Pre-publication of chapter XX of my forthcoming book “Turkey is Iran and Iran is Turkey – 2500 Years of indivisible Turanian – Iranian Civilization distorted and estranged by Anglo-French Orientalists”; chapters XVII, XVIII, XIX and XX form Part Six (Fallacies about the Early Expansion of Islam: the Fake Arabization of Islam) of the book, which is made of 12 parts and 33 chapters. Chapter XVII has already been pre-published.
Until now, 13 chapters have been uploaded as partly pre-publication of the book; the present chapter is therefore the 14th (out of 33). At the end of the present pre-publication the entire Table of Contents is made available. Pre-published chapters are marked in blue color, and the present chapter is highlighted in green color.
In addition, a list of all the already pre-published chapters (with the related links) is made available at the very end, after the Table of Contents.
The book is written for the general readership with the intention to briefly highlight numerous distortions made by the racist, colonial academics of Western Europe and North America only with the help of absurd conceptualization and preposterous contextualization.
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Istakhri’s map: miniature from the Book of Roads and Kingdoms; Islamic Geography and Cartography are the continuation of the respective sciences of the Ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Aramaeans and Iranians
In addition to the aforementioned, an enormous effort of historical discrediting of Islam was undertaken by all sections and disciplines of Western colonial Orientalism; the systematic dissociation of Islam, of the Islamic Civilization, and of the Islamic History from the Ancient Oriental History, civilizations and religionshas been an enormous, coordinated effort to historically distort and disfigure the Islamic world in its entirety and to deceitfully present Islam as a marginal and rootless story.
Western forgers did their ingenious best to
a) dissociate Islam as religion from earlier forms of monotheistic spirituality, doctrine, faith, religion, cosmogony, cosmology, and apocalyptic eschatology;
b) disconnect the Islamic civilization from the great Ancient Oriental civilizations (Sumerian, Assyrian-Babylonian, Hittite, Egyptian, Cushitic, Phoenician, Aramaean, Hebrew, Iranian and Yemenite); and
c) portray the Islamic sciences, arts, architecture, literature, moral wisdom, intellectual life, mythology, theology and philosophy as independent from and unrelated to the similar Ancient Oriental endeavors, exploits and accomplishments.
Yet, Islam as religion, spirituality, world conceptualization, intellectuality, culture, civilization and way of life is a comprehensive continuation, an investigative exploration, an overwhelming overhaul, and a consummate reassessment of the Ancient Oriental civilizations, and of their hitherto unequaled contributions to the History of the Mankind.
This historical reality was very well known indeed to all the major historians of Islamic times like Abu Ja’far Muhammad al-Tabari (839-923), Abu’l-Qasim ibn Khordadbeh (9th c.), Ahmad al-Ya’qubi (9th c.), Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdani (893-945), Al-Mas’udi (896-956), Shamsaddin al-Maqdisi (945-991), Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (973-1050), Abu al-Faraj ibn al-Nadim (10th c.), Ibn Hawqal al-Nasibi (10th c.), Abu Ishaq al-Istakhri (10th c.), Sa’id al-Andalusi (1029-1070), Al-Shahrastani (1086-1153), Ali ibn al-Athir (1160-1233) and Shamsaddin adh-Dhahabi (1274-1348) to name but a few.
Map of Fars: miniature from the Book of Roads and Kingdoms of Istakhri
Map of the Persian Gulf: miniature from the Book of Roads and Kingdoms of Istakhri
Ibn Hawqal’s world map translated in English: a diagram
They all knew the truth, and they ostensibly presented Islamic History as the uninterrupted continuation of all Ancient Oriental nations and civilizations. This is only normal after all; when in the year 750 the Umayyad dynasty was superseded the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad, Islam was the religion of the majority of all the people inhabiting the vast lands between the Atlantic Ocean in the West and India & China in the East.
Who were all these people? The Berbers of today’s Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and the Sahara, the Copts of Egypt, the Cushites (‘Ethiopians’) of today’s Sudan, the Yemenites and the Omanis, the Somalis of the Horn of Africa, the Phoenicians, the Palestinians, the Aramaeans of Syria and Mesopotamia (into whom the Ancient Babylonians had been assimilated already during the Parthian times), and all the nations of Eastern Anatolia, Caucasus, the Iranian plateau, the Indus River Valley and Delta, and Central Asia. But these peoples were indeed the descendants of the ancient Oriental nations that constituted the cradle of human civilization and had already impacted all the rest, and more particularly, the backward, uncouth and uncivilized tribes that inhabited the peripheral lands of Europe in pre-Christian times.
Why the aforementioned distortion, namely the dissociation of the Islamic World from the Ancient Oriental History, was necessary for the Western Orientalist forgers and deceitful historiographers is easy to grasp. By making the Islamic Civilization, the Muslim nations, and their History look like marginal heretics or barbarians, who come from nowhere and had no past, they portrayed them as an alien element in the World History, and instead of Islam, they viciously positioned the Anti-Christian ‘Christianity’ of Rome, Western Europe, and North America, as well as the perverse, degenerate, and putrefied modern Western world, as supposedly originating from the ancient Oriental nations and as representing the mainstream of historical evolution.
To promote racial discrimination, educational-academic contamination, cultural racism, intellectual terrorism, as well as abhorrent socio-economic exploitation, the villainous pseudo-professors of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and of other similar, criminal institutions have entertained deceptive and ludicrous discussions about the hypothetical ‘influence’ of the Ancient Greek philosophers on Islamic philosophy, whereas they certainly know that there has not been such ‘influence’.
The Ancient Greek term ‘philosophy’, in and by itself, is of lowly connotation when compared to the Ancient Oriental transcendental wisdom and spiritual science. The Ancient Greek thinkers and explorers, who coined the term, had visited and studied for many years in the temples of Egypt, Babylonia and Iran. They had deployed a genuine effort to reach the Oriental wisdom, but they knew that they had failed to attain the level of their Babylonian, Egyptian, Anatolian and Iranian sacerdotal instructors. That is why they declared themselves as ‘friends of the wisdom’, and this is the real meaning of the word ‘philosophy’.
Neither the Ancient Greek temples, which were mostly dedicated to the cult, nor the various philosophical ‘schools’ that were established by the former students of the Oriental temples could possibly reconstitute a tiny portion of the transcendental wisdom and the spiritual sciences that were developed and maintained in the great Ancient Oriental temples, which were the true universities and research centers of those days.
Because the overwhelming supremacy of Oriental spirituality, mythical symbolism, wisdom, knowledge, science, mysticism and intellect was totally absent among the inhabitants of the peripheral lands of Western Anatolia and South Balkans, various Ionian. Aeolian, Attic, Dorian and other thinkers, the likes of Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato, traveled to Mesopotamia, Iran and Egypt to become there to duly educate themselves, We can therefore conclude that their thought systematization, world conceptualization, and philosophical verbalism (or at times verbosity) did not have any originality; they never advanced up to the level of Oriental spirituality, active spiritual performance, and theurgy. They were unfortunately limited in ceaseless talking, and only few among them made the exception, and they were able to perform what simple people called miracles.
Islamic spirituality, intellectuality, wisdom, knowledge and sciences constitute the continuation of the Ancient Oriental spiritual exercises, religious endeavors, and scientific-intellectual explorations. As far as the 8th – 15th c. Muslim historians, grammarians, astronomers, erudite scholars, scientists, authors, transcendental epic poets, and wise explorers are concerned, one has to point out that they resourcefully studied ancient languages, texts, sciences, religions, and arts; they certainly practiced numerous techniques of ancient spirituality, and they performed what was called ‘mysteries’. Consequently, it is normal to assume that they also studied, translated and commented on selected texts of Ancient Greek authors and philosophers. But this fact demonstrates only the existence of one extra channel of Ancient Egyptian, Assyrian Babylonian, Aramaean, Phoenician, Yemenite and Iranian impact on the Islamic civilization; it does not constitute any ‘influence’.
There were also some Islamic philosophers, who found various statements made by some Ancient Greek philosophers as quite useful elements for their argumentation and their opposition to other, slightly earlier or contemporaneous philosophers (example: the philosophical feud between Ibn Rushd and Al-Ghazali). This situation does not reflect any ‘influence’ either; it consists merely in a reference to different sources. Influence is defined as ‘the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself’.
In the case of the Islamic wise scholars and so-called philosophers, this would entail a substantive adoption (either conscious or not) of earlier preached, taught, diffused and adopted concepts, perceptions, ideals, faiths, notions, rituals, doctrines, ideas, theoretical approaches, interpretations, spiritual exercises, cultic practices or behavioral systems. However, this never occurred.
To offer an example, I would state that there is an undeniable and multifaceted influence of Mani and Manichaeism on many Islamic and Christian mystics, esoteric groups, philosophers, scholars, theologians, spiritual masters, founders of orders, etc. But there is no Platonic, Neo-Platonic or Neo-Pythagorean influence on Islam; and in few cases that may look like cases of evident influence, this is not an Ancient Greek, but an Ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Iranian, Gnostic or other influence on Islam, because there was no originality in Ancient Greek philosophy.
In fact, what happened -as continuation of the Pre-Islamic Oriental erudition, spirituality, faith and knowledge, through Late Antiquity Gnosticisms, Manichaeism and other religions, down to Islamic times- is exactly the opposite of what the colonial academics of Western Europe and North America have meticulously tried for long to totally conceal:
a) with the appearance of Islam and the emergence of the Islamic civilization, Christianity was drastically ejected out of the mainstream human civilization. For many centuries, Orthodox and Catholic Christianity represented merely a wrinkle on the surface of the Earth (just the space between France, Central Europe, Central Italy, the Balkans and Anatolia) when compared to the Islamic world.
Even more so, because despite one strong imperial administration (the Eastern Roman Empire) and a powerful religious institution (Rome), Orthodox and Catholic Christianity together stretched over an area narrower even than that inhabited by Nestorian Christians in Asia, i.e. between Mesopotamia, India, Central Asia, Siberia, Mongolia and China. Despite the enormous spread of Islam between 700 and 1100 CE, Christianity in Asia (i.e. Nestorianism) stretched over lands that were far larger lands than the territory of the Eastern Roman Empire and the lands inhabited by Christians in Western Europe.
and
b) with the overwhelming proclamation of the Satanic perversion of Renaissance, after the demise of the Eastern Roman Empire (1453) and with the long prepared, systematic dispatch of criminal gangsters and colonial murderers across the world to shamelessly commit atrocious hecatombs and tyrannically impose the Renaissance deception (under the guise of ‘Christianity’), a counterfeit religion rose to prominence across the Earth (under the name of Christianity), disfiguring the historical past in order to justify its evil purpose.
In fact, if the Eastern Roman Empire had survived and had existed longer, it would have been the only institution to authoritatively denounce the Anti-Christian crimes and genocides which were perpetrated by the conquistadores and to reject the evilness of Renaissance as totally Anti-Christian.
Or why I defended Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 against the thoughtlessly irascible Muslims
When a Muslim writes an Obituary for the Catholic Church’s sole Pope Emeritus…
Table of Contents
I. From Joseph Ratzinger to Pope Benedict XVI
II. The theoretical concerns of an intellectual Pope
III. Benedict XVI: A Pope against violence and wars
IV. Manuel II Palaeologus and the Eastern Roman Empire between the Muslim Ottoman brethren and the Anti-Christian Roman enemies
V. The unknown (?) Turkic mystic interlocutor and the Islamic centers of science and reason that Benedict XVI ignored
VI. Excerpt from Benedict XVI’s lecture given on the 12th September at the University of Regensburg under title ‘Faith, Reason and the University–Memories and Reflections’
VII. The problems of the academic-theological background of Benedict XVI’s lecture
VIII. Benedict XVI’s biased approach, theological mistakes, intellectual oversights and historical misinterpretations
IX. The lecture’s most controversial point
X. The educational-academic-intellectual misery and the political ordeal of today’s Muslim states
Of all the Roman popes who resigned the only to be called ‘Pope Emeritus’ was Joseph Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI (also known in German as Prof. Dr. Papst), who passed away on 31st December 2022, thus sealing the circle of world figures and heads of states whose life ended last year. As a matter of fact, although being a head state, a pope does not abdicate; he renounces to his ministry (renuntiatio).
Due to lack of documentation, conflicting sources or confusing circumstances, we do not have conclusive evidence as regards the purported resignations of the popes St. Pontian (235), Marcellinus (304), Liberius (366), John XVIII (1009) and Sylvester (105). That is why historical certainty exists only with respect to the ‘papal renunciation’ of six pontiffs; three of them bore the papal name of ‘Benedict’. The brief list includes therefore the following bishops of Rome: Benedict V (964), Benedict IX (deposed in 1044, bribed to resign in 1045, and resigned in 1048), Gregory VI (1046), St Celestine (1294), Gregory XII (1415) and Benedict XVI (2013).
I. From Joseph Ratzinger to Pope Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI (18 April 1927 – 31 December 2022) was seven (7) years younger than his predecessor John Paul II (1920-2005), but passed away seventeen (17) years after the Polish pope’s death; already on the 4th September 2020, Benedict XVI would have been declared as the oldest pope in history, had he not resigned seven (7) years earlier. Only Leo XIII died 93, back in 1903. As a matter of fact, Benedict XVI outlived all the people who were elected to the Roman See.
Benedict XVI’s papacy lasted slightly less than eight (8) years (19 April 2005 – 28 February 2013). Before being elected as pope, Cardinal Ratzinger was for almost a quarter century (1981-2005) the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was the formal continuation of the Office of the Holy Inquisition, and therefore one of the most important sections (‘dicasteries’; from the Ancient Greek term ‘dikasterion’, i.e. ‘court of law’) of the Roman administration (‘Curia’).
A major step toward this position was his appointment as archbishop of Munich for four years (1977-1981); Bavaria has always been a Catholic heavyweight, and in this regard, it is easy to recall the earlier example of Eugenio Pacelli (the later pope Pius XII), who was nuncio to Bavaria (and therefore to the German Empire), in Munich, from 1917 to 1920, and then to Germany, before being elected to the Roman See (in 1939). Before having a meteoric rise in the Catholic hierarchy, Ratzinger made an excellent scholar and a distinct professor of dogmatic theology, while also being a priest. His philosophical dissertation was about St. Augustine and his habilitation concerned Bonaventure, a Franciscan scholastic theologian and cardinal of the 13th c.
II. The theoretical concerns of an intellectual Pope
During his ministry, very early, Benedict XVI stood up and showed his teeth; when I noticed his formidable outburst against the ‘dictatorship of relativism’, I realized that the German pope would be essentially superior to his Polish predecessor. Only in June 2005, so just two months after his election, he defined relativism as “the main obstacle to the task of education”, directing a tremendous attack against the evilness of ego and portraying selfishness as a “self-limitation of reason”.
In fact, there cannot be more devastating attack from a supreme religious authority against the evilness of Anglo-Zionism and the rotten, putrefied society that these criminals diffuse worldwide by means of infiltration, corruption, mendacity, and simulation. Soon afterwards, while speaking in Marienfeld (Cologne), Benedict XVI attacked ferociously all the pathetic ideologies which indiscriminately enslave humans from all spiritual and cultural backgrounds. He said: “absolutizing what is not absolute but relative is called totalitarianism”. This is a detrimental rejection of Talmudic Judaism, Zohar Kabbalah, and Anglo-Zionism.
It was in the summer 2005 that I first realized that I should study closer the pre-papal past of the Roman Pontiff whom St Malachy’s illustrious Prophecy of the Popes (12th c.) described as ‘Gloria olivae’ (the Glory of the olive). I contacted several friends in Germany, who extensively updated me as regards his academic publications, also dispatching to me some of them. At the time, I noticed that my Christian friends already used to question a certain number of Cardinal Ratzinger’s positions.
But, contrarily to them, I personally found his prediction about the eventuality of Buddhism becoming the principal ‘enemy’ of the Catholic Church as quite plausible. My friends were absolutely astounded, and then I had to narrate and explain to them the deliberately concealed story of the Christian-Islamic-Confucian alliance against the Buddhist terrorism of the Dzungar Khanate (1634-1755); actually, it took many Kazakh-Dzungar wars (1643-1756), successive wars between Qing China and the Dzungar Khanate (1687-1757), and even an alliance with the Russian Empire in order to successfully oppose the ferocious Buddhist extremist threat.
Finally, the extraordinary ordeal of North Asia {a vast area comprising lands of today’s Eastern Kazakhstan, Russia (Central Siberia), Northwestern and Western China (Eastern Turkestan/Xinjiang and Tibet) and Western Mongolia} ended up with the systematic genocide of the extremist Buddhist Dzungars (1755-1758) that the Chinese had to undertake because there was no other way to terminate once forever the most fanatic regime that ever existed in Asia.
Disoriented, ignorant, confused and gullible, most of the people today fail to clearly understand how easily Buddhism can turn a peaceful society into a fanatic realm of lunatic extremists. The hypothetically innocent adhesion of several fake Freemasonic lodges of the West to Buddhism and the seemingly harmless acceptance of Buddhist principles and values by these ignorant fools can end up in the formation of vicious and terrorist organizations that will give to their members and initiates the absurd order and task to indiscriminately kill all of their opponents. But Cardinal Ratzinger had prudently discerned the existence of a dangerous source of spiritual narcissism in Buddhism.
III. Benedict XVI: A Pope against violence and wars
To me, this foresight was a convincing proof that Benedict XVI was truly ‘Gloria olivae’; but this would be troublesome news! In a period of proxy wars, unrestrained iniquity, and outrageous inhumanity, a perspicacious, cordial, and benevolent pope in Rome would surely be an encumbering person to many villainous rascals, i.e. the likes of Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Nicolas Sarkozy, and many others so-called ‘leaders’. The reason for this assessment of the situation is simple: no one wants a powerful pacifier at a time more wars are planned.
At the time, it was ostensible to all that a fake confrontation between the world’s Muslims and Christians was underway (notably after the notorious 9/11 events); for this reason, I expected Benedict XVI to make a rather benevolent statement that evil forces would immediately misinterpret, while also falsely accusing the pacifist Pope and absurdly turning the uneducated and ignorant mob of many countries against the Catholic Church.
This is the foolish plan of the Anglo-Zionist lobby, which has long served as puppets of the Jesuits, corrupting the entire Muslim world over the past 250 years by means of intellectual, educational, academic, scientific, cultural, economic, military and political colonialism. These idiotic puppets, which have no idea who their true and real masters are, imagine that, by creating an unprecedented havoc in Europe, they harm the worldwide interests of the Jesuits; but they fail to properly realize that this evil society, which early turned against Benedict XVI, has already shifted its focus onto China. Why the apostate Anglo-Zionist Freemasonic lodge would act in this manner against Benedict XVI is easy to assess; the Roman pontiff whose episcopal motto was ‘Cooperatores Veritatis’ (‘Co-workers of the Truth’) would apparently try to prevent the long-prepared fake war between the Muslims and the Christians.
IV. Manuel II Palaeologus and the Eastern Roman Empire between the Muslim Ottoman brethren and the Anti-Christian Roman enemies
And this is what truly happened in the middle of September 2006; on the 12th September, Benedict XVI delivered a lecture at the University of Regensburg in Germany; the title was ‘Glaube, Vernunft und Universität – Erinnerungen und Reflexionen’ (‘Faith, Reason and the University – Memories and Reflections’). In the beginning of the lecture, Prof. Dr. Ratzinger eclipsed Pope Benedict XVI, as the one-time professor persisted on his concept of ‘faith’, “which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole”, as he said. In a most rationalistic approach (for which he had been known for several decades as a renowned Catholic theologian), in an argumentation reflecting views certainly typical of Francis of Assisi and of Aristotle but emphatically alien to Jesus, Benedict XVI attempted to portray an ahistorical Christianity and to describe the Catholic faith as the religion of the Reason.
At an early point of the lecture, Benedict XVI referred to a discussion that the Eastern Roman Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (or Palaiologos; Μανουήλ Παλαιολόγος; 1350-1425; reigned after 1391) had with an erudite Turkic scholar (indiscriminately but mistakenly called by all Eastern Roman authors at the time as ‘Persian’) most probably around the end of 1390 or the first months of 1391, when he was hostage at the Ottoman court of Bayezid I. In the historical text, it is stated that the location was ‘Ancyra of Galatia’ (i.e. Ankara).
This Eastern Roman Emperor was indeed a very controversial historical figure; although undeniably an erudite ruler, a bold diplomat, and a reputable soldier, he first made agreements with the Ottomans and delivered to them the last Eastern Roman city in Anatolia (Philadelphia; today’s Alaşehir, ca. 140 km east of Izmir / Smyrna) and then, after he took control of his ailing kingdom thanks to the sultan, he escaped the protracted siege of Constantinople (1391-1402) only to travel to various Western European kingdoms and ask the help of those rather reluctant monarchs (1399-1403).
At the time, all the Christian Orthodox populations, either living in the Ottoman sultanate or residing in the declined Eastern Roman Empire, were deeply divided into two groups, namely those who preferred to be ruled by Muslims (because they rejected the pseudo-Christian fallacy, evilness and iniquity of the Roman pope) and the fervent supporters of a Latin (: Western European) control over Constantinople (viewed as the only way for them to prevent the Ottoman rule); the former formed the majority and were called Anthenotikoi, i.e. ‘against the union’ (: of the Orthodox Church with the Catholics), whereas the latter constituted a minority group and were named ‘Enotikoi’ (‘those in favor of the union of the two churches’).
V. The unknown (?) Turkic mystic interlocutor and the Islamic centers of science and reason that Benedict XVI ignored
Manuel II Palaeologus’ text has little theological value in itself; however, its historical value is great. It reveals how weak both interlocutors were at the intellectual, cultural and spiritual levels, how little they knew one another, and how poorly informed they were about their own and their interlocutor’s past, heritage, religion and spirituality. If we have even a brief look at it, we will immediately realize that the level is far lower than that attested during similar encounters in 8th- 9th c. Baghdad, 10th c. Umayyad Andalusia, Fatimid Cairo, 13th c. Maragheh (where the world’s leading observatory was built) or 14th c. Samarqand, the Timurid capital.
It was absolutely clear at the time of Manuel II Palaeologus and Bayezid I that neither Constantinople nor Bursa (Προύσα / Prousa; not anymore the Ottoman capital after 1363, but still the most important city of the sultanate) could compete with the great centers of Islamic science civilization which were located in Iran and Central Asia. That’s why Gregory Chioniades, the illustrious Eastern Roman bishop, astronomer, and erudite scholar who was the head of the Orthodox diocese of Tabriz, studied in Maragheh under the guidance of his tutor and mentor, Shamsaddin al Bukhari (one of the most illustrious students of Nasir el-Din al Tusi, who was the founder of the Maragheh Observatory), before building an observatory in Trabzon (Trebizond) and becoming the teacher of Manuel Bryennios, another famous Eastern Roman scholar.
The text of the Dialogues must have been written several years after the conversation took place, most probably when the traveling emperor and diplomat spent four years in Western Europe. For reasons unknown to us, the erudite emperor did not mention the name of his interlocutor, although this was certainly known to him; if we take into consideration that he was traveling to other kingdoms, we can somehow guess a plausible reason. His courtiers and royal scribes may have translated the text partly into Latin and given copies of the ‘dialogues’ to various kings, marshals, chroniclers, and other dignitaries. If this was the case, the traveling emperor would not probably want to offer insights into the Ottoman court and the influential religious authorities around the sultan.
Alternatively, the ‘unknown’ interlocutor may well have been Amir Sultan (born as Mohamed bin Ali; also known as Shamsuddin Al-Bukhari; 1368-1429) himself, i.e. none else than an important Turanian mystic from Vobkent (near Bukhara in today’s Uzbekistan), who got married with Bayezid I’s daughter Hundi Fatema Sultan Hatun. Amir Sultan had advised the sultan not to turn against Timur; had the foolish sultan heeded to his son-in-law’s wise advice, he would not have been defeated so shamefully.
Benedict XVI made a very biased use of the historical text; he selected an excerpt of Manuel II Palaeologus’ response to his interlocutor in order to differentiate between Christianity as the religion of Reason and Islam as the religion of Violence. Even worse, he referred to a controversial, biased and rancorous historian of Lebanese origin, the notorious Prof. Theodore Khoury (born in 1930), who spent his useless life to write sophisticated diatribes, mildly formulated forgeries, and deliberate distortions of the historical truth in order to satisfy his rancor and depict the historical past according to his absurd political analysis. Almost every sentence written Prof. Khoury about the Eastern Roman Empire and the Islamic Caliphate is maliciously false.
All the same, it was certainly Benedict XVI’s absolute right to be academically, intellectually and historically wrong. The main problem was that the paranoid reaction against him was not expressed at the academic and intellectual levels, but at the profane ground of international politics. Even worse, it was not started by Muslims but by the criminal Anglo-Zionist mafia and the disreputable mainstream mass media, the likes of the BBC, Al Jazeera (Qatari is only the façade of it), etc.
I will now republish (in bold and italics) a sizeable (600-word) excerpt of the papal lecture that contains the contentious excerpt, also adding the notes to the text. The link to the Vatican’s website page is available below. I will comment first on the lecture and the selected part of Manuel II Palaeologus’ text and then on the absurd Muslim reaction.
VI. Excerpt from Benedict XVI’s lecture given on the 12th September at the University of Regensburg under title ‘Faith, Reason and the University–Memories and Reflections’
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on – perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara – by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.[1] It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor.[2] The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur’an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between – as they were called – three “Laws” or “rules of life”: the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur’an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point – itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole – which, in the context of the issue of “faith and reason”, I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις – controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: “There is no compulsion in religion”. According to some of the experts, this is probably one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels”, he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”[3] The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God”, he says, “is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably (σὺνλόγω) is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…”.[4]
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.[5] The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.[6] Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry.[7]
Notes 1 to 7 (out of 13)
[1] Of the total number of 26 conversations (διάλεξις – Khoury translates this as “controversy”) in the dialogue (“Entretien”), T. Khoury published the 7th “controversy” with footnotes and an extensive introduction on the origin of the text, on the manuscript tradition and on the structure of the dialogue, together with brief summaries of the “controversies” not included in the edition; the Greek text is accompanied by a French translation: “Manuel II Paléologue, Entretiens avec un Musulman. 7e Controverse”, Sources Chrétiennes n. 115, Paris 1966. In the meantime, Karl Förstel published in Corpus Islamico-Christianum (Series Graeca ed. A. T. Khoury and R. Glei) an edition of the text in Greek and German with commentary: “Manuel II. Palaiologus, Dialoge mit einem Muslim”, 3 vols., Würzburg-Altenberge 1993-1996. As early as 1966, E. Trapp had published the Greek text with an introduction as vol. II of Wiener byzantinische Studien. I shall be quoting from Khoury’s edition.
[2] On the origin and redaction of the dialogue, cf. Khoury, pp. 22-29; extensive comments in this regard can also be found in the editions of Förstel and Trapp.
[3] Controversy VII, 2 c: Khoury, pp. 142-143; Förstel, vol. I, VII. Dialog 1.5, pp. 240-241. In the Muslim world, this quotation has unfortunately been taken as an expression of my personal position, thus arousing understandable indignation. I hope that the reader of my text can see immediately that this sentence does not express my personal view of the Qur’an, for which I have the respect due to the holy book of a great religion. In quoting the text of the Emperor Manuel II, I intended solely to draw out the essential relationship between faith and reason. On this point I am in agreement with Manuel II, but without endorsing his polemic.
[4] Controversy VII, 3 b–c: Khoury, pp. 144-145; Förstel vol. I, VII. Dialog 1.6, pp. 240-243.
[5] It was purely for the sake of this statement that I quoted the dialogue between Manuel and his Persian interlocutor. In this statement the theme of my subsequent reflections emerges.
[6] Cf. Khoury, p. 144, n. 1.
[7] R. Arnaldez, Grammaire et théologie chez Ibn Hazm de Cordoue, Paris 1956, p. 13; cf. Khoury, p. 144. The fact that comparable positions exist in the theology of the late Middle Ages will appear later in my discourse.
VII. The problems of the academic-theological background of Benedict XVI’s lecture
It is my conviction that Benedict XVI fell victim to the quite typical theological assumptions that Prof. Dr. Ratzinger had studied and taught for decades. However, the problem is not limited to the circle of the faculties of Theology and to Christian Theology as a modern discipline; it is far wider. The same troublesome situation permeates all the disciplines of Humanities and, even worse, the quasi-totality of the modern sciences as they started in Renaissance. The problem goes well beyond the limits of academic research and intellectual consideration; it has to do with the degenerate, rotten and useless mental abilities and capacities of the Western so-called scholars, researchers and academics. The description of the problem is rather brief, but its nature is truly ominous.
Instead of perceiving, understanding, analyzing and representing the ‘Other’ in its own terms, conditions and essence and as per its own values, virtues and world conceptualization, the modern Western European scholars, researchers, explorers and specialists view, perceive, attempt to understand, and seek to analyze the ‘Other’ in their own terms, conditions and essence and as per their own values, virtues and world conceptualization. Due to this sick effort and unprecedented aberration, the Western so-called scholars and researchers view the ‘Other’ through their eyes, thus projecting onto the ‘Other’ their view of it. Consequently, they do not and actually they cannot learn it, let alone know, understand and represent it. Their attitude is inane, autistic and degenerate. It is however quite interesting and truly bizarre that the Western European natural scientists do not proceed in this manner, but fully assess the condition of the object of their study in a rather objective manner.
In fact, the Western disciplines of the Humanities, despite the enormous collection and publication of study materials, sources and overall documentation, are a useless distortion. Considered objectively, the Western scientific endeavor in its entirety is a monumental nothingness; it is not only a preconceived conclusion. It is a resolute determination not to ‘see’ the ‘Other’ as it truly exists, as its constituent parts obviously encapsulate its contents, and as the available documentation reveals it. In other words, it consists in a premeditated and resolute rejection of the Truth; it is intellectually barren, morally evil, and spiritually nihilist. The topic obviously exceeds by far the limits of the present obituary, but I had to mention it in order to offer the proper context.
It is therefore difficult to identify the real reason for the magnitude of the Western scholarly endeavor, since the conclusions existed in the minds of the explorers and the academics already before the documentation was gathered, analyzed, studied, and represented. How important is it therefore to publish the unpublished material (totaling more than 100000 manuscripts of Islamic times and more than one million of cuneiform tablets from Ancient Mesopotamia, Iran, Canaan and Anatolia – only to give an idea to the non-specialized readers), if the evil Western scholars and the gullible foreign students enrolled in Western institutions (to the detriment of their own countries and nations) are going to repeat and reproduce the same absurd Western mentality of viewing an Ancient Sumerian, an Ancient Assyrian, an Ancient Egyptian or a Muslim author through their own eyes and of projecting onto the ancient author the invalid and useless measures, values, terms and world views of the modern Western world?
As it can be easily understood, the problem is not with Christian Theology, but with all the disciplines of the Humanities. So, the problem is not only that a great Muslim scholar and erudite mystic like Ibn Hazm was viewed by Benedict XVI and Western theologians through the distorting lenses of their ‘science’, being not evaluated as per the correct measures, values and terms of his own Islamic environment, background and civilization. The same problem appears in an even worse form, when Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian-Babylonian, Hittite, Iranian and other high priests, spiritual masters, transcendental potentates, sacerdotal writers, and unequaled scientists are again evaluated as per the invalid and useless criteria of Benedict XVI, of all the Western theologians, and of all the modern European and American academics.
What post-Renaissance popes, theologians, academics, scholars and intellectuals fail to understand is very simple; their ‘world’ ( i.e. the world of the Western Intellect and Science, which was first fabricated in the 15th and the 16th c. and later enhanced progressively down to our days) in not Christian, is not human, and is not real. It is their own delusion, their own invalid abstraction, their abject paranoia, and their own sin for which first they will atrociously disappear from the surface of the Earth (like every anomalous entity) and then flagrantly perish in Hell.
Their dangling system does not hold; they produced it in blood and in blood it will end. Modern sciences constitute a counter-productive endeavor and an aberration that will terminally absorb the entire world into the absolute nothingness, because these evil systems were instituted out of arbitrary bogus-interpretations of the past, peremptory self-identification, deliberate and prejudicial ignorance, as well as an unprecedented ulcerous hatred of the ‘Other’, i.e. of every ‘Other’.
The foolish Western European academic-intellectual establishment failed to realize that it is absolutely preposterous to extrapolate later and corrupt standards to earlier and superior civilizations; in fact, it is impossible. By trying to do it, you depart from the real world only to live in your delusion, which sooner or later will inevitably have a tragic end. Consequently, the Western European scholars’ ‘classics’ are not classics; their reason is an obsession; their language and jargon are hallucinatory, whereas their notions are conjectural. Their abstract concepts are the manifestation of Non-Being.
VIII. Benedict XVI’s biased approach, theological mistakes, intellectual oversights and historical misinterpretations
Benedict XVI’s understanding of the Eastern Roman Empire was fictional. When examining the sources, he retained what he liked, what pleased him, and what was beneficial to his preconceived ideas and thoughts. In fact, Prof. Dr. Papst did not truly understand what Manuel II Palaeologus said to his Turkic interlocutor, and even worse, he failed to assess the enormous distance that separated the early 15th c. Eastern Roman (not ‘Byzantine’: this is a fake appellation too) Emperor from his illustrious predecessors before 800 or 900 years (the likes of Heraclius and Justinian I) in terms of Christian Roman imperial ideology, theological acumen, jurisprudential perspicacity, intellectual resourcefulness, and spiritual forcefulness. Benedict XVI did not want to accept that with time the Christian doctrine, theology and spirituality had weakened.
What was Ratzinger’s mistake? First, he erroneously viewed Manuel II Palaeologus as ‘his’ (as identical with the papal doctrine), by projecting his modern Catholic mindset and convictions onto the Christian Orthodox Eastern Roman Emperor’s mind, mentality and faith. He took the ‘Dialogues’ at face value whereas the text may have been written not as a declaration of faith but as a diplomatic document in order to convince the rather uneducated Western European monarchs that the traveling ‘basileus’ (βασιλεύς) visited during the period 1399-1403.
Second, he distorted the ‘dialogue’, presenting it in a polarized form. Benedict XVI actually depicted a fraternal conversation as a frontal opposition; unfortunately, there is nothing in the historical text to insinuate this possibility. As I already said, it is quite possible that the moderate, wise, but desperate Eastern Roman Emperor may have discussed with someone married to a female descendant of the great mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi (namely Bayezid’s son-in-law, adviser and mystic Emir Sultan). Why on Earth did the renowned theologian Ratzinger attempt to stage manage a theological conflict in the place of a most peaceful, friendly and fraternal exchange of ideas?
This is easy to explain; it has to do with the absolutely Manichaean structure of thought that was first diffused among the Western Fathers of the Christian Church by St Augustine (in the early 5th c.). As method of theological argumentation, it was first effectively contained, and it remained rather marginal within the Roman Church as long as the practice introduced by Justinian I (537) lasted (until 752) and all the popes of Rome had to be selected and approved personally by the Eastern Roman Emperor. After this moment and, more particularly, after the two Schisms (867 and 1054), the Manichaean system of thinking prevailed in Rome; finally, it culminated after the Renaissance.
Third, Benedict XVI tried to depict the early 15th c. erudite interlocutor of the then hostage Manuel II Palaeologus as a modern Muslim and a Jihadist. This is the repetition of the same mistakes that he made as regards the intellectual Eastern Roman Emperor. In other words, he projected onto the ‘unknown’, 15th c. Muslim mystic his own personal view of an Islamist or Islamic fundamentalist. Similarly, by bulldozing time in order to impose his wrong perception of Islam, he fully misled the audience. As a matter of fact, Islam constitutes a vast universe that Prof. Dr. Papst never studied, never understood, and never fathomed in its true dimensions.
In fact, as it happened in the case of the Eastern Roman Emperor, his interlocutor was intellectually weaker and spiritually lower than the great figures of Islamic spirituality, science, wisdom, literature and intuition, the likes of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Al Qurtubi, Mohyi el-Din Ibn Arabi, Ahmed Yasawi, Al Biruni, Ferdowsi, Al Farabi, Tabari, etc., who preceded him by 150 to 500 years. But Benedict XVI did not want to accept that with time the Islamic doctrine, theology and spirituality had weakened.
The reason for this distortion is easy to grasp; the Manichaean system of thinking needs terminal, crystallized forms of items that do not change; then, it is convenient for the Western European abusers of the Manichaean spirit to fully implement the deceitful setting of fake contrasts and false dilemmas. But the 15th c. decayed Eastern Roman Orthodoxy and decadent Islam are real historical entities that enable every explorer to encounter the multitude of forms, the ups and downs, the evolution of cults, the transformation of faiths, and the gradual loss of the initially genuine Moral and vibrant Spirituality. This reality is very embarrassing to those who want to teach their unfortunate students on a calamitous black & white background (or floor).
All the books and articles of his friend, Prof. Theodore Khoury, proved to be totally useless and worthless for the Catholic theologian Ratzinger, exactly because the Lebanese specialist never wrote a sentence in order to truly represent the historical truth about Islam, but he always elaborated his texts in a way to justify and confirm his preconceived ideas. Prof. Khoury’s Islam is a delusional entity, something like the artificial humans of our times. Unfortunately, not one Western Islamologist realized that Islam, at the antipodes of the Roman Catholic doctrine, has an extremely limited dogmatic part, a minimal cult, and no heresies. Any opposite opinion belongs to liars, forgers and falsifiers. As a matter of fact, today’s distorted representation of Islam is simply the result of Western colonialism. All over the world, whatever people hear or believe about the religion preached by Prophet Muhammad is not the true, historical, religion of Islam, but the colonially, academically-intellectually, produced Christianization of Islam.
Fourth, in striking contrast to what the theologian Ratzinger pretended through use of this example or case study (i.e. the ‘discussion’), if Benedict XVI shifted his focus to the East, he would find Maragheh in NW Iran (Iranian Azerbaijan) and Samarqand in Central Asia. In those locations (and always for the period concerned), he would certainly find great centers of learning, universities, vast libraries, and enormous observatories, which could make every 15th c. Western European astronomer and mathematician dream. But there he would also find, as I already said, many Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and other scholars working one next to the other without caring about their religious (theological) differences. This situation is very well known to modern Western scholarship, but they viciously and criminally try to permanently conceal it.
This situation was due to the cultural, intellectual, academic, mental and spiritual unity that prevailed among all those erudite scholars. Numerous Western European scholars have published much about Nasir el-Din al Tusi (about whom I already spoke briefly) and also about Ulugh Beg, the world’s greatest astronomer of his time (middle of the 15th c.), who was the grandson of Timur (Tamerlane) and, at the same time, the World History’s most erudite emperor of the last 2500 years. However, post-Renaissance Catholic sectarianism and Western European/North American racism prevented the German pope from being truthful at least once, and also from choosing the right paradigm.
IX. The lecture’s most controversial point
Fifth, if we now go straight to the lecture’s most controversial point and to the quotation’s most fascinating sentence, we will find the question addressed by Manuel II Palaeologus to his erudite Turkic interlocutor; actually, it is rather an exclamation:
– «Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached»!
This interesting excerpt provides indeed the complete confirmation of my earlier assessments as regards the intellectual decay of both, Christian Orthodoxy and Islam, at the time. Apparently, it was not theological acumen what both interlocutors were lacking at the time; it was historical knowledge. Furthermore, historical continuity, religious consciousness, and moral command were also absent in the discussion.
The first series of points that Manuel II Palaeologus’ Muslim interlocutor could have made answering the aforementioned statement would be that Prophet Muhammad, before his death, summoned Ali ibn Abu Taleb and asked him to promise that he would never diffuse the true faith by undertaking wars; furthermore, Islam was diffused peacefully in many lands outside Arabia (Hejaz), notably Yemen, Oman, Somalia, and the Eastern Coast of Africa. In addition, there were many Muslims, who rejected the absurd idea of the Islamic conquests launched by Umar ibn al-Khattab and actually did not participate.
We have also to take into consideration the fact that, in spite of the undeniable reality of the early spread of Islam through invasions, there has always been well-known and sufficient documentation to clearly prove that the Aramaeans of Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine, the Copts of Egypt, and the Berbers of Africa, although fully preserving their Christian faith, preferred to live under the rule of the Caliphates and overwhelmingly rejected the Eastern Roman imperial administration, because they had been long persecuted by the Constantinopolitan guards due to their Miaphysite (Monophysitic) and/or Nestorian faiths.
On another note, the Eastern Roman Emperor’s Muslim interlocutor could have questioned the overall approach of Manuel II Palaeologus to the topic. In other words, he could have expressed the following objection:
– «What is it good for someone to pretend that he is a follower of Jesus and evoke his mildness, while at the same time violently imposing by the sword the faith that Jesus preached? And what is it more evil and more inhuman than the imposition of a faith in Jesus’ name within the Roman Empire, after so much bloodshed and persecution took place and so many wars were undertaken»?
Last, one must admit that the sentence «Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new!» would have been easily answered by an earlier Muslim mystic of the Golden Era of Islam. Actually, this statement is islamically correct and pertinent. The apparent absence of a spectacular response from the part of Manuel II Palaeologus’ Muslim interlocutor rather generates doubts as regards the true nature of the text. This is so because he could have immediately replied to Bayezid I’s hostage that not one prophet or messenger was sent by God with the purpose of ‘bringing something new’; in fact, all the prophets from Noah to Jonah, from Abraham to Jonah, from Moses to Muhammad, and from Adam to Jesus were dispatched in order to deliver the same message to the humans, namely to return to the correct path and live according to the Will of God.
Related to this point is the following well-known verse of the Quran (ch. 3 – Al Imran, 67): “Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian but he was (an) upright (man), a Muslim, and he was not one of the polytheists”. It is therefore odd that a response in this regard is missing at this point.
It is also strange that, at a time of major divisions within Christianity and more particularly among the Christian Orthodox Eastern Romans, the ‘unknown’ imperial interlocutor did not mention the existing divisions among Christians as already stated very clearly, explicitly and repeatedly in the Quran. Examples:
“You are the best community ever raised for humanity—you encourage good, forbid evil, and believe in Allah. Had the People of the Book believed, it would have been better for them. Some of them are faithful, but most are rebellious”. (ch. 3 – Al Imran, 110)
“Yet they are not all alike: there are some among the People of the Book who are upright, who recite Allah’s revelations throughout the night, prostrating in prayer”.
(ch. 3 – Al Imran, 113):
To conclude I would add that elementary knowledge of Roman History, Late Antiquity, and Patristic Philology would be enough for Benedict XVI to know that
– in its effort to impose Christianity on the Roman Empire,
– in its determination to fully eradicate earlier religions, opposite religious sects like the Gnostics, and theological ‘heresies’ like Arianism,
– in its resolve to exterminate other Christian Churches such as the Nestorians and the Miaphysites (Monophysites),
– in its obsession to uproot Christian theological doctrines like Iconoclasm and Paulicianism, and
– in its witch hunt against Manichaeism, …
… the ‘official’ Roman and Constantinopolitan churches committed innumerable crimes and killed a far greater number of victims than those massacred by Muslim invaders on several occurrences during the early Islamic conquests.
So, when did the Christian Church encounter Reason and when did it cease to be ‘unreasonable’ according to the theologian Pope Ratzinger?
One must be very sarcastic to duly respond to those questions: most probably, the Roman Church discovered ‘Reason’ after having killed all of their opponents and the so-called ‘heretics’ whose sole sin was simply to consider and denounce the Roman Church as heretic!
If Benedict XVI forgot to find in the Quran the reason for the Turkic interlocutor’s mild attitude toward the hostage Manuel II Palaeologus, this is a serious oversight for the professor of theology; he should have mentioned the excerpts. In the surah al-Ankabut (‘the Spider’; ch. 29, verse 46), it is stated: “And do not argue with the followers of earlier revelation otherwise than in a most kindly manner”.
Similarly, the German pope failed to delve in Assyriology and in Egyptology to better understand that the Hebrew Bible (just like the New Testament and the Quran) did not bring anything ‘new’ either; before Moses in Egypt and before Abraham in Mesopotamia, there were monotheistic and aniconic trends and traits in the respective religions. The concept of the Messiah is attested in Egypt, in Assyria, and among the Hittites many centuries or rather more than a millennium before Isaiah contextualized it within the small Hebrew kingdom. Both Egypt and Babylon were holy lands long before Moses promised South Canaan to the Ancient Hebrew tribes, whereas the Assyrians were the historically first Chosen People of the Only God and the Assyrian imperial ideology reflected this fact in detail. The Akkadian – Assyrian-Babylonian kings were ’emperors of the universe’ and their rule reflected the ‘kingdom of Heaven’.
If Etana and Ninurta reveal aspects of Assyrian eschatology, Horus was clearly the Egyptian Messiah, who would ultimately vanquish Seth (Satan/Antichrist) at the End of Time in an unprecedented cosmic battle that would usher the mankind into a new era which would be the reconstitution of the originally ideal world and Well-Being (Wser), i.e. Osiris. There is no Cosmogony without Eschatology or Soteriology, and nothing was invented and envisioned by the Hebrews, the Greeks and the Romans that had not previously been better and more solemnly formulated among the Sumerians, the Akkadians – Assyrian-Babylonians, and the Egyptians. There is no such thing as ‘Greco-Roman’ or ‘Greco-Christian’ or’ Greco-Judaic’ civilization. Both, Islam and Christianity are the children of Mesopotamia and Egypt.
And this concludes the case of today’s Catholic theologians, i.e. the likes of Pope Benedict XVI or Theodore Khoury; they have to restart from scratch in order to duly assess the origins and the nature of Christianity before the serpent casts “forth out of his mouth water as a river after the woman, that he may cause her to be carried away by the river”. All the same, it was certainly Prof. Ratzinger’s full right to make as many mistakes as he wanted and to distort any textual reference he happened to mention.
X. The educational-academic-intellectual misery and the political ordeal of today’s Muslim states
Quite contrarily, it was not the right of those who accused him of doing so, because they expanded rather at the political and not at the academic level; this was very hypocritical and shameful. If these politicians, statesmen and diplomats dared speak at the academic level, they would reveal their own ignorance, obscurantism, obsolete educational system, miserable universities, nonexistent intellectual life, and last but not least, disreputable scientific institutions.
The reason for this is simple: not one Muslim country has properly organized departments and faculties endowed with experts capable of reading historical sources in the original texts and specializing in the History of the Eastern Roman Empire, Orthodox Christianity, Christological disputes and Patristic Literature. If a Muslim country had an educational, academic and intellectual establishment similar to that of Spain or Poland, there would surely be serious academic-level objection to Benedict XVI’s lecture. It would take a series of articles to reveal, refute and utterly denounce (not just the mistakes and the oversights but) the distorted approach which is not proper only to the defunct Pope Emeritus but to the entire Western academic establishment; these people would however be academics and intellectuals of a certain caliber. Unfortunately, such specialists do not exist in any Muslim country.
Then, the unrepresentative criminal crooks and gangsters, who rule all the countries of the Muslim world, reacted against Pope Benedict XVI at a very low, political level about a topic that was not political of nature and about which they knew absolutely nothing. In this manner, they humiliated all the Muslims, defamed Islam, ridiculed their own countries, and revealed that they rule failed states. Even worse, they made it very clear that they are the disreputable puppets of their colonial masters, who have systematically forced all the Muslim countries to exactly accept as theirs the fallacy that the Western Orientalists have produced and projected onto them (and in this case, the entirely fake representation of Islam that theologians like Ratzinger, Khoury and many others have fabricated).
If Ratzinger gave this lecture, this is also due to the fact that he knew that he would not face any academic or intellectual level opposition from the concerned countries. This is so because all the execrable puppets, who govern the Muslim world, were put in place by the representatives of the colonial powers. They do not defend their local interests but execute specific orders in order not to allow
– bold explorers, dynamic professors, and impulsive intellectuals to take the lead,
– proper secular education, unbiased scientific methodology, intellectual self-criticism, free judgment, and thinking out of the box to grow,
– faculties and research centers to be established as per the norms of educationally advanced states, and
– intellectual anti-colonial pioneers and anti-Western scholars to demolish the racist Greco-centric dogma that post-Renaissance European universities have intentionally diffused worldwide.
That is why for a Muslim today in Prof. Ratzinger’s lecture the real problem is not his approach or his mistake, but the impermissible bogus academic life and pseudo-educational system of all the Muslim countries. In fact, before fully transforming and duly enhancing their educational and academic systems, Muslim heads of states, prime ministers, ministers and ambassadors have no right to speak. They must first go back to their countries and abolish the darkness of their ridiculous universities; their so-called professors are not professors.
Here you have all the articles that I published at the time in favor of Benedict XVI; the first article was published on the 16th September 2006, only four days after the notorious lecture and only one day after the notorious BBC report, which called the Muslim ambassadors to shout loud:
I. Ancient, Christian, and Muslim historiographers
II. Oversights and errors attested in the existing bibliography
A. ‘Battle techniques’
B. ‘Two great empires exhausted and weakened’
———- EXCURSE I: HISTORICAL FOCUS —————-
Borders, fronts, rebellions, divisions and fights
1- Post-conquest Iran
2- Eastern Roman Empire
3- Upper Egypt and the Sudan (: historical Ethiopia)
4- Internal conflicts transported from Hejaz to Syria and Mesopotamia
——————————————————————————-
C. ‘History of states’ and not of peoples and cultures
D. Poor conceptualization of the early Islamic conquests by modern scholars
—— EXCURSE II: ETHNO-LINGUISTIC & RELIGIOUS FOCUS ———
Ethno-linguistic groups
Religious groups
i- the Christian Aramaeans of the Syriac Orthodox Church (Monophysites)
ii- the Christian Aramaeans of the Great Church of the East (Nestorians)
iii- the Gnostic Aramaeans
iv- the Manichaean Aramaeans
v- the Copts (Monophysitic Christian Egyptians)
vi- the (Aramaic-speaking) Jews, followers of Rabbinical Judaism
vii- the Persians and other Iranians followers of various Iranian religions
viii- the Eastern Roman Orthodox Christians, who sided with the Patriarchate of Constantinople
———————————————————————————
E. The demographic structure of the eastern provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire and of the Western Iranian provinces: the Aramaeans
F. The central provinces of the Islamic Caliphates: the lands of the Aramaeans.
G. Lack of historical criticism in Islamic Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies
III. The astounding scarcity of contemporaneous sources
IV. Critical incidents during the Battle of Yarmouk
V. The true dimensions of the Battle of Yarmouk and of its outcome
An early 7th c. drawing on a 5th c. biblical manuscript: the unusual and unnecessary representation of Job and his family is correctly viewed by modern scholars as a cryptographic representation of Heraclius and his family, notably his second wife Martina, his sister Epiphania, and his daughter Eudoxia. There is a clear reason for this allegory; by associating Heraclius with Job, the calligrapher and painter interpolated the concept of the Righteous Suffering and projected it onto Heraclius. The apparently Monotheletist artist wanted to praise the Monotheletist emperor for his patience and tolerance toward the Orthodox extremists among the Constantinopolitan clergy, who incessantly insulted the basileus. He therefore identified him with the Biblical person that embodies the concept of the Righteous Suffering, which is of entirely Assyrian-Babylonian origin as the illustrious epic Ludlul bel nemeqi – https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1189&context=cop-facbooks
The battle that led to the withdrawal of the Eastern Romans (‘Rum’ – therefore not ‘Greeks’) from Syria, Palestine, and North Mesopotamia has been the object of numerous studies, essays, chapters of books, and treatises. Modern Orientalist historiographers distorted and/or concealed the historical realities that determined the fact. They impacted their writings with unnecessary astonishment, unsolicited admiration, bizarre bewilderment, and at times childishly subjective descriptions. It is as if they are either blind or predetermined to disorient readers from the historical truth. It is most unfortunate that this situation prevails, despite numerous military experts delving into historical texts, many philologists scrutinizing posterior sources, and several historians publishing the corpus of the textual evidence as regards the event.
The confusion of the average reader and learner is completed with the modern, definitely unscholarly, Islamist pamphleteering as per which ‘the faith in the only true God’ gave the victory to the less-experienced, numerically inferior, and surely ill-equipped and poorly armed (if compared with the Eastern Romans) Muslim armies. I will not expand on this nonsense, because it would only prove that all victors and conquerors were true believers and all the defeated armies belonged to disbelievers – which is absurd.
I. Ancient, Christian, and Muslim historiographers
At this point, I have to highlight that, when it comes to the attitude toward History and historiography, there is a deep chasm between our modern world (after 1500) and past generations that lived in the Antiquity or during the Christian and Islamic times. The modern theories that History can ‘teach’ and that, by studying History, one can avoid past mistakes did not exist before the modern world; these theories are wrong, insane, inhuman and disastrous.
‘History’ does not ‘teach’, and not one Muslim, Christian, Manichaean, Gnostic, Zoroastrian, Babylonian or Egyptian ever thought or expected that History could possibly ‘teach’ him anything. In their perception of the world, there was clarity whereas modern minds are terribly confused about a critical issue: recording facts (historiography) is not History. History is what happened. No one can reconstitute it in its entirety, except by living in the past and being present in the events.
Historiography, i.e. simple recording of facts, did indeed happen for more than five millennia, but not for the purpose of ‘teaching’ or being ‘taught’. This reality determined all ancient historical records, be they Ancient Egyptian Annals, Babylonian Chronicles, Assyrian Annals, Greek and Roman history writing, Christian and Muslim Chronography or other. And for the purpose of objectivity, in most of the cases, the authors eliminated their personal views and considerations; and this is quite normal, as we all understand that a fact is always a fact per se, irrespective of the author’s (or narrator’s or historian’s) personal favor and/or understanding.
For the above reasons, serious, decent and valuable ancient authors did not include in their narratives what was evident to all: the historical context. Contextualization would be tantamount to self-devaluation for an historian like Tabari or Theophanes or the anonymous, 7th c. CE, Aramaean author of the Syriac Chronicle of Kirkuk, which is mainly known as ‘History of Karka de Beth Selok’. About:
(Throughout the present article links to the Wikipedia are included only for further research and access to historical sources and bibliography – not for the contents of the entries that are often impertinent and biased and the ensuing conclusions misplaced)
Ka’ba-ye Zardosht (Zoroaster’s Kaaba): one of the holiest shrines of the Sassanid Empire of Iran at Naqsh-e Rustam, ancient Achaemenid necropolis; it is to be noted that there were several pre-Islamic times’ holy buildings in rectangular shape. They were located in Iran and in Yemen. The Kaaba of Najran was the Christian cathedral in Yemenite Najran (currently under Saudi occupation).Saint Sophia: the Eastern Roman Empire’s greatest cathedral was not a holy shrine for the Monophysitic and Nestorian Aramaeans and the Copts (Egyptians), because they viewed the Patriarchate of Constantinople as heretic. This played an enormous role and impacted the historical developments back in the 630s.
II. Oversights and errors attested in the existing bibliography
Contrarily to Ancient, Christian and Muslim authors and people, who did not expect ‘History’ (but their holy books) to teach them the correct path in life and who did not repeat past mistakes by delving into moral depths (and not into useless historical manuals), we need extensive contextualization to accurately perceive and correctly understand epochs that totally differed from ours. This is what is terribly missing from the studies of almost all the scholars who were interested in the Battle of Yarmouk.
Yarmouk battlefield in Jordan today
A. ‘Battle techniques’
Many scholars focused on the battle techniques of Khalid ibn al-Walid (592-642 CE). But however successful these techniques may have been, military dexterity does not explain why the bulk of the indigenous populations of the eastern provinces (North Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Cyrenaica) of the Eastern Roman Empire did not rebel against the early Muslim rule. The battle of Yarmouk may have been won by the Muslims, but 10 or 20 years later a violent local rebellion could have eventually terminated the foreign rule. But this did not happen.
Typical samples of worthless bibliography and lectures:
One of the wrong diagrams that one can find in the Internet nowadays; suffice it that you read Tabari and you will understand the mistakes.This type of diagrams can never explain historical processes; it is therefore wrong, confusing and disorienting.
B. ‘Two great empires exhausted and weakened’
Several authors explained the early Islamic victories by referring to the exhaustion of the then known world’s two greatest empires, namely the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran. This is correct and true, but still it does not help us understand why the outright majority of populations of the western provinces of Iran and the eastern provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire did not rebel against the foreign invaders in the first 2-3 decades of Islamic rule. However, this fantasy is reproduced even in serious UNESCO documentation on the Silk Road: https://fr.unesco.org/silkroad/sites/default/files/knowledge-bank-article/vol_III%20silk%20road_the%20arab%20conquest.pdf
The Sassanid Empire of Iran and the Eastern Roman Empire at the time prophet Muhammad was bornMain movements of Eastern Roman and Sassanid Iranian armies
———- EXCURSE I: HISTORICAL FOCUS —————-
Borders, fronts, rebellions, divisions and fights
In this regard, it is noteworthy to point out a quadruple phenomenon that took place in the first decades of Islamic rule in the Caliphate’s central provinces:
1- Post-conquest Iran
The first rebellions against the new rule started early in Iran, but they occurred in remote provinces (Gilan, Mazandaran, Azerbaijan) that were inhabited by nations other than those living in the former western provinces of Iran. In any case, both great empires, the Eastern Romans and the Iranians, were multi-ethnic imperial structures.
2- Eastern Roman Empire
The first line of Eastern Roman defense against the Islamic Caliphate was created alongside the Taurus and Anti-Taurus mountains, whereas the upper flow of Euphrates became the border between the two empires. This is the location where the formidable Akritai appeared to fight and stop every advance of the Omayyad or Abbasid armies to the West, apparently coordinating with the Islamic opposition to the pseudo-Islamic rule of the caliphs.
3- Upper Egypt and the Sudan (: historical Ethiopia)
Upper Egypt totally escaped the Islamic rule, as Nobatia was incepted as Christian Coptic kingdom with capital at Faras (almost on the present Egyptian-Sudanese borderline). The Islamic rule in Masr (Egypt) did not exceed beyond the region between Al Minya and Assiut (ca. 350 km south of Cairo), and while Seville, Cordova, Sicily, Crete, Samarqand and the Delta of Indus belonged to the Islamic Caliphate, Coptic monasticism flourished in Thebes of Egypt (today’s Luxor; from Al Uqsur, ‘the military camps’) where all ancient Egyptian temples and antiquities, notably Deir al Bahri and Deir al Madina, had become monastic cells. Two other Christian Sudanese kingdoms rose further in the South: Makuria and Alodia, limiting the Islamic presence in Eastern Africa to the Red Sea coastland.
4- Internal conflicts transported from Hejaz to Syria and Mesopotamia
The only conflicts that took place in the early Islamic Caliphate’s central provinces (i.e. the lands that belong today to Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, SE Turkey, Iraq, SW Iran, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar and the northern parts of Saudi Arabia) were those related to the ‘new’ faith, prophet Muhammad’s preaching, and the interpretation of this faith’s prescriptions as regards the governance of the state. This means, in other words, that the Arabs of Hejaz, brought with them to Syria-Mesopotamia the deep divisions that characterized their society (acceptance, rejection and/or distortion of prophet Muhammad’s religious revelation) even before prophet Muhammad’s death (632 CE). These divisions were ferocious and the bloodshed tarnished irrevocably the History of Islam, although it really paled if compared with the bloodshed caused after the official imposition of Constantinopolitan-Roman Christianity as the sole religion throughout the Roman Empire. And the early converts from the newly occupied lands that earlier belonged to the Eastern Romans and to the Sassanid Iranians vividly participated in these divisions, debates, polarizations, conflicts and civil wars.
This quadruple phenomenon was never studied per se until now, and to duly investigate it one needs to delve in the ethnic and religious/theological conflicts that took place in the two great empires (the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran) for about 300-400 years before the Battle of Yarmouk. This clearly demonstrates that not one specialist of the Early Islamic History can be taken seriously without the knowledge of at least two among the following languages and religious/literary traditions: Coptic, Syriac Aramaic, Middle Persian, Medieval ‘Greek’ (‘Roman’: the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire), Manichaean, and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic (: the language of Rabbinical Judaism).
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C. ‘History of states’ and not of peoples and cultures
Numerous authors write on the topic, while focusing on State History (Eastern Roman, Sassanid Iranian, Omayyad and Abbasid Islamic); this is one way ticket to misperception, misunderstanding, and distortion. States are not representative of subject nations and peoples, but of ruling elites and their doctrines; in their effort to secure their interests, states destroy all historical, literary, religious or theological documentation that would challenge them. States are to some extent the reason for the scarcity of documentation that characterizes the 7th and the 8th centuries CE (or, to put it otherwise, the first 100-150 years AH/anno Hegirae).
D. Poor conceptualization of the early Islamic conquests by modern scholars
Most researchers failed to contextualize the early Islamic conquests, because they were unable to properly conceptualize the historical developments in the first place. Battles are undertaken by social groups or eventually states, but socio-cultural processes and historical developments are generated by peoples and nations. So, the proper manner to approach the topic is to view it as an affair of various nations and ethno-linguistic and religious groups that lived in the wider region between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, from the Taurus Mountains to the Indus River Delta, and in-between the Nile and Syr-Darya (Iaxartes River) in Central Asia.
——– EXCURSE II: ETHNO-LINGUISTIC & RELIGIOUS FOCUS ————
In this regard, it is essential to conclude from the aforementioned that the only pertinent manner to tackle the topic is via interdisciplinary studies. Until now, no effort was displayed in this direction; and yet, there can be many combinations of interdisciplinary studies applying to this case.
Ethno-linguistic groups
During the 6th–7th c. CE, the main nations which lived in the lands that, after the Islamic conquests, became the central provinces of the Islamic Caliphate were:
i- the Aramaeans,
ii- the Copts,
iii- the Persians and other Iranians, who manned the imperial administration at Tesiphun (Ctesiphon) and controlled the Iranian military outposts,
iv- the (Aramaic-speaking) Jews, and
v- the Eastern Romans, who were organized in small communities living in the major cities of the eastern provinces of the empire, notably around the Chalcedonian patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria.
This means that at those days the outright majority of the populations living in lands belonging to today’s SE Turkey, Syria, Iraq, SW Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and the North of Saudi Arabia were Aramaeans.
And the outright majority of the populations living in the Nile Valley were Copts.
Urhoy-Edessa of Orhoene-Urfa (SE Turkey): a major Aramaean cityNasibina-Nisibis-Nusaybin (SE Turkey): a major Aramaean city Hatra (NW Iraq): a major Aramaean city Dura Europos on Euphrates (Eastern Syria): a major Aramaean cityTadmur-Palmyra (Central Syria): a major Aramaean city Bosra (Southern Syria): a major Aramaean city Rekem (Petra, Jordan): a major Aramaean city of the Nabataean dynastyHegra, the necropolis of the Aramaean Nabataean kingdom, at 350 km distance north of Yathrib (Madina)Charax Spasinu (South Iraq): a major Aramaean city
Religious groups
When it comes to ethno-religious and linguistic groups existing at those days (6th–7th c. CE) in the aforementioned region, we enumerate the following:
i- the Christian Aramaeans of the Syriac Orthodox Church (Monophysites) Although entirely anti-Constantinopolitan, the Christian Aramaeans were divided into Miaphysitic (Monophysitic) anti-Chalcedonian Christians and Nestorian anti-Ephesine Christians (see below no ii).
Christian Aramaeans of the Syriac Orthodox Church (Monophysites) formed the outright majority of the populations living in the Eastern Roman provinces of Syria, North Mesopotamia, and Palestine.
The term Monophysitic (Monophysitism/Monophysites) being quite pejorative, it is currently replaced by Miaphysitic (Miaphysitism/Miaphysites). The most common appellation of the church is Jacobite, after St. Jacob Baradaeus (also known as Jacob bar Addai).
Deir Zafaran (also known as Mor Hananyo) Monastery, near Mardin (SE Turkey): a high place of Syriac Jacobite (Miaphysitic/Monophysitic) Christianity
It is also necessary to underscore that the noun/adjective ‘Syriac’ is totally unrelated to the land of Syria (in such case the adjective is ‘Syrian’), but denotes a late phase of Aramaic that survived down to our days, being one of the main liturgical languages in the History of Christianity. Syriac alphabet derived from Aramaic alphabet (in the 1st c. CE) and, similarly, Arabic alphabet derived (in the 4th c. CE) from Nabataean Aramaic alphabet; Aramaic and Hebrew were the two original languages in which the Old Testament was written.
Syriac Aramaic in Serto writingSyriac Aramaic in Estrangelo writing
Monophysitic Aramaeans were essential for the formation and the diffusion of historical Islam. Their overwhelming rejection of the Constantinopolitan theology and of the anti-Aramaean policies of the Eastern Roman Empire totally alienated the Aramaeans from the authorities that ruled them. For Monophysitic Aramaeans, the Eastern Roman Empire was ruled by heretics. And as the illustrious Aramaean theologian, historian and erudite scholar Tatian (112-185 CE) demonstrated in his magnificent opus Oratio ad Graecos (Address to the Greeks), the enormous cultural gap between Aramaeans and Greeks played a considerable role in the destabilization of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire (and subsequently of the Eastern Roman Empire), because the Constantinopolitan authorities cooperated basically with the Greek-speaking minority.
The determinant role played by the Monophysitic Aramaeans in the formation and the diffusion of historical Islam is highlighted by the case of Sergius Bahira, the Syriac Jacobite (Monophysitic) monk, who encountered prophet Muhammad in young age, when he accompanied his uncle Abi Taleb ibn Abd el Muttalib to Syria and other provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire.
ii- the Christian Aramaeans of the Great Church of the East (Nestorians)
These Aramaeans followed Nestorius in his doctrine that was a radical form of what is called Diophysitism (belief in two natures/hypostases of Jesus); they are called Nestorians, although the term is not regarded as correct (being tantamount to calling the Muslims ‘Muhammedans’). Nestorians rejected the Council of Ephesus (431 CE), pretty much like the Monophysites/Miaphysites rejected the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE).
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Dair Mar Eliya (Monastery of St. Elijah) in North Iraq: Nestorian monastery of the 6th c.Nestorian Gospel in SyriacThe Anikova plate: representation of the Siege of Jericho; masterpiece of Sogdian Nestorian Art from Semirechie (southeastern Kazakhstan and northeastern Kyrgyszstan). Probable date: 8th-9th c.Ecclesiastical provinces of the Nestorian Church in the 10th c.Nestorian communities in the 10th-11th c.
Christian Aramaeans of the Great Church of the East (Nestorians) formed the outright majority of the Sassanid Iranian provinces of Central and South Mesopotamia, South Transtigritane, and Arabia, namely Huzistan, Meshan, Asurestan, Nodshiragan (Adiabene), and Arabestan.
Nestorian Aramaeans were essential in the formation and diffusion of historical Islam. Their staggering rejection of both, Constantinopolitan Christianity and Sassanid Mazdeism (the official Iranian imperial religious dogma that consisted only in a later form of the Achaemenid Zoroastrianism), was highly determinant for the early success of the caliphs. At this early point, I only state the well-known (but not deeply understood) fact that, for ca. 180 years before the arrival of the Islamic armies in Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia, the Nestorians called Virgin Mary ‘Mother of Christ’ and not ‘Mother of god’, in striking opposition to the Constantinopolitan theologians, monks and courtiers. In this manner, Nestorian Aramaeans proved to be the real precursors of prophet Muhammad and his teachings. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of the 7th c. CE, the Nestorians were closer to the early Quranic text, which may have reached them through hearsay (before the early Islamic armies), than to the Nicene Creed.
Constantinopolitan theology and the anti-Aramaean religious and economic policies of the empire totally alienated the Aramaeans from the ruling authorities. Even worse, in Iran, the Nestorian Aramaeans were persecuted in definitely crueler manner than the Monophysitic Aramaeans were in the Eastern Roman Empire. And the ceaseless Eastern Roman – Sassanid Iranian wars devastated -more than any other territories- the lands inhabited by the Aramaeans.
Their surviving remnants are nowadays the Mandaeans. There are about 100000 Mandaean Aramaeans worldwide, but due to the ongoing persecution and oppression, most of them live currently in the Diaspora, and not in their historical land, i.e. Central and South Mesopotamia (Iraq) and South Transtigritane (SW Iran).
Gnostic Aramaeans were essential in the formation and diffusion of historical Islam. Their participation in Muslim spiritual life is at the origin of the formation of groups like the legendary Ikhwan Safa, whose rituals have been later reproduced by numerous Islamic mystics, spiritualists, occultists and scholars from the Qarmatians and the Isma’ilis to all types of Batiniyya (‘esoterism’) wise elders and great spiritual scientists, like Muhammad al Fazari, Al Ghazali, Abu ‘l Qassim ibn al Saffar, Maslam al Majriti, and Muhyieldin ibn Arabi.
Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa, (‘Epistles of the Brethren of Purity’), Book I – on the mathematical sciences; Western Iran, ca. 14th c.
Even the communication manners and literary style of the Ikhwan Safa’s treatises and manuals appear to be Gnostic in their essence. What is nowadays erroneously called ‘Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity’, which is in fact the compendium of their wisdom, consists of letters or ‘messages’ (رسائل), being thus a reminiscence of the typically Gnostic manner of sharing knowledge, wisdom and spiritual practices.
The religion composed, proclaimed and propagated by Mani was displayed in 242 CE in front of the formidable Sassanid shah Shapur I to whom the prophet of Manichaeism dedicated one of his books, titled Shabuhragan. Shapur I did not adhere to the new religion, but he realized its imperial importance for the Sassanid state and supported the young prophet (born in 216 CE) in his mission. It is not wrong to consider Manichaeism technically as a type of Gnosticism, but it was indeed a Gnostic system apart from the rest.
Aramaeans, Persians, Iranians, Sogdians, Turanians, Mongolians, Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, Romans, Armenians and many other nations wholeheartedly accepted Manichaeism, which was the first religion in the world to have adepts from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The last Manicheans performed their rites in China’s eastern coastland before 150-100 years. Following the rise of Mazdeism (a later form of Iranian Zoroastrianism) and the prevalence of Kartir among the Sassanid courtiers, Manichaeism was persecuted and Mani was tortured to death, but the diffusion of Manichaeism was not impacted; quite on the contrary! Mani’s faith spread and many Manichaean communities existed at the times of the Islamic conquest in both, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran. Aramaean Manichaean communities in Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine greatly impacted Islam in many dimensions.
Almost 400 years before prophet Muhammad postured to be the last of the prophets, the prophet of Manichaeism claimed to be the ‘seal of the prophets’. Manichaean hierarchy seems to have been diffused among many Muslim esoteric spiritual orders. Some of the greatest historians and chronographers of Islamic times, like Tabari, al Biruni, and al Nadim, expanded on Mani and the Manicheans. The five prayers that a Muslim must perform daily seem to have been a compromise between the four daily prayers of the Manichaean ‘hearers’ (laymen) and the seven daily prayers of the elects (ecclesiastical hierarchy). Prophet Muhammad’s discussions with earlier prophets, during the Isra and Mi’raj nocturnal voyage to the Celestial Jerusalem, seem to exactly reflect similar considerations. Furthermore, the ablutions before the prayer appear to be a repetition of Manichaean practices. In addition, the Ebionite and Elcesaite impact on Manicheans seems therefore to have been passed on to the Muslims.
Was Mani crucified? The question remains unanswered, as several Islamic sources reported a dire end following a terrible persecution unleashed by the Sassanid imperial priesthood against the prophet of Manichaeism.The diffusion of Manichaeism eclipsed that of any other religion before the Modern Times; but Manichaeism was state religion only once: among the Uyghur nation of Central Asia.
The religion of Mani may have by now gone extinct, but its impact on Islam was tremendous. Many scholars tried to retrace fundamental concepts of Islam to the beliefs of several Jewish or Christian groups and notably the Nazarenes, but it would make more sense to closely examine how some of Mani’s innovative concepts found their way into prophet Muhammad’s cardinal tenets and world conceptualization.
Although Christianity accepted the Ancient Hebrew prophets as such, Islam is characterized by a definitely different approach, as it makes of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isma’il, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David and Solomon prophets as well (also extending the status of prophet to John the Baptist and Jesus). Furthermore, it is noticeable that Islam’s position on prophethood is flexible enough to encompass other historical figures or outstanding persons not directly known to the small Meccan community of the times of Muhammad ibn Abdullah. However, this fresh approach to World History, which is a novelty for Christianity and Judaism, was absolutely Manichaean or origin. Mani first introduced the concept by accepting Zoroaster, Buddha and Jesus as earlier prophets and by thus giving to his religious system a universal-imperial dimension that was badly needed for a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious empire.
Manichaean Aramaeans were systematically persecuted in both, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran; it was therefore quite normal for them to support the replacement of the double yoke with an Arab state and administration that they would be able to fully staff and operate (along with other Aramaeans who were followers of other religions, notably Christianity), taking into consideration the fact that the uneducated, uncultured and primitive Arabs of Hejaz, who had never formed any kind of proper state, would be definitely and absolutely unable to face such a challenge.
In the early Islamic times, there have been many notable Manichaean scholars, who prospered in the Islamic Caliphate; as Abbasid Baghdad became a center for either Manicheans or Manichaean converts to Islam, many Manicheans of other origin flocked there to contribute to the illustrious Beit al Hikmah (بيت الحكمة/House of the Wisdom) university, library, archival organization, academic center of translations, research center, botanical garden, and observatory. Abu Hilal al-Dayhuri, a Berber from Maghreb, was one of them. On the other hand, elements of the criticism that Abu Isa al Warraq addressed to Islam and to prophet Muhammad seem to be Manichaean of nature.
However, one must admit that, despite similarities, loans and impact, Islam and Manichaeism soon became rival systems and most of the Islamic erudite scholars portrayed Mani in a rather negative manner. This approach made of Muslims the major opponents of the Manicheans, after the Christians and the Jews; but this situation is attested in rather later periods (9th–10th c.). However, this is not quite strange, if we take into consideration the fact that the Old Testament god Yahweh was portrayed as the Demiurge (i.e. the Satan) by Mani.
v- the Copts (Monophysitic Christian Egyptians)
As close allies of the Monophysitic Aramaeans (see above unit i-), they were ferocious enemies of the oppressive Constantinopolitan administrative hierarchy and Patriarchate. Similarly with the Monophysitic Aramaeans, who belonged to the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and rejected the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch (which sided with Constantinople), the Monophysitic Copts followed the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and rejected the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria.
Coptic manuscript with illuminationsCoptic manuscriptCoptic Gospel with illumination representing the four Evangelists.Coptic manuscript with illuminations
Similarly with what happened in North Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine where the followers of the Constantinopolitan doctrine-related patriarchates (in Antioch and Jerusalem) were not numerous, as they constituted the Greek-speaking minority of those regions, in Egypt, the followers of the Constantinopolitan doctrine-related patriarchate (in Alexandria) were few, and they constituted the Greek-speaking minority of Egypt.
This leads to a detrimental conclusion as regards the Eastern Roman Empire and its chances to maintain control across its eastern provinces, namely North Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Cyrenaica; both, the Constantinopolitan authorities and their local stooges were loathed and reviled by the outright majority of the local populations that would certainly do all that it took to get rid of the heretical rulers at Constantinople. All they needed was an opportunity, and prophet Muhammad’s preaching in Hejaz was apparently more important for them (as a tool) than to Arabs (as a faith).
vi- the (Aramaic-speaking) Jews, followers of Rabbinical Judaism
After the destruction of Jerusalem (70 CE) and the failure of the Bar Kokhba (136 CE) rebellion, the Sadducees, the Essenes and the Zealots did not have a chance to survive as religious-spiritual-intellectual systems among the Judaic Jews. Ever since, Judaism has revolved around the Pharisees, who thus formed what is now known as ‘Rabbinical Judaism’. As Ancient Hebrew was already a dead language, all Jews were already speaking Aramaic. Expelled from Aelia Capitolina (former Jerusalem), Jews could stay in Palestine or preferably settle in Arsacid (and after 224 CE, Sassanid) Iranian Mesopotamia.
They then (and over several centuries) elaborated a new religious book that marks a clear line of separation between their ancestors’ religion (Ancient Hebrew religion based exclusively on the Old Testament) and their new religion; this book is the Talmud, which is the product of the criminal priests who never repented for having killed the ancient prophets of Israel. Today, most scholars hide the critical fact that Judaism (i.e. Rabbinical Judaism or Talmudic Judaism) is totally different from and diametrically opposed to the Ancient Hebrew religion. As priestly literature and theological exegesis, the two different Talmud collections, namely the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalemite Talmud, were written in Aramaic.
Manuscript of the Babylonian Talmud with text from the tractate KiddushinManuscript of the Babylonian Talmud with text from the tractate Rosh ha-shannah
Contrarily to the Judaic Jews, who were marked by the composition and the diffusion of the Talmud among them, the Aramaean Jews in their totality turned to Early Christianity; this concerns the Samaritans of the time of Jesus and many other Aramaean Jewish communities that prospered in Syria and Mesopotamia, notably in Dura Europos where the Synagogue fully reveals the impetus and the magnificence of Aramaean Art. By the time of prophet Muhammad there was no Aramaean Jew.
Although late 6th c. and early 7th c. CE Jews wholeheartedly supported the Sassanid Iranians in their wars against the Eastern Roman Empire (in striking contrast with the early Muslims of the period 610-628/629, who clearly regretted the early Iranian advance and conquests, and later rejoiced with the final Eastern Roman victories) and in spite of many unfortunate incidents that occurred between the early Muslims and the Hejaz Jews (during prophet Muhammad’s lifetime), the early (634-651 CE) Islamic conquests were enthusiastically accepted by the Jews of the wider region, who found their ally and protector in the ominous figure of Omar ibn al Khattab, as he allowed them to enter Jerusalem, no less than 568 years after they were kicked out of there by the Romans. Jews actively supported the early Islamic Caliphates, notably the Umayyad state of Damascus, the Abbasid Empire of Baghdad, and the Umayyad caliphs of Córdoba (Andalus).
vii- the Persians and other Iranians followers of various Iranian religions
Being only one of the Sassanid Empire’s nations, the Persians lived in the province of Fars, which in Ancient Greek was translated as Persia; there cannot be confusion between ‘Persian’ and ‘Iranian’. Persians were/are only one of the Iranian nations.
The Persians controlled the administrative machine of the Iranian Empire during the Achaemenid times (550-330 BCE) and during the Sassanid times (224-651 CE), whereas the Parthians, another Iranian nation of Turanian origin, controlled the administrative machine of the empire during the Arsacid times (250 BCE-224 CE).
The Iranian Empire had always many imperial capitals, notably Pasargadae, Persepolis, Susa, Babylon, Ecbatana, Nisa (Mithradatkirt/Parthaunisa), Qumis (Hecatompylos), Ray (Ragae), Tesifun (Ctesiphon), and Istakhr; on the other hand, Praaspa (Adur Gushnasp/Takht-e Suleyman), at an elevation of 3000 m, in the northern part of Zagros Mountains, was permanently the Zoroastrian religious capital of the empire.
In the Mesopotamian provinces of the Sassanid Empire of Iran, there were few and rather small Persian communities; in these western provinces of Iran were also settled people originating from other Iranian nations that were indigenous in the central, eastern and northern provinces of the empire. They were dispatched to the imperial administration at Ctesiphon and they served in the army. But they were a minority among the indigenous Aramaeans of Central and Southern Mesopotamia, Transtigritane, and the Persian Gulf’s southern coastlands.
This reality has not been either assessed or revealed by any type of specialists who studied and wrote about the topic of the early Islamic conquests. Yet, it is uniquely determinant and utterly explanatory. It changes drastically our scholarly approach to the topic (see below unit E).
Another critical dimension that impacted greatly the fate of the Sassanid Empire of Iran was its religious multi-division. If we leave the Nestorian Aramaeans, the Gnostic Aramaeans, the Manichaean Aramaeans, other Manichaean Iranians (notably the Sogdians), and the Aramaic-speaking Jews aside, the Persians and the other Iranian nations of the Sassanid Empire were spiritually and religiously divided. Among them, there were adepts of the following religious systems:
1- Mazdeism: the imperial religion and Zoroastrian doctrine established by Kartir;
2- Mithraism: the popular religion that made of Mithra a god of polytheistic features;
3- Zurvanism: Mithra broke away from Zoroastrianism and Zurvan from Mithraism;
4- Mazdakism: the subversive socio-religious system of rebellious mobedh (priest);
5- Gayomardism: an offspring of Mazdeism and Mithraism, with monotheistic traits;
If one adds to the numerous aforementioned religions, several religious systems prevailing among nations of the Iranian periphery and border regions, notably Buddhism, Turanian Tengrism, and other Central Asiatic and Indus River valley religions, one gets a complete picture of the internal divisions that existed in the Sassanid Empire of Iran and finally lef to its destruction.
Sassanid Iranian relief with representation of the high priest, mystic and reformer of Zoroastrianism Kartir, a primary initiate who can be viewed as the founder of Mazdeism, i.e. the late form of Zoroastrianism that was instituted as official dogma in Sassanid Iran. Possibly Turanian (Turkic) of origin, Kartir (or Kerdyr) can be held as main responsible for the execution of Mani and the persecution of Manicheans in Iran until the end of the Sassanid times. Long before the Arabs of Hejaz heard of the Mi’raj story (prophet Muhammad’s nocturnal, transcendental travel to the Temple Mount and thence to the Celestial Jerusalem), the Iranians learned about Kartir’s celestial journey in the Heaven. There is also another (parallel?) Middle Persian story about the celestial journey of the sublime initiate Arda Viraf in the Heaven; however, the Middle Persian manuscripts of Arda Wīraz namag seem to date back to the 9th c., although the entire narrative echoes Sassanid traditions. About: https://iranicaonline.org/articles/kartir / https://www.academia.edu/37850211/The_nature_of_spiritual_journeys_in_Zoroastrianism_based_on_Kartir_and_Arda_Viraf_tripsThe Mithraic temple of Anahita at Bishapur near KazerunThe heroic elements of the Sassanid times’ Mazdeism were preserved in the Iranian epics of Islamic times, thus leading to a very different form of Islam than what Muhammad preached in Mecca; Esfandiyar faces Simurgh. Without Iranian epics composed 300 years after the death of prophet Muhammad, one cannot possibly identify correctly the cultural-spiritual-intellectual-artistic-educational environment of Iranian, Turanian, Central Asiatic, Caucasus and Indian Muslim societies. In fact, Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh became the second Quran for Ottoman sultans, Mughal emperors, Iranian shahs and Eurasiatic Muslims.Gayomard (Keyumars) fighting evil spirits; a reminiscence of Gayomardism of the Sassanid times was preserved in the Iranian epics of Islamic times.The execution of Mazdak, the preacher of the world’s first religion which evangelized a communist social structure without property, as represented in Islamic times’ miniatures of manuscriptsRepresentation of Zurvan, the all-consuming ‘god’ of time
viii- the Eastern Roman Orthodox Christians, who sided with the Patriarchate of Constantinople
As I already said, the few Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Orthodox Christian communities, settled in Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria and several other cities in North Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Cyrenaica, supported the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Constantinopolitan imperial administration, but they were largely outnumbered by the local Aramaean (in Asia) and Coptic (in Africa) populations (which rejected the Patriarchate of Constantinople and its local stooges). That is why the few Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Orthodox Christian communities were greatly loathed: they ultimately functioned as tools of the imperial oppression and persecution of all those who disagreed with the Constantinopolitan theologians.
These populations and their ecclesiastical authorities, namely the Patriarchate of Constantinople and its dependencies in the East, i.e. the three minor institutions at Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria that were unrepresentative (as they were accepted as ‘patriarchates’ only by the tiny local minority of the Greek-speaking populations of the respective cities), wanted to monopolize the term ‘Orthodox’, but this was merely their propaganda, against those whom they called ‘Monophysites’. It would be however wrong to imagine that there was concord within the sphere of influence of the Patriarchate of Constantinople; there was discord and division instead.
Caesarea of Cappadocia (Kayseri): the city walls erected by Justinian in the middle of 6th c. The early Islamic conquests were stopped in the Taurus and Anti-Taurus mountains beyond Cappadocia. The bulk of the Eastern Roman population was centered between Caesarea and Smyrna (Izmir) whereas Cappadocia was the holy land of Eastern Roman Christianity.The rupestrian Cappadocian Art: one of Christianity’s most stupendous contributions to ArtTypical sample of rupestrian Cappadocian ArtThe highland of Cappadocia where many hundreds of cells and churches have been built and hewn in the rock.Caesarea: The basis of the Eastern Roman defense against the Islamic Caliphate for more than 400 years
The new theological-Christological dispute revolved around the ‘energy’ and the ‘will’ (thelesis) of Jesus, in the sense of whether they were one or two (human and divine) and, if two, what the relationship of the two energies or two wills was. As a matter of fact, it was the resurgence of the old dispute (about the ‘nature’ (physis) of Jesus), which had given birth to what we now call Miaphysitism/Monophysitism.
This new division concerned mainly vast populations living in the central provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire, namely Anatolia (Turkey), Constantinople, the Balkan Peninsula, southern and eastern Italy, Sicily, and Carthage. The division had already reached the top of the imperial structure, as Emperor Heraclius and Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople were accused of Monoenergism and Monothelitism. And the fact that Heraclius got married with his niece Martina (as second wife) unleashed an abysmal hatred against him from the part of the uncompromising ‘Orthodox’ theologians, monks and priests, as they viewed the marriage as incestuous.
This, briefly presented, was the situation in which the two great empires, the Eastern Romans and the Sassanid Iranians, found themselves in the eve of the battles that ended with the loss of the eastern provinces of the former and the final dissolution of the latter. As I said in the last paragraph of the EXCURSE I: HISTORICAL FOCUS, there has to be an academic focus on interdisciplinary studies and research, which will certainly unveil many points and elements of common faith shared by Muslims and followers of other religions (notably Manicheans) or Christian denominations (notably Miaphysitic/Monophysitic and Nestorian). This will greatly impact our understanding of the Eastern Roman and the Iranian defeats, because it may reveal that these early battles (and the Battle of Yarmouk was only one) had been already won before they were fought; furthermore, it will also explain why the situation, which arose as a consequence of these battles, proved to be irreversible for many long centuries.
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E. The demographic structure of the eastern provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire and of the Western Iranian provinces: the Aramaeans
No scholar examined in detail the demographic structure of the populations that inhabited the central territories of the early Caliphate outside Hejaz and Yemen. This has much to do with the above EXCURSE II: ETHNO-LINGUISTIC & RELIGIOUS FOCUS. A detailed demographic study covering the period 224-750 CE would reveal that the bulk of the Aramaean populations living in the Western Iranian provinces and in the eastern provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire were
1- ethnically different from the nations that ruled both empires (the Greek-speaking Eastern Romans and the Persians);
2- religiously opposed to the official imperial religions of both empires;
3- systematically persecuted and marginalized by both imperial administrations and armies;
4- detrimentally devastated by the incessant wars fought between the two empires, because the ordinary battlefield was precisely located in their own lands, namely the Western Iranian provinces and the eastern provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire (and consequently the bulk of the populations of the ruling nations, namely the Greek-speaking Eastern Romans and the Persians, was not significantly affected by these wars); and
5- linguistically very close to the Arabs of Hejaz, because in fact Arabic was a southern Syriac dialect and the Arabic writing derived from Syriac Aramaic.
Ctesiphon: the remaining part of the then world’s most magnificent palace. Taq-i Kisra (or Al Mada’in) was the Sassanid palace in Mesopotamia and the archway is the largest single-span vault of unreinforced brickwork in the world. One of the best samples of pre-Islamic Aramaean-Iranian Art.In fact, Ctesiphon (Tesifun) in today’s central Iraq was an enormous agglomeration involving four cities; one of them, Seleucia, known as Mahoze in Aramaic, was the worldwide center of Nestorian Christianity.The Great Mosque of Damascus is a masterpiece of Aramaean Art.
F. The central provinces of the Islamic Caliphates: the lands of the Aramaeans.
No scholar noticed that, in addition to the aforementioned points, for about five (5) centuries (661-1258), the central regions of the Islamic Caliphates (Umayyad or Abbasid) were exactly the lands of the Aramaeans. The first Islamic capital was at Madinah, but this was soon terminated, as the Umayyad dynasty was based in the Aramaean city par excellence: Damascus. The determinant impact of the Aramaean universities, academies, monasteries and scriptoria (notably those of Urhoy/Edessa, Nisibis/Nusaybin, Tur Abdin, Mahoze/Ctesiphon, and Kerkha/Kirkuk) on the formation of the Islamic educational, academic, intellectual and scientific life changed totally the backward, uncivil and primitive environment in which prophet Muhammad’s preaching was undertaken.
The Sassanid Empire of Iran in its greatest extent at 621 CEHeraclius’ campaigns’ 611-628
This historical process and development made of the early Arab fighters, the so-called Sahaba, a marginal element that played almost no role in the History of Islamic Civilization. In other words, the Islamic Civilization in its early stage was clearly an Aramaean – Iranian civilization with significant Coptic, Yemenite and Jewish contributions; at a later stage, Berber, Turanian, African and Indus River Valley contributions to the Islamic civilizations have also been attested. However, there was never an ‘Arab civilization’ or -as per the French Orientalist forgers- “une civilisation arabo-musulmane”.
This automatically cancels the theoretical importance of the early Islamic conquests that are absurdly amplified and incommensurately over-magnified by both Western scholars and Islamic terrorists; in fact, the real winners were the inhabitants of the central regions of the Islamic Caliphates, i.e. the Aramaeans, who saw others fighting for their cause (to get rid of the double, Eastern Roman and Sassanid Iranian, yoke), for the transfer of the imperial capital into their land, and for the establishment of an imperial elite manned basically by them. In addition to the Aramaeans, the Persians and other Iranians and Turanians managed also to make their way into the new imperial administration. But prophet Muhammad had never spoken about an … ‘Islamic’ empire….
G. Lack of historical criticism in Islamic Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies
Taking all the aforementioned determinant parameters into account, reading the historical sources from the viewpoint of historical criticism, and viewing the historical facts in the light of the hitherto unevaluated critical factors, modern scholars can come up with a totally different interpretation/interrelation of sources and a dramatically contrasting reconstitution of the historical past, which would be diametrically opposed to the nonsense of military experts, who focus exclusively on battle techniques, and to the absurd and paranoid, pseudo-religious belief, as per which ‘god’ was involved in the events that took place in the 630s and 640s and shook the world between the Mediterranean, the Indus River valley, and Central Asia. Historical criticism of all sources relating to these events is indispensable and inevitable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_criticism
Hadhrat Ali’s tomb in Najaf; Ali ibn abi Taleb (599-661) was designated as the first caliph, but after meeting fierce opposition, he was accepted as the fourth caliph. The early divisions of the small Muslim community after the death of Prophet Muhammad are an extra reason for historians to apply today extensive historical criticism and to reject the absolutely reconstructed and erroneous version of History.The tomb of the 3rd imam Hussein ibn Ali (626-680) at Kerbala. The sons of Ali had to become caliphs in his stead. But the grandson of prophet Muhammad (Hussein) was slaughtered by the son of prophet Muhammad’s worst enemy (Mu’awiya ibn Abī Sufyan / Muawiyah son of Abu Sufyan). If this situation does not impose extensive historical criticism, this means that today’s fake academics receive orders from the powers that be as regards what to study, what not to explore, and how to investigate the topics of their research. Yet, what happened in Kerbala (680 CE) illuminates very well what occurred after the Hudaybiyah treaty when Abu Sufyan rushed to Palestine to meet Emperor Heraclius and deceive him.
III. The astounding scarcity of contemporaneous sources
The first serious difficulty that every modern historian faces, when dealing with the early Islamic conquests, is the extreme scarcity of contemporaneous historical sources. A recent and highly commendable scholarly publication, titled ‘Seeing Islam as Others saw it: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam’ (by prof. Robert G. Hoyland), enumerates ca. 140 different authors, manuscripts, texts or inscriptions (categorized as a. sources; b. apocalypses and visions; c. martyrologies; d. chronicles and histories; and e. apologies and disputations) that involve various narratives in Syriac Aramaic, Coptic, Greek, Armenian, Middle Persian, Christian Arabic, Jewish Aramaic, Latin and Chinese primary sources, which date back to the period between 620 and 780 CE.
As it can be easily understood, most of the above mentioned texts were not written with the specific purpose to detail the battles and the events that took place in the area under study in the 630s and the 640s; consequently, their mention of facts and their references to episodes were rather brief, because the main scope of the narrative was other. The Eastern Roman chronicler and monk Theophanes the Confessor (758-817) presented the longest description of the events by an Eastern Roman author. His text is to be found in Medieval Greek and Latin translation: J. P. Migne’s Patrologia Graeca, cviii (vol.108, col.55-1009). But when Theophanes wrote his venerated Χρονογραφία (Chronographia), at least 150 years had passed after the Battle of Yarmouk was fought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophanes_the_Confessor
Still this is fine if compared with the Muslim Arabic sources; the scarcity of 7th c. CE Islamic sources is spectacular. The Islamic sources of that period are much scarcer than the non-Islamic sources. Even worse, as the Arabs of Hejaz were not civilized and kept no historical records of their otherwise primitive and therefore dreary societies, a long formative period had to first pass, until -under clear Aramaean, Persian, Coptic and Jewish guidance- some rudiments of historiography be formed.
Most of the first, important historians of Islamic times were of non-Arab origin:
1- Muhammad ibn Ishaq (704-767) was the grandson of an Aramaean young boy held captive in a Christian monastery in Shetata (Ayn al Tamr) in Mesopotamia;
2- Al Waqidi (747-823) was the son of a Persian lady of noble ancestry whose family introduced letters, arts and music to uncivil and primitive Hejaz;
3- Tabari (or rather Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari/ محمد بن جرير الطبري; 839-923) was an Iranian born in the southern coastlands of the Caspian Sea (Tabaristan), a location to which he owes the name by which he became widely known. Tabari’s Chronography was not different from the Eastern Roman historiographical tradition, as he started his narrative from the Creation. Tabari accumulated an enormous, unprecedented documentation, and he mentioned explicitly his sources for each and every part of his colossal text (a recent, unilingual English translation needed 40 volumes of ca. 300 pages each to be published), making it unattractive to the non-specialists. But Tabari wrote no less than 230 years after the Battle of Yarmouk was fought.
The situation is even worse, when it comes to Islamic religious, theological, biographical, and hagiographical literature. The earlier manuscripts that survived down to our days date back to the 8th, 9th and 10th c., while few existing exceptions are in truly fragmentary condition and cannot be taken as ‘proofs’ properly speaking.
The scarcity of the contemporaneous sources makes the interdisciplinary research imperative for the case of the early Islamic conquests and for the study of the first decades of caliphs’ rule. The contrast or the agreement between two different sources and the often divergent perspectives offered can help drastically stimulate the research orientation and push scholars toward hitherto unidentified areas, which may then grant a far better understanding of the historical facts than present-day clichés do.
The Teaching of Jacob (Διδασκαλία Ἰακώβου/Didaskalia Iakobou; Doctrina Jacobi) is an example in this regard; preserved partially in Medieval Greek manuscripts and integrally in Latin, Arabic, Ge’ez and Slavonic translations, the text consists in a debate among Jews as regards their eventual conversion to Christianity. It seems to be dated back to 634 CE, and it provides some of the earlier references to the Islamic conquests. In fact, it contradicts all Islamic sources, because it describes prophet Muhammad (without naming him) as waging wars in Palestine. However, the brief excerpt that concerns these facts makes state of an alliance between Palestinian Jews and the Arab armies. On the other hand, those among the Palestinian Jews, who had converted to Christianity (or rather were forced to), saw in the person of the ‘warrior prophet’ the Antichrist and even expected the imminent return of the Christ, also regretting that it took them long to identify Jesus with the Biblical Messiah.
The Syriac ‘Chronicle of 640’, written by Thomas the Presbyter, consists in a particular Christian Chronography down to the year 640 CE; the scribe, who copied the manuscript ca. 85 years later (724 CE), added an extra text containing the list of the Umayyad caliphs, who had reigned until that year. The Chronicle contains critical references to the early Islamic attacks and conquests, also stating that an enormous bloodshed followed the battle “between the Romans and the Tayyaye of Muhmd (the Arabs of Muhammad)”, which took place on 4th February 634 CE in Palestine, east of Gaza. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Presbyter
Two years later (636 CE), the Syriac ‘Chronicle of 640′ mentions explicitly the Sassanid Iranian debacle (without however naming the Battle of Qadissiyyah) and the subsequent arrival of the Islamic armies in NE Mesopotamia and notably Mardin (today in SE Turkey), which was the religious capital of the Tur Abdin Aramaean Miaphysitic/Monophysitic monasticism; these events also caused great bloodshed there. However, by dating these events in 636 CE {year 947, indiction 9, of the Seleucid Era (starting 312-311 BCE)}, the author makes it impossible for us to date the Battle of Yarmouk in 636, which is nowadays the tendency of several scholars who rather follow Theophanes’ text. On the contrary, Tabari makes it very clear that the Battle of Yarmouk occurred days after the death of Abu Bakr in August 634 CE.
Another brief and fragmentary inscription written on a blank page of a 6th c. Syriac copy of the Gospel of Mark makes state of the failure of the Eastern Roman army to properly defend the eastern regions of the empire; the same expression is used in Syriac (Tayyaye of Muhmd), but the dating is arbitrary. The inscription may well have been written in the 630s, but we cannot specify when exactly. Modern scholars have the tendency to deliberately mistrust the historical authors in order to fabricate the version of historiography that pleases them, and that is why several specialists assumed that the inscription’s author mistook Gabitha for Yarmouk; the inscription mentions a battle between the Eastern Romans and the Muslims in Gabitha (Jabiyah, in Syria) and the modern scholars translate it as ‘Yarmouk’ (in Jordan). It would be however more interesting to focus on similarities and dissimilarities between Syriac and Arabic, because practically speaking the same noun (Gabitha, Jabiyah) ended up having two totally different meanings. If one applies Syriac reading to the Quranic text before vocalization, the surprises may be phenomenal.
IV. Critical incidents during the Battle of Yarmouk
Tabari starts his narration of the events of the year 13 AH (634-635) with the Battle of Yarmouk; it expands on the illness and the subsequent death of Abu Bakr later. This cancels automatically the falsely reconstructed entry of the Wikipedia that dates the event back to 636 CE. Tabari’s two previous units are:
– Those who say Abu Bakr led the pilgrimage
– Those who say Umar led the pilgrimage
It is quite interesting that, in the introductory text for the events of the year 13 AH (before the description of the Battle of Yarmouk), Tabari states clearly that Abu Bakr, after his return from Mecca to Madina (when the hajj was completed), prepared the armies to be sent to Syria. Tabari narrates the developments, based on many different chains of earlier sources. There were many recruits of Yemen, because the Yemenites had recently accepted Islam (630 CE). So, even in these early battles, we cannot speak of ‘Arab armies’, but of Arab and Yemenite armies; the Yemenites are a Semitic nation, but as different from the Arabs as the Jews are from the Aramaeans, and pre-Islamic Yemenite languages and writings were very different from Arabic.
At this point, one has to point out that, before and after the death of prophet Muhammad (632), the early Islamic state in Hejaz, Yemen, Oman and the desert was in a tumultuous situation and incessant rebellions were exploding every now and then here and there, which means that the Islamic army units were in continuous readiness. However, despite this fact, the preparations for the dispatch of the army to the southern confines of Palestine and Syria, as narrated by Tabari, seem to have been rudimentary. In other words, I want to state that, for an event of so cataclysmic importance, the preparations were minimal.
This can only mean one thing: there were ongoing communications and coordination with Aramaeans based in Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia as regards a) attrition activities that they would possibly undertake against the Eastern Roman armies, b) defection of Aramaean soldiers from the Eastern Roman armies, and c) public opinion preparation for the forthcoming arrival of the Islamic armies and for the acceptance of the early Islamic faith (which was not what people think today that Islam is). And these developments (in Syria, and not in Hejaz) are exactly what made the difference, irrespective of the battle outcome. Otherwise, an early Islamic victory and invasion could be met with local population resistance and then the dispatch of another imperial army from Constantinople or Cappadocia would demolish once forever the initial state structure that the Arab and Yemenite armies may have imposed for a year or two in Damascus, Emessa (Homs), Caesarea Maritima, and Jerusalem.
Four separate armies were dispatched from Madina at the same time and each of them took a different road, but when they reached the region of Yarmouk River, they decided to unite, because the Eastern Romans outnumbered them. The same tactic was followed by the Eastern Romans. In some early skirmishes a Muslim force under Khālid ibn Saʿīd was defeated. Tabari states that the two armies encamped at a relatively close distance from one another without fighting for several months.
At that point, Tabari gives the date of Abu Bakr’s death, namely in the middle of the month Jumadah al Akhirah of the Islamic calendar (16 August 634), and specifies that the event took place “ten days before the victory (in the battle of Yarmouk River)”. It is noteworthy that prophet Muhammad’s worst enemy and late convert to Islam Abu Sufyan bin Harb accompanied the army and was appointed as the ‘preacher’ (qass). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q%C4%81%E1%B9%A3%E1%B9%A3
During the description of the battle, Tabari mentions the arrival of the messenger from Madinah, namely the rider who announced the death of Abu Bakr only to Khalid bin Walid, the army leader, keeping it secret from all the fighters for obvious reasons. Tabari narrates also discussions that took place in intervals between Khalid bin Walid and George (Jurjah bin Budhiyah; also mentioned as Jarajis), one of the commanders of the Eastern Roman armies, who finally accepted Islam, performed a brief Islamic prayer (only two prostrations; rak’atayn), and then fought with the Muslims against the Eastern Roman army.
At another point, Tabari mentions an incident between Al-Ashtar (Malik bin al Harith al Nakha’iy, also known as Malik Al-Ashtar; a Yemenite origin Muslim) and ‘a man of the Romans’, who suggested a single combat with any Muslim fighter – a challenge that Al-Ashtar accepted. After the two combatants exchanged many blows, Al-Ashtar said to the ‘Roman’ opponent: “Take that, because I am a youngster from the Iyad tribe”! The ‘Roman’ fighter responded: “May God increase the number of people like you among my people; because, by God, if you were not of my people, I would have supported the Romans (meaning the Eastern Romans), but now I will not help them”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malik_al-Ashtar
The hills around the Yarmouk riverYarmouk RiverMaps and diagrams about historical developments are useless, as they only offer information of one dimension; one grasps the reality as regards the Battle of Yarmouk only when understanding that the outright majority of the local Aramaean populations passionately desired and wished for an Eastern Roman defeat, expecting the Muslim warriors as liberators. This occurred not because these populations believed in the faith preached by prophet Muhammad, but due to their need to use the Muslim armies in order to get rid from the tyrannical Eastern Roman rule. This truth has been systematically obscured by Western historians who came up with cheap propaganda and empty rhetoric, in order to repeat the divisive clichés that are necessary to the criminal colonial regimes of the West.
Incidents like the aforementioned totally change the image that modern scholars have created as distortion of the historical reality. The Islamic army did not actually need to be numerous; the battlefront would not be the most critical location as regards the battle outcome. Even more so, because if the first battle had been lost, the second would have been victorious in any case!
V. The true dimensions of the Battle of Yarmouk and of its outcome
The linguistic affinity between Aramaeans and Arabs was such that we can easily infer that most of the Islamic fighters could easily communicate in the language of a sizeable part of the Eastern Roman army (the Aramaean soldiers recruited from the lands of today’s SE Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine). There is no doubt about the knowledge and use of Syriac Aramaic among Arabs, due to their long professional involvement across the frankincense and spice trade routes. Even more importantly, the well-documented diffusion of Christianity among the Arabs bears automatically witness to their great skills of Syriac Aramaic in terms of reading comprehension, listening comprehension, written composition, and usage. How close to prophet Muhammad may this situation have been? Extremely close!
The cousin of his first wife, a learned man named Warraqah (: lit. ‘paper’) ibn Nawfal was a Christian convert. The religiosity of those days was such that we can safely claim that Khadijah’s cousin was reading every day excerpts from the Peshitta (the Syriac Bible). To all those, who discuss issues pertaining to prophet Muhammad’s education, knowledge and familiarity with Christological disputes, although it is certain that Khadijah’s husband -in young age- traveled repeatedly to territories of the Eastern Roman Empire (where he may have had month-long discussions with monks, theologians and learned merchants), the easiest response would be:
– Already in Mecca, there were Peshitta copies of the Bible, in the small houses of prophet Muhammad’s relatives!
Peshitta manuscripts with miniaturesAramaean Art of the Book
Also many Aramaeans involved in the trade between Yemen and the Mediterranean could communicate in the provincial Hejaz dialect that we now call ‘Quranic Arabic’. Language issues are mentioned in the Quran, and not without reason. In fact, Arabic sounded like a rough and uncouth dialect to the Aramaeans of Damascus or Antioch, two great cities each of which had larger population than the totality of the (Hejaz and desert) Arabs. On the other hand, the lexicographical poverty of pre-Islamic Arabic, if compared to the treasure of Syriac Aramaic (which also contained loans from other languages), was viewed by the Hejaz Arabs as ‘linguistic purity’; this situation led them to the aberration that their dialect was more ‘ancient’ or more ‘original’, whereas in fact it was more ‘isolated’ and more arid than Syriac Aramaic. And this situation is reproduced nowadays when people, who are well versed in the Quranic text (which stays close to the pre-Islamic Arabic’s ‘purity’, although it is far more elaborate), try to read Ibn Sina’s Al-Isharat wa al-Tanbihat; they fail to grasp anything.
The religious-cultural similarity between the Arabs, who had just accepted prophet Muhammad’s preaching, and the Christian Aramaeans (either Nestorian or Miaphysitic/Monophysitic) was even more stupendous. Of course, when it comes to religion, tiny differentiations are known to have been reasons of terrible strives and wars, but in this case, there was a tremendously different issue. The Arabs had already rejected their idolatry and polytheistic concepts in order to adopt a faith that had a great number of common points with both, Nestorian and Miaphysitic / Monophysitic Christianity. In other words, they had made the first step in the direction of Miaphysitic/Monophysitic and Nestorian Christianity, and this was how the Christian Aramaeans viewed them; of course, to some Aramaean monks, the Arabs were perceived as heretic, but still this is far ‘better’ than just ‘heathens’.
The truly negative view of Islam was particular only to Constantinople and to Rome; but this detrimental judgment of Islam had basically imperial and material motives; in other words, Muhammad ‘was’ for the imperial ruling class the Antichrist, because his religious system was effective in seriously and irreversibly damaging their imperial posture, material benefits, and ecumenical appeal. Suddenly, the major challenges of 300 years of Christian imperial rule (namely Arius, Eutyches and Nestorius) that the Constantinopolitan theologians had managed to overcome appeared to be extremely weak and minor compared with the latest: Muhammad.
The difference was simple; the earlier challenges (namely Arius, Eutyches and Nestorius) emanated from within the Roman Empire, and the Constantinopolitan elite proved to be able to squelch them, oppressing and persecuting leaders and followers of the ‘heresies’. But Muhammad emanated from outside the Roman Empire. He early managed to secure an independent basis for his faith, and thence he attacked the Eastern Roman provinces that were inhabited by populations, which overwhelmingly rejected the Constantinopolitan doctrine; it was only normal for these populations to massively opt for the standard bearers of the new faith.
In fact, they perceived the arrival of the Muslim armies as liberation from the Roman – Constantinopolitan tyranny. The Anti-Muhammadan rhetoric of the Medieval Latin sources is merely an evil propaganda of the losers; the reality is simple: either they accepted Islam or remained Monophysitic, Nestorian, Gnostic or Manichaean, the Aramaeans, who constituted the quasi-totality of the local populations in Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and the southern coastland of the Persian Gulf, did not rebel against the rule of the Caliphate. And the Arab rulers accepted the importance of the lands of the Aramaeans, and that’s why they abandoned their marginal towns and sketchy villages in Hejaz and set up their capitals in the lands of the Aramaeans.
After all, this new doctrine appeared at the time as merely a new Christological dispute and heresy, and its followers were few and originated from lands that had never been historically important and which remained historically unimportant. But the loss for the theological elites of Constantinople and Rome was abysmal; in fact, pretty much like Constantinople was the New Rome, Damascus and Baghdad were meant to be the Final Rome. That is why Arius, Eutyches and Nestorius were never called ‘the Antichrist’, but prophet Muhammad was!
The Umayyad Mosque at Damascus: a masterpiece of Aramaean ArtGrand Mosque of Damascus: the spectacular mosaics in the arcade around the iwan reveal the splendor of the Aramaean Art.
At this point, I terminate the present, first article of the series; in a forthcoming article, I will reveal other critical points explicitly mentioned in the historical sources that modern Western scholars sulphurously disregard, conceal or misinterpret only to advance their historical forgery and intellectual fallacy; in this they are imitated and followed by the disreputable, ignorant and vicious, pseudo-Muslim sheikhs, imams, professors, muftis, qadis and preachers, who have been fabricated and put in place by the English and French colonials in full disruption of the Islamic historical continuity. Yet, these -widely unknown- points help us first achieve a deep and comprehensive understanding of the facts that took place in the 620s-630s and then get the real picture of the entire historical process without the smokescreen of today’s misplaced version of historiography.
In fact, what most people believe today as History of Islamic Conquests and Early Islamic History is entirely false. It is a fairy tale that turns a) most of the Westerners into absurd Muhammad-haters and Islam-deniers and b) most of the Muslims into useful-idiots and naïve believers of a pseudo-Islamic theological doctrine that has nothing in common with the religion preached by prophet Muhammad and ever since advocated by hadhrat Ali and his descendants. It is not a matter of Westerners accepting Islam and Muslims accepting Christianity as faith, but as historical process. Islam was not preached by prophet Muhammad in order to be imposed worldwide. That’s why both groups need to first interpret Emperor Heraclius’ evident reluctance to fight against the Islamic armies. This was the only man in the world who, before meeting with prophet Muhammad’s personal envoy Dahyah al Kalbi, encountered his worst enemy.
Brussels Terror Attack: Due to Western Ignorance of the Barbaric Darkness of Ibn Taimiya’s theological system – Part III
By Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
In two earlier articles published under the titles “Brussels Terror Attack: Due to Western Misperceptions – Part I” (https://megalommatiscomments.wordpress.com/2016/03/23/brussels-terror-attack-due-to-western-misperceptions-part-i/) and “Brussels Terror Attack: Due to Western Ignorance of Evil Theological Systems – Part II” (https://megalommatiscomments.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/brussels-terror-attack-due-to-western-ignorance-of-evil-theological-systems-part-ii/), I highlighted the Western ignorance of the Muslim World and more specifically of the fact that the extremist way of life, mindset and belief are approved and shared by many hundreds of millions of Muslims in countries other than the evil cradle of Salafism / Wahhabism, i.e. Saudi Arabia; I called that dimension of Western misperception of the Islamic World ‘sociopolitical’. Then, I proceeded through a historical-religious analysis, emphasizing the putrefaction process caused to the Islamic religion by the different Islamic theological systems, and I established a link between the three successive layers of alteration caused by the theological systems of Ahmed ibn Hanbal, Ahmed ibn Taimiyah, and Muhammad ibn Abdulwahhab. In the present article, I will expand further on the nefarious impact that the barbarism of Ibn Taimiyah had on Islam as religion, spirituality, culture, and civilization.
As I described in the previous article, “Ahmed ibn Taimiya was the ugly and perverse child of his time“, meaning the period of the Crusades and the Mongol invasions that resulted in the destruction of Baghdad. In fact, his theological system was an introverted reductionism that triggered an overwhelming indifference for, and an abysmal hatred of, the “other”. These characteristics were intensified by ibn Taimiya’s followers who instructed Muslims to limit themselves to basics and to abstain from any contact with, or study of, the “other”.
WHY TROUBLES GO DEEPER THAN MERE WAHHABISM: THE EVILNESS OF IBN TAIMIYA’S THEOLOGICAL BARBARISM
Of course, after the year 1291 (Fall of Acre), when the last Crusader was out of the Orient, the Islamic World recovered from the Crusades and the Mongol invasions, and continued to expand in terms of imperial power, advance in terms of civilization, and prosper in terms of economic recovery and wealth accumulation. But there were two main negative points that survived for some centuries, gradually spread across the entire Muslim World, and finally prevailed:
A – The introversion gained momentum among the populations, irrespective of the success of the armies and the caliphs. It was combined with a genuinely un-Islamic reductionism (I mean of course ontological reductionism) as Ibn Taimiya followers – in order to control the masses – diffused the pathetic opinion that Philosophy, Arts, Letters and Sciences are useless, because “only few things are necessary for man to gain the ticket to the Paradise”: byhating and ignoring the “other” (which is a non-Islamic attitude and stance of life) and by preaching and diffusing this mindset, attitude and behavior, the followers of Ibn Taimiya addressed the fears, the sorrow, and the horror generated among the Muslims because of the Crusaders and the Mongols.
B – The bullying exercised by the masses that followed the theologians, who accepted Ibn Taimiya’s heretic theological system, started having an impact in the long run and progressively all the scholars, scientists, artists, architects, mystics, and philosophers came under attack, got dispersed, and disappeared.
For the first time, around the years 1350-1400, within Islam was formeda driving force which was pushing toward ignorance, darkness, hatred and barbarism.
It is obvious that such evil force could not exist without targets. Even worse, the targets had to be close. Shia Muslims and Oriental Christians were the first to be targeted. Then, it was the turn of the mystics, the Sufis, the philosophers, the erudite scholars, the astronomers, the chemists, the architects, the poets, the intellectuals, and the artists.
An inherent element of the evilness of Ibn Taimiya’s system is uniformity; the hatred of the other – in and by itself – eliminates every chance for diversity. At the social level, this situation means that you cannot differ, because you then become the “other”, and you get subsequently targeted. This means that you cannot carry out experiments in Chemistry, you cannot make sidereal observations in the Observatory, you cannot meditate, and you cannot explore or study anything, because “only few things are necessary for man to gain the ticket to the Paradise” and because the quasi-totality of the population, who are ignorant and uneducated, are not involved in these activities. This means that, by being a genuine scholar, polymath, mystic, explorer, erudite intellectual, philosopher, scientist, architect, artist or author, you differ, you automatically become the “other”, and consequently you are immediately taken as target.
During those centuries many Muslim scholars, polymaths, mystics, explorers, erudite intellectuals, philosophers, scientists, architects, artists or authors were persecuted – not by the power of the Sultan and Caliph but – by the average people at the very local, social level; they were forced to stop their scientific, philosophical, artistic or spiritual activities, they were obliged to move to other countries, and they were killed. And a systematic disregard for the Islamic Spiritual, Intellectual, Academic and Scientific Heritage was imposed, so that average Muslims forget the Golden Era of Islam, i.e. the greatness that the filthy and evil minds of ibn Hanbal and ibn Taimiya were virtually unable to ever reach.
Last, in cases of illustrious names of the foremost Islamic scholars of the Golden Era of Islam, the likes of al Farabi (Alpharabius), Muhyiddin ibn Arabi, ibn Sina (Avicenna), Nasir al Din al Tusi, ibn Rushd (Averroes), Al Ghazali, and others, they were all systematically, uninterruptedly and viciously denigrated, defamed and execrated by the uneducated, uncultured and sullen followers of the tenebrous theology of ibn Taimiya. This continues down to our times.
As regards ibn Taimiya, he gave the evil example; speaking against al Ghazali, he said: “This Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, despite his brilliance, his devotion to Allah, his knowledge of kalam and philosophy, his asceticism and spiritual practices and his Sufism, ended up in a state of confusion and resorted to the path of those who claim to find out things through dreams and spiritual methods” (Majmu’ al-Fatawa, vol. 4, p.71).
It goes without saying that this force destroyed the Islamic Civilization, driving the Muslim World to a bestial level of total insignificance around the years 1600-1700. For reasons which rather pertain to foreign affairs, not one caliph / sultan decided to oppose openly and drastically the force of darkness. We refer mainly to the Ottoman times now, because Sunni Islam in Europe, Asia, and Africa was multi-divided in the period 1300-1500, until Selim I (Yavuz Sultan Selim, the ‘stern’ one) reinstated the Caliphate in its magnitude. When the expanded Ottoman Empire was engaged in ferocious battles against Spain in Western Mediterranean, against Austria-Hungary in Central Europe, against Abyssinia in the Horn of Africa, and occasionally against Iran (and later Russia) in the East, it would be impossible for a Caliph (the Sultan) to trigger a deep social chasm by arresting the followers of the vicious, Satanic theological system of Ahmed ibn Taimiya and by declaring an open war against them. Sultans, in their majority, tried to basically rule against the dark ideas of these ignorant people, without turning openly against them.
Through the above, one can conclude that a great number of populations that traditionally belonged to and followed the Shaffi’i, Hanafi and Maliki schools of jurisprudence started being gravely affected and genuinely altered because of the socially forced diffusion of the villainous system of Ahmed ibn Taimiya, a Hanbali.
In a way, viewed through a historical perspective, the diffusion of that system across 96-98% of all the Muslims’ territories (the rest 2-4% representing the Arabian Desert) represents a late and indirect form of Hanbalization of the Shaffi’i, Hanafi and Maliki schools of jurisprudence.
In fact, this process never stopped; it was only spread over and over.
However, in the whole process, there is particularly critical moment, a date that can be taken as the turning point in the down spiral, from Civilization to Barbarism within Islam. This can be safely and accurately determined; it is 1580. Why this date is so important and what happened then in Istanbul are essential for the entire world to know, because today’s tragic events and terror attacks are only a mere reproduction of that ominous day.
Ancient Medes, their Precarious Empire, and the Historical Truth
Few remember today the Ancient Medes, one of the Iranian nations that rose to prominence in the Ancient Orient when, making an alliance with the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, managed to eliminate the few remaining Assyrian garrisons from the abandoned heartland of the Assyrian Empire and, with his Babylonian ally, divide the greatest empire that had grown in the then 2500 years old History of the Mankind. The Median Empire flourished under king Cyaxares (625 – 585 BCE), known as Umakishtar to Assyrians and Babylonians and as Uvak-shatra to Medes and Persians; today, his name in English is derived from the Ancient Greek deformation of the Assyrian-Babylonian name.
Modern maps reflecting political needs of the colonial powers are the result of the forgery of Freemasonic and Zionist Orientalists, who are payed (: bribed) to write what is convenient for those who spread animosity, enmity, fratricidal wars, and bloody conflicts; that’s why these maps show a huge empire of Media stretching from today’s Central Turkey to …. Kyrgyzstan ( ! ). These maps are entirely false. Media was smaller than Babylonia. It certainly spanned from Central Turkey to Central Iran, but neither Fars (today’s Iran’s south) nor Khorasan (today’s Iran’s northeast) were controlled by Cyaxares – let alone territories further to the east.
Map forgery carried out to portray the Median Empire more than double of what its was in historical reality
Made by paranoid, hysterical and heinous pseudo-Christians, Zionists and Freemasons – who quite shamefully revile personally, and fill their sick hearts with great hatred against, the illustrious Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar who turned the tiny and worthless state of Judah to ashes, transporting its entire population captive to Babylonia -, these fake maps only help these pseudo-Christians implement their odium by dramatically reducing the demarcated Babylonian borderlines as much as possible ( !! ). It sounds childish and sick, but it is true; these forgers of Ancient Oriental History do therefore their ingenious best to deliver a minimalistic view of Babylonia stretching only between today’s southern Iraq and Palestine. That’s absolutely false and totally ridiculous.
The last (and weakest) Babylonian king Nabonidus’ second palace was located nowhere else than in Tayma, an oasis not far from Yathribu, which is the Assyrian-Babylonian name of Yathrib, the pre-Islamic name of Medina. In fact, it was not a matter of the last Babylonian King. For almost two centuries before Nabonidus, the successive Assyrian Sargonid Emperors and Babylonian Nabonid Kings controlled the northern half of the Arabian Peninsula and received tribute from the vassal Yemenite states of the peninsula’s southern confines.
This is a brief excerpt from a scholarly, albeit summarizing, presentation of the archaeological evidence in Aramaic (administrative language of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom) that was unearthed in the area:
“Aramaic was probably introduced into North Arabia as an official written language by the last king of Babylon, Nabonidus. In 553 BC, he conquered Taymāʾ, Dadan (modern al-ʿUlā), Yathrib (modern Medina) and three other oases on the frankincense route and stayed at Taymāʾ for 10 years. Since Imperial (or Official) Aramaic was the administrative language of the Neo-Babylonian empire, it would almost certainly have been used by Nabonidus’ officials in Taymāʾ, though we know that some of them could also write in Taymanitic, and some fragmentary cuneiform inscriptions from this period have also been found in the excavations. After Nabonidus returned to Babylon in 543 BC, it appears that Imperial Aramaic remained one of the written languages at Taymāʾ and seems gradually to have displaced Taymanitic”. (from: OCIANA – Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia / http://krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/ociana/index.php/home/155-english/home/aramaic-scripts-of-north-arabia/355-the-aramaic-scripts-of-north-arabia).
To continue about Cyaxares, we know quite well that his capital was located at Ecbatana (Hangmatana in Old Achaemenid Persian), which is today’s Hamadan (NW Iran), and that the Median capital was protected by seven concentric walls. However, the Medes were a very small people, and the fact that they controlled an already large (for their capacities) territory did not bode well for the future of the newly risen kingdom. Their homeland constituted a minimal portion of the territory they controlled, and north of Media was located Atropatene (Azerbaijan) that stretched from the Middle Zagros Mountains to Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. With a multitude of nations under their control in Anatolia (today’s Turkey) in the west and with a rising strong Persian kingdom in the southeast of their country, the Medes could not last long due to the total lack of homogeneity in their territory, and to the weakness of their traditions. When Cyaxares died fighting against Lydia in the west, it became clear that the days of Media were numbered.
Ganj-e Nameh inscriptions from Hamadan (Ecbatana) in Old Achaemenid Persian, dating back from the reigns of Darius and Xerxes – not the earlier Median times
Hamadan – 16th c. map (Matrakçı Nasuh)
And truly, few decades later, Cyaxares’ granddaughter Mandane’s son, the Persian King Kurosh (Cyrus) – thanks to the mixed marriage of his father – united once forever Media and Persia (550 BCE), only to subsequently add other Iranian plateau territories (through suppression of minor rulers), Eastern Anatolia (already a Median territory), the kingdom of Lydia (Western Anatolia), and more importantly, Babylonia itself in 539 BCE. There is an enormous literature available in different ancient sources (Babylonian, Old Achaemenid Persian, Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew) about Cyrus whereby historical truth is perplexedly intertwined with legends, involving a great deal of eulogy and mythologizing. But the Median Empire’s only posterior memory is to be retraced in the Achaemenid Persian Empire of Iran. The Ancient Greeks may have called their wars with the Iranian Empire (which are today conventionally called ‘the Greco-Persian Wars’) ‘τά Μηδικά’ (the Median affairs), but in reality, there were only few thousands of Medes fighting in South Balkan lands in the early 5th c. BCE.
There has not been found even one inscription in Median language thus far, and it is quite possible that the mother tongue of king Cyaxares was actually never written. The only pre-Achaemenid inscription unearthed thus far is written in Assyrian-Babylonian cuneiform, which is quite normal because the western half of Iran was integral part of the Sargonid Empire (722 – 609 BCE) at least until the end of Ashurbanipal’s reign (669 – 625). What is reconstructed by modern linguists, epigraphists, philologists and historians as Median language is just a list of unusual occurrences in Old Achaemenid Persian inscriptions that are considered loanwords from the Median.
This is the brief diagram of the historical reality as known to us through an objective, neutral, and unbiased reconstruction of the Antiquity on the basis of philological and archaeological evidence.
Ancient Medes: totally Unrelated to Different Modern Nations that have been criminally Baptized as ‘Kurds’
Now from this point up to making of Cyaxares the …. ancestor of many – different from one another – nations that live today from Zagros Mountains (in the borders between Iran and Iraq) to the eastern plains of Syria to the Antitaurus Mountains (SE Turkey) there is as much distance as between the serious and the ridiculous.
The vicious plan providing for a state named ‘Kurdistan’ was conceived by French, English and American Orientalists, and other Freemasonic agents, politicians and diplomats, and the entire preparation has lasted decades. In the process, for the fake nation, a fake historicity was sought after, and the result ended with the usurpation of the Median past and heritage, which was conveniently and suitably attributed to the past-less ‘Kurds’, who certainly cannot have one common past and heritage, because they are not one nation but many.
Even worse, all these different modern nations (Kurmanji, Zaza, Sorani, Gorani, Hawrami, Faili, Yazidi, Ahl-e Haq to name only the major ethno-religious groups among those who are fallaciously named ‘Kurds’) do not have written monuments in their respective languages (which are of course different from one another) that go beyond 500-600 years. Before that level, all these modern nations are known through very few references in other languages (Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Azeri, Armenian, Syriac Aramaic, Georgian), but the scarce textual evidence is not enough to duly reconstruct their past. Earlier mentions in ancient languages (Latin, Ancient Greek, Old Achaemenid Persian, and even Assyrian-Babylonian) are even scarcer and cannot help us understand whether they all refer to the same ethnic group or different.
We cannot conclude whether the Assyrian-Babylonian ‘Zikurtu’, the Old Achaemenid Persian ‘Asagartiya’, the Ancient Greek ‘Kardouhoi’, the Ancient Roman ‘Cyrtii’ and the land known as Gordyene in Ancient Greek and Latin have anything to do
a) with one another, and/or
b) with one of the modern Kurmanji, Zaza, Sorani, Gorani, Hawrami, and Faili – the main ethno-linguistic groups that are mistakenly called altogether as ‘Kurds’.
Attributing to these disparate ethnic elements an almost totally undocumented past (the Median heritage) is purely absurd and testifies only to extremely vicious and even criminal needs of distortion and falsification. In fact, the Medes did not have any posteriority after the end of the Achaemenid Empire and its substitution by the ephemeral empire of Alexander the Great. The term ‘Media’ was shrunken into a merely geographic description; the Medes were certainly assimilated to the Atropatene Azeris and/or to Persians, and no Median cultural identity can be traced in any possible way during the subsequent periods of Seleucid (312 – 63 BCE), Arsacid (250 BCE – 224 CE) and Sassanid (224 – 651 CE) rule.
The Ludicrous Usurpation of the Median Past by bogus-Kurdish Nationalists – agents of the Intelligence Service
The story of this purely childish effort can make every saddened heart explode in laughter. At the very beginning of the falsehood about a hypothetical connection between the extinct ancient nation of the Medes and the non existent nation of the ‘Kurds’, one finds an unfortunate Iraqi Sorani young man who died under mysterious circumstances (most probably assassinated by the English secret services because he knew ‘too much’ of their internships and projects, while failing to keep his mouth closed) and in very young age and after never having studied History. This is Yûnis Reuf (1918–1948), who is widely known through his pen name Dildar (an Indian name that no Sorani Iraqi would have ever imagined to use it for himself because simply no one knew in Iraq this name at that time – and actually before being used as pen name, this name was his code name among the English secret services agents and diplomats who were those who made the name known to his silly bearer). Yûnis Reuf was a naive, idealistic, enthusiastic, daydreaming, and rather romantic youngster who failed to identify the criminal minds and the heinous hearts that were hidden behind the smiley faces of the Baghdad-based English gangsters, i.e. all those who befriended him for a while (before poisoning him – which occurred only after they extracted from him what they intended to duly utilize for their ignominious purposes). Born in Koy Sanjaq, near Suleymaniyeh, ‘Dildar’ studied Law in Baghdad, and there he was picked up by the English agents who used to include in their payroll youngsters originating from different ethnic background as tools for their nefarious and evil colonial rule that brought about the destruction that we have attested in the ancient land of Mesopotamia over the past decades.
Qyzqapan (near Sulaymaniyah, North Iraq). The rock-hewn tomb that bears no inscription and cannot therefore be identified may be Median, Persian, Azeri or other. It became however a matter of great speculation when the Soviet Assyriologist Prof. Diakonov suggested that it is probably a royal tomb and that if it is royal it is the tomb of Cyaxares.
During the period he is referred to as imprisoned (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dildar), he was in fact interned, and then he attended various seminars offered to duly selected audience by distinct members of the perfidious and criminal, colonial elite including Max Mallowan, the Assyriologist and archaeologist who happened also to be the husband of Agatha Christie.
During this process of falsehood indoctrination (I should say intoxication), he was told all the irrelevant points of which he made the cornerstones of his misplaced, baseless and futile ‘nationalism’. Ideas of a ‘Kurdish’ past related to the Medes (of whom he had never heard before) were deleteriously instilled into his ignorant mind, while his youthful and innocent enthusiasm was criminally exploited in a way to make him deliver in Sorani poetry what the English wanted the Soranis to be stupid enough to believe.
The rest was easy. ‘Dildar’ composed in Sorani (there is no ‘Kurdish’ language) the silly and heinous pseudo-poem Ey Reqib, and his colonial masters – happy that after 20 years of murderous, illegal presence on Ottoman territory they had in their dirty hands at last a useful document written by a naive, idiotic and therefore easily manipulated local youngster – managed within no time that the ‘poem’ was accepted by their other ‘Kurdish’ stooges as a ‘national anthem’ of the bogus-Kurdish nation that they intended to create. More about the fake anthem of the bogus nation can be read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ey_Req%C3%AEb
Simple philological analysis can prove that the ‘poem’ is not a normal national anthem. National anthems reflect the identity of one nation or the aspiration of one people at a particular moment. In striking contradiction with what a national anthem is or can be, this ‘poem’ defines the supposed nation for which it is written as per their imaginary opponent! Ey Reqib (which is both the title and the first verse) in Sorani means ‘oh enemy’. The pathetic verses of the pseudo-poem constitute a series of affirmations so viciously Freemasonic of content that certainly not one Sorani, Gorani, Zaza, Kurmanji, etc. would dare accept. Through English treachery, mendacity, and perfidy, people who have nothing in common as ethno-religious groups are made to believe that (as one verse states) “Kurdistan is our religion”. This is a shame and an abomination for every Muslim, Yazidi or Ahl-e Haq (the main religions among all these different nations of which the villainous gangsters of the Freemasonic lodges intend to make one monstrous ‘Kurdish’ fabrication).
In the worthless text, which comprises of just 20 verses, the sentences “Let no one say Kurds are dead, they are living. They live and never shall we lower our flag” are repeated five times, being thus half of the rather short ‘anthem’!
However, in the fourth stanza, it is stated in Sorani that “Ême roley Mîdya u Keyxusrewîn”. This is the first time the word Mîdya is written or said in Sorani, because no local had studied Orientalism and Iranology until that time in order to come across with this ancient nation which is not mentioned in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and Azeri literature – let alone the literature of the indigenous Sorani, Gorani, Zaza, Kurmanji, etc.
It is really cute to notice that the naive boy that composed the worthless verse did not even bother to localize in his native language the previously unknown to him, English name of the ancient kingdom, and so ‘Media’ was merely transliterated into Mîdya without the slightest effort of an eventual localization – Midistan, etc.!
Translated in English, this verse reads: “We are the descendants of Media and Keykhosrow”. However, in the conventionally accepted and diffused, false English translation of the Sorani verse, ‘Media’ is replaced by ‘Medes’. This is an enormous falsification, because ‘the descendents of Media’ can mean in general the heirs of earlier civilizations developed by other nations on the same land, which poses no problem as it can be a normal case of cultural historicity. Quite contrarily to this, the false translation presents today’s bogus-Kurds as the offspring of the Ancient Medes, which is absolutely wrong and absurd.
What is really comical as falsification and, at the same time, demonstrates how fake the whole effort is can be attested in the false translation of the verse’s last word, e.g, the name Keykhosrow (‘Keyxusrewîn’).
Who is Keykhosrow?
Modern Iranian imaginative painting. Departure of Kaykhosrow’s mother and grandmother toward Iran. (Kai Khosrow is seen with the old man in the middle)
Conventionally written in English as Kai Khosrow or Kay Khosrow, the legendary king is attested in Iranian and Azeri literature that goes as back as the 10th c. CE and reflects views over the origins of the Central Asiatic civilization, namely an heroic era of mythical kings, of their deeds of their and exploits, at a historically undefined time, when prevalence, superiority and sovereignty was vindicated by both, Turks and Persians, who – according to the narrative – are in fact the offspring of the same royal family.
Certainly, this heroic king’s name was not invented in the 10th c. CE as it is attested in earlier texts and even in the Avesta. But the Avestan term Kavi Husravah does not mean any legendary king but the ideal, primordial concept of fame. In other words, within different religious-cultural backgrounds the same name takes diverse connotations – Zoroastrian, Zendist, Mazdeist, etc., and the latest connotation is the Islamic Iranian one within which the earlier concept of fame is merely personified as a famous king.
Reading and interpreting epic poems like the famous Shahname by Ferdowsi (10th c. CE) is totally out of the limits of the present article, but here we have to stress the point that there are several different compositions and narratives of the same epic circle and they all reflect varied interpretations, Azeri / Turkic or Persian, of the common, Central Asiatic heritage and past that these nations had recorded to have had. One must add at this point that the epic circle in and by itself demolishes the modern linguists’ long venerated assumption of a division between two distinct ethno-linguistic groups, namely the Indo-European and the Uralo-Altaic (or Turco-Mongolian); however, this is a different topic.
Armies of Iran, led by Key-Khosrow, and of Turan, under the command of Afrasiab. From a miniature included in the Bayasanghori Shâhnâmeh, made in 1430 for Prince Bayasanghor (1399–1433)
On the other hand, one must specify that the consideration of ‘Iran’ as a matter of Persian history, homeland, nation, language, culture and civilization is only the result of Western Orientalist and Iranologist biases. Of course, this forgery was subsequently utilized by Persian nationalists, who turned the Iranian Empire into a nationalist monarchy under the pseudo-dynasty of Pahlavi, but this consists in a typical nationalistic nonsense. Iran is equally Azeri / Turkic and Persian, and the full proof for this is demonstrated by the fact that several Seljuk (Turkish) Sultans were also named Kay Khosrow. In fact, different narratives and diverse interpretations of the same heroic era heritage were equally appropriated by Azeris / Turks and Persians.
A last point that I would like to add to the aforementioned is that it is not only for the name Kay Khosrow that a) the aforementioned set of the existing different connotations as per diverse religious context and b) the Azeri / Turkish – Persian polarization can be encountered. Other names, like Kay Kaus, Kay Qubad, etc. present respective parallels at both levels, a and b – each involving several different connotations (Zoroastrian, Zendist, Mazdeist, etc.) and the said polarization.
– What is the relation that Kay Khosrow may have with the Soranis and the other nations that the Western colonial forgers regroup under the name of ‘Kurds’?
– Ethnically – racially none, but culturally great!
The mention of Kay Khosrow in the few childish verses composed by ‘Dildar’ to be selected by the English colonials, and by their idiotic pseudo-‘Kurdish’ stooges, as ‘Kurdish’ national anthem (Ey Reqib) reveals only the following points:
there was a tremendous cultural impact, exercised on two axes, namely a) Seljuk – Ottoman (Turkish) over the Kurmanji and the Zaza and b) Timurid – Safavid – Afhar – Zend – Qajar (Iranian, so partly Persian and partly Azeri / Turkish) over the Sorani and the Gorani
there was a sheer identification of the diverse small nations (that today’s colonials attempt to portray them as one and independent ‘Kurdish’ nation) with the common Turkish – Azeri – Iranian historical and mythical national background,
there was an evident overwhelming appropriation of Turkish – Azeri – Iranian concepts, values and virtues, ideals, prototypes and paradigms for the social-behavioral and cultural life’s needs of these marginal mountainous nations that did not have a significant heritage of their own, and
Turkish – Azeri – Iranian concepts, values and virtues, ideals, prototypes and paradigms prevailed even in the minds of those selected in Iraq by the English colonials as their own tools as recently as the middle of the 20th c.
Now, it is high time for me to unveil why I started my article by expanding briefly on Cyaxares, the only significant king of the Ancient Medes. The reason is that the UK-US bribed, fake Kurdish gangsters, who – in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran – promote the fake Kurdish nationalism and demand an independent Kurdistan, have been ‘taught’ by their secret Western masters to posture as the descendents of Cyaxares!
– What is their proof?
The false English translation of the verse of the fake national anthem Ey Reqîb that refers to Kay Khosrow!
The Sorani verse “Ême roley Mîdya u Keyxusrewîn” was falsely translated in English as “We are the descendants of the Medes and Cyaxares” (see Wikipedia link above), and this is presented by the idiotic thugs of the fake Kurdish nationalism, the likes of Talabani and Barzani, as the ‘proof’ of their supposedly Median ancestry.
Why do I specify that these idiotic thugs and gangsters have been taught all this fallacious nonsense by their Freemasonic / Zionist masters?
Simply because not one Sorani or Kurmanji specialized in Old Achaemenid Persian (cuneiform), Ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew to have thus direct access to original sources and subsequently form a correct view of the specific historical period to which it is impossible to establish any link for themselves and their resolutely non-Median past.
All the bribed fake Kurdish nationalists repeat therefore the lies and the falsehood that the incestuous Freemasonic tyrants, diplomats and agents of France, England, Holland, Canada, America and Australia and the inhuman beasts of the fake, Anti-Jewish state of Israel order them to say, although it is very well known that all their instructions are false and that ‘Key Khosrow’ cannot possibly be translated as ‘Cyaxares’!
Fake Christians propagating the Anti-Christian, Satanic Falsehood
It would however be wrong to imagine that the pathetic and ignorant fake Kurdish thugs are the only victims to have been misled and deceived through the Satanic poison that the Anti-Christian rulers of the Freemasonic – Zionist tyrannies of the West have systematically and incessantly diffused. There are many millions of Western fake Christians who are equally or even worse victimized. How? By unquestionably accepting the aforementioned falsehood as truth and by trying to adjust it to their evil ministries and childish teachings.
Scores of ‘pastors’, ‘ministers’ and other ignorant commentators – of all sorts of heretical backgrounds involving Protestant, Evangelical, Baptist, Anabaptist, Pentecostal, Methodist and other villainous deviations – ‘inform’ their supposedly Christian, but genuinely unsuspicious, naive and gullible readership about the plans of their criminal and Satanic elites that these pseudo-Christian ‘ministers’ serve by deceitfully presenting these plans as godly of origin (which is a foremost sin) and as supposedly prophesied across their misinterpreted Bibles!
Their followers, all those who accept the filthy scam, are being used by the ruling Freemasonic – Zionist, Satanic elites of America, France, England and their allies. By accepting this falsehood, sizable Christian populations are demotivated from scrupulously examining the Christian or Anti-Christian character of their rulers’ deeds, plans and policies and thus remain inactivated, pathetic and lethargic, which in turn eliminates obstacles and reactions from the path of their rulers towards establishing a global Satanic state of falsehood and distortion.
Even worse, the devilish ‘pastors’ and ‘ministers’, by identifying the Satanic policies and deeds of the Western rulers with supposedly Biblical prophecies and with the will of God, force their followers into slavery and submission to Satan, as they – by rejecting the historical truth and deeply plunging into ignorance – directly oppose Jesus’ order “Γνώσεσθε τὴν ἀλήθειαν, καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς” (Vulgata: “et cognoscetis veritatem et veritas liberabit vos” / English: And shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free – from John 8:32).
You probably don’t know Jack Kelley; you certainly don’t miss much. This ignorant and uneducated person found it necessary to compose a nonsensical article under title ‘The Return of the Medes’ (http://gracethrufaith.com/end-times-prophecy/the-return-of-the-medes/). The article starts with a fake map of an otherwise non existent country, ‘Kurdistan’. Not even in their wildest dreams did the fake Kurdish thugs and gangsters (who are closely guided controlled by the Satanic organizations CIA and the Mossad) dare to imagine that such a big bone would be thrown to them! Fake, non-existent Kurdistan is depicted in extraordinary dimensions on this forged map in order to look as vast as the precarious Median Empire!
Map forgery included in the ridiculous, false article published by the False Prophet Jack Kelley
Do you know what exactly the Anti-Christian gangster Jack Kelley does by suggesting the formation of a fake this big?
He heralds the butchery of the Oriental Christians of Urumiyeh, Salmas, Miandoab and other locations in Iran who are presented as forthcoming subjects of the fake Kurdish state, since all these cities and the surrounding territories of the Iranian provinces of West and East Azerbaijan have been included in the fictional state that Jack Kelley’s criminal masters want to set up. To serve his Satanic masters, the inhuman beasts of the CIA and the Mossad, this false preacher does not give a damn about the fate of the true Christians – which in and by itself is the best proof that he is a Satanist impersonating the Christian priest. I can already see Aramaean Christian blood in Jack Kelley’s hands because, if such an evil state is formed, the Christians will be the first targeted by the fake Kurdish nationalists and their lawless militias.
This silly person, who never attended the first hour of a first year course in History of Ancient Iran, repeats the hereby refuted falsehood of the Median ancestry of the non-existent Kurdish nation (“The Kurds are the modern descendants of the Medes”) in his trashy text, which is full of stupid mistakes, nonsensical assumptions, and deliberate distortions. In fact, every line of his text is full of mistakes.
Example: “The Medes, an Indo-European people who were joined by the Persians in their successful effort to overthrow Babylon and establish themselves as a world power in the 6th century BC”!
This pathetic and dangerous liar ignores that the Medes were not joined by the Persians in any effort against Babylon, simply because the Persians merged with Media by means of mixed royal marriage of Cyrus’ father, and that the unification of the two kingdoms (Media and Persia) took place more than a decade before Iran attacked Babylonia.
Why does this ludicrous Kelley man want to desperately include the Medes in the invasion of Babylonia which was undertaken exclusively by the Persians under Cyrus? The reason is simple. The Western pseudo-Christians’ and Satanists’ ‘art’ of impressing innocent and naive Western Christian readership involves the establishment of parallels between a misinterpreted past and a falsely prophesied future. Scores of villainous gangsters, who incessantly, purposefully and mercilessly kill Christians’ souls – through lies, systematic falsehood, and multilevel deception – insist on ‘inventing’ prophetic parallels in past events and teach their otherwise unsophisticated audiences that what happened in the past was an archetypal form of crucial events that ‘will’ happen at the End of Times. In fact, they commit a double forgery; they misinterpret several excerpts from prophetic – apocalyptic texts, then they deliberately falsify the past events as per their needs, and at the end, they establish the parallelism, thus uttering their bogus-prophecies!
Concerning the ludicrous assumption of a double Median-Kurdish (past and future) Anti-Babylonian action, Jack Kelley’s paranoid forgery involves the following 3-step argumentation and the ensuing conclusion:
1. The Medes overthrew Babylonia (which is proven wrong).
2. The Medes are the ancestors of the ‘Kurds’ (which is proven wrong).
3. So, the ‘Kurds’ will overthrow Babylonia at the End of Time.
– That’s why the West should help ‘Kurds’ setup their state, so that they later overthrow …. Babylonia (that does not exist anymore, but the idiotic author makes a laughable effort to resuscitate it!!).
What does Jack Kelley does not say?
He does not confess that he intends to write another ‘article’ in the future, and similarly ‘prove’ to his unfortunate readership that today’s ‘Babylonia’ is Islam or Turkey or Saudi Arabia and that the ‘allegorical’ notion of the Biblical term has been meanwhile ( ! ? ) transferred to Istanbul, Medina, Mecca or any other place whereby his shadowy masters and payers may order him to locate it!!
So, unrelated to the Medes and non-existent as one nation, the fake Kurds are ‘prophesied’ by this vicious liar to become “God’s agency for the never before fulfilled judgment against Babylon at the End of the Age”. And although ‘Babylon’ is a metaphor within Biblical and Christian prophetic texts (so, totally unrelated to any possible ‘state’, past or future), the miserable and idiotic liar Jack Kelley tries to identify it with the location of the ancient Mesopotamian city!!
This is a brief part of his toxic text: “Those who say the restoration of Babylon will require billions of dollars and many years have not considered that its preparation has been under way for several years now. For example, if you take a close look at the dimensions and capabilities of the US embassy in Baghdad you will see how easily it could be converted into a world governmental headquarters. With a compound covering 104 acres, it is the largest and most expensive embassy in the world, and is nearly as large as Vatican City. Babylon is only about an hour away by car.
In addition, one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces sits on a hill overlooking ancient Babylon and has been completely restored as a hotel and tourist destination. It could easily house the anti-Christ and his entourage. And there are several large military installations nearby as well. In short, preparing Babylon to become the capitol of the world won’t take anywhere near as long as most people think. And remember, this is Satan’s city on Earth”.
Do you want to know how it will all end?
False Prophet Jack Kelley has it ready for you in his McDonald’s style ‘prophecy’: “Through the Kurds, the Medes have stepped out of history and onto the world stage once again, and another player in the End Times Scenario is taking its place. One day soon, the King of the Medes will again lead a vast army against Babylon, and this time her destruction will be complete, and the Lord’s words will be fulfilled”. Absolute nonsense and deliberate forgery for which Jack Kelley will be deservedly thrown in the bottomless pit.
So, now you understand that, when you read in Matthew 24:4 “Βλέπετε μή τις ὑμᾶς πλανήσῃ” (Vulgata: “videte ne seducamini ” – English: See that no one mislead you), you know that Christians have already been ordered to reject the vicious fallacy of Jack Kelley.
Where does Jack Kelley’s mistake lie?
His reading of the Biblical and Christian texts is very superficial, schematic, immoralist and materialistic. He views these texts, which are above all reflecting moral standards and principles, eternal values and virtues, as simple mechanical tools able to be adjusted to his dirty heart’s vicious plans and desires that are all materialistic of nature. There is no spirituality and there is no morality in the Biblical texts in the way he reads them. I will terminate my article with an example. His worthless text starts with a Biblical excerpt referring to the Ancient Medes (the true ones, who are unrelated to today’s fake Kurds).
This is the Biblical text’s English translation that he has chosen: “See, I will stir up against them the Medes, who do not care for silver and have no delight in gold. Their bows will strike down the young men; they will have no mercy on infants nor will they look with compassion on children. Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory of the Babylonians’ pride, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah. She will never be inhabited or lived in through all generations; no Arab will pitch his tent there, no shepherd will rest his flocks there”. (Isaiah 13:17-20)
This text should not be taken as historically wrong because it mentions Medes and not Persians destroying Babylon; the selection of the ethnic names by scribes, translators and copyists in the Antiquity reveals several times a preference for a certain archaic style, and one has to take into consideration that the Septuagint (the 72 scholars), who translated from Biblical Hebrew to Ancient Greek the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), delivered their work to Pharaoh Ptolemy II in Alexandria 250 years after the Persian invasion of Babylonia (539 BCE). Even more so because the Achaemenid Empire of Cyrus had already ceased to exist in their time, following the conquests of Alexander the Great that took place at least 50 years before the Jewish scholars traveled to the Mediterranean city where they worked on this project in a royal facility made available to them at the island of Pharos.
However, the first sentence of the text is a key for us to understand the moral standards involved in Hebrew god’s decision to use a nation against another as chastisement. The Medes, as per the text, “do not care for silver and have no delight in gold”. This sets a very specific contextualization of how things like that can happen. The Medes are described as fully disinterested in materialistic goods, because even the two most precious metals of those days did not attract their attention.
This irrevocably concludes the case of the corrupt mind and worthless text of the False Prophet Jack Kelley. Even if today’s fake nation of the so-called ‘Kurds’ had been a true nation (and not a collective appellation of many different nations that evil colonial interests want to put together in the next ‘fratricidal’ scheme), even if today’s ‘Kurds’ as a hypothetically one nation had been the latest offspring of the Ancient nation of the Medes (which is certainly not the case), today’s ‘Kurds’ – in order to be eventually used again by the Hebrew god for the role that the ignorant author pretends that they will play – would have obligatorily reflected the same moral principles, concepts, values and virtues as those attributed by the Biblical text to the Ancient Medes (meant by the Septuagint translators as ‘Persians’).
Anyone who lives in our world knows that the fake Kurdish nationalists and their thuggish leaders, who are the puppets of France, England, America and Israel, are lewd and villainous persons of exclusively materialist interests of the lowest sort. These are the gangsters who killed scores of Iraqi Turkmen in order to ensure some millions of petrodollars for their filthy bank accounts and disreputable pockets. These are the inhuman beasts who can let others (particularly the Christian Aramaeans) die if this is the way their Satanic masters order them to act (they did so in Mosul where they had the time to prepare for battle when they first got the news of the ISIS plan – but their CIA / Mossad masters ordered them to abstain from any involvement). These are the masters of corruption, perversion, and lawlessness; they sell drugs wherever they settle and they manage their illegal business of human trafficking which has marked an extraordinary growth over the past 11 years. They feel no moral compunction to perform the most monstrous deeds for a handful of dollars. Only a False Prophet would find in them the tool of his god, but this lower god’s name would be Satan. And the False Messiah that a False Prophet like Jack Kelley expects is only the Antichrist (Masih Dajjal) and none else.
The very bad news for America’s fake Christians and False Prophets is that a genuine interpretation of sacred texts reflecting moral values cannot be undertaken by people who find it normal to live in a genocidal country that has systematically and mercilessly persecuted the indigenous population of the occupied territories for more than two centuries in the most abominable manner.
Truth and Faith do not permit a country to have Wall Street or Federal Reserve. If there are true Christians in America, their only possible target is the immediate rejection of the Satanic tyranny that has been imposed on them and on their forefathers since Day 1 the cursed Freemasonic – Zionist state was incepted.
Refutation of Prof. Mark Juergensmeyer’s article ‘Is ISIS Islamic?’
This is the Caliphate that France, England and America did not want.
And this is the ‘Caliphate’ that France, England and America wanted.
This is the Caliphate that France, England and America did not want.
And this is the ‘Caliphate’ that France, England and America wanted.
This is the Caliphate that France, England and America did not want.
And this is the ‘Caliphate’ that France, England and America wanted.
In a previous article under title ‘Ottoman Empire, Fake ‘Middle East’, the Pseudo-Christians of the West, and the Forthcoming Tribulation’ (https://megalommatiscomments.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/ottoman-empire-fake-middle-east-the-pseudo-christians-of-the-west-and-the-forthcoming-tribulation/), I analyzed why the Western Christians’ stance towards their governments’ policies against the Ottoman Empire and its detached provinces (the technical entities of the so-called ‘Middle East’) is very wrong, definitely immoral, and in total contradiction with the Christian principles, values and virtues. I concluded that a great number of nominal Christians, who approved of the evil policies and deeds of the Western governments, are in reality pseudo-Christians irrespective of what they may think they are.
In a world engulfed in the worst crisis of identity of all times, it is only normal that doubts are raised as regards the identity of the ‘other.’ Only yesterday, Prof. Mark Juergensmeyer, who specializes in ‘global religion’ – a non-existent entity – questioned in an article the identity of ISIS (Is ISIS Islamic? / http://www.theglobalist.com/is-isis-islamic/).
Quite interestingly, under the title, a motto gives the summarizing idea of the article (“Every religion has its dark sides, but the conflict is about politics.”). This is absolutely irrelevant; dark sides in a religion are what you don’t know of that religion. They don’t exist by themselves. No religion has ever had any dark side whatsoever. And all conflicts about politics cannot be deprived of their own religious dimension, because everything in a human society hinges on the spiritual belief or disbelief. Atheists are religious too; they are slaves of Satan either they understand it or not. Their theory and their rejection of God is a form of Satanic faith.
When one starts with so many preconceived ideas as the global religion theoretician Prof. Mark Juergensmeyer, his approach is doomed to fail, but this does not originate from the lack of knowledge of the ‘other side’. And Prof. Mark Juergensmeyer’s main problem is not his lack of insightful knowledge about both, the Islamic world and ISIS itself. The article reveals a serious problem of Christian identity and for this reason I intended to comment on it. I think that my comments will be useful to both, Christians and Muslims.
The author of the article tries to implement the following simplistic logic: if we hold the Ku Klux Klan in the US and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda as ‘Christian’, then we can consider ISIS as ‘Islamic’. This sort of approach does not clarify anything, and rather creates further confusion among both, Christians and Muslims. Generally speaking, I understand and accept the approach through analogy, but to implement this method in your text, you’ve got to select very firm examples. Yes, it is correct to say ‘if we hold the New and the Old Testament as holy books for the Christians, then we can consider the Quran as holy book for Muslims’. Beyond the limit of such comparisons, we can achieve minimal result through analogy and at times lose clarity.
There is always a very serious mistake in every approach that avoids a proper, direct definition and attempts to define something through its opposite. If you want to define Christianity, you cannot possibly be as vague as you are when saying ‘Christianity is something other than / different from Ku Klux Klan’ (or the LRA). Ditto for the Islamic World.
It is really gross to try to define Christianity as the antithesis of what the author calls the LRA ‘a terrible terrorist organization’! Who can expect a religion to possibly be ‘a terrible terrorist organization’? No one!
In addition, there are in Uganda hundreds of thousands if not millions of simple people who, if not terrorized, will have the courage to state that the LRA is NOT a terrorist organization – or if you want not as terrorist as the execrable, racist Ugandan government. And who is authorized to speak about ‘terrorism’? The global mass media? Or the defenders of a non-existent ‘global religion’?
But the term ‘terrorism’ (or ‘terrorist’) is an unhistorical fabrication that was composed only recently as a vicious tool of the world’s most evil, most villainous, and most dictatorial regimes, the likes of America, England and France. It has no credibility, and above all, it is used within political context. Why on Earth a scholar and an academic feels the need to confuse his readers so much as to mention a political term when he talks about religion?
Whatever Christianity has been or has not been or may have been, it is certainly something unrelated to modern political terms; even more so if these terms are recently invented as result of scheming and propaganda and therefore fully rejected by vast populations worldwide.
However, the use of brutal manners in order to achieve power that will later consolidate the survival and the propagation of a faith, a religion, a sect or a secret order-organization is widely attested in almost every religion, culture, nation and period.
There are many historical examples in this regard. The Ismailiyah Order of the Shia Muslims, who were also called Hashashin (because their leader, the famous ‘Elder of the Mountain’ administered the proper dose of hashish to his disciples in order to duly instrumentalize and effectively utilize them for his purposes) and were known to Marco Polo (he called them Assassins and this is how this word was first used in European languages), used to send members (their secret knights) to cross incredibly long distances to arrive where their target (a ruler, an military leader, an imam or other) lived and, by treacherously approaching, assassinate them. Should we call them ‘terrorists’? This would be utterly ridiculous.
It is actually always pathetic and ludicrous to project one period’s / civilization’s / culture’s measures, values and criteria onto other periods, civilizations and cultures. One cannot evaluate others through use of one’s own criteria; every civilization, culture, religion, and historical period is an independent entity that no scholar can transform as per his theoretical needs in any way. The reason for this maxim is simple; by slightly transforming (through improper evaluation involving external criteria) a civilization, culture, religion, and historical period, a scholar only modifies and misinterprets it. This scholar is therefore speaking of a false entity that practically speaking never existed (except in his misinterpretation and imagination); thus, he only confuses his unfortunate readers.
Another example is offered by the Christian Catholic Holy Inquisition. It is undisputed that this Holy Office carried out very brutal policies for long. Should we call it ‘terrorism’? This would also be utterly ludicrous.
As the author is continuously avoiding a proper definition for what is ‘Islamic’ and what is not, the article is characterized by a personal, individualistic approach that is both, irrelevant and confusing. Prof. Mark Juergensmeyer implements again the analogy approach, but this time at the very personal level. He, as a Christian, dissociates himself from the Ugandan LRA and the American Ku Klux Klan, and he therefore postulates that, accordingly, ‘this is the same position most Muslims are in now with regard to ISIS’.
This is very irrelevant because scholars are expected to include personal views and experience in their memoirs at the end of the their lives and not as supposedly convincing evidence in their articles and other publications. This style is very arrogant; in addition, it is very confusing because personal approaches do not constitute proper definitions. The sentence he makes is quiet evident: ‘As a Christian, I feel like they have nothing to do with me or with the Christianity that I know’. The last words reveal the extent of the problem; probably the globalist professor and specialist of the non existent ‘global’ religion ( !! ? !! ) does not know the Holy Inquisition, and consequently we can safely claim that he does not know Christianity well. And this is the problem for him and for all the misled and confused Christians of the West.
Many people have been driven to the impasse of assuming a lot; one of their wrong assumptions is to take today’s fallen Christianity as the true Christianity. Similarly, in the Islamic world, there are many Muslims, who assume that today’s fallen Islam is the true Islam. Both groups fail to understand one another because they primarily fail to understand themselves and accurately specify how far they have gone from their respective religions, sailing adrift in the Sea of Relativism and Faithlessness.
After the preliminary part of the article, its inconsistency turns it to a mere worthless piece. As the title obliges the author to give a definition of ISIS, the ‘global religion’ specialist or rather propagandist Mark Juergensmeyer enters into a series of mistakes while giving to his readers unexplained terms that are absolutely meaningless to the non-specialist.
He says: ‘What makes things even more complicated is that ISIS bases its beliefs and actions on a form of Islamic interpretation called Salafism’.
– Why on Earth is now the Salafist nature of ISIS (which is true and beyond any doubt) a problem?
Let me make my position clear. In many articles, I denounced the Wahhabism (the correct term for Salafism) as a deformation of Islam. But Wahhabism (or if you want Salafism) is nothing new to the Western world’s academia and diplomats.
To paraphrase Prof. Juergensmeyer, before any other institution on Earth, Saudi Arabia – the country that America catastrophically chose as its primary ally in the region before …. 70 years or, to put it otherwise, the country that England disastrously conspired with against the Ottoman Caliphate for more than 100 years before the fall of the Ottoman dynasty and continually ever since – ‘bases its beliefs and actions on a form of Islamic interpretation called Salafism’.
What is Prof. Juergensmeyer talking about?
If Saudi Arabia did not exist, there would never be an ISIS.
What does Prof. Juergensmeyer want?
Does he want ISIS to disappear and Saudi Arabia to survive?
That’s silly.
Because if Saudi Arabia continues existing, even if ISIS is mercilessly exterminated and all its members and fighters executed ( and this needs at least 50000 US soldiers in a large scale land attack and in coordination with the venerable president of Syria! ), there will be another ISIS, an ISIS bis if you want, or an ISES (Islamic State of Egypt and Sudan), an ISYA (Islamic State of Yemen and Arabia), or any combination of letters you may choose!
As long as Saudi Arabia exists, Wahhabism will be its pseudo-Islamic state dogma, and through the filthy money of the inhuman gangsters who rule from Riyadh, Wahhabism will be diffused among the masses of Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia to the Muslim Diaspora worldwide.
What is even worse is that Prof. Juergensmeyer fails again to either give a definition of Wahhabism (Salafism) or the historical perspective thereof; as a matter of fact, all the filthy and un-Islamic, dark and inhuman ideas that Muhammad Abdel Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism) shaped and propagated during the 18th c. did not fall from the sky into his idiotic and ignorant mind. There has been an entire historical process within Islam (with heretic theologians preceding Muhammad Abdel Wahhab by 450 and 900 years) that led to this monstrous theological deformation of Islam. All this is unknown to the ‘global religion’ professor who writes about Islam without having a clue of all academic fields pertaining to the study of this historical – spiritual phenomenon.
This is the historical reality, which is quite well known to specialists of Islamic History and Religion in the West, but it remains concealed, because it is politically disturbing and troublesome. If Wahhabism is not uprooted, if all the Wahhabi institutions across the world are not shut down, if a new class of Muslim intellectuals at the antipodes of Wahhabism is not formed, the explosive situation will only turn worse.
First point of conclusion is therefore that Saudi Arabia and the Saudi family itself must be denounced as the only matrix of all evil across the Islamic world for the last 200 years, and an overwhelming attack against it must be undertaken in order to totally eliminate Riyadh and the villainous, heretic elite which from there managed to incessantly spread the evilness of Wahhabism worldwide.
The confusing presentation of Prof. Juergensmeyer is due to the fact that he does not seek the historical, religious, cultural and theological truth, but only writes in order to serve political purposes and needs, preserve strategic alliances, and in the process, effectuate compromises. We saw these compromises in Mosul, in Sanjar and in Raqqah. These compromises are responsible for the evacuation of most of the Yazidis from their homelands; these compromises are the reason for the deracination of all the Aramaean Christians of Mosul; these compromises are the root cause of the hecatomb that the bloodthirsty vampires of ISIS want to deliver.
For one more time, the ‘global religion’ specialist, Prof. Juergensmeyer, attempts a confusing definition through analogy! He writes: “The Salafi movement is similar to an extreme fundamentalism in Christianity”. This is an understatement; in addition, who can specify what ‘fundamentalism in Christianity’ means? This is not called ‘definition’ but ‘anyone’s guess’…
It must however become crystal clear to Western readership that ISIS, Saudi Arabia, and Wahhabism, (Salafism) do not constitute any form of Islamic fundamentalism. They are heretic, so they cannot be held as Islamic in any sense. They are far and out of the foundations of Islam, so they cannot possibly be ‘fundamental’. Muhammad Abdel Wahhab in his days was considered as a heretic and a traitor by the Ottoman administration; the same evaluation concerned also the Ottoman Caliphate’s traitor and founder of the Satanic house of the Saudis.
The two earlier Islamic theologians on whom Abdel Wahhab was based to produce his pseudo-Islamic trash, namely Ahmed ibn Taimiyah and Ahmed ibn Hanbal who lived in the 13th-14th c. and the 8th-9th c, respectively, were also considered as heretic in their times and duly imprisoned. They may be unknown to Prof. Juergensmeyer, but he should then abstain from writing purposelessly on issues he is not relevant of.
The famous, 14th c. Moroccan traveler, explorer and scholar Ibn Battuta encountered in Damascus people who knew personally the evil, villainous and ignorant heretic Ibn Taimiyah who was then imprisoned. This is what the Islamic World’s most illustrious traveler wrote about the progenitor of Wahhabism:
A controversial theologian
One of the principal Hanbalite doctors at Damascus was Taqi ad-Din Ibn Taymiya, a man of great ability and wide learning, but with some kink in his brain. The people of Damascus idolized him. He used to preach to them from the pulpit, and one day he made some statement that the other theologians disapproved; they carried the case to the sultan and in consequence Ibn Taymiya was imprisoned for some years. While he was in prison he wrote a commentary on the Koran, which he called ” The Ocean,” in about forty volumes. Later on his mother presented herself before the sultan and interceded for him, so he was set at liberty, until he did the same thing again. I was in Damascus at the time and attended the service which he was conducting one Friday, as he was addressing and admonishing the people from the pulpit. In the midst of his discourse he said “Verily God descends to the sky over our world [from Heaven] in the same bodily fashion that I make this descent,” and stepped down one step of the pulpit. A Malikite doctor present contradicted him and objected to his statement, but the common people rose up against this doctor and beat him with their hands and their shoes so severely that his turban fell off and disclosed a silken skull-cap on his head. Inveighing against him for wearing this, they haled him before the qadi of the Hanbalites, who ordered him to be imprisoned and afterwards had him beaten. The other doctors objected to this treatment and carried the matter before the principal amir, who wrote to the sultan about the matter and at the same time drew up a legal attestation against Ibn Taymiya for various heretical pronouncements. This deed was sent on to the sultan, who gave orders that Ibn Taymiya should be imprisoned in the citadel, and there he remained until his death.
At a certain point in his article, Prof. Juergensmeyer makes a totally misleading statement (“So, yes, ISIS is ultimately Islamic – whether you like it or not”), which can have disastrous consequences on anyone who may happen to accept it. A heretic cannot be identified with the religion from which he was rejected. It is not a mere point of accuracy, but a critical issue of false target.
Failing to understand this, he adds perjury to infamy, by completing his sentence with the following: “but it is certainly not the kind of Islam that most Muslims would accept or profess”.
This is a pure lie. And more than a merely false point, it reflects the tendencies of the Western governments to totally conceal the truth from their peoples. First of all, no one has accurate estimates on the subject. Gallup polls in several Muslim countries are prohibited – particularly on a subject this critical -, whereas in the rest no Gallup polls have ever been conducted on issues as troublesome as that.
However, there are many indicators that ISIS does truly reflect in a certain way the kind of false, heretic and decayed Islam that most Muslims accept and profess. If you make a list of what is correct as an act or practice of the Islamic way of both, personal life and social organization, including perhaps 500 detailed points accepted by the followers, the fighters and the leaders of ISIS, and then you submit this list to 1000 average Saudis (without adding that these points are all approved by ISIS members), their responses, homogeneous and ominous, will take you by surprise. Their agreement with the 500 points of the list will deliver a result far above 90-95%. Similar results, always above 80%, you will collect from countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Egypt, Algeria, etc. And certainly the agreement will be lower in other countries, but even in Turkey, it will be as high as 40% due to the vicious Western policies in favor of the AKP party Islamists and against the nationalist military establishment of Ankara (a paranoid policy that allowed the ruling Islamists to widen their basis through a varied set of methods).
How can one be sure of this?
By simply walking in the streets of districts inhabited by middle and lower classes (that total more than 80-90% of the total population of the country in most of the aforementioned cases) and observing what goes around, talking to the people, asking about their ideas, and entertaining comprehensive discussions as to just how they see and how they want to see their lives and their social environment – something that Prof. Juergensmeyer did not do, ultimately preferring the calmness and the security of his office somewhere in the States.
However, the situation is far worse than that. If you now present the same list (of what is correct as an act or practice of the Islamic way of personal life and social organization, including perhaps 500 detailed points accepted by the followers, the fighters and the leaders of ISIS) to a selected group of academics, engineers, businessmen, administrators and high profile functionaries, deputies of ‘parliament’ (this is a non-representative assembly for most of the cases), military, ministers and religious authorities across the Islamic world (without however saying that these points are all approved by ISIS members), you will collect even more surprising results. The outright majority of the elite of these countries (and I don’t mean here only Saudi Arabia but all the aforementioned countries) in majority supports the same points. This is for instance the reason one should view the latest president El Sisi of Egypt as theologically – ideologically – politically far closer to the former president Morsy than to the one time vice president El Baradei.
It would take too long to narrate how this situation has been formed, but I would however like to briefly hint at what I said earlier about the theologians who served as source of inspiration for Muhammad Abdel Wahhab, the founder of the Wahhabism (Salafism), namely the heretics Ibn Taimiyah and Ibn Hanbal. In fact, if Muhammad Abdel Wahhab developed the theological system that constitutes today’s Wahhabists’ doctrine, this is due to the fact that Ibn Hanbal’s and Ibn Taimiyah’s successive and intertwined theological systems gradually prevailed among the Islamic world and eliminated or transformed/altered all the opposite systems.
As a matter of fact, if one Muslim imam, qadi, mufti, minister, general, professor, president or businessman today rejects Wahhabism, he still accepts Ibn Taimiyah’s widespread and fully accepted theological system, which is – metaphorically speaking – the tree that produced the fruit of Wahhabism. There is, practically speaking, little difference or no difference at all between the two systems; simply every posterior system that emanates from an anterior is expected to feature and does actually feature some extra points.
The real difference existed in the past, in Islam’s Golden Era, when totally opposite philosophical systems totally prevailed across the highly educated Islamic World. These are the philosophical systems of Ibn Sina, Qurtubi, Ibn Rushd, Ghazali, Mohyieldin Ibn Arabi, Ibn Hazm, to name but a few; to them is due the Islamic Enlightenment, whereas to the gross, villain, uneducated trash of Ibn Taimiyah is due the complete disfigurement of Islam’s quintessence. However, due to the gradual diffusion of Ibn Taimiyah’s theological nonsense and ignominious darkness, and following its prevalence among ignorant and uneducated masses that it created in a vicious circle mechanism, as it attacked Science, Knowledge, Philosophy, Art and Spirituality, gradually all the philosophical systems of the aforementioned Titans of the Islamic Thought disappeared until the end of the 16th c.
Of course, there is one more difference between the political elites of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, etc. and the ISIS extremists; the former, although accepting most of Abdel Wahhab’s theories and all of Ibn Tamiyah’s ideas, differ politically and make the necessary compromises to ensure the survival of their regime. Contrarily, the latter reject the compromise of the former, viewing it as a treason of Islam. Political difference is therefore due to mere survival tactics of elites that are theological quasi-identical to ISIS; these elites believe that by making compromises upon compromises with the West, they can prolong their tenure and the ensuing material benefits. But their existence only spearheads new waves of uncompromising Wahhabists. Certainly, there is also an attitudinal difference (but no behavioral difference) between the followers of a guy like al Bashir of Sudan or Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and the fighters of ISIS; the former want to pocket more money and store it in their banks, whereas the latter are ready to die. But none of them would accept his wife to be uncovered (without hejab, the Islamic veil) or his daughter to travel alone on motorbike across Europe.
The best corroboration of the aforementioned is the following tragicomical contrast between Egypt’s last and current presidents; Muhammad Morsy is viewed by some as extremist whereas the incumbent is considered as a moderate and pragmatist person.
Former Egyptian president Muhammad Morsy’s wife wears hejab (Islamic veil that allows the face to be seen).
Current Egyptian president El Sisi’s wife used to wear a niqab (Islamic veil that covers the face entirely leaving only two small holes for the eyes) and only recently “swapped the niqab for a trendy hijab, hushing up claims that she was dyed-in-the-wool” (http://www.albawaba.com/slideshow/sisi-wife-intisar-amer-581626)!!
Prof. Juergensmeyer goes on saying that the reason for which “world leaders are trying to make in saying that ISIS is ‘not Islamic’.” is that ISIS “is certainly not the kind of Islam that most Muslims would accept or profess”. In the light of the aforementioned this appears to be a very unfortunate consideration and an erroneous evaluation of what is going on in the Islamic world.
Reaching the end of the brief yet mistaken article, Prof. Juergensmeyer says that Islam’s name means “peace” which is very wrong (in reality, it means ‘submission to God’ although it originates from the word ‘peace’).
In the article’s last three paragraphs, Prof. Juergensmeyer makes one more futile effort to dissociate ISIS from today’s prevalent Islamic theological systems and to associate it with politics. This is quite pointless and misplaced. In fact, there is no, and there cannot be any, difference between religion and politics in Islam. So, everything that is religious is also political, and vice versa.
Contrarily to the wrong Western assumption that Islam is the only system whereby religion and politics constitute an indivisible entity of faith and action, it is historically proven that all the major religions were systems in which faith and government were perfectly well interwoven. The same occurred particularly in Christianity either Orthodox or Catholic; one may even ponder that in some cases the phenomenon occurred more emphatically in Christianity than in Islam; extensively discussed terms, such as Papocaesarism and Caesaropapism are quite telling in this regard.
So, Prof. Juergensmeyer’s sentence “Besides religion, it is critical to recognize that all the forms of terrorism that we have seen are about politics. Any act of violence in the public sphere is aimed at trying to claim political space – at taking over power to assume control over regions or peoples. This is certainly true in the case of ISIS” is absolutely irrelevant and completely wrong.
The way one family lives is defined by religion; the way one society is organized is specified by religion; the way the art of rule is exercised is decreed by religion. The aforementioned does not only apply to the Islamic world; it does also to Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Iran, etc. It is also valid in Confucian China, Biblical Israel, and Christian Rome or Constantinople. One can enter into details that can fill volumes: the way one fights in battle is determined by religious orders; the way one sleeps is elucidated by religious advice; the way one eats is clarified by religious guidance; the way one has sex is stipulated by religious prescriptions, and so on.
Piety is one of the religious traits and virtues that must be reflected in a person’s life, either this person is Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu or Confucian. I fully agree with Prof. Juergensmeyer that “most people directly involved in ISIS are not pious Muslims”; this is right. But does it really matter?
And what about Prof. Juergensmeyer? Will he agree with me saying that “most people directly involved in Assets Management are not pious Christians”?
When we see vulture-funds in Latin America terrorizing nations like Argentina (which involves populations far larger than Iraq or Syria) and endangering the lives and the well-being of dozens of millions of people, do we still need to focus exclusively on a minor terrorist group and forget worse gangsters and terrorists who are far more perilous than the idiotic fighters of ISIS?
And this concludes the case of this type of confusing presentations and futile approaches that leave the Western readership in mysteries; identifying the true reasons of an explosive situation may help greatly solve and diffuse the crisis. But it entails a real inquiry about the original and the altered, the genuine and the transfigured, the authentic and the corrupt. Instead of searching pretexts and excuses, one should seek the truth.
It is not only greatly comical but also highly perilous for the Western leaders to continue on the same track. Why should they bother whether most of today’s Muslims accept or don’t accept the doctrine and the practices of ISIS? The Western leaders themselves constantly disregard the majority of the population back in their countries, and particularly when the majority is ostensibly opposite to calamitous choices that they make (such as the case of the erroneously conceived and catastrophically carried out attack against, and occupation of, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq). Their disregard for the wishes and the opinions of the majority of their countries’ populations is monumental; they cannot be sensitive for other nations when they are insensitive for their own.
The search for the reasons that brought about the present situation cannot be undertaken by Western academia, intellectuals and diplomats without a deep investigation of the developments that took place in their own countries in the first place. Before bothering to know whether ISIS is Islamic or not, they should care to find out whether the so-called Christian nations of the West are really Christian. Drunken of their colonial successes for many centuries, the Western peoples lived with myths and lies that totally disfigured the true dimensions of their own deeds, choices and policies. Modernity is not Christian but Anti-Christian. Globalism is not Divine but Satanic. And the Homosexual Marriages are not the ‘right of the free’ but the evilness of the slaves – of Satan.
Atheist, materialistic, and despiritualized, the Western world turned out to be the Cemetery of the Christian Faith. That’s why the leaders of the Western countries did not give a damn about the persecution, expulsion and extermination of the Aramaean Christians in Mosul. They face now a nominalist and legalist theological system of despiritualized Muslims, who are partly westernized and deeply materialistic, which means filled with extremely contradictory elements able to explode with uncontainable consequences.
The fallacy, inhumanity and monstrosity of either systems is such that one could simply consider them as the two faces of same coin. So corrupt and eroded this coin is that nothing can save it; it will soon be thrown in the Hell that it deserves. And its two faces, in full discord to one another, are triggering now by themselves the downgrading spiral that will bring their end. To survive one has to dissociate him/herself from the onerous coin as much as possible, as soon as possible, and as irreversibly as possible.
The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire is a Crime for which the World will still pay much.
The rightful state for all African and Western Asiatic territories between Morocco and Iran is the Ottoman Empire. However, in the aftermath of WW I, and because of the defeat of Imperial Germany’s allies, the Ottoman Empire was dispossessed of more than 80% of its territories (today’s Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Yemen) that had meanwhile been limited only in Western Asia, due to the French – English – Italian colonial expansion and illegal expropriation of Ottoman provinces in NW – N – NE Africa (today’s Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea).
The colonial empires attempted to achieve economic and political benefits through their expansion, and they managed to do so, and in the process they diffused colossal amounts of lies, disseminated alien theories and insults against the indigenous nations’ traditions, performed heinous deeds, carried out series of crimes, imposed unacceptable policies, and offered every reason for any indigenous nation to reject their plans and to revile them for having spread in the process discord and enmity among the indigenous nations, fratricidal conflicts, successive wars, foreign military interventions, ecological and human disasters, and total social disintegration.
On the other side, governed by puppet governments that do not obey the will of their peoples but carry out the orders of shadowy organizations and secret societies, the Western societies in their totality (except those who openly rejected the evildoing) became the undisputed accomplices of their governments and of their secret masters. Responsibility is therefore to be shared by all.
Because the top of the Western societies, i.e. the powerful secret organizations that define who participates in the local governments and who does not, consists of unbelievers, immoral gangsters, and villainous cheaters, no consideration was given to the moral aspect of the policies implemented and the deeds performed. But this does not change in anything their responsibility, and the responsibility of the puppet governments, and the responsibility of the peoples who were controlled by this pyramidal hierarchical scheme. They all bear the common responsibility for the aforementioned deeds because, irrespective of any religion and faith, every human bears the responsibility of his / her acts.
This is something that most of the simple people in all the Western countries tend to forget. If this attitude characterizes one agnostic or atheist person, it does not matter much because every person who rejects the universal order established by God (however perceived as per each specific religion and philosophy) is automatically immoral and no morality standards or principles can apply to, and be expected from, him/her. The notion of civic morality is a ludicrous attempt to effectively kill God and as such fully disregarded. Morality exists only within Faith; extreme cases like those of the Biblical stories about Sodom and Gomorrah bear witness to the aforementioned.
So, Western people, who are Christian of faith and accept the Christian concept of morality (differently interpreted of course as per each denomination), must know that they fully bear responsibility for the criminal deeds and policies of their governments to which they (and their forefathers) did not duly react. What is to be concluded from this point is that, according to Christian morality itself, Christians in the West should not be surprised, if terrible acts against their life, integrity, safety, and security are to be tomorrow undertaken. These acts have already been spearheaded by their governments’ policies and by the inactivity of those who value Christian and Biblical moral concepts like the famous order ‘Ό μισείς, μηδενί ποιήσεις‘ (Do that to no man which thou hatest – from Tobias, 4:15 – http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/apo/tob004.htm) which was exemplarily rephrased by Jesus as ‘Καθώς θέλετε ίνα ποιώσιν υμίν οι άνθρωποι, και υμείς ποιείτε αυτοίς ομοίως‘ (Do to other people what you want them to do to you – from Luke 6:31).
I am sure that true Christians fully understand the crimes that their successive governments have performed for more than 200 years against the Ottoman Empire and the different nations that lived in this vast empire. It would be too idiotic to believe that Jesus demanded from his followers to invade other countries, extirpate their resources, scheme against their inhabitants, and in the process persecute, torture or kill those who opposed them.
As this is quite clear, one has to conclude that those among the Westerners, who recently supported policies such as the wars undertaken by the US (with or without their allies) against Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, etc., are not and by definition cannot be Christian, irrespective of how they identify themselves, what they say they believe in, and whether they go to a church or not.
The reason for the above statement is simple.
– Who is the Christian American who would accept happily a foreign invading nation to detach Texas from the US, occupy the land, persecute the inhabitants, and expropriate its resources?
But America invaded Iraq, and the American Christians had an opportunity to thunderously oppose the Anti-Christian and Satanic policy of their country and in the process save their souls by markedly dissociating themselves from this nefarious evildoing. Unfortunately for the American Christians, they did nothing of the sort; quite contrarily, many of them expressed great happiness for the destruction their army caused on innocent countries like Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. none of which had ever planned, neither did they have the means, to attack America.
The extent of the crime to which these pseudo-Christians are held as wholehearted accomplices is such that, if they believe in their often mistranslated Bibles as they say, we can safely conclude that their souls will vanish in eternal Hell. And even before dying, they will face a calamitous punishment while living.
Jesus spoke about these pseudo-Christians of the West who are a real disgrace on the surface of the Earth; he said that ‘Οὐ πᾶς ὁ λέγων μοι, Κύριε Κύριε, εἰσελεύσεται εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν, ἀλλ‘ ὁ ποιῶν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ πατρός μου τοῦ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς‘ (Vulgata: ‘non omnis qui dicit mihi Domine Domine intrabit in regnum caelorum sed qui facit voluntatem Patris mei qui in caelis est ipse intrabit in regnum caelorum’ / English: Not every one who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but he that does the will of my Father who is in the heavens – from Matthew 7:21).
Similarly, the English and French pseudo-Christians, who do not regret for their countries’ anti-Ottoman (and at the same time Anti-Christian) policies and who do not try to dissociate themselves from their evil, Satanic governments and states by any possible means, will be held responsible and vanish in eternal damnation. And before this is adjusted to their souls, their fate on Earth will be duly affected, because they have, thoughtlessly if not willingly, been the unrepented accomplices of the vicious and heinous policies pursued by their governments against the Ottoman Empire and its different nations.
Of course, the Christian populations of England and France (and before them those of other Christian countries like Holland, Spain and Portugal) were repeatedly confused and systematically misled by their vicious governments that promised them great wealth and prosperity due to the acquisition of colonial territories. But there are plenty of warnings in the Christian Bibles that clearly state that Christians have as tasks to watch carefully so that no one cheats them. Jesus said: ‘καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· βλέπετε μή τις ὑμᾶς πλανήσῃ’ (Vulgata: ‘et respondens Iesus dixit eis videte ne quis vos seducat’ / English: And Jesus answering, said to them: Take heed that no man seduce you – from Matthew 24:4).
All accounts made, there have been very few territories (mainly small islands) that were totally uninhabited at the moment of the Western colonization. In most of the cases, colonization brought about total destruction of the previous inhabitants, so it was a premeditated criminal act that the European colonizers carried out – and only for the sake of robbery, theft, expropriation of local wealth. Even worse, when trying to achieve these immoral and illegal targets, to overwhelmingly prevail over the indigenous nations that justly and rightfully defended their homelands, the European colonizers were forced to carry out extensive persecution, torture and genocide of the indigenous nations.In fact, it was a typical downgrading spiral that we customarily notice every time we see people, who are possessed by evil spirits, proceed from minor evil deeds to the most appalling crimes and sins.
It goes without saying that these crimes were decided and performed by the Freemasonic gangsters, who govern England, France, Holland and America; as a matter of fact, following their first initiation into the mysteries of Satan, these secluded non-humans lose quickly all traces of humanity and morality, and can perform all types of criminal evildoing. However, the enormous moral problem of all the rest, i.e. those who inhabit these countries and claim to be Christian, is that they did not and they still do not oppose these acts and policies, they don’t dissociate themselves from these crimes, and they do nothing to prevent them, being thus the most unfortunate accomplices. For the sake of stolen wealth that does not effectively belong to them (and which is will certainly and justly be soon removed from them), these pseudo-Christians have sold their souls to the devil.
They have thus forgotten the words of Jesus saying ‘Τι ωφελείται άνθρωπος εάν τον κόσμον όλον κερδήση, την δε ψυχήν αυτού ζημιωθή; Η τι δώσει άνθρωπος αντάλλαγμα της ψυχής αυτού;’ (Vulgata: ‘quid enim prodest homini si mundum universum lucretur animae vero suae detrimentum patiatur aut quam dabit homo commutationem pro anima sua’ / English: For what does a man profit, if he should gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? – from Matthew 16:26). This helps us understand that the consequences of their own indifference, ignorance, and immorality will fall upon them.
There is no Middle East – this is a false term in replacement of the correct ‘Ottoman Caliphate’
The extensive falsification project, which was launched by the colonial Orientalist academics in support of their countries’ evil deeds and was unfortunately accepted by the different Western, Christian nations, is another vast crime perpetrated for which the Western nations are in total impossibility to avoid the consequences. The project hinges on a multitude of points and details, systematic distortion, and fallacious contextualization of the events, but here I will examine only one dimension and term.
In fact, there is no Middle East.
The term is a subdivision of the ‘Orient’ (East) into ‘Near East’ (or Levant), ‘Middle East’, and ‘Far East’ (that comprised India and every land east of India). The entire subdivision of the Orient is historically irrelevant and morally vicious, but this is a subject for later discussion.
First, we should examine the general division of the world until the late 15th c. into Orient and Occident (East and West). The term draws on geographical considerations, but it takes a far more elaborate form of cultural division or divide. Geographically, it is truly correct to divide the surrounding lands as per the four cardinal points; however, this varies per country. What is ‘West’ for Iran (example: Turkish Anatolia) is ‘East’ for Greece. The same happens when moving from the septentrional to the meridional direction; what is ‘North’ for Sudan (example: Egypt) is ‘South’ for Phoenicia.
So, we can shape a conclusive opinion that whatever stands as geographically ‘relative’ cannot be held as historically – culturally – politically ‘absolute’. Consequently, the use of a similar term in a specific country cannot become general for all the countries of the world.
However, in striking opposition to the aforementioned conclusion, Western European scholars, promoting Freemasonic schemes, division and strives that brought about endless bloodshed, attempted to divide – first the historical past and second the political present of the last 300 years – into a fictional categorization ‘Orient vs. Occident’.
The term ‘Orientalist’ originates from this false division too. Quite interestingly, the vicious Freemasonic forgers of France and England did not come up with an equivalent term for those specializing on Western civilizations; there was never an ‘Occidentalist’!
This incredible trickery means that for no less than 20 different great civilizations (which entail twenty different names of specialists, such as Egyptologist, Assyriologist, Iranologist, etc.) there has been one generic term (Orientalist) created, whereas for only 2 great civilizations (Greece and Rome) no generic term was created but instead there have always been two specialized terms (Hellenist, Latinist) in use. This is exactly how – due to the dishonest terminology and the worthless diatribes of the Freemasonic forgers – the number 20 proved to be only half of the number 2!
As ‘Occident’ are identified, as regards the Antiquity and the Christian / Islamic Ages, only Greece, Rome and the predominantly Celtic Western Europe.
As ‘Orient’ are identified, as regards the Antiquity and the Christian / Islamic Ages, all the other lands, nations, cultures and civilizations in either Europe (Scythians, Cimmerians, etc.), Africa (Egypt, Carthage) or Asia (from Phrygia and Lydia that flourished on the Aegean Sea’s eastern shores to China).
This division is culturally baseless, structurally false, and largely contradicted by the existing historical sources and archaeological evidence referred to by the villainous Freemasonic forgers. In addition, it is geographically unacceptable. Example: ‘Oriental’ Carthage lies ‘west’ of ‘Western’ Greece!
Quite interestingly, even Greece’s territory during the Christian / Islamic Ages (successively part of the Eastern Roman and the Ottoman Empires), was viewed as rather part of the ‘Orient’. Useless to add that, according to this paranoia, the Islamic Caliphate of Andalusia in the Iberian Peninsula was unequivocally part of the ‘Orient’ too! This was absolutely ridiculous from the geographical point of view, because it meant literally that the ‘Orient’ was located both, east and west of the ‘Occident’!
However, the baseless cultural division obscured the minds of many people worldwide and deceived those of the rest. Even more unfortunately, the ensuing political division triggered scores of dead, incessant wars, and permanent discord and racism with even worse consequences.
As ‘Occident’ were identified in Modern Times only Italy, France, England, Belgium, Holland, the Scandinavian nations, and the US. Republics or monarchies seceding from the Spanish, Portuguese, and Ottoman Empires (Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Greece, Serbia) were tentatively accepted as ‘Occident’, and the same concerned later a certain number of former English dependencies that were accepted as independent states (Canada, Australia).
As ‘Orient’ were identified in Modern Times all the other lands, nations, cultures and civilizations in either Europe (Austria-Hungary, Imperial Germany, Tsarist Russia. the Ottoman Caliphate, and even the religious monarchies of Spain and Portugal that opposed the intellectual cholera of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’), Africa (the Ottoman provinces in the Black Continent, the Great Somali Sultanates, Morocco, the African kingdoms of the Oromos, the Hausa, etc., plus all the indigenous nations of the European colonies) or Asia (from the Ottoman Empire and Iran to Central Asia, India, SE Asia, China, Korea and Japan).
The political divide is certainly clearer of purpose; due to the projection of the baseless divide on the European soil itself, we can understand that the Freemasonic forgers created the two terms – parts of the divide in order to further polarize the differences between the states whereby the Anti-Christian theories of the French philosophers of the ‘Enlightenment’ were accepted (England, Holland, America, ‘Nouveau Régime’ France after 1789) and the states whereby these villainous, yet ideally marketed, theories were rejected.
In fact, the fake political divide categorized as ‘Orient’ together numerous states, empires, religions, cultures and nations as different from one another as the Catholics are from the Orthodox, the Sunni Muslims, the Shia Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Taoists, the Confucians, the Shinto, the followers of diverse indigenous African religious systems, like the Oromo monotheistic Waaqeffannaa, and the followers of indigenous American and Pacific religious systems. Only this shows that the categorization is fake and the ensuing polarization can afflict the entire Mankind.
Following the systematized diffusion of the vicious divide, the ‘Orient’ (or East) was cut into three pieces, namely ‘Near East’ (Proche Orient or Levant in French), ‘Middle East’ (Moyen Oreint in French) and ‘Far East’ (Extrême-Orient in French). In fact, there is a very simple question that does not take years of specialized studies for someone to formulate, and it still unveils automatically the entire fallacy of the Freemasonic subdivision of the Orient:
– ‘Near East’; ‘near’ to whom?
To Western Europe, of course! This makes clear what is in the back side of the minds of the people involved in universities, research, academic and intellectual life, and subsequently in the world of politics.
Middle East: a Historical Fallacy and an unacceptable Immorality for Christians
There is no need for someone to specialize in an academic field in order to fully assess how terribly immoral and inhumanly vicious this terminology is.
Giving to a place, land, nation and civilization an appellation that does not reflect genuinely the indigenous developments and evolution across History but fully subordinates the place, land, nation and civilization to yourself is the result of a disproportionately gigantic egoism / egotism which is tantamount to the worst form of discrimination and racism. The problem is not anymore about the term’s falsehood and fallacy, but about its absolute immorality and tragic vicissitude. Of course, if the French or the English employed this term locally for the use of their own students only, this would be tolerated and would not create a major problem. Unfortunately, this is not what happened.
The colonial academics and diplomats imposed this false term on the students and the intellectuals, the journalists and the filthy, corrupt politicians of the victimized countries that were thus defined through their relationship with a third party. The Lebanese and the Egyptian slaves of the French (and subsequently the European and the American) universities were therefore forced to ‘learn’ that their countries were part of a region called ‘Near East’ because this region was ‘near to’ and ‘east of’ France and Western Europe. This automatically implied that the region in question was insignificant up to point that not one indigenous academic / intellectual could give it a collective name on the basis of the historical characteristics and evolution of the region, but they all had to pathetically wait the foreign invaders decree and order how their place should be named.
The subliminal consequences were immense; to call it ‘trauma’ it would be an understatement. In fact, it was a national – cultural – academic – intellectual – mental – educational assassination and, subsequently, a mind transplantation. The fact that the purely religious aspect was left out of the targeted area did not turn things better but did indeed worsen them. Islam as religion had collapsed long before the colonial powers arrived. As early as 1600 – 1700, Islam was not anymore a religious system of spirituality and transcendental experience (as it had used to be, like every religion) but a silly legal system involving a myriad of jurisprudential deliberations about petty things, a certain number of orders and directives that have to be executed thoughtlessly (and in most of the cases out of a desire to imitate the Prophet Muhammad), rites that have to be performed physically but without any spiritual dimension, beliefs that are of nominal value, a morality that counts on reward and social approval, and a deliberate, compact ignorance about, and disregard for, the Islamic Philosophy, Art, Science, and Erudition – despite the fact that Islam is accepted as the Religion of the Revealed Knowledge. It was quite clear to the colonial specialists on Islam that the survival of these religious beliefs within the new, colonial environment created after their arrival and interference in the colonized societies would have only explosive and destructive results; that’s why they did not do anything else except help the explosion come timely…
The indigenous nations were thus obliterated at all three, the personal, the collective social, and the narrative national, levels. They were turned to impotent, brainless and demented monkeys awaiting their foreign masters to give them names like Koko, the famous female gorilla that was born on July 4, 1971, in San Francisco, and mastered over 2,000 words in the American Sign Language, allowing her to communicate with humans in an astounding way (http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-famous-monkeys.php). As their mimicking of Islam was quite materialistic a system, they were engulfed in a total lack of creative imagination, which demands a certain degree of spirituality in order to be developed, and this prepared all these populations to duly be pathetic spectators of their unstoppable degradation and destruction; their leaders followed and still follow therefore an idiotic policy of day-by-day survival, which is not even a real effort to survive. If Zine al Abedine ben Ali, Mubarak, Ali Abdullah Saleh and Muammar al Qadhafi were overthrown in 2011 – 2012 and not in 1998, this is only due to the fact that the plan providing for their extinction included another date.
The imposition of the alien, colonial ego on the colonial monkeys and its mixture with the aforementioned religious leftover produced a monstrous, confused mind able only to cause self-destruction of monumental scale. This is the environment out of which emanated the dictatorial, bogus-monarchical, and religious authorities of the region, the likes of Abdallah of Saudi Arabia, Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz, Al Thani of Qatar, Abdallah of Jordan, Qadhafi, al Assad, Bouteflika, Mubarak, Sheikh Shaarawi, Saddam Hussein, Sheikh Qaradhawi, etc., all confused and self-confusing, genuinely unable to make a correct assessment of their situation and to see the impending destruction. They ostensibly worsened their case because, when they were deliberately and repeatedly mistreated, disrespected and even ridiculed, and they felt so, they used to react to this situation without however correctly assessing the overall context from where they emerged and the existing possibilities for efficient reaction – and this used only to bring forth the next disaster.
The absolute elimination of the indigenous ‘ego’ along with a flux of false documentation and historical falsification that the colonial powers produced massively and projected on the militarily / economically / politically / academically / intellectually / culturally colonized territories (that are still euphemistically called ‘independent realms’!) triggered oppressed among local leaders and indigenous peoples vast complexes of inferiority, obstinate reactions, and obdurate interpretations of Islam (‘misinterpretations’ is the correct term) that are the root causes of all conflicts and misunderstandings, strives and clashes in the wider region.
I did not mention however the above points in order to analyze the reasons of, and find a solution to, the problem but exclusively in relation with the pseudo-Christian populations of the West. Morally dead, these fake Christians accepted the Freemasonic falsification produced by their academic – political elites, without thinking that ‘Οὐδεὶς οἰκέτης δύναται δυσὶ κυρίοις δουλεύειν’ (Vulgata: ‘nemo potest duobus dominis servire’ / English: None is able to serve two lords – from Matthew 6:24).
Accepting to impose on all the other nations of the world definitions based on a vicious egocentric Western misperception of the World and misuse of the World History is a great sin for Christians of the West. Consenting, favoring and sanctioning the aforementioned colonial policies of their governments is a tremendous immorality from the part of the Christians of the West. It consists in one of the worst expressions of pride, arrogance and egoism in the World History. But in Christianity, egoism, egotism and egocentric theories are the expression of a high level immorality.
As matter of fact, European colonialism and colonial academic endeavors fully reflect Biblical expressions ascribed to Satan himself, as Isaiah specifies: “I will ascend…I will raise…I will sit… I will ascend…I will make myself like the Most High” (14:13-14). Western European and North American pseudo-Christians must have no doubt of what comes after pride and egoism. Isaiah points it out for them in just the next verse (14:15): “But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit”. This is the wretched place into which very soon North American and Western European nations will find themselves for having committed innumerable atrocious crimes against the lands and the nations that they colonized, depersonalized, and deprived of a) identity, b) integrity, c) traditions, d) resources, and e) independent political volition, through an entire set of deception techniques and systematized falsehood.
As long as this vicious egoistic and egocentric attitude prevails and remains unchallenged in the West, the local pseudo-Christians must be fully aware that they bear responsibility as accomplices of they governments and that they stand in full opposition to Jesus and his words: “whoever exalts himself will be humbled” (Matthew 23:12).
True Christians in Western Europe and North America, if any, instead of talking nonsensical stories about conspiracy theories, must get a clear vision of the conspiracy acts that their corrupt governments and Freemasonic academicians have perpetrated over the past 300 years. They must therefore stand up, take to the streets, and bring down the forgery ateliers and the Satanic lodges that devised these schemes and invented the fake divisions that triggered the death spiral in the provinces of the Ottoman Empire that sheer cacophony led us to the misnomer of ‘Middle East’. Their voices, if any, must reach the darkness of the Whitehall, the Buckingham, the Élysée, the Hôtel Matignon, the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and the other neuralgic centers of today’s Satanic power. Christian voices must raise up in the West, terminating the apathy of the high accomplices and they should echo the question Paul made to the Corinthians: “For who makes you different from anyone else? (1 Corinthians 4:7).
So, if Paul is right is eliminating boasting from the lives of the Christians (“Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded…by the law of faith” – Romans 3:27), today’s Christians in Western Europe and America must denounce the formation of the vicious Euro-centric academic approach and system and condemn its calamitous projection on the rest of the world. If they want to be present as Christians in other lands that were not ‘Western’ before the beginning of the European Era of Colonialism (1492 CE), they must follow Jesus’ example and go there to serve – as per the local values, ideals, concepts, faiths and virtues, not theirs. Jesus reportedly made “himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). If these Biblical excerpts form the foundations of the Christian faith, these values and attitudes have to be displayed by the Western countries, and if this is not the case, Christians in the West have to clearly and effectively dissociate themselves for their governments and states, denouncing and preventing the iniquity carried out by Paris, London and Washington D.C. Otherwise, they should not be surprised by the forthcoming tribulation that they deserve.
And for those among these pseudo-Christians, who are fully aware of the Christian sources but dare shamelessly propagate silly concepts and misinterpretation schemes like the stupidly awaited ‘rapture’ at the End of Time, the punishment will come soon and it will be as terrible as their theological fornication.
And what does it matter whether these pseudo-Christians believe they are right in their purpose and true in their faith? World History is full of examples of hypocritical people who thought of themselves as ‘righteous’ but ended in the Hell. The forthcoming developments will demonstrate how false these pseudo-Christian doctors and pastors have been, and will prove that, despite their ceaseless evocations of Christian sources and Biblical excerpts, their real master is Satan. But it will be too late for all of their followers who will also vanish in Eternal Fire.
Καὶ τῶνδ’ ὅμοιον εἴ τι μὴ πείθω· τί γάρ; Tὸ μέλλον ἥξει. Kαὶ σύ μ’ ἐν τάχει παρὼν ἄγαν γ’ ἀληθόμαντιν οἰκτίρας ἐρεῖς. (‘What does it matter now if men believe or no? What is to come will come. And soon you too will stand aside, To murmur in pity that my words were true’). Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1239-1241 (Cassandra addressing the chorus)
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