Monday, April 19, 2010

Marco Polo: Islamophobe--Or Observer?

Raymond Ibrahim writes that Marco Polo was one of many writers who noticed the same qualities in Muslim doctrine:
If today it is “Islamophobic,” that is, irrational, to claim that Islam advocates war against and subjugation for infidels, permitting the latter to be abused, plundered, and enslaved in the process — what does one make of the fact that, some 700 years ago, the same exact claims were made by our Venetian traveler? Indeed, what does one make of the fact that, centuries before and after Polo, a diverse host of writers — including John of Damascus (d.749) Theophanes the chronicler (d.818), Francis of Assisi (d.1226), Joinville the crusader (d.13th century), and Manuel the Byzantine emperor (d.1425) — all made the same “Islamophobic” observations about Islam? (The latter’s writings, when merely quoted by the pope, caused an uproar in the Muslim world.) This, of course, is to say nothing of the countless Muslim ulema who regularly affirm that Islam teaches war, subjugation, slavery, and plunder vis-a-vis the infidel, tracing it back to the words of the Koran and Muhammad.
Read the whole thing.

At some point, I suppose, people will notice.

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2 comments:

NormanF said...

What upsets Muslim clerics is all of those observations are true. The fact they come from non-Muslims is a testimony to Islam's inability to accept external criticism. In that sense, it is one of the most solipsistic religions known to mankind. And that is precisely why the evils attendant to it will neither be corrected nor exorcised in our own day.

Daled Amos said...

Also because of today's multiculturalism: everyone has a right to their solipsism