Your tax dollars at work.

Actually, the Saudi blood/oil money at work.

And where are the resources used to make this statement?
Did the referrals come from the top of their heads?
The insanity that is evident is growing. Maybe the whole world is going tip over on it's side.

Yeeeaaarrrggghhh!!!

/deano

I will give them one Muslim Mariner if they take responsibility for inventing Terrorism, Suicide Bombing, Cult Worship, Satan Worship, Anti-Semitism, Nazism, sand, Falafel, and the worst governments ever known to mankind.

Muslims invented the internet too. No, hang on...

Can I get an aaarrrggghhh?

You can indeed:

aaarrrggghhh

Cubed®

I wonder if the foggy intellects at Foggy Bottom are aware of the reasons the Islamists promote this theory?

I guess I should be grateful that State didn't refer to a "Palestinian" navigator, who kept the key to his parents' house on a leather string around his neck.

Can I get an aaarrrggghhh?

Sure, Charles. Aaarrrggghhh!

The unsupported assertion that Christopher Columbus had a Muslim navigator is fairly common on Islamist web sites, but I’ve never seen it verified (or even echoed) by any reputable historical source.

Highly unlikely considering that southern Spain was still occupied by the Moors when Colombus sailed, and that Muslims weren't too high on the King and Queen of Spain's buddy list at the time.

Also, my understanding is that they hoped Colombus's mission would open a shortcut trade route to the East so that they could raise the money to kick the Moors out of Spain.

Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Spain had just kicked out the last of the muslim invaders and was knee deep in the Inquisition. Being of spanish colonial decent, i can tell you the chances of them allowing that were next to nothing. I doubt the spanish crown wasnt about to let a moorish navigator learn where they're going, after having kicked them out after their 800 years of rule.

Columbus had an Arab-speaking Spaniard on board. That's good enough, America is Muslim land! This article, very pro-Arab, directly disputes the contention he had an Arab navigator in the conclusion.

Arabic had been the scientific language of most of humankind from the eighth to the 12th century. It is probably for this reason that Columbus, in his own words, considered Arabic to be
"the mother of all languages," and why, on his first voyage to the New World, he took with him Luis de Torres, an Arabic-speaking Spaniard, as his interpreter.

...There is no doubt that Columbus deserves to be celebrated, in this anniversary year, for his courage, perseverance, sailing skills and superb navigational ability. On the other hand, one can only wonder what might have happened that October day 1492 had he heeded eight centuries of Arab invention and navigational knowledge. Certainly it would have made his navigation easier, his fears fewer, and his landfall more accurate.

See? He should have had an Arab navigator, therefore he did have one. -- U.S. State Department

Can't possibly be true.
Report is that all the sailors arrived in the new land with their heads intact.

Hm. This may be one of those attempts to claim for the Muslims what has been claimed for the Jews:

Much has been written of Columbus's purported Jewish origins and of Jews who accompanied him on his first voyage. It is certain only that the expedition's interpreter, Luis de Torres, was born a Jew but had converted shortly before the expedition set sail; that two "New Christians," Luis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez, had a hand in the financing; and that two Jews, Abraham Zacuto and Joseph Vecinho, provided technical expertise that helped Columbus navigate the "Ocean Sea."

(source)

Historians of southwestern jewelry believe the Native Americans adopted the design from a crescent ornament on the horse bridles of Spanish-Arab mudejars who arrived in the New World in the 1500s. Mudejars were Muslims who remained in Spain after the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula (11th-15th century).

Certainly. How else would Indians in the American SW be so inspired? I mean, the moon never appears in a crescent shape in that part of the world...

///%$#*&@ idiots

Why, Charles, didn't you know the Arabs have been quite busy exploring for quite a while now? There's the famed explorer Sir Ragheeb Byrd, discoverer of the Allahrtic Circle, Mahjdi Polo, explorer extradinare to the Middle Kingdom, Muhammellan who circumsized the globe and denounced it as a Zionist plot, and who could forget Neil Ahmedstrong's trip to the moon? 'One small.. step...for man...one ULUOLUAULULULUALULUAUAAUAULAH!!!'

I just read an equally egregious claim, taken absolutely seriously by the writer, that the blues, and hence all American music, is based on the Islamic call to prayer. The number of lies, distortions and absurdities presented as truth in the article are too numerous to discuss here, but here's a couple samples:

It's really there because of all the Muslim slaves from West Africa who were taken by force to the United States for three centuries, from the 1600s to the mid-1800s. Upward of 30 percent of the African slaves in the United States were Muslim, and an untold number of them spoke and wrote Arabic, historians say now.

Forced to do menial, back-breaking work on plantations, for example, they still managed, throughout their days, to voice a belief in the God of the Quran. These slaves' practices eventually evolved -- decades and decades later, parallel with different singing traditions from Africa -- into the shouts and hollers that begat blues music, historians believe.

In his book "Black Music of Two Worlds," author John Storm Roberts says he can hear patterns of Islamic African music in the songs of Billie Holiday

Bayoumi wrote a paper two years ago that examined African Muslim history in the United States in which he argues that John Coltrane's best-known album, "A Love Supreme," features Coltrane saying, "Allah Supreme"

Keep in mind this is not a crackpot publication -- this was published in the San Francisco Chronicle, considered the second most important newspaper on the West Coast (after the LA Times).

We are in the midst of another major round of historical revisionism. The first big one happened in the '70s when the white founding fathers and other Euro-descended historical figures were re-cast as villains. Now, we're going to get a rehash of the phony history already promulgated in the Middle East, that the Muslims are responsible for every single creative or good thing that ever happened in history. (See the earlier thread about the teachers being brainwashed to brainwash their 8th-grade students about Islam).

Welcome to our nightmare.

#6 Doctor Phibes
Muslims invented the internet too. No, hang on...

Yeah, his last name was al-Gore. I think that's Arabic for "dumbass."

Beagle (#13):

I beleive Luis de Torres was a Hebrew-speaking Jew.

Found this snippet that says Muslims were responsible for the discovery of the New World -- but not quite in the way they'd like you to believe! :

By the 1400s, the passages to the East were denied to the Christian West by the Muslims who controlled the main overland routes to the Orient. Bandits, desert heat and sand storms, as well as other hazards eventually made Europe's alternate overland routes too dangerous and expensive. A new route, by sea, was the challenge.

They (Muslims) make similar claims on Native American history, claims of Muslim Navajo and Cherokee chiefs, how Native dress is based on Islamic dress, etc.

I do not understand why there is this cheerleading for Islam by the state department. Do they do this for any other religion, like Buddhisim, Judaism, Hinduism, Chinese culture, etc.?

Is there some counterintelligence reason for this, make the Arabs feel good, like the phoney balooney esteem building - feel good philosphy they sometimes throw at our children. Does this mean the state department views the Arab mentality at a kindergarten level that they have to play such childish esteem building games and pandering. If I was an arab/muslim I would be kind of insulted at being treated like a 7 year old with nonsensical, unsupported stories. I am sick to my stomach to think where this will lead.

I do not understand why there is this cheerleading for Islam by the state department.

The State department is owned by the Saudi entity.

#18 Adamthemadman

Hilarious!!! Sad thing is there'd be some who'd believe every word of it.

Note the weasle words: "It is likely that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America in 1492, charted his way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an Arab navigator..." that allow the author to make this claim without any support.

What a load of crap!

Arab != muslim tho

My old man is just going to love this...historians hate revisionists...someone needs to take their heads and slam them into books over and over again until the point comes across this isn't right.

Cheers all and good night.

If a muslim discovered America then it must become muslim.

/reza

BS!

I don’t believe it!

I think the State Department version would have had more plausability had Columbus sailed west starting from Malta. Now when was it that the Muslims built the Suez Canal? I better have my man The Rev. Al check with his buddy, Calypso Louie, and get back to me on this one.

Though little known, Islamic influence runs deep in American culture. A number of the words Americans speak, foods Americans eat, buildings Americans design, decorative items Americans create, and traditions Americans treasure can trace their roots to the Islamic world.
In its broadest sense, Islamic art refers to all art of the Middle East during the Islamic period, whether produced by Muslims or non-Muslims or for religious or secular purposes.

Well, no. Not really. Actually its Lizard influence that runs deep in every culture in the universe. A number of the words spoken in every language, plus barks, grunts, meows, food, beverages, buildings, yo-yos, slinkys, the boomerang, knock-knock jokes, photosynthesis, banjos, the compact disc, riding lawn mowers, ukuleles, word processing, cross-country skiing and anything else worth inventing was invented by a Lizard.

Broadly speaking, Lizard culture refers to all cultures of the Universe, whether produced by Americans or non Americans, sentient beings, androids, robots, plants, vegetables, or minerals. Even alien culture on planets far, far away. It's true because I said so.

Flying Pigs???

Washington Post calls Kerry's "seared - seared" story "troubling" and calls on Kerry to release his militaty records:

Mr. Kerry's conflicting statements about where and when he was in Cambodia remain troubling. He has backed away from repeated claims that he spent Christmas Eve 1968 in Cambodia, a memory that, he said in a 1986 Senate speech, is "seared -- seared -- in me." This does not undermine Mr. Kerry's military bravery, but it does raise an issue of candor. It's fair to ask whether this is an episode of foggy memory, routine political embroidery or something more. Indeed, the Kerry campaign ought to arrange for the full release of all relevant records from the time. Mr. Kerry granted historian Douglas Brinkley exclusive use of his wartime journals and other writings; the campaign should seek to be freed from that agreement and to make all the material public. Though the ads are being underwritten by longtime Bush partisans, the Kerry campaign's claim of illegal coordination between the Swift boat group and the Bush campaign is unconvincing.

[Link: www.washingtonpost.com...]

#29 midas mulligan 
Note the weasle words: "It is likely that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America in 1492, charted his way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an Arab navigator..." that allow the author to make this claim without any support.

What a load of crap!

If that's all it takes to make an unsubstantiated claim in public, then I'd like to take advantage of it myself! Here we go:

It is likely that Charles Manson was a practicing Muslim during the Manson Family murder spree.

It is likely that Muslim scientists invented AIDS to exterminate the Black Man.

It is likely "Allah" is really the Masonic name for Satan.

It is likely that Islam is a brain-wasting bacterium similar to Mad Cow Disease.

I think I'm really getting the hang of this!

More pigs go airborn at the Washington Post!!!

Kerry's Cambodia Whopper

By Joshua Muravchik
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A17

Most of the debate between the former shipmates who swear by John Kerry and the group of other Swift boat veterans who are attacking his military record focuses on matters that few of us have the experience or the moral standing to judge. But one issue, having nothing to do with medals, wounds or bravery under fire, goes to the heart of Kerry's qualifications for the presidency and is therefore something that each of us must consider. That is Kerry's apparently fabricated claim that he fought in Cambodia.

[Link: www.washingtonpost.com...]

Ah, but we can all thank Leif Erricson that it doesn't actually matter if Columbus' navagator was a marrano or moor. This here's Viking land.

And in other related news...

The Jewish people have no connection to Israel, the Hebrews of the Old Testament were actually Arabs, the prophets in the Bible were Muslim, Solomon's Temple was not built by Israelites but by Arab Canaanites, and the entire Bible is an invention of the Jews, according to a recent educational program aired on Palestinian Authority TV

Both said any Jewish connection to Israel is actually a Muslim connection, even though Islam wasn't founded at the time of the biblical Hebrews.

PA: No Jewish connection to Israel

#25 Rayra

I thought I was making a joke on the other thread about Kevin Bacon being the center of the 527 "Web of Connections".

[Link: www.captainsquartersblog.com...]

What Kerry And Edwards Refuse To Denounce

MoveOn has a number of ads planned, starring such luminaries as Kevin Bacon, Boom, liberal radio hosts Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo, Rebecca Romjin-Stamos, Woody Harrelson, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner, Ileana Douglas, Ione Skye, Scarlett Johanssen, Ed Asner, and Moby.

My feeble sense of humor can't compete with reality.

WOW! They found a way to criticize Bush for telling the swift vets to stop the ads.

"I think they're bad for the system," added Bush, who had ignored calls to condemn the ad while it was on the air.

truly amazing...

#34 Rayra

I just read the rest of the article and, holy crap, it does make Navajo Muslim-related claims as well. This is so f'ed up, to see the State Dept site basically mimmicking Islamist websites.

Possibly one of Phyllis McIntosh's sources: google cache of islaam.com page

As long as we're just making shit up, let's do it right:

- Christopher Columbus was really a Muslim woman disguised as a man.

- And a lesbian (goes without saying, really).

- She discovered the New World with the help of esoteric secret knowledge handed down from pagan Mother Goddess mystery religions (the same place we got atomic theory and calculus from).

- Of course she only wanted to bring the joyous Islamic message of peace and tolerance to the Native American gay, lesbian, and transgender community, but ultra-extreme Christian right-wing fundamentalists hijacked her ships and used them to commit genocide against the progressive Aztecs. Fortunately, most of the Aztecs escaped in rocket ships.

- There are a bunch of secret symbols in Leonardo da Vinci's paintings that prove all of this crap, so there.

Navigator? No.

Peg Boy? Maybe.

The departure of Columbus from Spain was delayed for a day at the request of Luis de Torres, Navigator, in observence of Tish B'Av the ninth day of the month of Av, a Hebrew fast day.

zombie #20

Sylviane Diouf knows her audience might be skeptical, so to demonstrate the connection between Islam and American blues music, she'll play two recordings: The Muslim call to prayer (the religious recitation that's heard from mosques around the world), and "Levee Camp Holler" an early type of blues song that first sprang up in the Mississippi Delta more than 100 years ago.

Per my advisor, ethnomusicological materials taken from different parts of the world are often virtually indistinguishable.

Back to the Foggy Bottom nonsense. The State Department didn't site a single example of an important Islamic influence on the United States.

The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus is not an influence on our culture, the spirit of discovery is. And so is the quest for scientific knowledge. It's a Western kind of thing.

It's possible that the Navahos adopted an element of a Middle Eastern design. Big deal! It's possible that the cowboy dress style was influenced by the Muslims. But real life and pop culture cowboys are all about Western ideals. Just how much superficiality should we expect from the State Department?

Language is important in so far as it forms our thought. But a couple of nouns lifted from Arabic are hardly consequential.

Of course you'd expect a couple of Islamic art exhibits here and there in a country this big. And perhaps some architect will imitate Islamic domes or arches.

In this article the State Department proved that Islamic influences in this country are limited.

Ya know, we're making fun of this, but the sorry-ass tragic truth is that much of this Islamic revisionist garbage is taken seriously in K-12 schools, in urban African-American communities, and in moonbat-land. And in the State Department.

The Earth has been cloven in twain: on one side are those who hew to the truth no matter what, and on the other are those who deny the very notion of "truth" altogether.

Which side will obtain?

Well, Louie got back to Al with The Word and Al tells me Louie said that this whole Columbus thing is just another plot to keep the black Muslim man down and hoeing on the plantation. According to Louie, the Suez Canal was what was left over after the Muslims built the Pyramids to serve as control towers for the airplanes they was inventing. Al says that Louie is sure of his info because he double checked with an Ivy League Prof named Cornell West. He says the everyone knows where the bongo drums was invented which is proof that Columbus's ships were powered muslim built diesel engines and had Islamic navigators. Al said he was a bit confused by Louies data but said he had fantastic recall of all things Islamic and that the State Department consulted with him regularly.

OT -- The black lady cop on Reno 911 converted to Islam. I saw parts of the episode out of the corner of my eyes, and am looking forward to the reruns.

veebee:

The State Department didn't site a single example of an important Islamic influence on the United States.

Yeah, isn't that weird? It's like they never heard of Louis Farrakhan.

Columbus . . . charted his way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an Arab navigator.

That's not true! It was a gay-Arab-vegan-differently-abled-wiccan-socialist- Navigator of color who had two mommies.

Glen Wishard
LOL! That would be undiplomatic. Do the Saudis still have a fatwa of some sort against him?

they also invented the steam engine, diesel, electric motor and generator, radio, telegraph, airplane, the first subway, written constitution, women's rights, discovered DNA, flew to the Moon, invented the rifle and machine gun.
/brain-re-engaged
the digital prayer rug, the date picker, the camel groin scratcher

Was it a Muslim or State Dept who invented bovine fecal matter?

#56 Jakester 
they also invented ... the camel groin scratcher

Little-known real historical fact (I am not kidding here): The Muslims actually did invent something quite amazing: the IUD! They would insert pebbles into camels' uteruses (if you value your sanity, don't visualize how they inserted them) to keep them from getting pregnant on long caravan treks. (Pregnant camels apparently slow down the whole caravan and act grumpy.) The pebbles would prevent the pregnancy from taking hold, just as modern IUDs function. Don't have a link for this, but I learned it long ago before PC-balderdashery seized control of our educational system.

OT

Ed Koch (D): I'm voting for Bush.

Koch says he plans to campaign for Bush among the Jews of New York and South Florida in the coming two months. He says he will write a flurry of op-eds in Jewish newspapers, and has already started hitting the airwaves, talking to several Jewish radio shows, including Israel's Tovia Singer Radio Show, which many American Jews follow online.

"You see, I was elected mayor because New Yorkers trusted my insights and common sense," explains Koch. "And I believe they still do. They and the rest of America must realize Islamic terrorists want to destroy us, and there are hundreds of millions of them. I want a president who is willing to go after them before they have the chance to kill us."

#59 zombie

That particular practice predates Mo' by about a thousand years...

#58 Rayra

That would be a big NO. The NOI is the biggest farce since Muhommad (please spare me) pulled his huge BS campaign. Africans don't read history either. Africa didn't have Islam until they were slaughtered into it. But, apparently that's better than what they have now.

/disgusted

#58 Rayra
Arab Muslims that were capturing and selling their forefathers into slavery at ports on the West Coast of Africa

I think you mean the East coast of Africa.
Yeah, that's something else the Arabs invented: the African Slave Trade! Starting as early as the 700s they established slaving centers along the Indian Ocean coast of Africa and institutionalized the enslavement of sub-Saharan black Africans. They did it uninterrupted for 600 years until the Portuguese came around the Cape for the first time and learned of the practice from the Muslims. The Portagees then taught it to the Spaniards, and the French and English picked it up after that -- mostly on the Atlantic coast, so as not to interfere with the Arab slavers on the Indian Ocean side.

Why doesn't the State Department issue a press release about that?

Oh, I forgot: they only promote falsehoods. My bad.

Here we go:

Crew of the Santa Maria:

* Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus), captain-general
* Juan de la Cosa, owner and master
* Diego de Arana, master-at-arms
* Pedro de Gutierrez, royal steward
* Rodrigo de Escobedo, secretary of the fleet
* Rodrigo Sanchez, comptroller
* Diego de Salcedo, servant of Columbus
* Luis de Torres, interpreter
* Rodrigo de Jerez
* Alonso Chocero
* Alonso Clavijo
* Andres de Yruenes
* Antonia de Cuellar, carpenter
* Bartolome Biues
* Bartolome de Torres
* Bartolome Garcia, boatswain
* Chachu, boatswain
* Cristobal Caro, goldsmith
* Diego Bermudez
* Diego Perez, painter
* Domingo de Lequeitio
* Domingo Vizcaino, cooper
* Gonzalo Franco
* Jacomel Rico
* Juan, servant
* Juan de Jerez
* Juan de la Placa
* Juan Martines de Acoque
* Juan de Medina
* Juan de Moguer
* Juan Ruiz de la Pena
* Juan Sanchez, physician
* Lope, joiner
* Maestre Juan
* Marin de Urtubia
* Pedro de Terreros, cabin boy
* Pero Nino, pilot
* Pedro Yzquierdo
* Pedro de Lepe
* Rodrigo Gallego, servant

Crew of the Pinta:

* Martin Alonso Pinzon, captain
* Francisco Martin Pinzon, master
* Cristobal Garcia Xalmiento, pilot
* Cristobal Quintero, ship's owner
* Francisco Garcia Vallejo
* Garcia Hernandez, steward
* Gomez Rascon
* Juan Bermudez
* Juan Quintero
* Juan Rodriquez Bermejo
* Pedro de Arcos
* Alonso de Palos
* Alvaro Perez
* Anton Calabres
* Bernal, servant
* Diego Martin Pinzon
* Fernando Mendes
* Francisco Mendes
* Gil Perez
* Juan Quadrado
* Juan Reynal
* Juan Verde de Triana
* Juan Vecano
* Maestre Diego, surgeon
* Pedro Tegero
* Sancho de Rama

Crew of the Niña:

* Vincente Yanez Pinzon, captain
* Juan Nino, owner and master
* Francisco Nino
* Bartolome Roldan, apprentice pilot
* Alonso de Morales, carpenter
* Andres de Huelva
* Bartolome Garcia, boatswain
* Diego Lorenzo
* Fernando de Triana
* Garcia Alonso
* Juan Arias, cabin boy
* Juan Arraes
* Juan Romero
* Maestre Alonso, phyiscian
* Miguel de Soria, servant
* Pedro de Soria
* Pero Arraes
* Pero Sanches
* Rodrigo Monge
* Sancho Ruiz, pilot

No Ali, Mahmood, Khalid, whatsoever.

#59 zombie
The Muslims actually did invent something quite amazing: the IUD

#61 Mr Pol 
That particular practice predates Mo' by about a thousand years.

True -- slip of the keyboard on my part. I meant the Arabs invented the IUD. I knew that.

#64 ördög Johnson
Here we go:
Crew of the Santa Maria:
...
No Ali, Mahmood, Khalid, whatsoever.

Checkmate!!

I can see historians around the world tonight saying, "Well there's no evidence of it whatsoever, but the US State Department said it's 'likely' so that's good enough for me."

#64, ordog Johnson. No Muslims that I could tell but it sure looks like he had about three boatloads of Mexicans.

OT: more taqqiyah

gymnast (#68),

No Muslims that I could tell but it sure looks like he had about three boatloads of Mexicans.

LOL.

Wait, that's probably not politically correct.

You should be ashamed.

#68 gymnast 8/23/2004 11:56PM PST

No Muslims that I could tell but it sure looks like he had about three boatloads of Mexicans.

LOL

You are confusing Colon's crew with Cortez troopers. I would be inclined to believe that quite a few Mexicans can trace their roots from his merry men.

#72 ördög Johnson

You are confusing Colon's crew with Cortez troopers.

Huh? I didn't know Colon Bowel was a Muslim.

#70, Geepers, I don't know about PC, but it was too good to pass up. How did those Mexicans get over there to Spain anyways?

Speaking of "arrrggghhh" -- AP Abdul drives me nuts

Late Monday, U.S. warplanes bombed the area of the Old City, and fires lit up the night sky, witnesses said. Ahmed al-Shaibany, an aide to al-Sadr, said shrapnel from the attack hit the shrine's golden dome, one of its minarets and the compound's outer wall.

The U.S. military denied damaging the shrine and said an air crew saw militants in the compound fire a rocket that clipped one of the walls and explode 10 yards outside.

"We are not doing anything that could have caused damage to the shrine," Marine Capt. Carrie Batson said.

There was no independent confirmation of damage to the shrine, but violence earlier Monday ripped a chunk out of the outer wall of the compound. Explosions throughout the day shook the Old City, which is a mix of streets and narrow, maze-like alleys at the heart of much of the fighting.

Human shields? Who cares. Nick the dome? World outrage. Misplaced priorities, priceless.

The writer of that article ("Phyllis McIntosh") has been doing LOTS of work writing Islamic Feel-Good Fiction for the State Department.

THE TAGOURIS: One Family's Story

Muslim Life In America

Her writing is also on the web site for the US Embassy in Japan.
YES Program Helps Young People Discover America

and Australia

She also writes for the Muslim News
Native Deen's Muslim rap

Something's up with this lady.
All of here work so far (back to 1999) is WILDLY Pro-Islam.

I wonder how much she gets from the Saudis and the State Department for these "fluff pieces".

#5 Captain America

What do you have against felafel? Meh.

#73 Mr Pol

I'd love what ya smokin'. :-)

#78 ördög Johnson

It's good stuff :-)

#74 gymnast 8/24/2004 12:20AM PST

How did those Mexicans get over there to Spain anyways?

They snuck in, like they always do, even today, the place differs, tho, whaddaya think? :-)

More bad news... yesterday I Googled an article by a woman musician detailing how ONE negro-work-song was patterned on the Muslim 'Call to Prayer', which is quite logical and reasonable, BUT

...the article was headlined "Muslim Roots of the Blues", a huge and unwarranted assumption only possible if we accept that it was Muslim Africans who sold their brethren into slavery in ante-bellum America, causing so much suffering and hence being the 'roots of the blues'

Yeargh!

Apparently, Taqqiya is now part of the Federal Budget.

The taxpayer-funded Islamic fantasy tells us the bald-faced lie that WESTERN CIVILIZATION IS IN FACT EASTERN. That ARCHES and PATIOS are Islamic? These snakes think nobody has ever studied Western Civ.

To spout that Mexican food is Islamic because arabs had some spicy food? (Never mind that hot peppers, tomatoes, and corn are all exclusively FROM the New World.)

Furthermore, the next time somebody in SoCal tells me that they're "Persian" I'll smile and say I'm from the Holy Roman Empire. Sorry to burst your bubble, but there hasn't been a Persia since Great Britain decided it wasn't needed any more and its just wrong to let somebody walk around talking insane gibberish.

So...is it supposed to matter that Columbus had a muslim crewman? honestly, if it was one man, I highly doubt he would have done much culturally; though by this reasoning, why aren't we much closer to the spaniard way of thinking? Or even Italian since Columbus was Italian...or hell, we should be more like the Vikings, seeing as how Lief Erricson found America first..

Man and I was pissed when I was told I was wrong about the appearance of jets in WW2, this is that 3 times as bad...

When I was a young child, I was taught that Columbus discovered America and opened the way for trade to the New World.

Once I got to (public) high school, however, the line had changed. Now Columbus was an evil oppressor who murdered thousands of people so he could steal their gold and pepper.

So, if Columbus is evil, and had a Muslim navigator, is the navigator an evil oppressor too? I'm having a hard time getting my head around this. It doesn't jive. Of course, I remember stuff that was told to me ten and twenty years ago, I don't pretend like it was never said.

There is indeed much nonsense in that article:

"Arabs knew well before the Europeans that the earth was round"

Eratosthenes (276-194 BC) had already calculated accurately the circumference of the Earth and in the times of Columbus nobody thought that the earth was flat.

"By the 15th century, it was common for European ships crossing the Atlantic in search of an alternate route to Asia to enlist Muslims as navigators and potential translators"

Huh? Just how many "European ships" did cross the Atlantic in the 15th century? Only the ones of Columbus. And he was looking for Japan, China, India, so he didn't have much use for Arab translators.

"It is likely that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America in 1492, charted his way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an Arab navigator"

This is most unlikely. Columbus based his first voyage on an erroneous calculation of the earth's circumference (that of Pierre d'Ailly). The Arab calculations were much closer to the correct Greek ones. Any Arab navigator would have known this. No Arab navigator would have confused Roman miles with nautical miles. And any Arab navigator, who had been in the New World before Columbus, would have known that the New World was NOT Japan or China, something Columbus never ceased to believe. Most European sailors and navigators were (rightly) convinced that the Indies (Japan was actually over 10000 nautical miles away from the Canaries, not 2400 as Columbus claimed) were too far away to make his plan worth considering. That's why Columbus had such a hard time "selling" his idea.

O dear, did Muslims discover America with Colombus??? ... or did they manage to do solong before Colombus by crossing the Atlantic??? or was it by crossing the Pacific???

Well, with all these Muslims being the first to discover America, obviously Allah does not plan for America to be Muslim. Otherwise Allah could manage to make it so during all this years, no?

OT: Got a big one in Bethlehem

The elite IDF Duvdevan unit arrested wanted fugitive and senior member of the Fatah Al-Aksa Brigades Adnan Abayat, who for the last couple of months hid in an obstetric hospital in Bethlehem.

Good work, but... why is he alive?

From Charles' original link:

According to a number of encyclopedia sources, many everyday words come from Arabic, including... guitar

WTF??? My tax dollars are paying for this? Just because an ancient Greek (kithara) and Latin (cithara) word for a stringed instrument known to have been used 2600 years ago was borrowed and misspelled (qitar) by the invading Arabs for a short period before being used by the Spaniards and the French before passing into English doesn't mean that the word comes from Arabic. It's completely mind-boggling the lengths they will go to to give credit to the Arabs. Both the word and the stringed instrument design long pre-date and post-date the Arabs, who neither originated it nor passed it directly to English. Don't they have a freakin' DICTIONARY at the State Department? Is there no fact-checking of any kind?

How and why did this woman get her job there? How can we raise a stink?

George Orwell, here we come.

#87 norar

Well, with all these Muslims being the first to discover America, obviously Allah does not plan for America to be Muslim. Otherwise Allah could manage to make it so during all this years, no?

Or maybe G-d decided to oppose Ba'al Zebuth Allah scheme...

#20 : zombie, I tip my ember assed hat to you...

I read down to 18, jumped to the bottom, and posted my bowdlerized version of your perspicacious posting.

Sincere apologies, Zom.
My mistrake, however, does not alter the inherent idiocy of the Columbian-Muslim gurf outta the State Department.

#90 Mr Pol

Well, God definitely mixed Muslims up on the question of discovering America. :)

Arabs knew well before the Europeans that the earth was round

Erastothenes calculated the circumference of the earth to within a couple of hundred miles of the currently accepted figure. This was in the 3rd century, BC. Erastothenes was Greek.

And any one that has ever watched a ship depart, has seen it go "over the horizon". The last thing that disappears is the highest point. This is just promulgating myths.

The very embodiment of the American Old West, the cowboy, likely owes much of his equipment -- saddle, spurs, and even his boots --

Moving north toward the area that is now Siberia, the nomadic Scythians created saddlery that was functional and beautiful. A frozen Scythian tomb from the 5th Century B.C. revealed a saddle cover intricately decorated with animal motifs made from leather, felt, hair and gold. As expert horsemen, the Scythians used cushioned saddles and girths and may have had leather stirrups.

Saddles are 800-900 years older than Islam. Stirrups are known to be at leat 500 years older.

The astrolabe was invented in Greece between 3rd and 1st century BC.

The compass was a 3rd century BC Chinese invention.

If anybody introduced this stuff to Europe, it was the Persians.

And if Muslims knew anything about North America, they learned it from the Vikings, who discovered Vinland (Nova Scotia?) and Arabia! As well as many other places.

Squash was a staple of many indian nations, so it's not surprising that it found it's way into art.

You have to laugh. Earlier this year, Muslims claimed that they had discovered Australia.

They said that there was proof of this because the Australian aboriginals had the same customs as Muslims.

They are a joke.

#94 DianaC

It's not a joke. By saying Muslims discovered Australia and American, they are claiming both as part of dar al Islam - meaning any good [bigoted word] is bound to fight jihad against the kufr invaders...

#20 zombie

The musicologist Samuel Charters - among others - has shown that the music of the West African Griots is closely related in structure to the American blues. Robert Palmer writes that

the melodies sung by Griots, though they often have been influenced by the Islamic call to prayer, often resemble blues melodies - modal or scale structures are pentatonic, with areas of pitch-play, especially flattening, around specific intervals - the third, sometimes the fifth or seventh. These variously flattened notes correspond to the so-called "blue notes", and the pentatonic scale corresponds to one frequently encountered in blues. (This "blues scale" actually operates more like a highly developed modal system, as found in Arab and some West African music, in that "directions" for flattening certain pitches-and often at least the suggestion of a melodic kernel or motive- are effectively part of the fixed musical material for any given performance).

[Link: www.glasspages.org...]

On the other hand, Palmer notes that

The Griot tradition is strongest in areas of West Africa that are primarily Islamic but include significant communities of both Christians and adherents of traditional tribal religions

The assertion of a direct, "causal" link between the blues and Islamic music would seem to have an ideological, rather than a strictly musicological origin. That there are similarities between the two traditions, no one would surely deny. But that's not tantamount to saying that they are the "same". As has been pointed out, the Griot tradition is not exclusively Islamic.

LOL Why am I not surprised there were Muslims present at the mass-rape of the Native American peoples, who were systematically robbed of their land and sold into slavery leading to the deaths of thousands upon thousands in force mine labor. Seems only appropriate the original Satanic flies on the wall would be about, standing next to the quintessential European knife-man, Columbus. Why think they'd stop at Persia?

Just how were historians to explain how a seventy ton boulder with Hebrew inscription appeared on this mountain landscape in North America around 1000 B.C.?

See this

It has often by noted by LGFers that the mathematical and scientific work popularly mis-attributed to the medieval Arabs really originated in India.

But it gets even worse -- Much of the mathematics and science and even arts of India and farther east were transmitted to the Arabs of the Middle East and to Europe by the Radanites.

These were the merchants of the Radan Network that in the earli Middle Ages ran from the Atlantic coast of Spain to the Pacific coast of China. In the Dark Ages, it was virtually the only conduit of international trade.

And it gets worse still --

The Radanites were ALL JEWS.

And Maybe This:

King Solomon's fleets in America

Ancient Hebrew coins found in Tenn. and 10 other states

#100 Clio

A link: How the Radanite Traders Spiced Up Life in Dark-Ages Europe

Why would the Arabs want to claim Columbus' navigator as one of their own? He started out for India & ended up in America... not a gifted map/star reader then.

#45 Glen Wishard - You've been reading the DaVinci Code!

#104 Smit

See #95.

Ok... Here's a little known fact outside of Jewish scholarly circles. Like most Arabs, Mohammad was illiterate, right?

Which people ALL learned how to read and write, traditionally starting at the age of 3? Jews.

So who else did Mohammad have in that cave to dictate his mad Koran to before he murdered him? You guessed it.

And Arabic speaking rabbincal scholars say that encoded at the beginning of the Koran is the disclaimer "what follows is nonsense."

OT: Iraq Minister Gives Najaf Rebels Hours to Surrender

"We are in the last hours. This evening, Iraqi forces will reach the doors of the shrine and control it and appeal to the Mehdi Army to throw down their weapons," Defense Minister Hazim al-Shalaan told a news conference at a U.S. military base outside Najaf.

"If they do not, we will wipe them out."

If Columbus did have a multi-culti crew, is he then forgiven for the "genocide" of the indigenous North Americans?

68 gymnast

No Muslims that I could tell but it sure looks like he had about three boatloads of Mexicans.

LOL. You have a nasty sense of humour. Now go wash your mouth.

aaarrrggghhh?

Some would have us believe that Moslems invented the Blues.

Can I get an oy vey?

94 DianaC

One of the customs, IIRC, Muslims cited as proof of a relationship with the Aborigines was that the Aborigines buried their dead.

Of course, the fact that Christians, Jews, Native Americans, and who knows how many others also bury their dead, doesn't count.

#110 Paco

Some would have us believe that Moslems invented the Blues

See posts #20, #81, #96

#111 Ed Moran: Abu GOMEX aoa 28C

Well, if they eat their young and bury the remains, then they are muslims...

State Department has been part of the Ummah for decades.

69 Mr Pol

Muslim scholars recommended Monday that adherents living abroad join political parties as a means to clarify and improve the perception of Islam.

Here we go again. Just yesterday I posted this

[Link: littlegreenfootballs.com...]

It is only Islam that needs continuous propaganda to 'correct' the misconceptions of Islam. It never stops. Muslims need to get it onto their heads that Islam is an evil ideology. No misconceptions here.

OT
Christians leaving Iraq.

[Link: www.jihadwatch.org...]

This is really quite harrowing. Christians are leaving Iraq and most Muslim nations, as secular traditions give way to Islamic fundamentalism.

So why on earth are we allowing Muslims into the West?

#112 halldor

Hey, I only just logged on, haven't even finished my first coffee of the day! ;-) 

#106 Jayce

Arabic speaking rabbincal scholars say that encoded at the beginning of the Koran is the disclaimer "what follows is nonsense."

Heh - you got a link for that? I'd like to forward it to a few friends.

#116 Paco

That's ok. :-)

Just drawing your attention to the discussion of this interesting subject.

How many muslims?
How many medals?

#118 halldor 

Thanks, I do usually read the whole thread before adding to it.

For sure this revisionist trend is interesting, and scary. The next step is for the Palestinians to claim that the USA was built on their land... then maybe more people will take the threat seriously. Or maybe I just haven't even woken up fully today.

/dream on

Columbus got to America with maps by Abraham Zacuto (1452 - 1525), mathematician, astronomer, map maker and Jew. His voyage was financed through the offices of Isaac Abrabanel (1437-1508), statesman, philosopher, theologian, commentator and Jew. Spain's 200,000 Jews were expelled under the Edict of Expulsion which went into effect August 2, 1492. Columbus chose to sail within a day of that. Some Jews were aboard. Maybe some Arabs, too.

OT -- FARENHEIT 527

Someone has finally drawn the connection betweeen Michael Moore's effort and the Democratic Party in the context of the Swift Boat ads. The Fox TV guy points out that Moore is a star in the Dem Party. It should also be noted that Farenheit 527 was widely shown for free during Dem events such as the convention. Moore was placed in a seat of honor at the Dem convention, right next to Jimmy Carter. If Farenheit 527 was not an anti-Bush ad I don't know what is.

The war on Israel is just a part of the global Jihad. The North American Salafi society acknowledges it

[Link: www.jihadwatch.org...]

Nothing but the destruction of Islam will do. This will be the crowning achievement of the 21st century.

What a bunch of tangential rubbish.

In actual fact it was the worms embedded in the hull of the ship that guided Coumbus to the "new world". By carefully altering the hydrodynamic properties of the hull they were able correct the errors of navigation imposed by the captain and crew. Unfortunately the're story will never be heard until we have universal access to the Internet that is not restricted to humans and moslems. Another tragic twist of fate that has distorted our perception of history.

Doesn't the (unholy) Koran say that the Earth is flat? If so, why would a muslim have been on one of those ships?

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

Excuse me, I spelled the name of Michael Moore's movie wrong, it should be FAHRENHEIT 527.

"In its broadest sense, Islamic art refers to all art of the Middle East during the Islamic period, whether produced by Muslims or non-Muslims or for religious or secular purposes."

Use a sufficiently broad definition and you can pretty much fit anything you want into it. It becomes so general it's almost meaningless. I wonder how much is left when you tighten that definition up a bit and look strictly at things created during the "Islamic period" by Muslims? Such a general standard when applied for instance to Africa qualifies most art from 18th to the 20th centuries as Christian since Europeans were the dominant power. The people who spout such rubbish are the same ones who overlook many centuries of bloody Ottoman conquests and corruption while lamenting the evils of colonialism. In a way it is a perverse eurocentrism: nyah nyah our past misdeeds are bigger than yours :-P

#120 Paco

It might be worth remembering that the rewriting of history - and science - was something the Nazis and Communists were both quite good at. In Stalin's Soviet Union, Lysenkoism tried to reformulate the entire theory of modern genetics. And the political myths touted by Arab and Islamist ideologists today - such as those concerning the circumstances of the 1967 war - were originally formulated in the USSR:

[Link: www.eretzyisroel.org...]

OT - Michelle Malkin exposes Chris Matthews for the blustering fraud he is. And, in closing:

I have now witnessed firsthand and up close (Matthews' spittle nearly hit me in the face) how the pressure from alternative media sources--the blogosphere, conservative Internet forums, talk radio, Regnery Publishing, FOX News, etc. --is driving these people absolutely batty.

Davy Crockettaman, George Alahamawashington, and Neil Allaharmstrong - weren't they all Muslims too?
Surely they were.

I told you the world was going nuts. I told you, I told you, I told you.

:)

HAve a nice day and may Allah spare your noggin.

Owl

Ha - Niall - so in that first definition, a Christian painting of Mary & Jesus is Islamic Art if done by a Christian living in the Middle East.

Pah - These people.

OT

It's a beautiful Tuesday morning here Virginia. The early morning fog is lifting off the winding river outside and the temperature has fallen to the mid 60's. We have had so much rain the AAA baseball team can't play on their home field downtown.
And it was very pleasant to read John Kerry's obit in the WSJ this a.m. . I love the smell of defeated candidate so lovingly portrayed in the newsprint of one of the world's greatest journals.
In the morning.

"The North Koreans made it very clear, politely, that they want Mr. Kerry to win the election," said Kenneth Quinones, a former U.S. diplomat who was in Pyongyang this month for a Korean studies conference.

North Korea endorses JFKerry

Two OT’s this morning-Suspected Hamas operative detained while videotaping Chesapeake Bay Bridge
Ismael Elbarasse of Annandale, VA (DC suburb best known for mention in Steely Dan song) was named as a ``co-conspirator'' in a conspiracy to illegally finance terrorist activities in Israel

And, WaPo continues its fair and balanced coverage of the campaign.

Kerry Team Lines Up Vietnam Witnesses
Buried six paragraphs down: President Bush condemned unregulated money "pouring" into the political process but stopped short of denouncing the ad by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, funded largely by Republicans.

Here’s a theory- it’s not so much that the MMM want Kerry to win (though with stories like this it’s hard to argue that point.) More than that, they want a close election, to sell more papers and ads. There is a bit of the MM egging the candidates on, too: “Let’s see you two fight. Please.“

Again, I don't see why all of you are surprised. Moses had a Muslim companion who taught him how to be a good Muslim. It stands to reason that Columbus then needed a Muslim to teach him how to navigate.

Hey, all of Europe, USA, and other parts of the world must belong to Italy!

Consider the influence of Roman culture, of Latin language, of Italian expats - restaurants, barbers, scientists, mafia :).

But, to meet popular demands, you can pay your tributes by credit card on my PayPal account.

/satire

Filthy Islam's Legacy Continues in Iran

#134 Jim in Virginia

The first link is no good. Was it the Annapolis or the Va. Beach bridge?

My 134 - link to Chesapeake bridge story
Hamas operative arrested
Sorry

139- Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Annapolis.
Lots of beach traffic on a late August weekend.

I wouldn't doubt that Columbus had an Arab navigator when he discovered America...unfortunately, they were looking for Australia.

F-Islam

There is a train of thought out there that feels that the truth can be "felxible." That is that it is fine to submerge or distort the truth in order to promote what they refer to as a "higher truth." Remember several years ago on PBS there was a documentary called "Liberators."? They cliaimed that concentration camps at Dachau was libearted by a Black unit of American soldiers. It turns out that that was bogus, however the producer, a typcial multiculturalist said something to the effect, that there are higher truths and that in essence it was fine to lie in order to promote the higher turth.

#117 Smit

Heh - you got a link for that?

No, I don't. And I don't think there will be one. Torah scholars won't spend much time on it as it concerns another religion and has nothing to teach us. However, Jews have been around for a while and history is past on.

The last time I heard of it was a couple of months ago from an American-Israeli rabbi who learned this in passing from his Sephardi (Arabic speaking) rabbinical collegues.

Also, any rabbinical mention of "the mad man" (HaMeshugah in Hebrew/Yiddish) is referring to, without having to utter the name of, Mohammad. mhnbbo.

Now, you know all my secrets. (^^)

#140 Jim in Virginia:

The officers, assigned to the department's marine unit, were returning from a training exercise in a marked car when they noticed a male occupant of a passing sport utility vehicle videotaping the bridge, authorities said.The officers, assigned to the department's marine unit, were returning from a training exercise in a marked car when they noticed a male occupant of a passing sport utility vehicle videotaping the bridge, authorities said.

I just heard the story on WTOP. What a nightmare scenario if that bridge was toppled!

This is what the State Department has been known for. Crazy policies and promoted beliefs that tear down our culture.

A revolution WILL soon be necessary to root the tyranants from power.

DC Watson

I like your posts at Jihad Watch. Welcome.

Thanks Andrew...Mutual respect for your posts...They're dead on the money...

#93 - Big Guy

Vinland was actually Newfoundland . Link here if you're interested.

And having visited there several times over the last couple of years, I can assure you that there is only a very small Muslim community in Newfoundland.

#143 Jayce - Thankyou, this is fascinating.

Interesting theory; what are the odds the Spain, which that same year (1492) completed the Reconquista, basically kicking out or killing the last of the Muslims, would have allowed this? People forget that Columbus discovered America during the height of the Inquisition... Muslim Navigator? Somehow, I think NOT.

#117 Smit

N.B.: As I have never seen this documented, I also don't know how true it is. I have only heard it by word of mouth on a very few occasions, but from respected sources who wouldn't knowingly lie.

#143 me: "past" = passed. PIMF

That's scary.

The thought of the US slipping into Dhimmitude--as unlikely as that seems right now--is downright frightening.

Canada is actively prostating herself to be ass-raped by militant Islam (begging for it). We have now approved Al Jazeera while banning Fox, and we have formal Sharia courts to boot. Canada is crawling with Al Qaeda, and we recruit unstable Musilm "refugees".

However there is a simple solution should Canada go off the rails: a column of M1 tanks in Ottawa and a few wings of fighters patrolling our airspace. In other words a sane US can prevent Canada from slipping beneath the Islamist wave ifnecessary.

What if America caves? What if the leftist zeitgiest triumphs? Well then western civilization is toast no less than was the Roman Empire.

Oh for crying out loud ARRRGGHHH!

How long will it take for the Moslems to DEMAND or INSIST that a Moslem be buried in Arlington National Cemetery along with an Islamic marker such as a mini-minneret? Or that one is already there but unacknowledged?

I thought of this today while reading President Reagans inaugural speech when he said about the crosses and Star of David "add up to only a tiny fraction of the price that has been paid for our freedom."

CROSSES & STAR OF DAVID. JUDEO CHRISTIAN HERITAGE. THE USURPERS WON"T STAND FOR THAT.

Islam has proven very malicious and spiteful. They will want to assemilate our culture and achievements and claim them falsely as their own, however undeserved and illigitimate it may be.

Consider the Al Aska Mosque in Jerusalem for example.

This is what the State Department has been known for. Crazy policies and promoted beliefs that tear down our culture.

This is my gripe with career diplomats, bureaucrats, etc. Presidents and policies come and go but those who implement them too often have their own agendas. State has for decades been known to be anti Israeli, or at least pro Arab. It makes it very difficult for an administration which is at best there for 8 years to enact a policy which has to be carried out by those who are often there for at least 30 years. In many ways the old patronage system had definite advantages.

Jews on Columbus's Voyage

Note that confiscated money from the Jews helped Ferdinand and Isabella pay for the voyage.

Also note the the Talmudical dictum, "He prepares the salvation before the punishment." Spain represented the Golden Age of the Jews in their exile, much as America would later be and still is. Columbus set sail for the New World the day before (8/2) the expulsion of the Jews on August 3rd, 1492 (on the VERY SAME day that commemorates Jewish suffering over THOUSANDS OF YEARS as mentioned in the Bible re the Incident with the Spies (Joshua, Caleb,...).

#151 - Pro-Bush Canuk - If America caves and the leftist zeitgiest triumphs then it's time for a strike ala Atlas Shrugged. Galts Gulch anybody?

It's true! I was born in al-Abama. You've probably heard of al-Aska, the furthest place. And then there's al-Buquerque...

#153 andrew2

Consider the Al Aska Mosque in Jerusalem

I'd rather not think about that monstrosity. It's horrible when the invading culture insults the previous one like that.

Regardless of whether it's Muslims building on the Temple mount, or on Hindu sites it is a horrible insult.

I'd also be against non-Muslims building a place of worship on the Kaaba, but seeing as tho' non-muslims aren't even allowed in the city of Mecca, that's not highly likely.

Phyllis McIntosh is one busy bee. The number of pro-Muslim articles that she has written for the State Department is incredible. Here is a pro-Iranian one that she has written:

[Link: www.farsinet.com...]

One can only reluctantly conclude that the State Department, like the BBC, and many other organizations has been infiltrated and subverted by Muslim agents. And if you don't believe me, take a look at the BBC's information on line about Islam:

[Link: www.bbc.co.uk...]

/sarcasm on

Isn't the BBC's description of Islam objective and unbiased?

Don't forget Susan B. Allahnthony, a Muslim who fought for women's rights, which is an Islamic concept. Other famous Muslims are Mohammed Einstein, the Wright brothers- Mahmoud and Ali, and all of the founding fathers.

as cited earlier the onlu non spaniard I saw in the list was jewish, ha

[Link: www.italian-american.com...]

(cites original work)

Someone should fact check the revisionist fucks. There is nothing more I hate in this world than a revisionist fucker.

OT: Good News from the Homeland Security Front

"Moderate" Muslim Scholar Tariq Ramadan denied visa to teach at Notre Dame.

FYI: Notre Dame is gradually transgressing to dhimmitude

WTF is this?

Do the mullahs not know that they are about to release a homosexual infedels work to the fragile Muslim ears?

Iran set to Release Queen albums

Steyn: Kerry: strange, stuck-up...and stupid -- Telegraph Hard to argue with that.

...The other day it was CNN host James Carville, former skinhead-in-chief to Bill Clinton, yelling and howling all over O'Neill's answers before brushing him aside with, "I've got no use for this man."

Meanwhile, the grandees at the New York Times, having studiously ignored the story for two weeks, decided that, with the Kerry campaign all but paralysed by the issue, they'd have to sully their lily-white hands with the ghastly business and kill it themselves. Maureen Dowd, the paper's elderly schoolgirl columnist, dismissed the dissenting Swiftees as "creepy-crawly", "stomach-turning", "sleazoids".

Pat Oliphant, who appears in the Washington Post and many other newspapers, offered a cartoon showing the Swiftees as Bush-backing deadbeats sitting round a bar bitching: "I never seen Kerry do nothing hee-roic," says one loser. "Damn right," says another. "You and me was right there in latrine maintenance. We orta know."

The redneck spelling's a nice touch, ain't it? I wonder which of the anti-Kerry campaign's 254 Swift vets, including 17 of Lieutenant Kerry's 23 fellow officers, Oliphant thinks were in latrine maintenance. Maybe he's got in mind fellows like Paul Galanti, who appears in the latest anti-Kerry ad and whose plane went down over North Vietnam in 1966. He was held in the "Hanoi Hilton" Viet Cong POW camp until 1973. That's seven years getting tortured by the gooks, only to be mocked by some lame-o cartoonist as a redneck latrine operator.

I've never quite understood the preferred formulation of big-time Democrats – that "of course" they support our troops even though they oppose this war. But in practice they "support our troop" – singular – just Lieut Kerry and the handful of Swiftees willing to appear in public with him. The rest can go to hell and any of 'em impertinent enough to question the Senator are just "sleazoids" wading through their own backed-up latrine. I wonder if the Kerry campaign and its media cheerleaders have really thought this one through.

Nothing the "sleazoids" say about Kerry is as bad as what he said about them 33 years ago in his testimony to Congress, when he informed the world that his comrades – his "band of brothers" – had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads" etc, throughout their time in Vietnam.

Yeah, what about that rank hypocrisy, always on display, Monsieur Kerry?

#128 halldor

It might be worth remembering that the rewriting of history - and science - was something the Nazis and Communists were both quite good at.

I'm sure it began way back before then, like when the Romans crucified a Jew called Jesus then blamed it on those same Jews.

Anyhow, everybody knows Jews invented Jazz.

Paco

“Today you will play jazz, tomorrow you will betray your country.”
- 1930s Soviet propaganda poster

At least Tariq Ramadan was denied a visa. Some things do turn out right.

OTPodhoretz on Kerry
This nails it:
Had Kerry really been in Cambodia when he said, he would have told his buddys at VVAW all about it, and they would have used it. They didn't, however, until much later, when US activities in Cambodia came out from other sources. Then JFKII jumped up and said, "Oh, I was there, by the way!"
Read it all.

A Moorish navigator? What a bunch of bullshit.

I sent State an email through their comment form. I'll let everybody know if I hear something back.

A friend who was born in South Korea tells me that China is now teaching stories from Korean history in its primary schools as Chinese history. The reason? To make it easier to integrate part or all of North Korea once it collapses, something expected by China within ten years.

(#162) Axiom

That's awesome, but the seethe-a-than has already begun:

"The essence of the problem is that pro-Likud organizations want to block people who can speak articulately and present the Muslim dilemma in a way that might be understandable and sympathetic to Americans," said Graham Fuller, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the Central Intelligence Agency. The Likud party leads the political coalition currently in power in Israel.

"They succeed by presenting this as a security matter. There is no way Homeland Security would initiate this on its own," said Fuller, who is an expert on political Islam.

Graham Fuller, as it happens, is also on the advisory board for something called the "Middle East Journal" put out by the UASR, a Hamas front/"think tank."

For some reason, the Tribune never digs deeper than one layer, yet they never have a problem floating an angle like this:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has revoked a visa granted to Tariq Ramadan, a renowned Islamic scholar who is accused by some Jewish groups of being a Muslim extremist, effectively barring him from a teaching post he was to begin this week at the University of Notre Dame.

As if it's only "some Jewish groups" that accuse Ramadan of being an extremist.

Right.

#166 Mentat

Even Bernard Henri-Levy thinks Ramadan's anti-globalization rhetoric is anti-semitism. And Levy's a Socialist universalist PC thinker.

Juan Arias, cabin boy

Hmmm...

Hmmm, again...

Hmmm, for a third time...

I encourage you to all to join the Skeptics Society.

[Link: www.skeptic.com...]

Jim in VA -

Brrr re the Bay Bridge.

Brrr again.

Brrr for a third time.

#37

This was in the WaPo? Holy sh*t.

It is likely that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America in 1492, charted his way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an Arab navigator.

The overly-simplified view of history here suggests that this is destined for an elementary school textbook.

Let's see, the real Naviator aboard Columbus' journey, Torres, was a jew or converted jew.

The State Department says his navigator was likely a Moslem.

This is a nice bit of revisionist history, that might have been crafted by S. Arabia's spin machine.

The fact that many bigwigs at the state department have revolving door or retirement plans supported by Saudi largesse couldn't have anything to do with it, could it?

I mean, making Islam more of a mainstream thing and all, that couldn't be a Saudi goal, could it???

169 Bill Jefferson- I'm not sure I buy that. Even the South Koreans aren't sure they want reunification- it will cost them far more than German reunification cost. I know the Chinese are expansionist but there are easier and more profitable places they could absorb.

#171 Axiom

You are preaching to the choir with me, Axiom. I have read quite a bit of Ramadan's stuff and it doesn't take long before you see where his biases lie and what his goals are. He is just a sophisticated Muslim apologist.

I live for the day when Notre Dame appoints someone like Ibn Warraq to their middle east studies department to teach "Islamic philosophy and ethics". Islamic philosophy and ethics? My goodness, anyone who has even a cursory acquaintance with this area knows that Islam has nothing, and I mean NOTHING, to teach the West about philosophy and ethics.

What you are seeing here is the influence of money, large amounts of money, paying for hired ideological guns to disseminate propaganda and agitate for the Islamic cause. What is required is an equally well funded and fanatical response from Western intellectuals. Otherwise soon we will be reading "learned" articles in our newspapers about how wonderful Sharia law is and how if we all cheerfully submitted to Allah what a wonderful world it would be. There would be universal peace and prosperity if we all became Mobots. Ahhh yes. The thought just makes me warm all over.

SoCal

Don't you just love the whole "Ramadan" thing anyway...I mean the hypocracy of it. I was in DS and we were in Saudi during "Ramadan"(oooh, the crowd hushes). The Islamofascists go through this "fasting" thing where they don't go anywhere during the day and "fast" all day. Not much of a fast though, because after dark "allah" hell breaks loose(LOL) and they head to the nearest restaurant to gorge and party, only to repeat the same crap for over a month!!! Everything about this "religion" is a farce, a mimic of the other great religions, and just the basal rampant hypocracy of it turns my stomach...(turning green)

#170 SoCalJustice

I think the request came from the French Government. This will eventually find its way into the press. Levy has many friends in high places in the French government that don't see the military side of fighting Islamism, but they do see the interior ministerial side to fighting Islamism.

The bureaucrat with responsibility for the USIA, which published the islamist piece:

Patricia deStacy Harrison
Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

#180 pax

Considering the number of "non-hunger" hunger strikes lately, for example the 48 hour fast by LLL in California and the gluttoness hunger strike leader in Israeli jail, now it all makes sense! I mean, when their season of fasting has feasts every night.

Re: 65 Zombie

Too bad they don't use it on themselves given their high birth rate.

183
lol

in the grand scheme, i'd say this is pretty unimportant. aren't you trying a BIT too hard to be outraged?

#186 - myocarditis - WHAT? YOU INFIDEL!!!

Seriously - historical revisionism, especially when there is an agenda behind it, is extremely annoying.

#179 Mentat

What you are seeing here is the influence of money, large amounts of money, paying for hired ideological guns to disseminate propaganda and agitate for the Islamic cause. What is required is an equally well funded and fanatical response from Western intellectuals.

Which is something that may be difficult to achieve. As Robert Conquest notes in the context of the Soviet Union:

Soviet insistence on the continuation of the ideological struggle was often misunderstood. As Walter Laqueur remarked, in the West "Soviet insistence on the continuation of the ideological struggle is all too often not taken seriously" - because the concept of such struggle is alien to Western thought. People were, Laqueur argued, inclined to think that Soviet pronouncements were merely a matter of lip service to doctrine... This "ideological struggle" was not a matter of winning well-conducted philosophical debates at international congresses - though even as to theoretical argument, Lenin cogently said that his controversial methods were "calculated to evoke in the reader hatred, aversion and contempt... calculated not to convince, but to break up the ranks of the opponent, not to correct the mistake of the opponent, but to destroy him."

(Notes on a Ravaged Century, 1999)

Much the same, it could be argued, is true of the ideological struggle waged by Islam.

187:

yeah, i don't disagree (ie. the statues of the three 9-11 fireman). it's just that this kind of thing is rampant and not really an example of some vast State-Saudi conspiracy.

just don't think its such a big deal, that's all.

It is revisionist history and it is a big deal. Why don't they mention the "theory" that Columbus was a Jew and that he was trying to escape persecution of Jews that was rampant during this period of Spanish history?

#186 myocarditis

Historical revisionism has been a technique common to all totalitarian movements as they seek to create "new" men, untainted by history who will behave with the "new" values with which the state seeks to indoctrinate them. Pol Pot didn't kill every intellectual they had for no reason at all. Ayatollah Khomeini didn't kill every secularist, leftist, feminist he could after the revolution for nothing. The Nazis and the Soviets all sought to re-write history to re-educate the masses. The Turks will still not admit to the Armenian genocide. Muslims are already denying that 911 happened, let alone the Holocaust. As times goes on, these people seek to teach the new generation their version of things to promote their vision of the future. If we do not combat this kind of thinking, the future will be very dark indeed. The only form of knowledge that the Islamists have not yet assaulted in a significant way is science. Fortunately, the defenders of science are ferocious. They are much more ferocious than the defenders of freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, freedom of speech and democracy. We have to be ferocious in our defence of Western values or we will see our freedoms taken away by people who would like to make "new" people of us.

This is same sort of nonsense that passes for "history" in school these days. Kids spend a huge amount of time learning about the "black veterans" of the Revolution, the black union soldiers in the Civil War, black cowboys, black homesteaders, on an on and on. It is a re-write of history to portray even the thinnest connection of present day "minorities" to events in the nation's past. The nonsense in the linked article points to "muslim" architecture being the basis for things like interior courtyards and other details of buildings in Southern Spain. So what? There are Greek temples masquerading as government buildings all over the country? Are we Greek? No. What a stretch.

scott in east bay -

And since most of the cathedrals are of Gothic architecture, that means we're all Goths.

#192 scott in east bay

Kids spend a huge amount of time learning about the "black veterans" of the Revolution, the black union soldiers in the Civil War, black cowboys, black homesteaders, on an on and on

Er, what does this have to do with Islamist ideology?

What a pile of crap. The state department has no shame.

I think it's time to counter the CAIR offensive at changing history by changing history in an equal and opposite manner.

That's right. Chris Columbus had a Jewish navigator. His name was Shlomo Goldstein Sanchez, and his wife Ethel spent the entire trip kvetching at him to stop and ask for directions.

Top that, Ibrahim Hooper!

#192 Scott and #193 Frank IBC

You have to admit islamic architecture such as that of the Alhambra courtyards/patios in Granada is beautiful, which is why the Spanish monarchs lived there. And same style has been copied all over California, explaining the Left Coast's predisposition to djimmitude, unless the Arabs landed in California first and tried to work their way East. in 1492.

midas:

IIRC, Newfoundland was not Vinland. The sagas describe L'Anse Aux Meadeux as the starting off point, from which they travelled to Vinland. Vinland could be anywhere from New York State to Nova Scotia.

The Iranians i know say that they reject Islam as a religion and they don't consider themselves as muslims anymore..

For that, i see no problem with the Iranian-Americans.

They're a resource-even against the Arab-Americans that are,actually very dangerous and one of the less-educated groups in the US

P.S. The majority of the Iranian-Americans are going to vote for Bush and are fiercely campaigning against Kerry's appeaser campaign (and his ties with the Mullahs)

I think you should ask Free Republic's Doctor Zin

alegrias -

I'm actually a big fan of Islamic architecture. In addition to the Moorish architecture from Spain, it also was a major influence on the development of Gothic architecture. And its influence can also be seen in many important buildings in Venice.

Next thing we know the [bigoted word]s will claim that the original Santa Claus was actually Ali Haji Sheikh Habib, who delivered presents all over the world from his flying carpet.

Muslims should want to change history, they've truly been the losers of the planet. Look at them, idiots bringing knives to gunfights, raping children and hacking people to death. Fred Flintsonte, Barney Rubble, and Joe Rockhead all reincarnated.

However, they're not intelligent enough to know that the hands of time don't spin backwards. Dumb Muslims, they should consider trying to be a benefit to the future of mankind intead of the illiterate, foul smelling mad bombers the world has come to know and hate.

The fact that we're civilized is keeping them alive. If we shut off the corn, wheat and grain products to the Arabian ghetto, they'd have to swing their machetes at each other, and knaw on each others limbs to survive.
No worries though, they can always wash the flesh of their muslim brothers down their sand ridden throats with oil.

OT:

MSNBC has a little "Fact File" (msnbc)on the first of the jihadis to stand trial. Here's an example of the 'facts' they like to remind us of:

His family disputes the case against him, saying al Bahlul doesn’t like violence. "He is cultured and peace-loving. He speaks English and enjoys reading and writing poetry," al Bahlul's father, Hamza Ahmed, told The Associated Press.

Yes, this all will be coming to your kids'/grandkids'/nieces' and nephews' textbooks soon if it's not already there. They've already relearned an anti-Western American history. Now they have a pro-something to replace it with.

Screwed up history curricula is one of the reasons we homeschool our children.

Islamic influence runs historically deep in America. . .

It's not generally known that chess was an Islamic invention. The pieces and the rules were slightly different from modern chess in the following ways:

The Kings, known as Khalifs, could move one square at a time, but could only move backwards, spatially and chronologically.

The Queens, known as the takiyya pieces, could be moved at will anywhere else on the board. Both are painted half-black half-white.

The Bishops were known as Muftis and shifted diagonally.

The Knights were known as Archers and had to be moved after a Mufti had been moved.

Pawns are known as Pawns and, due to lack of birth-control can be replaced endlessly as they are taken.

Rooks (Ruhks) were known as Domes, and, if taken, detonated, finishing the game and one or more of the players.

Eventually the game was banned.

According to the Hadith: Muslim 946 The Prophet said: "He who played chess is like one who dyed his hand with the flesh and blood of swine."

A'isha considered chess evil. Umar would beat people playing chess and break the pieces. Malik said that playing chess is repugnant.

Ben B

I really hate to burst your bubble Jayce, but all that stuff about Jewish artifacts being found in the Americas before Colombus is actually just Mormon propaganda.

Zombie:

We are in the midst of another major round of historical revisionism. The first big one happened in the '70s when the white founding fathers and other Euro-descended historical figures were re-cast as villains. Now, we're going to get a rehash of the phony history... that the Muslims are responsible for every single creative or good thing that ever happened in history. Welcome to our nightmare.

W can fire the ass of whoever is responsible for propagating the enemy's lies on a US Government website. As for the rest of your argument--the Right has to decide whether it's going to fight to retake all the cultural institutions it surrendered to the Left from the 70s through the 90s.

Q (#27) wrote:

The State Department is owned by the Saudi Entity

I have heard that the Saudi gov't pays attention to the activity of the State Dept., and identifies those who take friendly positions toward the Saudi royal family. Then, in an informal way of saying "Thanks", they will offer these supporters with lucrative lobbying contracts after they retire, which for civil servants can be quite early.

The question is: Is this Saudi quid-pro-quo apparatus urban legend, or is has there been some bonafide investigation into this phenomenon? Any links?

I was there...I know...
Chris was JEWISH and the WHOLE crew was GAY...and they arrived in a SWIFT BOAT

I think this cheerleading by State smacks of state support for religion.

Where're the usual suspects screaming separation of church and State?

194- my example was chosen because it is an EXAMPLE of finding some, any connection between present day "minorities" and the events of the American past. Blacks are one example. You will also find examples of Moors with Columbus, a black slave with Coronado, Chinese building Gold Rush railroads (they did), the founding of New Mexico in 1598, long before the Pilgrims(true). All of this is interesting, but it is an attempt by the politically correct to change our history from one of events to one that is only valid because someone from a particular, currently favored ethnic group was involved. I don't care if the American Revolution was fought by Vikings and Chinese, the result was our independence. This thread is about the same thing happening again, but this time we are supposed to dig up the most obscure "Mulsim" contribution to events in our history. Sorry, it's not there, any more than a couple of black soldiers fighting with rebels in Massachusetts means that blacks played a real role in the Revolution. It's identity politics, not history.

er...MuSlim..

#147 midas mulligan

Thanks for the correction. All I really remembered was that it was a coastal province.

That, and it was before the Little Ice Age.

Also, the latest date for the burning of the library at Alexandria, that I can find, is 640 AD (CE?). It was done by muslims.

Earlist was done by julius ceaser. About 700 years before.

Islamic influences may date back to the very beginning of American history. It is likely that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America in 1492, charted his way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an Arab navigator.

This is very likely a true statement but it is all in the nuance.

Most maps of the period were made from or updated from Moorish maps. So at some point in his life Columbus must have used a map or a updated map made from a Moorish map.

If you use this argument then you could also say "The Jewish people financed the expedition". Since Queen Isabella gave Columbus jewels to finance his voyage.

But to say all Arabs are Islamic is a racist statement. Since no one can prove or disprove that they are.

#bbcrackmonkey

Don't worry; you haven't burst my bubble. My degrees are in Anthropology and Linguistics, so I have taken an interest over the years in artifacts denoting travelers from Israel in the Americas (many of them are labled Phoenician because of inability to recognize early Hebrew writing styles and lie gathering dust in the Smithsonian).

When I saw this article about the ridiculous Arab(ist) claims, I quickly checked to see what the internet might have about Jews to give you an idea.

You're right that there are religions that promote the American Indians and themselves, naturally, as the real Children of Israel. However, that has nothing to do with Hebrew artifacts which are often DATED earlier than the existance of those religions.

In the articles, the Ten Commandments written on the Las Lunas stone found in New Mexico have been authenticated to be ancient Hebrew by such scientists as Dr. Barry Fell, who dated it to as early as 1200 BCE, and Dr. Cyrus Gordon, head of the Dept of Mediterranean Studies at Brandeis and an expert in ancient Semitic languages.

They don't look Mormon to me.

Sorry, bbc, #206, here is your statement that I was referring to:

...all that stuff about Jewish artifacts being found in the Americas before Colombus is actually just Mormon propaganda.