery. However, by the middle of the twentieth century, an era marked by civil rights movements, anti-colonialism, and growing secularization, missionaries were viewed quite differently. Instead of godly martyrs, historians now described missionaries as arrogant and rapacious imperialists. Christianity became not a saving grace but a monolithic and aggressive force that missionaries imposed upon defiant natives. Indeed, missionaries were now understood as important agents in the ever-expanding nation-state, or “ideological shock troops for colonial invasion whose zealotry blinded them.” British historian Brian Stanley regrets that this symbiotic relationship between “the Bible and the flag” in Western expansion has now become “one of the unquestionable orthodoxies of general historical knowledge.” Although emotionally appealing to many, the imperial approach was not completely intellectually satisfying. As James Axtell noted, the post-1960s interpretation was “little more than the familiar Eurocentric plot turned on its normative head”: missionary heroes became the villains, indigenous victims became the new heroes, and Christianity and indigenous religions were still viewed as mutually incompatible. Native preachers were rarely taken seriously by either group of scholars because they were not orthodox enough for one and not “authentic” enough for the other. Both the missionary-as-saint and missionary-as-imperialist framework therefore left little interpretive space for the hundreds of native preachers who actively participated in British evangelical efforts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. [Excerpt: Christian Missions and Colonial Empires Reconsidered: A Black Evangelist in West Africa, 1766–1816, by Edward E. Andrews, Journal of Church and State Volume 51, Issue 4, Pp. 663-691, January 1, 2009. Author is probably a doctoral candidate listed on this link]

Compare the above figures with Muslim ‘Empires’ which overlapped in regions under their control and at different times. Essentially the same area under the last Muslim rule of Ottomans shrunk from that of the first i.e. Ummayads:

There is a fundamental difference between Muslim Empires and the Christian Empires. The former was only a rule and their descendents are still living today among the ruled, whereas the latter was colonialism that sucked the resources of the occupied back to Europe. If by any chance, the European Christian rulers decided to live among the ruled for an extended stay, they made sure to carve out apartheid in Rhodesia and South Africa. But, ultimately it is from the ashes of Prophet Jesus Christ (peace be upon him) at the hands of Christianity that phoenix rises and gives birth to Mandelas and Tutus of our times. Moral clock is ticking in Palestine as well, though taking a little longer, but for how long?

References:

Colonialism – Wikipedia

Atlantic Slave Trade – Wikipedia

List of Largest Empires – Wikipedia