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Post by timoneill on Feb 6, 2010 8:18:21 GMT
From "The New American", the magazine of the insane John Birch Society?! Is this a joke? How about a link to a review of a book on race relations by Stormfront of the Klan? I bought Stark's book this morning. I have a couple of other things to read first, but I'll be giving it a thorough analysis on Armarium Magnum soon. Having since looked at the other content on that site, I fear you may have a point; although I must admit I've never heard of the John Birch society. Okay. And they have become even more kooky since then. An article on that site is about as credible as something from prisonplanet.com or any site that thinks the world is run by shape-shifting reptilians. My initial impression of Stark's book is that he's combined some valid points (the Crusades were not colonialist expansion or a grab for loot) with some polemical nonsense (they were a counter-attack against Islamic expansion). But I'll read carefully then comment. |
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Post by zameel on Feb 8, 2010 22:55:25 GMT
The largest Muslim country by population, Indonesia, was never conquered, except spiritually by Chinese Naqshbandi Sufi traders. China, too, was never conquered by Muslims, yet Chinese Muslims (the Hui) have lived as part of the Buddhist-Confucian-Tao-Muslim community for over a thousand years: www.nawawi.org/downloads/article5.pdf whereas Christianity came to China relatively recently. This wasn't achieved as some have imagined, by "syncretism" or Islam being mixed up with other religions, but by appropriating culturally sensitive ways of expressing the truths of Islam (see the above link for a remarkable example of this from China). The largest Christian nations, the US and Brazil, however, were conquered in the 16th century, with much of the native population enslaved and annhialated (through disease and other means). This contrast to what is commonly perceived is readily visible in a less known part of the world, the Caucasus. The people of the Caucasian mountains were never conquered by Muslim caliphs or emirs or sultans, but were won over by Naqshbandi missionaries in the 15th and 16th centuries, which subsided their pre-Islamic vengeful culture and constant warring. Since the 18th century, the people of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Daghestan have put up one of the most fierce resistance (jihad) against conquering Christian armies from Russia. The Jihad of the 18th century Sufi master Imam Shamyl is described here by Timothy Winter (under his pen name Kerim Fenari): www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/misc/shamyl.htm . One thing that is remarkably consistent in all Muslim anti-colonialist efforts from India to Algeria in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries is the combination of an emphasis on the precepts of the Shari'ah and the mysticism of Sufi tariqas: this is clear in the jihad of Syed Ahmad Shahid and Qasim Nanotwi in India; Imam Shamyl in the Caucasus; Omar Mukhtar in Libya; the Emir Abd el-Qadir in Algeria; Abdullah Hassan al-Somali in Somalia and others - these were not only teachers of the Law but were part of the Sufi shaykh-murid (master-student) networks, stretching back according to Sufi belief, to the Prophet Muhammad who was the shaykh of his sahaba (companions). One thing one notices in many of the reckless acts of violence committed by Muslim groups today (with the possible exception of the Taliban) is the anti-Sufi (Wahhabi/Salafi) ideology; contemporary jihadism lacks that vital combination of Law and Spirit that was so effective amongst earlier mujahids. Muslims have never conquered the Caucasus: even the Sahaba, who swept before them the legions of Byzantium and Persia, stopped short at these forbidding cliffs. For centuries, its people continued in their pagan or Christian beliefs; while the Muslims of neighbouring Iran regarded it with terror, believing that the Shah of all the Jinn had his capital amid its snowy peaks.
But where Muslim armies could not penetrate, peaceful Muslim missionaries slowly ventured. Many achieved martyrdom at the hands of the wild, angry tribesmen; but slowly the remote valleys and even the high aouls accepted the faith. The Chechens, Avars, Circassians and Daghestanis entered Islam; and by the eighteenth century, only the Georgians and the Armenians were still unconverted.
But despite this victory, a new threat was gathering on the horizon. In 1552, Ivan the Terrible had captured and destroyed Kazan, the great Muslim city on the upper Volga. Four years later the Russian hordes reached the Caspian. At their van rode the wild Cossacks, brutal horsemen who reproduced themselves by capturing and marrying by force the Muslim women who fell into their hands. As pious as they were turbulent, they never established a new settlement without first building a spectacular church, whose tolling bells rang out over the Tsars everexpanding empire in the steppes.
By the late eighteenth century the Christian threat to the Caucasus had not gone unnoticed by the mountain tribes. Their lack of unity, however, made effective action impossible, and soon the fertile lowlands of North Chechenia and (further west) the Nogay Tatar country were wrested from Muslim hands. The Muslims who remained were forced to become the serfs agricultural slaves of Russian lords. Those who refused or ran away were hunted down in an aristocratic Russian version of fox-hunting. Some were skinned, and their skins were used to make military drums. The enserfed women often had to endure the confiscation of their babies, so that the pedigree Russian greyhounds and hunting dogs could be nourished on human milk.
…
The first coherent response to the danger came from an individual whose obscure but romantic history is very typical of the Caucasus. He is known only as Elisha Mansour an Italian Jesuit priest sent to convert the Greeks in Anatolia to Catholicism. To the anger of the Pope, he soon converted enthusiastically to Islam, and was sent by the Ottoman sultan to organise Caucasian resistance against the Russians. But at the battle of Tatar-Toub in 1791 his resistance came to an untimely end; and, captured by the enemy, he spent the rest of his life a prisoner at a frozen monastery in the White Sea, where monks laboured unsuccessfully to bring him back to the Christian fold.
Mansour had failed, but the Caucasians had fought like lions. The flame of resistance which he lit soon spread, nursed and fanned by one man of genius: Mollah Muhammad Yaraghli. Yaraghli was a scholar and a Sufi, deeply learned in the Arabic texts, who preached the Naqshbandi Way to the harsh mountaineers. Although he converted many thousands, his leading pupil was Ghazi Mollah, a religious student of the Avar people of Daghestan, who began his own preaching in 1827, selecting the large aoul of Ghimri to be the centre of his activities.
...www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/misc/shamyl.htm |
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Post by penguinfan on Feb 9, 2010 20:55:03 GMT
I suppose the problem is with the lady you mention and why she chose to change what Brown said from 'stabbing' to a scratch. She didn't cite Brown - she merely said nyssein in this context means "scratch". Ok, so you claimed that Brown said that nyssein meant scratch, not 'to stab'? Or did you read another author who said this and lift that claim from that secondary source? (Oh, and have you confirmed that Alexandria and Caesarea were sacked and the former's churches burnt?) |
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Post by timoneill on May 14, 2010 10:40:42 GMT
Sorry for the long hiatus, but I've finally got around to reviewing Stark's book on Armarium Magnum. The results aren't pretty - the book is tendentious crap. Comments welcome on the blog. |
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Post by James Hannam on May 14, 2010 20:41:19 GMT
Good review Tim.
I have also decided that Stark gets more wrong than right and that his work has drifted into being apologetics. An academic historian who is wrong but in an interesting way has some value. Stark, I fear, does more harm than good. This is a shame because I found Rise of Christianity rather good.
By the way, although I'm sure you have a huge pile of books, I'd be very interested in your take on Tom Holland's Millennium. I just can't make up my mind.
Best wishes
James
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Post by timoneill on May 14, 2010 22:23:12 GMT
Good review Tim. I have also decided that Stark gets more wrong than right and that his work has drifted into being apologetics. An academic historian who is wrong but in an interesting way has some value. Stark, I fear, does more harm than good. This is a shame because I found Rise of Christianity rather good. Agreed. But he's gone off the deep end since then. God's Battalions was terrible. It's on my to do list. I will have to order a hardcover edition though, because I now have a policy of only buying hardcover copies of books I suspect I will refer back to and may read again. Philip Jenkins' The Lost History of Christianity is probably going to be my next review, but I still have an article on Richard Carrier bubbling away on the backburner. How does "Richard Carrier - Pseudo Historian and Anti-theist Preacher" sound?  |
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Post by wraggy on May 15, 2010 5:31:41 GMT
Tim O'Neill said "but I still have an article on Richard Carrier bubbling away on the backburner. How does "Richard Carrier - Pseudo Historian and Anti-theist Preacher" sound? ".
I can see Tim being accused of being a pseudo-atheist and a closet christian, or maybe even a self hating atheist, if he posts an article with a title like that.
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Post by timoneill on May 15, 2010 5:54:20 GMT
Tim O'Neill said "but I still have an article on Richard Carrier bubbling away on the backburner. How does "Richard Carrier - Pseudo Historian and Anti-theist Preacher" sound? ". I can see Tim being accused of being a pseudo-atheist and a closet christian, or maybe even a self hating atheist, if he posts an article with a title like that. I get that regularly anyway. Then again, if I post something Christians don't like I get called a typical militant atheist. While ever I'm annoying the fundamentalists on both sides I know I'm doing something right. |
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deef
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 87
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Post by deef on May 16, 2010 19:25:42 GMT
Thanks for the review Tim!
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Post by jamierobertson on May 16, 2010 19:43:27 GMT
Cheers Tim. I suppose another warning for those who stray too far from their specialist area...
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