Second Essay on Islam

* * UPDATE:

Ya'll will see a cowardly comment below by an "ANON" in the combox. The commenter's idea is that America is tainted by slavery and cannot point fingers at jihadists fer all the killin' they done-- check the responses fer the fun of it.

But any whose interested mebbe will want to check out the book at the left--a scholarly look at how many millions of Europeans have been enslaved by Muslims.

From a Review of Professor Davis' book:



(European) Slave numbers declined through four causes: death, escape, redemption (i.e. by ransom), and conversion to Islam. Davis gets annual rates from these causes of 17 percent, 1 percent, 2-3 percent, and 4 percent, respectively. This implies a total number of slaves, from the early 1500s to the late 1700s, of one to one and a quarter million. This is an astonishing number, implying that well into the 17th century, the Mediterranean slave trade was out-producing the Atlantic one. Numbers fell off thereafter, while the transatlantic trade increased; but in its time, the enslavement of European Christians by Muslim North Africans was the main kind of enslavement going on in the world.

Christians were captured by two methods. First, there was the seizing of ships by straightforward piracy. The ship itself became a prize along with its crew and passengers. Second, there were raids on the coasts of European countries. Spain, France, and Italy were worst affected, but the pirates sometimes ventured further afield. In 1627 they kidnapped 400 men and women from Iceland.

The victims in either case would be taken back to one of the Barbary ports — the main ones were Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli — and sold in a slave market, by auction. They ended up either as the domestic slaves of private persons, or as slaves owned by the state, to be put to work rowing galleys, or constructing public works. The first of these two fates was usually preferable, as there was some chance of humanity from a private owner. Prof. Davis’s account of the lives of galley slaves is hard to read, and state slaves employed on public works were not much better off. There was no large-scale private-enterprise slavery as in the plantations of the Old South. The North African states had little commercial culture.

The effect on the European coastal populations was dramatic. Entire areas were depopulated. The author even sketches out an argument that the culture of baroque Italy was determined in part by a turning inward from the terrors of coastal life — from the “fear of the horizon” that afflicted all the regions subject to slave raiding. He tells us (he is professor of Italian Social History at Ohio State University, by the way) that to this day there is an idiom in Sicilian dialect to express the general idea of being caught by surprise: pigliato dai turchi — “taken by the Turks.” The distress of those left behind, deprived of a husband of father, is painful to read about.

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Ya'll Aunty's point here is to disabuse anybody of the idea that because the USA has slavery in her history, that she cain't complain about the jihadist horrors. Islam teaches and promotes an evil ideology against the entire world unless and until they submit to Islam. This monstrous teaching is the fertile field of the Islamic terror that Anon tries to excuse by pretending that Western abuses is no worse'n Islam-- utterly laughable.

The abuses of ISLAM is systemic and taught as a good thang--not an occasional aberration, and NEVER lamented, but still in existence.





Hey all ya'll whose regulars and to any visitors--Aunty invites ya'll to read the first essay and references, scroll backwards to see how we got into this yak-fest on Islam.
I meant to git up the essay on a Brief History of Islam and the West--an' I will...but not before Christmas (sorry!! I know, I promised...really sorry).

Meanwhile, I'se gonna post various clips from other folks...startin' with this one:

from http://www.humanevents.com/ )



A passenger revolt occurred on a Malaga-Manchester flight. Vacationing Brits refused to fly with two Arabic-speaking men. This came in the wake of arrests of 21 British-born Muslims who were plotting to blow up as many as 11 trans-Atlantic flights.

A spokesman for Britainâ™s opposition Tory party said the passengers panicked into “behaving irrationally.” Fancy that, not wanting to fly with members of a faith whose adherents keep trying to blow things up.

Within days of this incident, a Lebanese student was arrested for trying to plant bombs on German trains. In India, meanwhile, a group with alleged ties to al-Qaeda threatened to blow up the 17th century Taj Mahal.

If Muslims make travelers nervous, its not without cause.

Would you be more likely to have an anxiety attack at 20,000 feet if the passenger seated next to you was: A) An Irish nun saying the Rosary? B) A Mormon missionary in regulation white shirt and narrow, black tie? C) A Hari Krishna in a standard-issue saffron robe? or D) A bearded bloke of Middle Eastern complexion holding a well-thumbed Koran?

Guessing the religion of those who plant bombs, highjack planes, fire into crowds of civilians, take hostages and murder hostages is the world's ultimate no-brainer.

And yet our leaders, the media and many of us pretend there’s absolutely no connection between psychopathic, ideological killers and the religion which exalts the slaughter of unbelievers.

To counter confusion here, a la Letterman, I humbly offer The Top 10 Reasons Why It's Quite Possible That Islam Isn't Exactly A Religion of Peace....

Where Have All The Moderate Muslims Gone

If suicide bombers are radical Muslims, apologists for suicide bombers must be moderate Muslims. (In a letter to Tony Blair following the unraveling of the latest plot, 40 Muslim community leaders — including six members of Parliament — claimed Britain's foreign policy gave ammunition to extremists)

If someone slaughtered hundreds of innocents in the name of Christianity, everyone from the Pope and Billy Graham to your parish priest or local pastor would denounce the crime as an obscenity — without reference to the fall of Constantinople.

Hardly a day goes by that evil isn't perpetrated in the name of Islam somewhere in the world. When it comes to denouncing same, moderate Muslims are mostly AWOL.

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