Among all the other reasons Muslims turn to terrorism, we can now add “to avenge lost battles of history.” Seriously. For example, last month,
While much can be said about this development, consider what it reveals about the two civilizations in question — that of Muslims, and that which was once headed by men such as Charles “the Hammer” Martel.
The battle of Tours in 732 AD was indeed a watershed moment (I’ve dedicated an entire chapter to it in Sword and Scimitar). One leading historian, Godefroid Kurth (d. 1916), presented it as “one of the great events in the history of the world, as upon its issue depended whether Christian Civilization should continue or Islam prevail throughout Europe.”
As such, isn’t it interesting that, on the one hand, Muslims still remember and seek to avenge themselves against this battle, and, on the other, most Western people know absolutely nothing about it? Bernard Lewis once explained this strange dichotomy: “most Muslims, unlike most Americans, have an intense historical awareness and see current events in a much deeper and broader perspective than we normally do.”
Knowing Your History
Surely this is putting it mildly. If anything, Muslims are increasingly walking in perfect continuity with their history — one which featured invasions, terrorization, and conquests of non-Muslim lands; and Westerners are increasingly walking in perfect discontinuity with their history — one which featured Europeans defending against invading Muslims.
Isn’t it interesting that, on the one hand, Muslims still remember and seek to avenge themselves against this battle, and, on the other, most Western people know absolutely nothing about it?
Meanwhile, if Muslims are aware of and regularly celebrate their jihadist past, the West does everything to forget and whitewash over a millennium of Muslim atrocities, while condemning and pulling out of context the deeds of its own ancestors, the Crusaders being a prime example.
This inability to appreciate true history, including its unwavering continuity, has naturally spilled into how the West completely misunderstands current events. Put differently, because the West has insisted on a lie — that Islam was historically peaceful and tolerant — it naturally cannot understand the ideology that fuels modern-day jihadist aggression, and therefore always attributes it to something else: “grievances,” mental disturbances, territorial disputes, and so forth.
The Fox and the Hedgehog
As for those many other acts of Muslim violence that are too difficult to chalk up to “grievances” — such as the persecution (sometimes genocide) of Christians under Islam; systematic attacks on European churches; and sexual assaults on or grooming of infidel women — these are simply not discussed because they are, for historically amnesiac Westerners, “inexplicable,” not to mention the way they throw a wrench into the “narrative” we are all supposed to accept without question.
This, incidentally, is why every single Muslim terror attack is always presented as something “new,” a disparate phenomenon to be understood on its own, with an endless supply of media talking heads “explaining” (often wrongly) what should otherwise be commonsensical.
Much of this dichotomy is captured by a fragment from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Discussing the significance of this obscure aphorism in his The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953), Isiah Berlin wrote,
An online article offers a more simplistic definition:
Thus, the Muslim’s “hedgehog” strength lies in the fact that he sees the world and his place in it according to one big idea — namely, Islam, and how Islam has always behaved. As for the Western “fox,” nothing is connected; there is no overarching understanding of anything; everything is “nuanced” and often presented in a vacuum, never part of an obvious continuum. Hence why everything is “new” and presented as the news (with the pun on Fox News being unavoidable).
Incidentally, one need look no further than to France, where this latest terror plot to “avenge Tours” was busted, to see all of the aforementioned dynamics at work in stark display. Historically, France produced more crusaders and spearheaded more crusades against Islam than any other European nation. Yet today it is among the most accommodating nations to Muslims, and has arguably the largest Muslim population of Europe.
Thus, Muslims continue to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors, while Western people have been conditioned to be the mirror opposite of theirs—to their own detriment.
