This week, a fanatic at the Kabul Airport chose to annihilate himself and 108 innocent people, including thirteen American military members, in the name of Allah “the Compassionate, the Merciful.” Akin to human sacrifice, suicide bombings have always appalled the Western mind.
Our first introduction to the concept of the “sacrificial lamb” came to us through Christianity. Jesus, we are told, died for our sins. The Romans under Pontus Pilate were God’s vehicle in this bloody redemption. Abraham, the patriarch of three major Semitic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam was the author of this depressing way of thinking.
We all know of the close call Isaac had when his father Abraham was about to dispatch him as a human sacrifice. The salient point was that Abraham conversed with God, as did Jesus, as did Mohammad. Religion before Abraham was mostly begging stone idols and embracing superstition, with him it became full celestial conversation.
It was the end of August in A.D. 70 that Jews and the followers of Jesus stopped hearing voices. In the Hebrew calendar it’s called Tisha B’Av (the Ninth of Av, a month) a day of mourning, the event was a failed Judean rebellion and the destruction of Herod’s Temple by the Romans, followed by the Jewish diaspora. Still today, Orthodox Jews cannot eat, bathe, or have sex on Tisha B’Av. There would be another failed rebellion and further diaspora in A.D. 135, but the earlier loss of the temple had a profound effect on Judaism and on the newly-born Christianity.
Without Herod’s temple, Judaism lost its center, and so did Judeo-Christianity. Rome, not Jerusalem, became the home of Christianity. That shift profoundly Westernized the new religion, and Abraham became a footnote. Yet, six hundred years later, in Arabia, a new Abraham arose in the person of the prophet Mohammad who also spoke with God (Allah).
Despite the charitable and moral messages within the Koran, Mohammad’s Allah allows sex with slave-girls (an ISIS fringe benefit, still); and provides a heaven of “gardens, vineyards, and high-bosomed maidens” to reward those who die fighting infidels. These carnal incentives, as well as the quest for land, riches, and converts led Islam into a millennial conflict with Europe. Centuries before the Crusades, Arab and Berber Muslims occupied Spain and invaded France, until they were stopped at the Battle of Tours in A.D. 732. Sicily was invaded and occupied for two hundred years by Muslims.
The Ottoman Turks captured Christian Constantinople in 1453, then invaded the Balkans. In 1529, they laid siege to Vienna – the very center of Europe. They were repelled, but in 1571 the Turks launched an invasion fleet in the Mediterranean. An Italian pope (Pius V) mustered the resources of Latin Europe to defeat the Turks at Lepanto (off Greece) in the greatest naval battle until that time [see our Research Library: Italic Way XL].
But the Turks weren’t through yet. In 1683, they were once again at the gates of Vienna. Another Italian pope (Innocent XI) organized the “Holy League” and funded a Polish army to raise the siege, which it did. The League later liberated Hungary – Pope Innocent XI is honored as the “Savior of Hungary,” to this day.
Militant Islam still considers the West (and Israel) an evil to be resisted and expelled from Muslim lands. The vast majority of Muslims around the world embrace the modern, tolerant world, but they are painted by the terrorists with the same brush as the rest of us. They may celebrate Isaac’s survival as the Feast of Sacrifice, but no doubt wonder what father would even consider sacrificing his own son.
Nor was Abraham tolerant. He began his epic journey in life by smashing idols in the marketplace. He had no code of honor when it came to idolaters. When he lived in Egypt he lied to the pagan Pharaoh himself, saying his wife was his sister to entice the pharaoh’s eye. He rejected his illegitimate son Ishmael, child of his slave-girl, banishing them into the desert. Such is the patriarch who holds sway over the minds of so many.
Europeans came to terms with the Abraham legacy long ago. Our ancestors had their battles over the place of Christianity in a Greco-Roman, secular world. Looking at Afghanistan and much of the Islamic World, I would call that resolution a miracle in itself. -JLM
I would add that the Ottoman Turks went very close to actually conquer Italy. In fact, they sieged the city of Otranto (Puglia, the heel of Italy) in 1480. They occupied the city for more than one year preparing to take Rome as well. The Ottoman effort included 20,000 soldiers and 128 ships. They terrorized the local population with mass killing, deportation of teens to Turkey and forced conversion. Luckily, the King of Naples (Ferdinand I) raised an army and defeated the Turks.
As I wrote other times, the South of Italy has a glorious history, including military victories.
Unfortunately, in the Anglo-Saxon world, it has been historically represented as an extremely poor and uncivilized land of small villages ran by organized crime. The only articles you find on Southern Italian history are those on the origin of the Mafia or on the poverty that caused mass immigration.
I was reflecting on the horrors at the Kabul airport, and recall the first, or one of the first, armed conflicts of the new nation, the USA, was against the Muslim caliphates in North Africa not for colonial interest but in defense of free trade and freedom of the sea. “…to the shores of Tripoli” as the US Marine Hymn begins. Also, one of the first allies of the USA during those times was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which aided the US Navy expeditionary forces. I wish those days were just footnotes in history but sadly not so, as history does seem to repeat itself…..