In a follow-up to last night’s post about the Al-Quds Day rally and related matters, Michael Coren talks about the behavior of the Toronto police and the larger ramifications of last Saturday’s event.
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:
Emanuele Ottolenghi talks to Ezra Levant about a proposed Iranian school in Montreal that will indoctrinate Iranian immigrants to Canada and their descendants with the ideology of the Islamic Republic.
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:
It’s time to catch up on some of the videos that Vlad has been accumulating while I was busy doing other things. First, A CNN report on an honor killing in the West Bank.
Notice that the reporter manages to assign at least part of the blame for the killing to Israel — “the stress of occupation”.
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:
Similarly, looking at the inferences drawn by The Chronicle of Philanthropy in their journal summaries leave one with questions. However, it was their work that the Times news report referenced so they’re worth considering.
From The Times:
Charitable giving in America breaks down largely along political and religious lines, a new study shows.
Regions of the country considered “deeply religious,” such as the Bible Belt and states such as Utah and Idaho — each of which has large Mormon populations — give much more to charity than others, according to a report released Monday by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
The survey, which sampled 2008 tax information for those making $50,000 or more, found that the typical household in a “religious” state, such as Utah or Mississippi, gave more than 7 percent of its income to charity. By contrast, the average home in Massachusetts and other New England states gave less than 3 percent, the study says
Notice several things here: they didn’t look at any givers who make less than fifty thousand dollars a year. That excludes many of the people where we live, and these folks are generous in supporting projects they find worthy. Around her, it’s hard to walk into a country store without seeing a “tip jar” stuffed with small bills and change for, say, a family who lost everything in a fire, or a child with some exotic illness or condition whose family needs may include a frightfully expensive service dog or a handicapped room fitted out.
There is also the front-of-the-grocery-store-phenomenon: many grocery stores permit Boy Scouts, school teams, etc., to set up tables explaining their projects and asking for funds from customers going in and out of the store. I’m sure there are curmudgeons who complain to management about these “beggars” but around here at least these groups are still permitted. No doubt there will soon be some regulatory agency which will seek to continue its own petty existence by ruling out these customs — and then sending out their enforcers to make sure no Cub Scout is found with a leaflet in his hand. It’s a living, I suppose, though such “work” hasn’t a smidgen of honor in comparison to, say, the oldest profession in the world.
Some pages in the journal are devoted to particular charities, but there didn’t seem to be any mention of Habitat for Humanity, though their work is legendary both in concept and execution — and now it’s gone international. When this program first began, the “sweat equity” required of its recipients demonstrated the ‘exceptionalism’ for which we are such objects of scorn. Our government destroyed the housing base in this country via the corruption and machinations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, neither of whom ever looked at the suitability of individuals on whom they pushed home ownership. This fixed game — “Bundling Mortgages Into Eternity” — was ‘played’ by corrupt banksters and their legislators: Barney Frank and Maxine Waters, anyone? We’d be in a much smaller mess today had they not held the cards. And the saddest part is that Habitat for Humanity was changing lives, one house at a time.
Governmental interference is becoming ever more severely deranged and dangerous across a myriad of venues. The ugly rules about curtailing help to religious organizations are mean-spirited indeed. A commenter in the Times report put it this way (you may have to read this twice to understand the full import):
Anyone who gives to people other than their very own religion are no longer defined as a religious organization effective Aug 1, 2012.
Thus a Catholic giving to a Protestant can no longer claim being a religious organization with all the consequences flowing therefrom.
Thus your donations would no longer be tax deductible.
The intent is the hope the organization goes away.
If it goes away there is no buffer between the Gov and the Individual.
It’s Gov vs. individual. The Individual loses Religious protection of word and deed. He violates the tenets of his religion to help others in need plus whatever else yet to be determined.
What his first sentence seems to mean is that if you’re, say, a Catholic and you donate to the local Methodist church’s building fund, you can’t deduct this contribution from your taxes. On the other hand, if you’re an R.C. and give to Saint Jude’s Hospital then you’re okay… but Baptists giving to St. J’s don’t qualify for a charitable deduction on their tax form… Say what? This is indeed passing strange — when you put such donations on a tax return will you now be required to verify your religion to qualify??
I don’t see any legalese references to this assertion and it sounds awkward at best. If anyone has real information about whatever was supposed to start on August 1st, I’d be interested in following up on the particulars. Ordinarily, I’d call this paranoid. But given the last four years’ experience, this sounds Obama-esque enough to be credible — perhaps… maybe. Yet wouldn’t this require legislation? Oh wait… perhaps not. The overreach of our regulatory soviet is quite alarming; definitely we live in a top-down statist environment in this era of proliferation of agencies to regulate everything. Sad, but the fellow could be right.
Religion isn’t the only factor to influence donations. Politics also appears to play a role, with those in conservative states much more likely to give to charity than those in left-leaning areas. The eight states where people contributed the highest percentage of their income to charity — Utah, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Idaho, Arkansas and Georgia — all voted for Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, in the 2008 presidential election.
The seven states that gave the lowest percentage of income to charity — New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Wisconsin — went for President Obama.
Well, you’ve seen my opinion about these summations. I’ll play devil’s advocate here:
Those chintzy-appearing blue states are also heavily taxed and unionized — which means a hefty piece of personal income is shoveled off to the corrupt leadership, leaving less real discretionary income. Oh wait — I see a complication here: New Hampshire is a haven for those poor folk fleeing Taxachusetts, so there goes that generalization. The “Live Free or Die” state is apparently simply chintzy.
And consider New York’s combination of heavily unionized workers with the burden of dues in addition to the state’s infamously leaden hand groping into its citizens’ pocketbooks — yet New York still didn’t come out at the bottom. In other words, I don’t think these “findings” are as easily summed up as they say.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy has a nifty interactive map that allows you to search al the way down to zip code. As the Times said, “the nation’s generosity divide is vast”. But again, I disagree that it’s merely about religion, geography and politics — as you can see the realities are far more complex. The change in behavior of The Rich living among their own vs. The Rich living among regular folks is a good demonstration of how our environment affects our behavior, as you’ll see below.
However, if we’re going to generalize, then say that the Southern Religious Right is simply more inclined to toward the virtue of generosity because they believe acts of generosity are crucial to their faith. In other words, the inculcation of this virtue has a great deal to do with how and where you are raised, and by whom.
Not only that, but the issue is not just money, though there is no denying the necessity of funding. However, as I’ve pointed out to our donors, it is crucial to remember that while money is necessary, it’s not sufficient. And this truism is one that our federal bureaucrats have seriously, even criminally ignored. When contemplating the virtue of generosity it is vital to consider all its components: giving of your time, your talents, and your non-monetary resources. There is also —gasp — the context of cultural expectations.
Virtues arise out of habit and example — i.e., what did your daddy do about being his brother’s keeper? What did your mother do about the elderly and sick within her purview? What did your neighbors do — and if you didn’t know about your neighbors’ habits of helping, what does that say about the neighborhood?
Whatever combination of those components you saw exemplified in your formative years is a likely path for your own life. Thus, as interesting as this vast continental numbers-crunching is, the limits of such summaries by database programming means that the devils (and angels) hidden in the details stay hidden, and all the truths not available via tax returns are our unknown unknowns.
About the other end of the spectrum, the very rich, the Chronicle drew out these differences:
The rich aren’t the most generous. Middle-class Americans give a far bigger share of their discretionary income to charities than the rich…
The 1 percent really are different. Rich people who live in neighborhoods with many other wealthy people give a smaller share of their incomes to charity than rich people who live in more economically diverse communities [my emphasis -D]. When people making more than $200,000 a year account for more than 40 percent of the taxpayers in a ZIP code, the wealthy residents give an average of 2.8 percent of discretionary income to charity, compared with an average of 4.2 percent for all itemizers earning $200,000 or more.
From my limited experience with the very wealthy I learned first-hand some of their quirks. They think nothing of spending, oh, $25,000.00 on a week’s vacation or an impulse purchase of jewelry. Yet they will haggle over a dry-cleaning bill or a car repair. One fellow was beside himself when a rock flew from a riding mower and caused the whole side of one French door off the porch to “craze” — we saw the slow motion shatter of the glass into ever smaller fragments even though they never left the wooden frame which held them. As he watched the process this rich homeowner ranted, almost insane with rage and anxiety about the man cutting the grass, and the company he would have to hire to replace the glass and how they would cheat him as soon as they saw his house, etc, etc.
Just to distract him, I suggested that he and I go to town and wait by the back door of a glass repair company. Then as they closed for the day we could kidnap a likely looking craftsman, blindfold him and carry him back to do the necessary repairs. Maybe give the fellow five dollars for his pains before we dropped him off back in town. My plan certainly distracted this Scrooge for a moment. As he quieted I could see him mull over my daft idea — just before he came to and yelled at me to SHUT UP.
Yup, they’re different, those folk.
A sad current example of the rich is Dinesh D’Souza’s story about being called by a poverty-stricken father who needed help paying for his son’s hospital bill. George Hussein Obama told D’Souza he had no one else to turn to for that kind of money. I guess not, given the slum in which he lives and the Mount Olympus on which his wealthy brother dwells. Half-brother? There are far more than merely six degrees of separation between these men who share the same philandering father.
Read the whole sorry story, including the suppression of George’s book, Homeland. All 20,000 copies were destroyed by Simon & Schuster — on whose orders? Who knows? It’s interesting, though, that S&S doesn’t mind fronting the airhead hit piece Obama did on Romney’s dog. I believe that tome could be put in the genre known as Chicago “Literature”.
By the way, George Obama’s book, an autobiography also, was picked up by another publisher:
Homeland: An Extraordinary Story of Hope and Survival
Meanwhile, there’s an intriguing clip of Barack Obama from April that could be juxtaposed against the well-sourced neglect this president has demonstrated toward his own extended family, including a grandmother in her 90s. That video is an excerpt from a speech given in Vermont last April. There the president explains why we are our brother’s keeper. [See if you can interpret the noises of the listeners. They don’t sound entirely friendly at some points. Since you don’t get a shot of the audience, you can’t tell if the off-kilter noise is about Obama or about, perhaps, a protestor in the group. You can see the irritation crossing our President’s visage, but its source isn’t clear]. At any rate, this speech certainly is audacious. Surely there isn’t anyone left in this country, even in the deepest blue Democrat echo chambers who hasn’t heard about the Kenyan slums where dwell Obamas galore? His daddy was a busy man, even if son Barack behaves for all the world as though he were an only child. Which, in one sense he was, this momma’s boy with the fathomless, fatherless grievances he uses to punish the rest of us. One hopes that the girls can’t hear Michelle yelling at him, demanding to know what he’s going to be when he grows up.
Ah me….
There are many mysteries left unplumbed in those statistics gathered by The Chronicle of Philanthropy. In the final analysis are those numbers any more than factoids? Are they really helpful in understanding what fuels a genuine generosity of spirit? And if no one is willing to frame the generous heart as a virtue, and virtue as habit, how will we ever reach the self-absorbed, especially those whose wealth seems only to increase geometrically their insecurity?
Y’all, of course, are another story. This marks the end of another quarterly fundraising week. Don’t faint, but the thank you notes have begun — and yes, it’s still fun to write them. From the bottom of my heart, a particular note of gratitude for your patience. I especially have to laugh at our donors who respond, “Oh, did I do that? I’d forgotten. Thanks for reminding me”.
For the entire week (including the last-minute group), here’s the tally:
Stateside: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
Near Abroad: Canada west and Canada east and Canada in the middle. What a wildly varying country.
Far Abroad: Australia, British Virgin Islands, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, and the UK
Vlad is very happy for his part — it came at a good moment for him and he was fairly bouncing with glee when the PayPal notice arrived.
See you in November!
Three Jordanians who were scheduled to compete in the Paralympics in London have been arrested and charged with sexual assault and voyeurism in Northern Ireland. The King of Jordan intervened in their case, and the Jordanian government has posted surety for the three suspects, who have been bailed.
In other news, an Australian sheik from Sydney named Mustapha al-Majzoub was killed in a rocket attack in Syria. Mr. al-Majzoub was in Syria to help deliver humanitarian aid when a rocket allegedly launched by pro-regime forces exploded and killed him.
To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.
Thanks to Barry Banter, C. Cantoni, Diana West, Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.
Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.
Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.
There is a widespread phenomenon in the Western democracies that I refer to as “hassling the law-abiding”. I’m familiar with the American version, but the Canadian, Australian, and Western European versions are surely similar.
The general idea is this: complex modern welfare states mobilize bureaucrats and law-enforcement agents to coerce conformity from ordinary people — normal well-behaved citizens who are (mostly) peaceful and productive members of society.
The prototype — some might say the Platonic ideal — of hassling the law-abiding occurs every day at the airport. When I travel by air I have to stand in line for half an hour, have my baggage X-rayed, remove my shoes and belt, and endure TSA employees staring at my junk on a screen. These procedures are supposed to ensure my “security”, but all they really do is display the absolute power of the State and allow sadistic low-level employees to get their jollies humiliating and inconveniencing thousands of innocent travelers a day.
Similar examples may be found at police sobriety checkpoints, or in school pat-downs, or at the National Capitol Visitors’ Center. Any added security is minimal, and mostly illusory — how many lives have been saved by these humiliating, intrusive, and authoritarian procedures? And how many billions (or trillions) of dollars do they cost the taxpayer every year?
I could list more examples, but you get the idea. Law-abiding people experience routine hassles because they are, well, law-abiding. The authorities do this stuff to us because they can. Ordinary citizens are generally compliant, and put up with these things because they’re brought up to be lawful, orderly, and respectful towards authority.
Those who might really be dangerous — the guys in the beanies and nightgowns with their women dressed in shapeless black bags — are the ones who get the religious exemptions. Nobody wants to offend their religious sensibilities or, God forbid, profile them, so they can count on having the rules suspended for them whenever they yell loud enough. They’re not all that law-abiding, but they can cause mass trouble when riled. It’s much easier to just hassle Mr. Jones and let the others slide on by.
This syndrome is partly ideological and partly practical. Everyone is frightened of being a “racist”, or at least of appearing to be one. We all want to be tolerant and inclusive. So we apply a different set of rules to ordinary law-abiding Western citizens than we do to the Other.
And, practically speaking, it’s easier that way. So, no matter how much money it costs, no matter how many man-hours it wastes, we have to go through all this pointless folderol.
A couple of recent examples of cultural dhimmitude in Canada seem to fit the above model. The first one concerns a citizen who was handcuffed and threatened with arrest for walking his dog too near some Muslimas in a public park in Toronto. The second incident — which occurred at the same event, the Al-Quds Day celebration in Toronto — involved a cyclist who was similarly treated by police for flying an Israeli flag.
Superficially, these seem to be classic examples of hassling the law-abiding. The victims are ordinary upstanding Caucasian or Jewish citizens. They are being orderly and obeying the law, but are threatened and pushed around anyway.
However, there is one major difference between these cases and the ordeal at the airport.
When I get hassled at the airport, money is no object. Untold billions of dollars are spent on largely meaningless “security” regimes at the nation’s airports and other public locations. There is no measurable benefit served by these procedures. Terrorists are savvy enough not to walk through the naked scanner with something that can be seen that way. The process we all go through is theater, a vast bureaucratic kabuki dance designed to fool the public into thinking that the government is doing something that justifies all those enormous taxes. At the same time it allows the badged and uniformed officers a chance to flex their power muscles. It says, “This is your Government. You must obey us.”
But the situation in Toronto was somewhat different. The same kind of thing occurred in Dearborn a few months ago when those Christian proselytizers were forced out of the Arab Festival by police. And it happens in Europe all the time, especially in Britain, where the EDL is kettled and arrested and hassled and restricted while the Sharia4Everywhere brigades can do just about whatever they please.
The difference is in the cost-benefit analysis. Unlike airport security, money is an object in these street events. That’s because those who are charged with preserving public order are ordinary local police, and not the officers of a huge central government bureaucracy.
There may have been a time when enforcing the law and preserving the constitutional rights of ordinary citizens was foremost in the minds of law enforcement officials, but that time is long past. The police department of a major city — especially given the current economic crisis — operates under serious financial constraints. Policing is an expensive enterprise, what with unions, work-safety rules, and ambulance-chasers hungry for lucrative lawsuits. The bottom line rules.
When those officers on the street in Toronto or Dearborn or Chelmsford confront a potentially explosive situation, they know that they must contain it in the cheapest way possible, or face wrath from above. And, let’s face it, cracking down on Christians and Jews is much cheaper than trying to keep a Muslim mob from murder and mayhem. Just think of the amount of police overtime and fuel use that would be required if the dogs or the crosses or the bacon or the Israeli flags were to get too close to the culturally enriched!
Cracking down on the guy walking his dog and the guy riding his bike is far easier — and cheaper — than actually enforcing the law. Police know that natives are far more likely to be peaceful and compliant than the enrichers. So they twist the arms of the law-abiding, and make sure they comply.
If it takes, say, twenty officers to manage those annoying white guys with dogs and flags, how many would it take to contain the rage of all the Rage Boys if the flames of Islamic righteousness were to be ignited? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand?
Think of all the overtime! And the negative headlines! And the official investigation! And the questions on the floor of Parliament or Congress!
It’s far, far cheaper to hassle the law-abiding kaffir.
The fact that this actually amounts to the enforcement of sharia in the democratic West doesn’t ever have to enter the minds of those who do the enforcing. At most, they’re hoping to avoid being fired or sued for being “racist” and “discriminatory”.
They’re not thinking, “Gee, I want to do my part to bring Islamic law to my country!”
But they’re doing it anyway.
That’s the real cost. And there are no benefits.
September 10th, 12:00pm – 2:00pm
B339 Rayburn House Office Building
Lunch to be Served, Dietary Laws Observed
RSVP: Info@emetonline.org
We continue to find ourselves embroiled in a conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their allies in Afghanistan, a dominating Iranian influence spreads in Iraq, and nations across the Arab world are falling under the sway of the Muslim Brotherhood, adherents to the same ideology that the 9/11 Commission warned us motivated Osama Bin Laden. Are our policy-makers doing enough to protect the American people?
Featuring:
People often ask us some variation of the following:
But what can I
, practically speaking, to push back against the wall of silence that the p.c. elites have erected against those who would tell the truth.?
- I never saw the point of big rah-rah demonstrations.
- Getting out in public carrying signs isn’t my style.
- I don’t dare mention the subject to my neighbors — not with all those Obama posters on their lawns.
- what if my friends or family or co-workers saw me on You Tube doing that stuff? I could get fired.
Those are valid concerns. But there ways to learn about the problem, and this gathering is just such an opportunity. Of course in this case you have to live within commuting distance of Washington, D.C.
Or, if you have the means and the time you could travel to Washington ahead of time and stay overnight. Think of it as a mini-vacation-cum-lecture-series…
The hotels and motels available in the area range from very nice to bare necessities. When the Baron has to attend events in Washington, he mostly stays in the low-end Bare Necessities places and takes the Metro into D.C. itself. So let your budget be your guide.
Another reminder: Israel is taking in African refugees.
On another page, Sarah Stern has a journal entry about her recent visit to Europe:
“Everything would have been fine, if only Hitler wouldn’t have lied to me.”
— Neville Chamberlain
As I write these words, I am returning home from a trip to Prague, Vienna and Budapest. Part of the reason for this trip was to find out where, under these ancient cobble stone streets, or perhaps on the bottom of the much romanticized, meandering Blue Danube, all the extended members of both my mother ‘s and my father’s families had been buried. All those unknown aunts, uncles and cousins, crushed in the passion of the Anschluss, because they had been dismissive of which way the wind had been blowing.
Among the most moving aspects of my trip was a Museum of The Jewish People in Vienna, where on a wall was a high tech visual display of the beautiful, rich and deep Jewish life in that city. We saw the way births, Bar and Bat Mitzvot, weddings and funerals were commemorated. As Ahed Ha. Am had once said, “No Jew was alone in his joy or in his sadness.”
So much like my own community, here in the States…but all wiped out. Gone. Why?
Because these good people, in their innocence could not possibly fathom the magnitude of the hatred that had been thrust upon them. Because in their deepest nightmares or the wildest machinations of their imagination they could not possibly conceive of a war machine that could plan out every precise detail of the Anschluss and of their inevitable destruction.
We in the West are eternally stubborn when it comes to learning the lessons history would have us know…
Here’s a special treat from their TV page: John Bolton, known around here as “John the Boldly Outspoken”:
There’s a lot of news in tonight’s feed, for some reason. Most of it concerns the deteriorating economic situation, Iranian nukes, or the bloody chaos in Syria. But the violence in India merits a few column inches, as do various conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa.
Oh, and there’s also the police investigation of a bias crime in a Staten Island park involving uncooked bacon and praying Muslims…
To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Diana West, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, JD, JP, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.
Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.
Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.
Or could I be on strike for higher wages?
Seriously — what really happened is that I’ve been working hard most of the day on a complicated and time-consuming little programming job. It’s finished now, but there won’t be anything else from me tonight except for the news feed. The wrap-up for the fundraiser has been postponed (and Dymphna may do it instead).
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…
An unemployed Italian man committed suicide by dousing himself with a flammable liquid and setting himself on fire. His suicide note said that he had become despondent after he lost his job and failed to find another one.
In other news, a gunman in Yemen celebrated Eid al-Fitr by opening fire inside a mosque, killing nine worshippers and wounding ten others.
To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, CSP, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, JD, JP, McR, Nick, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.
Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.
Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.
Ezra Levant talks to a Canadian citizen named Allan Eintoss, who was accosted, handcuffed, and threatened with arrest on Saturday for walking his licensed, leashed, well-behaved dog in a public park in Toronto.
The reason? The occasion was the annual anti-Israel Al Quds Day rally, and a group of culture enrichers took exception to having an unclean animal come so close to their women.
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:
In the following clip from Fox News, Walid Phares and his host speculate on Israeli plans for a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear capability, and the possible response from the Obama administration to the escalating crisis.
Will Obama act before an Iranian first strike on Israel? Afterwards?
Or not at all?
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:
Today’s essay about Las Navas de Tolosa appeared originally on August 18 in Berlingske Tidende. Many thanks to our Perth correspondent Anne-Kit for translating it from the Danish:
When Europe Fought
The exact location is unknown, but is thought to be somewhere within a good day’s march SW of Calatrava, which was then the only town of any significance in the Guadiana valley, southern La Mancha.
By David Gress: Historian, writer, PhD
The time was a summer’s day in 1212, which is why this year we can — if we dare — celebrate the 800th anniversary of one of the most significant battles of the Middle Ages: The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, where a broad array of Christian warriors from Spain and France decisively conquered the Almohad Muslims who then occupied the southern third of the Iberian Peninsula.
From then on it was merely a question of time before the whole of Spain would be liberated. In 1212 it was exactly 500 years since the Muslims had begun their lightning campaign to conquer Spain. They named the conquered lands Al-Andalus and established themselves exactly as Muslims always did: They were the new Master Race; Christians and Jews must feel and act like cowed and subservient subjects. If they complied they were — by and large — left alone.
As early as 718 the Christian counteroffensive had begun in the far north west, but another couple of hundred years were to pass before the reconquest, La Reconquista, reached even as far as the river Duero. Not until 1085 did King Alfonso VI of Castile conquer the old capital of Spain, Toledo. The peninsula was now roughly equally split between Christian Spain and Muslim Al-Andalus.
In response to the fall of Toledo the Muslims called for assistance from the Almoravids, a fierce and very pious Berber warrior people of North Africa. They were akin to the Talibans and Salafists of our modern age: ruthless, sure of their own righteousness, merciless with apostates and Christians, and extremely brave to boot. They overran Al-Andalus and put an abrupt stop to the Christian offensives.
Half a century later the Almoravids had been integrated into the somewhat softer lifestyle of Al-Andalus. When they lost their fervour, from 1147 onwards a new wave of puritanical North Africans crashed onshore to defend Al-Andalus. The newcomers were the Almohads, from an Arabic word meaning “unitarians”. All Muslims must be unitarians, for Allah is “One”, but the Almohads wished to signal a particularly severe puritanism, again like the Salafists of our time.
The Almohads threatened to re-establish the old Al-Andalus as far as the Pyrenees. Christians had never been particularly good at organised resistance, and the five Christian kings of Spain were busy fighting each other. However, they did come together in the end. Yet another Almohad offensive put Christian backs to the wall.
In 1211 Pope Innocent III called a Crusade against the Muslims in Spain. The Kings of Castile and Aragon mobilised as many horsemen and infantry as they could, planning an attack the following year. Other forces came from France and further afield. It was almost miraculous, or rather for the Spanish it was precisely miraculous and proof of the favour of God, that these multifarious armies managed to fight under a common authority, and even in a targeted and effective manner. The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa itself was a struggle between some 50,000 Christians and a somewhat larger Muslim army, and it was decisively won by midday.
It is, to put it mildly, not politically correct today to celebrate any Christian military victories or to consider La Reconquista a liberation of Spain. We are told that a less civilised and more violent culture, that of the Christians, crushed a noble and superior culture, that of the Arabs of Al-Andalus. This is a dangerous and false myth. The real story is much more interesting.
800 years ago Christians were proud of their culture and ready to conquer or die for it. If we had their spirit nothing could threaten us. It is evident that our present rulers do not.
A gift for you, this example of the genius of Western culture whose fumes we can now only catch a whiff of here and there. There was a time when people really thought Bach’s work approached the eternal; it has been long overtaken by the random noises of modernity.
It is about as eternal as… well,think of a child with her nose pushed against an empty rectangular pink box. She’s inhaling deeply from the memories of those chocolates it used to contain. When she’d first untied the gold ribbon and pulled off the top, the richness of those three layers seemed immense. If not exactly forever, five pounds was surely enough to last a long, long time.
A personal favorite of those interrogations about his musicial tastes came from Momma. One day after she’d been living with us for several month she got up the courage to inquire, “is this by Beethoven? He’s the one who wrote all those dirges, eh?
Umm…since we all laughed, including Momma, maybe you had to be there.
When we’ve been obliterated back to B.C., the only “music” our descendants will hear will be the ear-aching broadcasts of the muezzins’ calls to prayer emanating from competing mosques. Fortunately (for their sakes), those people-yet-to-be won’t have fumes to miss or even empty boxes to hold.
Enjoy while you can… via Takuan, a gift for our readers and especially for the Baron.