More Historical Malpractice From CNN--The Original Cordoba Mosque

Yesterday, I posted about how CNN attempted to imply a comparison between opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque with both Father Coughlin and the KKK--both of whom actually had strong associations with the Democratic Party.

After showing such an ignorance of American history, CNN fearlessly wades into Muslim history.

Here is an excerpt from CNN’s “Newsroom,” between CNN reporter Ali Velshi and Time Magazine’s deputy international editor Bobby Ghosh:

VELSHI: The name Cordoba- some people are associating it with Muslim rule and bloody battles, when, in fact, Cordoba was one of the finest times in relations between the major religions.

GHOSH: Exactly right- in interfaith discourse-

VELSHI: Yeah-

GHOSH: And the great mosque of Cordoba that people are talking about and that Newt Gingrich was talking about- the man who built it, the Muslim prince who built it, bought it from a Christian group- paid money for it and bought it from a Christian group. And there was not a lot of alarm and anger raised then. It's- as I said, we- I'm afraid, at this point, no rational discussion seems possible- [emphasis added]

Andrew Bostom corrects the record, which Ghosh has so brutally distorted.
Bostom quotes from Reinhart Dozy (1820-1883), an Orientalist scholar and Islamophile, who wrote a four-volume work Histoire des Musselmans d’Espagne (A History of the Muslims in Spain). Bostom quotes from Dozy’s historical account of how the Cordovan cathedral was converted into a mosque:

All the churches in that city [Cordova] had been destroyed except the cathedral, dedicated to Saint Vincent, but the possession of this fane [church or temple] had been guaranteed by treaty. For several years the treaty was observed; but when the population of Cordova was increased by the arrival of Syrian Arabs [i.e., Muslims], the mosques did not provide sufficient accommodation for the newcomers, and the Syrians considered it would be well for them to adopt the plan which had been carried out at Damascus, Emesa [Homs], and other towns in their own country, of appropriating half of the cathedral and using it as a mosque. The [Muslim] Government having approved of the scheme, the Christians were compelled to hand over half of the edifice. This was clearly an act of spoliation, as well as an infraction of the treaty. Some years later, Abd-er Rahman I [i.e., the “Muslim prince” in Ghosh’s redacted narrative] requested the Christians to sell him the other half. This they firmly refused to do, pointing out that if they did so they would not possess a single place of worship. Abd-er Rahman, however, insisted, and a bargain was struck by which the Christians ceded their cathedral….[emphasis by Bostom]

One can of course distinguish between what happened then and what is happening now and point to significant differences between the 2 cases.

But that is exactly the point.

No one is openly discussing what happened then--they are either sweeping it under the carpet or rewriting the history of what actually happened. In fact there is a significant history of Islam disrespecting the sites of other religions and co-opting them.

You can argue that this is part of the distant Muslim past, but considering that the Muslim world has at least one foot firmly planted in its Medieval past (as in the Saudi judge who wants to damage a man's spine to paralyze him the way he did to his victim) and we saw the destruction of  Buddha statues by the Taliban in Afghanistan, it is clear that such a discussion is both relevant and badly needed.

Technorati Tag: Ground Zero Mosque and Media Bias and Cordoba Mosque.