yes
Saturday, November 28, 2020
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Before Christianity there was slavery by many civilizations (pretty much all of them) and when Christianity became a dominant religion (in the Roman Empire) the first act by the new Christian leaders was to... ban slavery. And again when slavery was reintroduced to the Christian West (by non-Christians) the first and strongest abolishionist movement was in the Churches (the Anglican being the first).
Leviticus also gives the "Golden Rule" in 19:18 and universalizes it in 19:34 (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31, and Luke 10:25-28 also repeat it). Did the Bible borrow the "Golden Rule" or did the "Golden Rule" come from the Torah (which a far amount of the Bible also comes from)? No civilization prior to the rise of Judaism had a "Golden Rule", so it appears more likely that it became known through Judaism.
"The bible took from man, the inherent goodness..." You kid right? Men in the early ages were brutal, savage, and selfish. Men defined themselves by family, tribe, or sect and viewed all else as threats. The only things that prevented mass slaughter by ancient man were lack of effective weapons to kill each other and plentiful resources (food, shelter) to wage continuous war. Chrisitanity created a path to, and creation of, a universal brotherhood of man.
"Or maybe if the bible had knowledge in its pages that spoke far beyond what a 3rd century man would know? Such as the heliocentric model of our solar system, or germs or atomic theory?" As you will notice few Christians find the Bible as infallable.. oh you didnt, guess you should become a little more aware of what is going on in the world and what Christians really believe (and not what you wish to project upon them). If you read the Bible you will notice it doesnt actually state how the universe moves (it was men of the Church who created the Earthcentric planetary movements).
The people during the Enlightenment had no clue about atomic theories either, should that cause us to reject all of the philosophies created during then? You again take another quote from the Bible, one that very few modern Christians use and yet there are more Aethiests (China and Vietnam) who make their women second class citizens than Christians. Women in Christian countries had rights and suffrage before any other.
Leviticus also gives the "Golden Rule" in 19:18 and universalizes it in 19:34 (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31, and Luke 10:25-28 also repeat it). Did the Bible borrow the "Golden Rule" or did the "Golden Rule" come from the Torah (which a far amount of the Bible also comes from)? No civilization prior to the rise of Judaism had a "Golden Rule", so it appears more likely that it became known through Judaism.
"The bible took from man, the inherent goodness..." You kid right? Men in the early ages were brutal, savage, and selfish. Men defined themselves by family, tribe, or sect and viewed all else as threats. The only things that prevented mass slaughter by ancient man were lack of effective weapons to kill each other and plentiful resources (food, shelter) to wage continuous war. Chrisitanity created a path to, and creation of, a universal brotherhood of man.
"Or maybe if the bible had knowledge in its pages that spoke far beyond what a 3rd century man would know? Such as the heliocentric model of our solar system, or germs or atomic theory?" As you will notice few Christians find the Bible as infallable.. oh you didnt, guess you should become a little more aware of what is going on in the world and what Christians really believe (and not what you wish to project upon them). If you read the Bible you will notice it doesnt actually state how the universe moves (it was men of the Church who created the Earthcentric planetary movements).
The people during the Enlightenment had no clue about atomic theories either, should that cause us to reject all of the philosophies created during then? You again take another quote from the Bible, one that very few modern Christians use and yet there are more Aethiests (China and Vietnam) who make their women second class citizens than Christians. Women in Christian countries had rights and suffrage before any other.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Islam threw Christian Europe into the dark ages, bringing slavery from black Africa with it
Islam and the Dark Age of Byzantium
Islam had as debilitating an impact upon Byzantine Empire as it has on West Europe, the precipitation of the Dark Age, spanning 8th to 10th centuries...
In his 1936 book, ‘Mohammed et Charlemagne’, Belgian historian Henri Pirenne argued in great detail that the Dark Ages of Europe began rather suddenly in the middle of the seventh century; and that this sudden and catastrophic decline in civilization was due to Islam’s blockade of the Mediterranean. Up to that time, Pirenne showed, there was no evidence of a decline in Classical culture. True, the Western Roman Empire as a political entity had disappeared in 476, but the literate, prosperous and urban civilization, which we call "Classical", continued virtually uninterrupted. The Goths and other "Barbarian" peoples, who ruled the provinces of the West after 467, did not try to destroy Roman civilization and civil society. Indeed, as Pirenne showed in great detail, they did everything in their power to preserve it. They adopted the Latin language, accepted Imperial titles from the Emperor in Constantinople, and minted gold coins with the image of the Eastern Emperor emblazoned upon them.
Yet this thriving Late Classical culture came to a rather sudden end in the seventh century: city life declined, as did trade; a barter economy replaced the earlier monetary system, and what coins were issued were minted in silver rather than gold; literacy declined as papyrus from Egypt disappeared and expensive parchment took its place; and the power of kings waned, as local strongmen or "barons" seized the reigns of power in the provinces. The Middle Ages had begun.
Pirenne's great book, which was published posthumously, received a mixed reception. On the whole, it was conceded that he seemed to be on to something of great importance. Yet there was criticism, and this criticism only increased over the years.
One of the most telling arguments against Pirenne was the question of Byzantium. Historians were quick to point out that, whilst the regions of the West may have experienced a Dark Age between the seventh and tenth centuries, those of the East did not. There was no decline, they said, in Byzantium. If the Arab blockade of the Mediterranean had strangled classical urban civilization in the West, why did it not have the same effect in the East? This was a question to which there seemed no easy answer. Even Pirenne believed that Byzantium had somehow coped better with the Arabs than the West. In his time it was generally assumed that Classical Civilization survived in the East, and that the region was less "medievalised" than the West. We are, or have been until recently, informed by historians that the eighth-to-tenth-century Byzantium was, in the words of Sidnay Painter, "three centuries of glory," and that during this time "The Byzantine Empire was the richest state in Europe, the strongest military power, and by far the most cultivated" (Sidney Painter, ‘A History of the Middle Ages, 284-1500’). We are further informed that, "During these three centuries while Western Europe was a land of partly tamed barbarians, the Byzantine Empire was a highly civilized state where a most felicitous merger of Christianity and Hellenism produced a fascinating culture" (Ibid).
The above opinions, common till the latter half of the twentieth century, were partly prompted by Byzantine propaganda, which always sought to portray Constantinople as the "New Rome" and the successor, in an unbroken line of authority, of the first Christian Emperor, Constantine. Yet over the past half century, the science of archaeology has proved that picture a fabrication. As a matter of fact, we now know that the once-proud Eastern Rome was devastated by the Arab assaults. The same poverty and illiteracy that we find in the West we now find also in the East. Cities decline and the science and philosophy of the Greeks and Romans disappear. Just as in the West, a "dark age" descends. In the words of Cyril Mango, "One can hardly overestimate the catastrophic break that occurred in the seventh century. Anyone, who reads the narrative of events, will not fail to be struck by the calamities that befell the Empire, starting with the Persian invasion at the very beginning of the century, and falling to Arab expansion some thirty years later—a series of reverses that deprived the Empire of some of its most prosperous provinces, namely, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and, later, North Africa—and so reduced it to less than half its former size both in area and in population. But a reading of the narrative sources gives only a faint idea of the profound transformation that accompanied these events. ... It marked for the Byzantine lands the end of a way of life—the urban civilization of Antiquity—and the beginning of a very different and distinctly medieval world" (Cyril Mango, ‘Byzantium, the Empire of New Rome’, p. 4). Mango remarked on the virtual abandonment of the Byzantine cities after the mid-seventh century, and the archaeology of these settlements usually reveals "a dramatic rupture in the seventh century, sometimes in the form of virtual abandonment" (Ibid, p. 8). With the cities and papyrus supply from Egypt went the intellectual class, who after the seventh century, were reduced to a ‘small clique’ (Ibid, p. 9). The evidence, as Mango sees it, is unmistakable: the ‘catastrophe’ (as he names it) of the seventh century, "is the central event of Byzantine history" (Ibid).
Constantinople herself, the mighty million-strong capital of the East, was reduced, by the middle of the eighth century, to a veritable ruin. Mango quotes a document of the period which evokes a picture of ‘abandonment and ruination. Time and again we are told that various monuments—statues, palaces, baths—had once existed but were destroyed. What is more, the remaining monuments, many of which must have dated from the fourth and fifth centuries, were no longer understood for what they were. They had acquired a magical and generally ominous connotation’ (Ibid, p. 80).
So great was the destruction that even bronze coinage, the everyday lubricant of commercial life, disappeared. According to Mango, ‘In sites that have been systematically excavated, such as Athens, Corinth, Sardis and others, it has been ascertained that bronze coinage, the small change used for everyday transactions, was plentiful throughout the sixth century and (depending on local circumstances) until some time in the seventh, after which it almost disappeared, then showed a slight increase in the ninth, and did not become abundant again until the latter part of the tenth’ (Ibid, p. 72-3). Yet even the statement that some coins appeared in the ninth century has to be treated with caution. Mango notes that at Sardis the period between 491 and 616 is represented by 1,011 bronze coins, the rest of the seventh century by about 90, ‘and the eighth and ninth centuries combined by no more than 9’ (Ibid, p. 73). And, ‘similar results have been obtained from nearly all provincial Byzantine cities’. Even such paltry samples as have survived from the eighth and ninth centuries (nine) are usually of questionable provenance, a fact noted by Mango himself, who remarked that often, upon closer inspection, these turn out to originate either from before the dark age, or after it.
When archaeology again appears, in the middle of the tenth century, the civilization it reveals has been radically altered: The old Byzantium of Late Antiquity is gone, and we find an impoverished and semi-literate rump; a Medieval Byzantium strikingly like the Medieval France, Germany and Italy with which it was contemporary. Here, too, we find a barter or semi-barter economy, a decline in population and literacy, and an intolerant and theocratic state. And the break-off point in Byzantium, as in the West, is the first half of the seventh century, precisely corresponding to the arrival on the scene of the Arabs and of Islam.
Archaeology has thus come dramatically to the support of Pirenne, long after his death, and answered for him a question he could not. The impact of Islam was devastating for all of Christendom, both East and West. It was the event that terminated Classical civilization. The destruction of Classical culture in Europe was due to largely, though not completely, to the economic blockade of the Mediterranean by Muslim piracy. Yet the termination of that culture in regions such as Egypt and Syria (formally great centers of Classical and Hellenistic civilization), which came under the control of Islam, was produced by the new faith's utter contempt for the cultures and histories of the peoples it came to dominate. Right from the start, the caliphal government in Egypt established a commission, whose purpose was to seek out pharaohnic age tombs for plundering. So complete was the destruction that, perhaps, little more than a century after the Islamic conquest, no one in Egypt had any idea who built the Great Pyramid, despite the fact that very substantial histories of these monuments, and of the pharaohs, who erected it, were contained in the works of many Classical authors, most notably, of Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus. Immediately prior to the Mulsim invasion, the libraries and academies of Egypt, Syria, and Babylonia, were packed with the works of these authors. Their disappearance and the disappearance of the knowledge they contained can only mean, as Christian polemicists argued for centuries, that the Muslims had deliberately destroyed a great quantity of Classical literature.
In the West of Europe and in the East, in North Africa and the Middle East, Classical civilization came to an end in the mid-seventh century. And the reason for its demise can be summed up in one word: Islam.
Islam had as debilitating an impact upon Byzantine Empire as it has on West Europe, the precipitation of the Dark Age, spanning 8th to 10th centuries...
In his 1936 book, ‘Mohammed et Charlemagne’, Belgian historian Henri Pirenne argued in great detail that the Dark Ages of Europe began rather suddenly in the middle of the seventh century; and that this sudden and catastrophic decline in civilization was due to Islam’s blockade of the Mediterranean. Up to that time, Pirenne showed, there was no evidence of a decline in Classical culture. True, the Western Roman Empire as a political entity had disappeared in 476, but the literate, prosperous and urban civilization, which we call "Classical", continued virtually uninterrupted. The Goths and other "Barbarian" peoples, who ruled the provinces of the West after 467, did not try to destroy Roman civilization and civil society. Indeed, as Pirenne showed in great detail, they did everything in their power to preserve it. They adopted the Latin language, accepted Imperial titles from the Emperor in Constantinople, and minted gold coins with the image of the Eastern Emperor emblazoned upon them.
Yet this thriving Late Classical culture came to a rather sudden end in the seventh century: city life declined, as did trade; a barter economy replaced the earlier monetary system, and what coins were issued were minted in silver rather than gold; literacy declined as papyrus from Egypt disappeared and expensive parchment took its place; and the power of kings waned, as local strongmen or "barons" seized the reigns of power in the provinces. The Middle Ages had begun.
Pirenne's great book, which was published posthumously, received a mixed reception. On the whole, it was conceded that he seemed to be on to something of great importance. Yet there was criticism, and this criticism only increased over the years.
One of the most telling arguments against Pirenne was the question of Byzantium. Historians were quick to point out that, whilst the regions of the West may have experienced a Dark Age between the seventh and tenth centuries, those of the East did not. There was no decline, they said, in Byzantium. If the Arab blockade of the Mediterranean had strangled classical urban civilization in the West, why did it not have the same effect in the East? This was a question to which there seemed no easy answer. Even Pirenne believed that Byzantium had somehow coped better with the Arabs than the West. In his time it was generally assumed that Classical Civilization survived in the East, and that the region was less "medievalised" than the West. We are, or have been until recently, informed by historians that the eighth-to-tenth-century Byzantium was, in the words of Sidnay Painter, "three centuries of glory," and that during this time "The Byzantine Empire was the richest state in Europe, the strongest military power, and by far the most cultivated" (Sidney Painter, ‘A History of the Middle Ages, 284-1500’). We are further informed that, "During these three centuries while Western Europe was a land of partly tamed barbarians, the Byzantine Empire was a highly civilized state where a most felicitous merger of Christianity and Hellenism produced a fascinating culture" (Ibid).
The above opinions, common till the latter half of the twentieth century, were partly prompted by Byzantine propaganda, which always sought to portray Constantinople as the "New Rome" and the successor, in an unbroken line of authority, of the first Christian Emperor, Constantine. Yet over the past half century, the science of archaeology has proved that picture a fabrication. As a matter of fact, we now know that the once-proud Eastern Rome was devastated by the Arab assaults. The same poverty and illiteracy that we find in the West we now find also in the East. Cities decline and the science and philosophy of the Greeks and Romans disappear. Just as in the West, a "dark age" descends. In the words of Cyril Mango, "One can hardly overestimate the catastrophic break that occurred in the seventh century. Anyone, who reads the narrative of events, will not fail to be struck by the calamities that befell the Empire, starting with the Persian invasion at the very beginning of the century, and falling to Arab expansion some thirty years later—a series of reverses that deprived the Empire of some of its most prosperous provinces, namely, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and, later, North Africa—and so reduced it to less than half its former size both in area and in population. But a reading of the narrative sources gives only a faint idea of the profound transformation that accompanied these events. ... It marked for the Byzantine lands the end of a way of life—the urban civilization of Antiquity—and the beginning of a very different and distinctly medieval world" (Cyril Mango, ‘Byzantium, the Empire of New Rome’, p. 4). Mango remarked on the virtual abandonment of the Byzantine cities after the mid-seventh century, and the archaeology of these settlements usually reveals "a dramatic rupture in the seventh century, sometimes in the form of virtual abandonment" (Ibid, p. 8). With the cities and papyrus supply from Egypt went the intellectual class, who after the seventh century, were reduced to a ‘small clique’ (Ibid, p. 9). The evidence, as Mango sees it, is unmistakable: the ‘catastrophe’ (as he names it) of the seventh century, "is the central event of Byzantine history" (Ibid).
Constantinople herself, the mighty million-strong capital of the East, was reduced, by the middle of the eighth century, to a veritable ruin. Mango quotes a document of the period which evokes a picture of ‘abandonment and ruination. Time and again we are told that various monuments—statues, palaces, baths—had once existed but were destroyed. What is more, the remaining monuments, many of which must have dated from the fourth and fifth centuries, were no longer understood for what they were. They had acquired a magical and generally ominous connotation’ (Ibid, p. 80).
So great was the destruction that even bronze coinage, the everyday lubricant of commercial life, disappeared. According to Mango, ‘In sites that have been systematically excavated, such as Athens, Corinth, Sardis and others, it has been ascertained that bronze coinage, the small change used for everyday transactions, was plentiful throughout the sixth century and (depending on local circumstances) until some time in the seventh, after which it almost disappeared, then showed a slight increase in the ninth, and did not become abundant again until the latter part of the tenth’ (Ibid, p. 72-3). Yet even the statement that some coins appeared in the ninth century has to be treated with caution. Mango notes that at Sardis the period between 491 and 616 is represented by 1,011 bronze coins, the rest of the seventh century by about 90, ‘and the eighth and ninth centuries combined by no more than 9’ (Ibid, p. 73). And, ‘similar results have been obtained from nearly all provincial Byzantine cities’. Even such paltry samples as have survived from the eighth and ninth centuries (nine) are usually of questionable provenance, a fact noted by Mango himself, who remarked that often, upon closer inspection, these turn out to originate either from before the dark age, or after it.
When archaeology again appears, in the middle of the tenth century, the civilization it reveals has been radically altered: The old Byzantium of Late Antiquity is gone, and we find an impoverished and semi-literate rump; a Medieval Byzantium strikingly like the Medieval France, Germany and Italy with which it was contemporary. Here, too, we find a barter or semi-barter economy, a decline in population and literacy, and an intolerant and theocratic state. And the break-off point in Byzantium, as in the West, is the first half of the seventh century, precisely corresponding to the arrival on the scene of the Arabs and of Islam.
Archaeology has thus come dramatically to the support of Pirenne, long after his death, and answered for him a question he could not. The impact of Islam was devastating for all of Christendom, both East and West. It was the event that terminated Classical civilization. The destruction of Classical culture in Europe was due to largely, though not completely, to the economic blockade of the Mediterranean by Muslim piracy. Yet the termination of that culture in regions such as Egypt and Syria (formally great centers of Classical and Hellenistic civilization), which came under the control of Islam, was produced by the new faith's utter contempt for the cultures and histories of the peoples it came to dominate. Right from the start, the caliphal government in Egypt established a commission, whose purpose was to seek out pharaohnic age tombs for plundering. So complete was the destruction that, perhaps, little more than a century after the Islamic conquest, no one in Egypt had any idea who built the Great Pyramid, despite the fact that very substantial histories of these monuments, and of the pharaohs, who erected it, were contained in the works of many Classical authors, most notably, of Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus. Immediately prior to the Mulsim invasion, the libraries and academies of Egypt, Syria, and Babylonia, were packed with the works of these authors. Their disappearance and the disappearance of the knowledge they contained can only mean, as Christian polemicists argued for centuries, that the Muslims had deliberately destroyed a great quantity of Classical literature.
In the West of Europe and in the East, in North Africa and the Middle East, Classical civilization came to an end in the mid-seventh century. And the reason for its demise can be summed up in one word: Islam.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
A glimpse into the bloody barbaric pagan world before Christianity
Child sacrifice and ritual murders rise in Uganda as famine loomsSurge in deaths and kidnaps among poor linked to witch-doctors and organ trafficking hmmmmmmmmm
.........this isn't about money or lack thereof, folks.
When James Katana returned from a church service to his village in the Bugiri district of eastern Uganda he was told that his three-year old son had been taken away by strangers.
"We were looking for my child for hours, but we couldn't find him," he said. "Someone rang me and told me my son was dead and had been left in the forest. I ran there and saw him lying in a pool of blood. His genitals had been cut off, but he was still alive." A witch-doctor is now in police custody, accused of the abduction and attempted murder of the boy.
Despite the mutilation and terror the child experienced, police say he was one of the lucky ones. Uganda has been shocked by a surge in ritualistic murders and human sacrifice, with police struggling to respond and public hysteria mounting at each gruesome discovery.
In 2008 more than 300 cases of murder and disappearances linked to ritual ceremonies were reported to the police with 18 cases making it to the courts. There were also several high-profile arrests of parents and relatives accused of selling children for human sacrifice.
In January this year the Ugandan government appointed a special police taskforce on human sacrifice and announced that 2,000 officers were to receive specialist training in tackling child trafficking with the support of the US government. Since the taskforce was set up there have been 15 more murders linked to human sacrifice with another 200 disappearances, mainly of children and young adults, under investigation.
"This year we have had more occurrences of people attempting to sell their children to witch-doctors as part of ritual ceremonies to guarantee wealth and prosperity," said Moses Binoga, acting commissioner of the anti-human sacrifice and trafficking taskforce.
Both police and NGOs are attributing the surge to a new wave of commercial witch-doctors using mass media to market their services and demand large sums of money to sacrifice humans and animals for people who believe blood will bring great prosperity.
"Cases of child sacrifice have always existed, mainly in the Ugandan central region, but there is a new strain of traditional healers in Uganda and their geographical spread is mainly attributed to increased unemployment and poverty," said Elena Lomeli. She is a volunteer with the British charity VSO who is supporting ANPPCAN Uganda, a child abuse NGO, in its work with victims in the capital Kampala. "My experience working with victims suggests that the abusers are greedy people who want to get rich quick. In rural areas, people can sacrifice their own child. In urban areas, educated and rich people will look for somebody else's."
Looming food shortages and famine hitting Uganda's poorest in the north and east are also feeding the demand for sacrificial rituals. "These are not poor people paying for these rituals, they are the wealthy elite taking advantage of the desperate poor," said Binoga. "In January a 21-year-old woman was jailed for 16 months for kidnapping a child and trying to sell him to a witch-doctor for a large sum. These cases are on the increase."
Ugandan police are increasingly linking the sudden increase in cases to organ trafficking. The anti-human trafficking taskforce said many of the bodies found in the past few months were missing organs such as kidneys, hearts and livers, a detail not consistent with many traditional ritualistic practices.
In May a report released by the US State Department said Uganda had become an international hub for human trafficking and highlighted the increased trade of children in the east of the country for their body parts . "We are investigating the possibility that some of these murders are the work of an international organ trafficking ring who are making these murders look like human sacrifice," said Binoga.
Despite the rise in cases, Ugandan police have secured a number of convictions and point to the high-profile trial of Kato Kajubi, a businessman accused of sacrificing a 12-year-old boy to guarantee the success of a new venture.
"According to our judicial system we can't charge people for these specific crimes, we have to charge them with murder, kidnap and intent to murder but these cases take about six months to process," said Binoga. "But many cases are going through the courts and a message has been sent. This year we have charged 10 people with homicide related to sacrificial practices, but we need parliament to pass a specific law to help us fight these crimes."
Government officials have warned that perceived police inaction over the ritual murders could lead to political instability as mob justice takes over.
.........this isn't about money or lack thereof, folks.
When James Katana returned from a church service to his village in the Bugiri district of eastern Uganda he was told that his three-year old son had been taken away by strangers.
"We were looking for my child for hours, but we couldn't find him," he said. "Someone rang me and told me my son was dead and had been left in the forest. I ran there and saw him lying in a pool of blood. His genitals had been cut off, but he was still alive." A witch-doctor is now in police custody, accused of the abduction and attempted murder of the boy.
Despite the mutilation and terror the child experienced, police say he was one of the lucky ones. Uganda has been shocked by a surge in ritualistic murders and human sacrifice, with police struggling to respond and public hysteria mounting at each gruesome discovery.
In 2008 more than 300 cases of murder and disappearances linked to ritual ceremonies were reported to the police with 18 cases making it to the courts. There were also several high-profile arrests of parents and relatives accused of selling children for human sacrifice.
In January this year the Ugandan government appointed a special police taskforce on human sacrifice and announced that 2,000 officers were to receive specialist training in tackling child trafficking with the support of the US government. Since the taskforce was set up there have been 15 more murders linked to human sacrifice with another 200 disappearances, mainly of children and young adults, under investigation.
"This year we have had more occurrences of people attempting to sell their children to witch-doctors as part of ritual ceremonies to guarantee wealth and prosperity," said Moses Binoga, acting commissioner of the anti-human sacrifice and trafficking taskforce.
Both police and NGOs are attributing the surge to a new wave of commercial witch-doctors using mass media to market their services and demand large sums of money to sacrifice humans and animals for people who believe blood will bring great prosperity.
"Cases of child sacrifice have always existed, mainly in the Ugandan central region, but there is a new strain of traditional healers in Uganda and their geographical spread is mainly attributed to increased unemployment and poverty," said Elena Lomeli. She is a volunteer with the British charity VSO who is supporting ANPPCAN Uganda, a child abuse NGO, in its work with victims in the capital Kampala. "My experience working with victims suggests that the abusers are greedy people who want to get rich quick. In rural areas, people can sacrifice their own child. In urban areas, educated and rich people will look for somebody else's."
Looming food shortages and famine hitting Uganda's poorest in the north and east are also feeding the demand for sacrificial rituals. "These are not poor people paying for these rituals, they are the wealthy elite taking advantage of the desperate poor," said Binoga. "In January a 21-year-old woman was jailed for 16 months for kidnapping a child and trying to sell him to a witch-doctor for a large sum. These cases are on the increase."
Ugandan police are increasingly linking the sudden increase in cases to organ trafficking. The anti-human trafficking taskforce said many of the bodies found in the past few months were missing organs such as kidneys, hearts and livers, a detail not consistent with many traditional ritualistic practices.
In May a report released by the US State Department said Uganda had become an international hub for human trafficking and highlighted the increased trade of children in the east of the country for their body parts . "We are investigating the possibility that some of these murders are the work of an international organ trafficking ring who are making these murders look like human sacrifice," said Binoga.
Despite the rise in cases, Ugandan police have secured a number of convictions and point to the high-profile trial of Kato Kajubi, a businessman accused of sacrificing a 12-year-old boy to guarantee the success of a new venture.
"According to our judicial system we can't charge people for these specific crimes, we have to charge them with murder, kidnap and intent to murder but these cases take about six months to process," said Binoga. "But many cases are going through the courts and a message has been sent. This year we have charged 10 people with homicide related to sacrificial practices, but we need parliament to pass a specific law to help us fight these crimes."
Government officials have warned that perceived police inaction over the ritual murders could lead to political instability as mob justice takes over.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The depraved, horrific slave/rape history of the Vikings, until Christianity spread across Scandinavia and SLAVERY CEASED IMMINENTLY
Part I Origin of Vikings
Peter Klevius hypothesis (2005-06) on how Islamic slavery created the Vikings and the origin of Russia
IS 1400 YRS OF ISLAMIC SLAVERY/RAPETIVISM/GENOCIDES THE WORST CRIME EVER AGAINST HUMANITY?
Origin of footbinding
also compare Klevius hypothesis on how Siberia created modern humans
The page should preferably be considered within KLEVUX macro social understanding (of which sex segregation is a crucial concept)
Philosophy/AI: EMAH - the even more astonishing hypothesis
Anthropology: Demand for resources - on the right to be poor
Out of Africa as "pygmies" and back as global "mongoloids"
Sociology: Definition of religion
Definition of feminism/sex segregation
Definition of (negative) human rights
Angels of Antichrist - kinship vs. social state
History: Origin of Islam
Background
Islam doesn't only support slavery but was itself, from start (first Islamic slaves were Arabs), the very essence of slavery. To understand the origin of Islam as Koranic slavery one has to understand the pre-Islamic trade routes going through the Arabian peninsula
The medieval expansion of Islam has been a forgotten analytical tool for most historians when it comes to historical dynamics such as e.g. Mongols, Vikings etc. But whereas the Mongol invasions were originally initiated as an "attacking defence" against Islamic invasions/atrocities, the Vikings started as slave traders serving Islam. The pattern could actually have been exactly the same as in Africa had it not been for a powerful Christianity in between (again, note that Klevius isn't a Christian nor even "religious" in any meaning resembling mideastern monolitheisms - see Klevius definition of religion).
In Goodbye to the Vikings? (2006) Richard Hodges (known from the "Islamic Origins" Institute) "re-reads" early Middle Age history from the distorted position as one more in a long row of populist re-readers with pro-Islamic intentions. This is perhaps why he misses entirely the whole point of Islamic slave trade as the basis not only for Islam itself but also for the understanding of Islam's influence in medieval Europe!
In one of his many popular science books archaeologist and associate professor Mats G. Larsson, allegedly interested in the Viking age, writes (1998) that in exchange for francian swords and "other goods" huge amounts of arabic coins began streaming in via Staraja Ladoga and Birka. Does this signal an enormous lack of scientific understanding or is it just pure political correctness (extremely deep and widespred in Swedish universities)?! The very fact that some swords are found there tells very little abt what was the real commerce abt. Especially considering "slave remains" are rare!
FROM HARAM TO HAREM
-The Islamic balancing of the proportion "infidels" and "muslims" in the wake of expansion
has to be understood in the light of Koranic Islam as a blueprint for slavery/rapetivism
Nine months after a forced or institutionalized rape a captured/traded slave girl had transformed from being a victim of sexual abuse/assault to a muslim mother and educator of her (Islam's) child(ren) under the sword of Sharia. From sexual plesure for the rapist patriarchs to a cultural fosterer of more of the same! That's the simple formula underlying Islam's "success" in conquest.
Islam proponents often brag that Islam doesn't use missionaries. Well da, you can't eat the cake and still have it, can you! This is why Islamic slave trade routes historically are actively rooted in "infidel" land. Of course, there were enough helpless slave girls etc available in most parts were the Islamic slave trader planted their nets/raids etc, but the tremendous expansion combined with the eagerness of scared people to convert to Islam for the sake of protection from Islam, constituted a real threat against Islam's economic base. Read more abt this on Origin of Islam.
Usually it's argued that it's unknown what triggered the Viking expansion. Historians have, for example, suggested technological innovations, positive climate change and due population growth.
Others have proposed the 785 destruction of the Frisian fleet by Charlemagne, as interrupting the flow of goods from Central Europe to Scandinavia, hence paving the way for Viking traders/raiders. Yet others emphasise centralisation of power in fewer hands in the aftermath of turmoil in Scandinavia. However, here it will be argued that none of the factors above, alone or combined, can even remotely compete with an explanation based on Islam's tremendous increase in slave trading during the advent of the Viking Age. The more one looks into it the more convincing the picture. So why hasn't it been offered before? The simple answer is that whereas white racists didn't like the image of Viking "heroes" killing defenceless white families and robbing their minor daughters (and some sons although these were often taken back to Sweden as 'trälar") and making a huge industry in selling them as sex slaves to Islam, today's racist/sexist pro-Islamists don't like it either!
In The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe (2000), when considering the causes of the Viking expansion, all attention is domestic and not a single word is offered towards external causes like the simple fact that new demands (Islamic slavery) signalled through old trade/raid routes (e.g. Russian river ways) may have considerable effects on even small communities if they are capable of delivering what is demanded. Perhaps Scandinavian fur traders just happened to have their wives/daughters with them (as we know the Vikings sometimes had) and someone (the Bolgars?) told them that similar, pretty slaves would mean big business with the muslims.
Facts
- Eurasian river-systems from nort to south and vice versa have been crucial, not only in the evolution/spreading of modern humans (also see Klevius anthropology blog) but also as extremely useful channels for trading/raiding.
- Viking boats were shallow-draught, light and perfect for light "cargo" that could walk by itself on difficult passages.
- From e.g. the Annals of Xanten we know that at least at one occasion in 837, in Walcheren, only females were abducted as slaves by the Vikings.
- Viking age emerged after the expansion of Islam.
- The Kazars stopped the Muslims in the east at the time when Charles Martel defeated them in the west (around 730).
- Viking age ended/transformed in conjuction with the decline of Islamic Cordoba, Abbasid etc and with the progression of empowered Christinity
- Koran/Islam clearly sanctions slavery (in fact, one may argue that Islam is institutionalized slavery/rapetivism).
- Muslims preferred white slave girls, i.e. these were the most valuable of all slaves (and, of course, both easy to handle and abuse during long journeys - I suggest reading Artur Lundkvist's well-informed novel Slavar för Särkland/i.e. someting like Slaves for Baghdad, 1978 - see exerpts below)..
- some 100.000 Arab/Islamic (mostly Abbasid) coins from the Viking age have been found in Sweden. A majority of them at Gotland in the Baltic sea, i.e on the island known for its 'russ' horses and a probable home harbour for Viking Rus, the "founder" of Russia (in fact he was asked to help the Russians against his fellow Viking looters).
- there was a huge increase in trade activity compared to pre-Viking age Scandinavia. Furthermore economic historians as well as historians of finance are beginning to agree that the trading of slaves connected to Islam has been greatly under-estimated.
- although slave taking/trading etc existed before, Islam made it a "religion"/"social state" (see Klevius Angels of Antichrist - kinship vs social state) /big business that the caliphates rested on.
- the Vikings were widely feared of in Europe but not in Arab/Islamic land..
- Viking slave trading stopped via Christianity and the creation of a feudal system, i.e. bridging to the so called Hansa period around the Baltic sea.
Koran 33:50: "Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives to whom you have granted dowries and the slave girls whom God has given you as booty."
Ibn Sa'd in Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir: Muhammed liked Mariyah (a slave girl),who was of white complexion, with curly hair and pretty.
Concepts and possible facts
Some Finnish, Baltic and Russian researchers now argue that the eastern Viking slave route predated the western one. Note that the very word Viking is often poorly conceptualized in different writings. Klevius Viking concept is: The north-European product of a pronounced increase in slave trading that was caused by Islam's pronounced increase in demand for slaves, as well as elaborate channels (incl. Jews etc) for this trade..
- Varjager (the name given for the Eastbound Vikings (from around 850 - but note that Vikings were present in Russia before 750) possibly comes from the Finnic-Ugric word for thieve 'wargas" (Finnish 'varkas' or 'varas'). Also compare Swedish 'varg' wolf, and 'jägare' hunter (wolves hunt/loot as a pack don't they).
- Valkyrie may mean 'chosen at slaughter', i.e. girls taken captive when the rest in raided villages were killed or expelled
Klevius' hypothesis on the "Viking age"
The so called Viking age (8th to 11th century) was initiated by Islam's demand for white slave girls and was finished by Christianity/feudalism (a bias comment: Klevius has never been a Christian or even believer in any mideast "monolitheist religion"). People wanted protection from Viking raids which fact, together with the fact that Islam threatened Europe from opposite directions, paved the way for Christian missionary/fortifications. Interestingly eastbound and westbound Vikings met in Miklagård (Constantinople). Furthermore it seems that the long transition period from Viking "paganism" to Viking Christianity may be explained as a result of commercial.pragmatism and long distances.
Trafficking, slavery and rapetivism/sex segregation need to be morally justified. This is why Islam rests on the racist "infidel" concept. Furthermore, to avoid any criticism the concept is said to come from a god who can't be questioned because he is cut off from the earthly via Mohammed and his "interpretors"..
Islam as an idea to conquer and sponge on human capital not only rests on, but is the result of the conditions in a pre-Islamic world. So yes, slavery existed before Islam, as did trading and looting, wars etc. But the point here is that certain Arabs (who couldn't/didn't want to do anything else), started campaigning an elaborated system - KORAN/ISLAM - of sponging based on slavery and institutionalized rapetivism (the first been enslaved being poor nomad Arabs). As we do know, this led to a tremendous expansion along existing trade routes and, as a consequence, to a great demand for slaves (especially young girls) and a corresponding increase in commerce/finance due to the wealth of.silver/gold that the Islamists had robbed from Africa, Central-Asia etc. It might be worth mentioning that the reason why Islam is said to not have missionaires is the fear of "infidel" shortage! However, as shown by M. Gordon and others, Muslims have throughout history had no problems enslaving other Muslims.
The word "valkyrie" comes from the Old Norse valkyrja (plural "valkyrur"), from the words "val" (slaughter) and "kyrja" (to choose). Literally the term means choosers of the slain. Cognate forms include the Old English "wælcyrige" and the German "Walküre." If this interpretation is rewersed (and I see no reason why not - but if you know, please tell me on the blog) we get:'girl chosen from the slain! Of course this doesn't affect the hypothesis either way but its an appealing thread, and, at least, a good title for the already known change from malign (raven on slain corpses) to benign (beauty, pleasure, fertility etc) that is recorded at the beginning of the Viking age.
Note that the secondary meaning of the 'valkyries' as "after death compensation" may also have been strengthened by contacts to the Islamic story abt young gils waiting for sexually please the slain jihadists. Also note that the lack of Islamization of the Vikings may be related to the simple and pragmatic fact that the Vikings had to cross/deal with Christians and Jews on their way down (look at your Europe map and compare it with European history of the time!).
From Slavar för Särkland (Artur Lundqvist, 1978) excerpts summarized and translated by P. Klevius
p 173 Flocks of slaves on their way to the Baghdad caliphate which seemed never to get enough of them.
p 180 In Baghdad it's hard to disinguish between male and female hookers - but no one seems to care whether the front or rear hole should be utilized.
p 180.What they see in Baghdad annoys them. The miserable state of the people doesn't in any sense exclude pompousness and a behavior like the whole world belonged to them.
p 181 Even males sit down piing hence showing fat asses resembling unbaked dough. Fleshy and powerless bodies in an unhealthy sense with hanging bellies and jumping cheeks.
p 188 Slave trader: And this young girl isn't yet used at all, just check for yourself. She can give her master great pleasure now and later on when her body gets the female form.
p 189 Viking Ulving starts doubting his mission in this traffic. He hasn't really seen the full picture before now.
Klevius comment: Perhaps there's also something to consider for those who haven't, even today, seen (or blinked) the full (slave/rape)picture of Islam!
Klevius etymology: The ancient Persian word for god 'khoda' connects to Finnish 'koti' and Finno-Ugric 'kota' (=home/house/seed vessel - see Klevius definition of religion and the Vagina gate), Saami 'goahti'. German Gott (god) and Swedish gott (good) as well as Gotland (pronounced Gottland).
Note the river link from Bay of Finland to the Viking (Rus)-Arab trade center in Bulgar. Also note that Staraja Ladoga is est. at 750 (even earlier by some Finnish and Russian researchers) and that Vikings were using Volga down to Abbasid at least in the early 9th century, probably far earlier. Furthermore, because of the Avars the Djnepr route was more difficult up to around 800. Old trade routes to Bulgar Volga were intensified and more directed on slave girls than on fur when Islam announced its slave girl hunger (see Rapetivism and the origin of Islam) via the Bulgars. Here one also has to carefully consider the facts that 1) the northern areas were quite sparsely populated hence not allowing for great fleets, armies, economies etc from the beginning, 2) that existing types of boats and routes were utilized/optimized in congruence with the islamic slave demand 3) that white slave girls were extremely high in value among Abbasid muslims, as well as 4) easy to pick up along the Finnish, Baltic and Russian rivers. As a consequense of this lucrative raiiding/trading in small scale Viking groups a more influential Viking aristocracy emerged and merged with Slavs etc eventually ending up as great armies in other parts of Europe.
Peter Klevius hypothesis (2005-06) on how Islamic slavery created the Vikings and the origin of Russia
IS 1400 YRS OF ISLAMIC SLAVERY/RAPETIVISM/GENOCIDES THE WORST CRIME EVER AGAINST HUMANITY?
Origin of footbinding
also compare Klevius hypothesis on how Siberia created modern humans
The page should preferably be considered within KLEVUX macro social understanding (of which sex segregation is a crucial concept)
Philosophy/AI: EMAH - the even more astonishing hypothesis
Anthropology: Demand for resources - on the right to be poor
Out of Africa as "pygmies" and back as global "mongoloids"
Sociology: Definition of religion
Definition of feminism/sex segregation
Definition of (negative) human rights
Angels of Antichrist - kinship vs. social state
History: Origin of Islam
Background
Islam doesn't only support slavery but was itself, from start (first Islamic slaves were Arabs), the very essence of slavery. To understand the origin of Islam as Koranic slavery one has to understand the pre-Islamic trade routes going through the Arabian peninsula
The medieval expansion of Islam has been a forgotten analytical tool for most historians when it comes to historical dynamics such as e.g. Mongols, Vikings etc. But whereas the Mongol invasions were originally initiated as an "attacking defence" against Islamic invasions/atrocities, the Vikings started as slave traders serving Islam. The pattern could actually have been exactly the same as in Africa had it not been for a powerful Christianity in between (again, note that Klevius isn't a Christian nor even "religious" in any meaning resembling mideastern monolitheisms - see Klevius definition of religion).
In Goodbye to the Vikings? (2006) Richard Hodges (known from the "Islamic Origins" Institute) "re-reads" early Middle Age history from the distorted position as one more in a long row of populist re-readers with pro-Islamic intentions. This is perhaps why he misses entirely the whole point of Islamic slave trade as the basis not only for Islam itself but also for the understanding of Islam's influence in medieval Europe!
In one of his many popular science books archaeologist and associate professor Mats G. Larsson, allegedly interested in the Viking age, writes (1998) that in exchange for francian swords and "other goods" huge amounts of arabic coins began streaming in via Staraja Ladoga and Birka. Does this signal an enormous lack of scientific understanding or is it just pure political correctness (extremely deep and widespred in Swedish universities)?! The very fact that some swords are found there tells very little abt what was the real commerce abt. Especially considering "slave remains" are rare!
FROM HARAM TO HAREM
-The Islamic balancing of the proportion "infidels" and "muslims" in the wake of expansion
has to be understood in the light of Koranic Islam as a blueprint for slavery/rapetivism
Nine months after a forced or institutionalized rape a captured/traded slave girl had transformed from being a victim of sexual abuse/assault to a muslim mother and educator of her (Islam's) child(ren) under the sword of Sharia. From sexual plesure for the rapist patriarchs to a cultural fosterer of more of the same! That's the simple formula underlying Islam's "success" in conquest.
Islam proponents often brag that Islam doesn't use missionaries. Well da, you can't eat the cake and still have it, can you! This is why Islamic slave trade routes historically are actively rooted in "infidel" land. Of course, there were enough helpless slave girls etc available in most parts were the Islamic slave trader planted their nets/raids etc, but the tremendous expansion combined with the eagerness of scared people to convert to Islam for the sake of protection from Islam, constituted a real threat against Islam's economic base. Read more abt this on Origin of Islam.
Usually it's argued that it's unknown what triggered the Viking expansion. Historians have, for example, suggested technological innovations, positive climate change and due population growth.
Others have proposed the 785 destruction of the Frisian fleet by Charlemagne, as interrupting the flow of goods from Central Europe to Scandinavia, hence paving the way for Viking traders/raiders. Yet others emphasise centralisation of power in fewer hands in the aftermath of turmoil in Scandinavia. However, here it will be argued that none of the factors above, alone or combined, can even remotely compete with an explanation based on Islam's tremendous increase in slave trading during the advent of the Viking Age. The more one looks into it the more convincing the picture. So why hasn't it been offered before? The simple answer is that whereas white racists didn't like the image of Viking "heroes" killing defenceless white families and robbing their minor daughters (and some sons although these were often taken back to Sweden as 'trälar") and making a huge industry in selling them as sex slaves to Islam, today's racist/sexist pro-Islamists don't like it either!
In The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe (2000), when considering the causes of the Viking expansion, all attention is domestic and not a single word is offered towards external causes like the simple fact that new demands (Islamic slavery) signalled through old trade/raid routes (e.g. Russian river ways) may have considerable effects on even small communities if they are capable of delivering what is demanded. Perhaps Scandinavian fur traders just happened to have their wives/daughters with them (as we know the Vikings sometimes had) and someone (the Bolgars?) told them that similar, pretty slaves would mean big business with the muslims.
Facts
- Eurasian river-systems from nort to south and vice versa have been crucial, not only in the evolution/spreading of modern humans (also see Klevius anthropology blog) but also as extremely useful channels for trading/raiding.
- Viking boats were shallow-draught, light and perfect for light "cargo" that could walk by itself on difficult passages.
- From e.g. the Annals of Xanten we know that at least at one occasion in 837, in Walcheren, only females were abducted as slaves by the Vikings.
- Viking age emerged after the expansion of Islam.
- The Kazars stopped the Muslims in the east at the time when Charles Martel defeated them in the west (around 730).
- Viking age ended/transformed in conjuction with the decline of Islamic Cordoba, Abbasid etc and with the progression of empowered Christinity
- Koran/Islam clearly sanctions slavery (in fact, one may argue that Islam is institutionalized slavery/rapetivism).
- Muslims preferred white slave girls, i.e. these were the most valuable of all slaves (and, of course, both easy to handle and abuse during long journeys - I suggest reading Artur Lundkvist's well-informed novel Slavar för Särkland/i.e. someting like Slaves for Baghdad, 1978 - see exerpts below)..
- some 100.000 Arab/Islamic (mostly Abbasid) coins from the Viking age have been found in Sweden. A majority of them at Gotland in the Baltic sea, i.e on the island known for its 'russ' horses and a probable home harbour for Viking Rus, the "founder" of Russia (in fact he was asked to help the Russians against his fellow Viking looters).
- there was a huge increase in trade activity compared to pre-Viking age Scandinavia. Furthermore economic historians as well as historians of finance are beginning to agree that the trading of slaves connected to Islam has been greatly under-estimated.
- although slave taking/trading etc existed before, Islam made it a "religion"/"social state" (see Klevius Angels of Antichrist - kinship vs social state) /big business that the caliphates rested on.
- the Vikings were widely feared of in Europe but not in Arab/Islamic land..
- Viking slave trading stopped via Christianity and the creation of a feudal system, i.e. bridging to the so called Hansa period around the Baltic sea.
Koran 33:50: "Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives to whom you have granted dowries and the slave girls whom God has given you as booty."
Ibn Sa'd in Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir: Muhammed liked Mariyah (a slave girl),who was of white complexion, with curly hair and pretty.
Concepts and possible facts
Some Finnish, Baltic and Russian researchers now argue that the eastern Viking slave route predated the western one. Note that the very word Viking is often poorly conceptualized in different writings. Klevius Viking concept is: The north-European product of a pronounced increase in slave trading that was caused by Islam's pronounced increase in demand for slaves, as well as elaborate channels (incl. Jews etc) for this trade..
- Varjager (the name given for the Eastbound Vikings (from around 850 - but note that Vikings were present in Russia before 750) possibly comes from the Finnic-Ugric word for thieve 'wargas" (Finnish 'varkas' or 'varas'). Also compare Swedish 'varg' wolf, and 'jägare' hunter (wolves hunt/loot as a pack don't they).
- Valkyrie may mean 'chosen at slaughter', i.e. girls taken captive when the rest in raided villages were killed or expelled
Klevius' hypothesis on the "Viking age"
The so called Viking age (8th to 11th century) was initiated by Islam's demand for white slave girls and was finished by Christianity/feudalism (a bias comment: Klevius has never been a Christian or even believer in any mideast "monolitheist religion"). People wanted protection from Viking raids which fact, together with the fact that Islam threatened Europe from opposite directions, paved the way for Christian missionary/fortifications. Interestingly eastbound and westbound Vikings met in Miklagård (Constantinople). Furthermore it seems that the long transition period from Viking "paganism" to Viking Christianity may be explained as a result of commercial.pragmatism and long distances.
Trafficking, slavery and rapetivism/sex segregation need to be morally justified. This is why Islam rests on the racist "infidel" concept. Furthermore, to avoid any criticism the concept is said to come from a god who can't be questioned because he is cut off from the earthly via Mohammed and his "interpretors"..
Islam as an idea to conquer and sponge on human capital not only rests on, but is the result of the conditions in a pre-Islamic world. So yes, slavery existed before Islam, as did trading and looting, wars etc. But the point here is that certain Arabs (who couldn't/didn't want to do anything else), started campaigning an elaborated system - KORAN/ISLAM - of sponging based on slavery and institutionalized rapetivism (the first been enslaved being poor nomad Arabs). As we do know, this led to a tremendous expansion along existing trade routes and, as a consequence, to a great demand for slaves (especially young girls) and a corresponding increase in commerce/finance due to the wealth of.silver/gold that the Islamists had robbed from Africa, Central-Asia etc. It might be worth mentioning that the reason why Islam is said to not have missionaires is the fear of "infidel" shortage! However, as shown by M. Gordon and others, Muslims have throughout history had no problems enslaving other Muslims.
The word "valkyrie" comes from the Old Norse valkyrja (plural "valkyrur"), from the words "val" (slaughter) and "kyrja" (to choose). Literally the term means choosers of the slain. Cognate forms include the Old English "wælcyrige" and the German "Walküre." If this interpretation is rewersed (and I see no reason why not - but if you know, please tell me on the blog) we get:'girl chosen from the slain! Of course this doesn't affect the hypothesis either way but its an appealing thread, and, at least, a good title for the already known change from malign (raven on slain corpses) to benign (beauty, pleasure, fertility etc) that is recorded at the beginning of the Viking age.
Note that the secondary meaning of the 'valkyries' as "after death compensation" may also have been strengthened by contacts to the Islamic story abt young gils waiting for sexually please the slain jihadists. Also note that the lack of Islamization of the Vikings may be related to the simple and pragmatic fact that the Vikings had to cross/deal with Christians and Jews on their way down (look at your Europe map and compare it with European history of the time!).
From Slavar för Särkland (Artur Lundqvist, 1978) excerpts summarized and translated by P. Klevius
p 173 Flocks of slaves on their way to the Baghdad caliphate which seemed never to get enough of them.
p 180 In Baghdad it's hard to disinguish between male and female hookers - but no one seems to care whether the front or rear hole should be utilized.
p 180.What they see in Baghdad annoys them. The miserable state of the people doesn't in any sense exclude pompousness and a behavior like the whole world belonged to them.
p 181 Even males sit down piing hence showing fat asses resembling unbaked dough. Fleshy and powerless bodies in an unhealthy sense with hanging bellies and jumping cheeks.
p 188 Slave trader: And this young girl isn't yet used at all, just check for yourself. She can give her master great pleasure now and later on when her body gets the female form.
p 189 Viking Ulving starts doubting his mission in this traffic. He hasn't really seen the full picture before now.
Klevius comment: Perhaps there's also something to consider for those who haven't, even today, seen (or blinked) the full (slave/rape)picture of Islam!
Klevius etymology: The ancient Persian word for god 'khoda' connects to Finnish 'koti' and Finno-Ugric 'kota' (=home/house/seed vessel - see Klevius definition of religion and the Vagina gate), Saami 'goahti'. German Gott (god) and Swedish gott (good) as well as Gotland (pronounced Gottland).
Note the river link from Bay of Finland to the Viking (Rus)-Arab trade center in Bulgar. Also note that Staraja Ladoga is est. at 750 (even earlier by some Finnish and Russian researchers) and that Vikings were using Volga down to Abbasid at least in the early 9th century, probably far earlier. Furthermore, because of the Avars the Djnepr route was more difficult up to around 800. Old trade routes to Bulgar Volga were intensified and more directed on slave girls than on fur when Islam announced its slave girl hunger (see Rapetivism and the origin of Islam) via the Bulgars. Here one also has to carefully consider the facts that 1) the northern areas were quite sparsely populated hence not allowing for great fleets, armies, economies etc from the beginning, 2) that existing types of boats and routes were utilized/optimized in congruence with the islamic slave demand 3) that white slave girls were extremely high in value among Abbasid muslims, as well as 4) easy to pick up along the Finnish, Baltic and Russian rivers. As a consequense of this lucrative raiiding/trading in small scale Viking groups a more influential Viking aristocracy emerged and merged with Slavs etc eventually ending up as great armies in other parts of Europe.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Europe’s Dark Age and Islam’s Golden Age: Two Facets of The Same Fiction?
Popular history books tell us that Euruope's Dark Ages (8-10th century) was Islam's Golden Age --- a Golden Age without any hard facts...
Brilliant article regarding the mysterious years of the early middle ages, and the revisionism regarding the religious struggles therein
According to the history books, the Early Middle Ages, the period stretching roughly from the first quarter of the seventh century to the first quarter of the tenth, was a crucial time for Europe and the Middle East. For Europe, this was the very darkest phase of the so-called Dark Ages, an era during which the light of Classical Civilization was finally extinguished. However, for the Middle East, which from about 635 onwards became Muslim, it was a very different story. The next three centuries, far from constituting a “Dark Age”, became a veritable Golden Age. This was to be the high point of Islamic civilization: three centuries during which the Islamdom led the world in science, philosophy, wealth and culture. As Europe floundered in poverty and darkness, with cities abandoned and violence everywhere, Muslim rulers such as Harun al-Rashid and Al-Mamum presided over a flourishing and enlightened urban civilization.
That, at least, is the story told in all the textbooks. But proper examination of facts suggests that this is mostly, if not completely, a myth. In reality, neither the European Dark Age nor the Islamic Golden Age has any basis in fact: These are little more than two facets of a single fictitious historical narrative, a narrative which has however been around for many centuries; one that derives from the written histories of early Islam and of Europe. Until the nineteenth century, no-one had any real reason to question this version of events. After all, the Islamic world, at least by the beginning of the eleventh century, did seem to be far ahead of Europe. Did we not get our numeral system (“Arabic numerals”) from the Arabs, as well as algebra, alcohol, and a host of other techniques and technologies? All the evidence seemed to indicate that the Muslim world was, in the centuries preceding the eleventh, advanced and sophisticated, while Europe was mired in a primitive barbarism.
But this view has now faced a serious challenge: For, in the twentieth century, a whole new body of evidence became available to historians; evidence unavailable to previous generations of scholars: The evidence of archaeology. And what archaeology tells us has been devastating to the traditional view.
By the mid-twentieth century, archaeologists had begun to put together a fairly comprehensive picture of the archaeology of Europe and the Near East. Indeed, several areas of the Near East, such as Egypt, Palestine and Iraq, were and remain among the most thoroughly excavated regions of the earth.
Medievalists had, of course, been very interested in throwing light on the somewhat romantic though apparently fabulously wealthy and cultured Islamic world of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries. Strange and wonderful tales were told of this epoch, though all agreed it was an age of high civilization. This was the age of the Omayyad and Abbasid Caliphs; the romantic epoch of Scheherazade and Harun Al-Rashid, the fabulously opulent Caliph of Baghdad, who is said to have donned the disguise of a commoner and wandered by night through the dimly-lit streets of the metropolis—a city of reputedly a million people. This epoch, and this alone, is said to have marked the age of Islam’s cultural ascendancy. Consider the following description from an English historian of eighth-tenth century Cordoba, typical of the genre: “In Spain … the foundation of Umayyad power ushers in an era of unequalled splendour, which reaches its height in the early part of the tenth century. The great university of Cordova is thronged with students … while the city itself excites the wonder of visitors from Germany and France. The banks of the Guadalquivir are covered with luxurious villas, and born of the ruler’s caprice rises the famous Palace of the Flower, a fantastic city of delights” (H. St. L. B. Moss, The Birth of the Middle Ages; 395-814, Oxford University Press, 1935, p. 172). All agree that, in later years, from the late eleventh century onwards, the Islamic world began to fall rapidly behind the West.
On the word of the written histories, then, archaeologists expected to find, from Spain to eastern Iran, a flourishing and vibrant culture. An Islamic world of enormous cities endowed with all the wealth of antiquity and the plunder gathered in the Muslim wars of conquest. They hoped to find palaces, public baths, universities and mosques; all richly decorated with marble, ceramic and carved stone.
In fact, they found nothing of the sort.
The archaeological non-appearance of the Islamic Golden Age is surely one of the most remarkable discoveries to come to light in the past century. It has not achieved the sensational headlines we might expect, for the simple reason that a non-discovery is of much less interest to the public than a discovery. Then again, as archaeologists searched in vain through site after site, they imagined they had just been unlucky; that with the next day’s dig, the fabulous palaces and baths would be uncovered. And this has been the pattern now for a hundred years. In fact, the entire Islamic world is a virtual blank for roughly three centuries.
Normally, we find one or two finds attributed to the seventh century, then nothing for three centuries, then a resumption of archaeological material in the mid- or late-tenth century. Take, for example Egypt, the largest and most populous Islamic country during the Early Middle Ages. The Muslim conquest of the country occurred in 638 or 639, and we should expect the invaders to have begun, almost immediately, using the wealth of the land to begin building numerous and splendid places of worship, but apparently they didn’t. Only two mosques in the whole of Egypt, both in Cairo, are said to date from before the eleventh century: the Amr ibn al-As (641) and the Ahmad ibn Tulun (878). However, the latter building has many features found only in mosques of the eleventh century, so its date of 878 is disputed. Thus, in Egypt, we have a single place of worship, the mosque of Amr ibn al-As, dating from the mid-seventh century, then nothing for another three-and-a-half centuries. Why, in an enormous country with up to, perhaps, five million inhabitants, should the Muslims wait over 300 years before building themselves places of worship?
And it is the same throughout the Islamic world. No matter where we go, from Spain to Iran, there is virtually nothing between circa 650 and 950. Spain, as we have seen, is supposed to have witnessed a flowering of Islamic culture and civilization in the two centuries after the Arab conquest of 711; and the city of Cordoba is said to have grown to a sophisticated metropolis of half-a-million people or more. We recall the description of a flourishing and vastly opulent metropolis painted by the writer quoted above. Yet the same author admitted that “Little remains of the architecture of this period.” Little indeed! As a matter of fact, the only Muslim structure in the whole of Spain dating from before the eleventh century is the so-called Mosque of Cordoba; yet even this, strictly-speaking, is not an Islamic construction: It was originally the Visigothic Cathedral of Saint Vincent, which was converted, supposedly in the days of Abd er-Rahman I, to a mosque. Yet the Islamic features that exist could equally belong to the time of Abd er-Rahman III (latter tenth century), whom we know did conversion work on the Cathedral, adding a minaret and a new façade (Louis Bertrand, The History of Spain, p. 54). Most of the Islamic features in the building actually come after Abd er-Rahman III, and there is no secure way of dating anything in it to the eighth century.
The poverty of visible Islamic remains is normally explained by the proposition that the Christians destroyed the Muslim monuments after the city’s re-conquest. But this solution is inherently a suspect. Granted the Christians might have destroyed all the mosques, though even that seems unlikely, but they certainly would not have destroyed opulent palaces, baths, fortifications, etc. Yet none of these—none, at least, ascribed to the eighth to early tenth centuries—has survived. And even granting that, such a universal and pointless destruction did take place, we have to assume that at least under the ground, we would find an abundance of Arab foundations, as well as artifacts, tools, pottery etc. Indeed, in a city of half-a-million people, as Cordoba of the eight, ninth and tenth centuries is said to have been—the archaeologist would expect to find—a superabundance of such things. They should be popping out of the ground with almost every shovel-full of dirt.Now Cordoba has been extensively excavated over the past seventy years or so, often specifically to search for Arab/Moorish remains. What then has been found?
According to the prestigious Oxford Archaeological Guide, the city has revealed, after exhaustive excavations: (a) The south-western portion of the city wall, which was “presumably” of the ninth century; (b) A small bath-complex, of the 9th/10th century; and (c) A “part” of the Umayyad (8-9th century) mosque (The Oxford Archaeological Guide, Collins, 1998). This is all that can be discovered from two-and-a-half centuries of the history of a city of supposedly half-a-million people. And the rest of Spain, which has been investigated with equal vigor, can deliver little else. The foundations of a small house here and a few fragments of pottery there, usually of doubtful date and often described as “presumably” of ninth century or such like.
The sheer poverty of these remains makes it clear that the fabulously wealthy Cordoba of the eighth, ninth and early tenth centuries is a myth; and the elusive nature of all materials from these three centuries, in every part of the Islamic world, makes us wonder whether the rise of Islam has been somehow misdated: For the first real mark left (in archaeological terms) by Islam in Spain is dated to the mid-tenth century, to the time of Abd er-Rahman III, whose life bears many striking comparisons with his namesake and supposed ancestor Abd er-Rahman I, of the eighth century.
Again, there are strange and striking parallels between the major events of Islamic history of the seventh and eighth centuries on the one hand and of the tenth and eleventh centuries on the other. Thus, for example, the Christian Reconquista in Spain is supposed to have commenced around 720, with the victory of Don Pelayo at Covadonga; but the real Reconquista began three hundred years later with the victories of Sancho of Navarre around 1020. Similarly, the Islamic invasion of northern India supposedly commenced around 710-720 with the victories of Muhammed bin Qasim, though the “real” Islamic conquest of the region began with the victories of Mahmud of Ghazni, roughly between 1010 and 1020. Yet again, the impact of Islam on Europe seems not have been felt until the late tenth and eleventh centuries, though commonsense would suggest that it should have been felt three hundred years earlier. Henri Pirenne, for example, was criticized by Alfons Dopsch for suggesting that Islam terminated Classical Civilization in Europe in the seventh century by its blockade of the Mediterranean. Thus, said Dopsch, Europe should have become “Medieval” by the late seventh century. Yet many of the characteristics of medieval society, such as the rise of feudalism and castle-building, said Dopsch, only appear in the late tenth century. And obviously Islamic ideas, such as Holy War, were only copied by the Europeans in the eleventh century.
What then does all this mean?
The lack of Muslim archaeology from before the tenth and eleventh centuries (with the exception of two or three monuments such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Amr ibn al-As mosque in Cairo, usually of the mid-seventh century), would indicate that the rise of Islam has been misdated, and that some form of error has crept into the chronology. But error or not, the fact that, virtually nothing from before the mid-tenth century has been found, means that Islam was not a flourishing, opulent and cultured civilization whilst Europe was mired in the Dark Ages. By the late tenth century, Europe was experiencing her own “renaissance”, with a flowering of “Romanesque” art and architecture, much of it strongly reminiscent of the Late Classical work of the Merovingian and Visigothic period.
The meaning of this archaeological “dark age”, of central importance to our understanding of European and Islamic history, will be discussed more fully in a subsequent article.
The above article summarizes arguments found in John O’Neill’s Holy Warriors: Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization (Felibri Publications).
Popular history books tell us that Euruope's Dark Ages (8-10th century) was Islam's Golden Age --- a Golden Age without any hard facts...
Brilliant article regarding the mysterious years of the early middle ages, and the revisionism regarding the religious struggles therein
According to the history books, the Early Middle Ages, the period stretching roughly from the first quarter of the seventh century to the first quarter of the tenth, was a crucial time for Europe and the Middle East. For Europe, this was the very darkest phase of the so-called Dark Ages, an era during which the light of Classical Civilization was finally extinguished. However, for the Middle East, which from about 635 onwards became Muslim, it was a very different story. The next three centuries, far from constituting a “Dark Age”, became a veritable Golden Age. This was to be the high point of Islamic civilization: three centuries during which the Islamdom led the world in science, philosophy, wealth and culture. As Europe floundered in poverty and darkness, with cities abandoned and violence everywhere, Muslim rulers such as Harun al-Rashid and Al-Mamum presided over a flourishing and enlightened urban civilization.
That, at least, is the story told in all the textbooks. But proper examination of facts suggests that this is mostly, if not completely, a myth. In reality, neither the European Dark Age nor the Islamic Golden Age has any basis in fact: These are little more than two facets of a single fictitious historical narrative, a narrative which has however been around for many centuries; one that derives from the written histories of early Islam and of Europe. Until the nineteenth century, no-one had any real reason to question this version of events. After all, the Islamic world, at least by the beginning of the eleventh century, did seem to be far ahead of Europe. Did we not get our numeral system (“Arabic numerals”) from the Arabs, as well as algebra, alcohol, and a host of other techniques and technologies? All the evidence seemed to indicate that the Muslim world was, in the centuries preceding the eleventh, advanced and sophisticated, while Europe was mired in a primitive barbarism.
But this view has now faced a serious challenge: For, in the twentieth century, a whole new body of evidence became available to historians; evidence unavailable to previous generations of scholars: The evidence of archaeology. And what archaeology tells us has been devastating to the traditional view.
By the mid-twentieth century, archaeologists had begun to put together a fairly comprehensive picture of the archaeology of Europe and the Near East. Indeed, several areas of the Near East, such as Egypt, Palestine and Iraq, were and remain among the most thoroughly excavated regions of the earth.
Medievalists had, of course, been very interested in throwing light on the somewhat romantic though apparently fabulously wealthy and cultured Islamic world of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries. Strange and wonderful tales were told of this epoch, though all agreed it was an age of high civilization. This was the age of the Omayyad and Abbasid Caliphs; the romantic epoch of Scheherazade and Harun Al-Rashid, the fabulously opulent Caliph of Baghdad, who is said to have donned the disguise of a commoner and wandered by night through the dimly-lit streets of the metropolis—a city of reputedly a million people. This epoch, and this alone, is said to have marked the age of Islam’s cultural ascendancy. Consider the following description from an English historian of eighth-tenth century Cordoba, typical of the genre: “In Spain … the foundation of Umayyad power ushers in an era of unequalled splendour, which reaches its height in the early part of the tenth century. The great university of Cordova is thronged with students … while the city itself excites the wonder of visitors from Germany and France. The banks of the Guadalquivir are covered with luxurious villas, and born of the ruler’s caprice rises the famous Palace of the Flower, a fantastic city of delights” (H. St. L. B. Moss, The Birth of the Middle Ages; 395-814, Oxford University Press, 1935, p. 172). All agree that, in later years, from the late eleventh century onwards, the Islamic world began to fall rapidly behind the West.
On the word of the written histories, then, archaeologists expected to find, from Spain to eastern Iran, a flourishing and vibrant culture. An Islamic world of enormous cities endowed with all the wealth of antiquity and the plunder gathered in the Muslim wars of conquest. They hoped to find palaces, public baths, universities and mosques; all richly decorated with marble, ceramic and carved stone.
In fact, they found nothing of the sort.
The archaeological non-appearance of the Islamic Golden Age is surely one of the most remarkable discoveries to come to light in the past century. It has not achieved the sensational headlines we might expect, for the simple reason that a non-discovery is of much less interest to the public than a discovery. Then again, as archaeologists searched in vain through site after site, they imagined they had just been unlucky; that with the next day’s dig, the fabulous palaces and baths would be uncovered. And this has been the pattern now for a hundred years. In fact, the entire Islamic world is a virtual blank for roughly three centuries.
Normally, we find one or two finds attributed to the seventh century, then nothing for three centuries, then a resumption of archaeological material in the mid- or late-tenth century. Take, for example Egypt, the largest and most populous Islamic country during the Early Middle Ages. The Muslim conquest of the country occurred in 638 or 639, and we should expect the invaders to have begun, almost immediately, using the wealth of the land to begin building numerous and splendid places of worship, but apparently they didn’t. Only two mosques in the whole of Egypt, both in Cairo, are said to date from before the eleventh century: the Amr ibn al-As (641) and the Ahmad ibn Tulun (878). However, the latter building has many features found only in mosques of the eleventh century, so its date of 878 is disputed. Thus, in Egypt, we have a single place of worship, the mosque of Amr ibn al-As, dating from the mid-seventh century, then nothing for another three-and-a-half centuries. Why, in an enormous country with up to, perhaps, five million inhabitants, should the Muslims wait over 300 years before building themselves places of worship?
And it is the same throughout the Islamic world. No matter where we go, from Spain to Iran, there is virtually nothing between circa 650 and 950. Spain, as we have seen, is supposed to have witnessed a flowering of Islamic culture and civilization in the two centuries after the Arab conquest of 711; and the city of Cordoba is said to have grown to a sophisticated metropolis of half-a-million people or more. We recall the description of a flourishing and vastly opulent metropolis painted by the writer quoted above. Yet the same author admitted that “Little remains of the architecture of this period.” Little indeed! As a matter of fact, the only Muslim structure in the whole of Spain dating from before the eleventh century is the so-called Mosque of Cordoba; yet even this, strictly-speaking, is not an Islamic construction: It was originally the Visigothic Cathedral of Saint Vincent, which was converted, supposedly in the days of Abd er-Rahman I, to a mosque. Yet the Islamic features that exist could equally belong to the time of Abd er-Rahman III (latter tenth century), whom we know did conversion work on the Cathedral, adding a minaret and a new façade (Louis Bertrand, The History of Spain, p. 54). Most of the Islamic features in the building actually come after Abd er-Rahman III, and there is no secure way of dating anything in it to the eighth century.
The poverty of visible Islamic remains is normally explained by the proposition that the Christians destroyed the Muslim monuments after the city’s re-conquest. But this solution is inherently a suspect. Granted the Christians might have destroyed all the mosques, though even that seems unlikely, but they certainly would not have destroyed opulent palaces, baths, fortifications, etc. Yet none of these—none, at least, ascribed to the eighth to early tenth centuries—has survived. And even granting that, such a universal and pointless destruction did take place, we have to assume that at least under the ground, we would find an abundance of Arab foundations, as well as artifacts, tools, pottery etc. Indeed, in a city of half-a-million people, as Cordoba of the eight, ninth and tenth centuries is said to have been—the archaeologist would expect to find—a superabundance of such things. They should be popping out of the ground with almost every shovel-full of dirt.Now Cordoba has been extensively excavated over the past seventy years or so, often specifically to search for Arab/Moorish remains. What then has been found?
According to the prestigious Oxford Archaeological Guide, the city has revealed, after exhaustive excavations: (a) The south-western portion of the city wall, which was “presumably” of the ninth century; (b) A small bath-complex, of the 9th/10th century; and (c) A “part” of the Umayyad (8-9th century) mosque (The Oxford Archaeological Guide, Collins, 1998). This is all that can be discovered from two-and-a-half centuries of the history of a city of supposedly half-a-million people. And the rest of Spain, which has been investigated with equal vigor, can deliver little else. The foundations of a small house here and a few fragments of pottery there, usually of doubtful date and often described as “presumably” of ninth century or such like.
The sheer poverty of these remains makes it clear that the fabulously wealthy Cordoba of the eighth, ninth and early tenth centuries is a myth; and the elusive nature of all materials from these three centuries, in every part of the Islamic world, makes us wonder whether the rise of Islam has been somehow misdated: For the first real mark left (in archaeological terms) by Islam in Spain is dated to the mid-tenth century, to the time of Abd er-Rahman III, whose life bears many striking comparisons with his namesake and supposed ancestor Abd er-Rahman I, of the eighth century.
Again, there are strange and striking parallels between the major events of Islamic history of the seventh and eighth centuries on the one hand and of the tenth and eleventh centuries on the other. Thus, for example, the Christian Reconquista in Spain is supposed to have commenced around 720, with the victory of Don Pelayo at Covadonga; but the real Reconquista began three hundred years later with the victories of Sancho of Navarre around 1020. Similarly, the Islamic invasion of northern India supposedly commenced around 710-720 with the victories of Muhammed bin Qasim, though the “real” Islamic conquest of the region began with the victories of Mahmud of Ghazni, roughly between 1010 and 1020. Yet again, the impact of Islam on Europe seems not have been felt until the late tenth and eleventh centuries, though commonsense would suggest that it should have been felt three hundred years earlier. Henri Pirenne, for example, was criticized by Alfons Dopsch for suggesting that Islam terminated Classical Civilization in Europe in the seventh century by its blockade of the Mediterranean. Thus, said Dopsch, Europe should have become “Medieval” by the late seventh century. Yet many of the characteristics of medieval society, such as the rise of feudalism and castle-building, said Dopsch, only appear in the late tenth century. And obviously Islamic ideas, such as Holy War, were only copied by the Europeans in the eleventh century.
What then does all this mean?
The lack of Muslim archaeology from before the tenth and eleventh centuries (with the exception of two or three monuments such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Amr ibn al-As mosque in Cairo, usually of the mid-seventh century), would indicate that the rise of Islam has been misdated, and that some form of error has crept into the chronology. But error or not, the fact that, virtually nothing from before the mid-tenth century has been found, means that Islam was not a flourishing, opulent and cultured civilization whilst Europe was mired in the Dark Ages. By the late tenth century, Europe was experiencing her own “renaissance”, with a flowering of “Romanesque” art and architecture, much of it strongly reminiscent of the Late Classical work of the Merovingian and Visigothic period.
The meaning of this archaeological “dark age”, of central importance to our understanding of European and Islamic history, will be discussed more fully in a subsequent article.
The above article summarizes arguments found in John O’Neill’s Holy Warriors: Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization (Felibri Publications).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
