If Fake News is a “threat to democracy,” what about Fake History? Although more subtle — Fake News is certainly much easier to expose than Fake History — the latter is every bit as dangerous, if not more so.
Unlike the “news,” which is ephemeral, the presumed lessons of history are much more concrete and long-lasting. For example, if you believe the Fake History that presents white people as having some sort of genetic predisposition to enslave everyone else you may, like black Rutgers University Professor Brittney Cooper, conclude that “white people are committed to being villains.”
To the point: A colleague recently sent me an article extolling Saladin (Salah al-Din), the Muslim sultan who took Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187. Like so much modern literature on Saladin, that article presents the sultan in the most flattering light possible — magnanimous, merciful, moderate, a paragon of virtue in an era marred by crusader brutality.
But is that true?
Western Praise
The one point Saladin’s many Western admirers always stress as proof of the sultan’s quality is that he did not commit a bloodbath in Jerusalem (the way the First Crusaders did in 1099) but rather permitted the Christians to peacefully surrender and leave unmolested.
Thus, in the article in question, we learn that, after conquering Jerusalem, “Saladin shamed the ruthless Crusaders by treating the city with kindness and keeping every promise he made to its people.”
Best of all:
Such encomiums are the staple way of presenting Saladin (and have naturally spilled into movies, such as Kingdom of Heaven). Thus, according to esteemed American historian Dana Carleton Munro (d. 1933),
Note the present tense — “might learn.” Saladin is to be held up as an example from whom today’s “intolerant” Western Christians need to learn.
Ancient Role Model
If one accepts this flattering picture of Saladin — and why shouldn’t one, seeing that it is the mainstream portrayal of the sultan in the West? — one will become confused about the truth concerning Islam (hence the dangers of Fake History). If Saladin, whom the sources also present as a highly observant Muslim, behaved so, then clearly the behavior of ISIS and other modern-day “radicals” cannot be based on a correct understanding of Islam. That, of course, is what we’re constantly assured.
Meanwhile, back in the real world — that is, back in actual history — we learn that Saladin behaved little better than an ISIS terrorist. Indeed, a memorable scene that he orchestrated (which for some odd reason never makes it into any of the films about him) has been especially instructive for ISIS.
According to Saladin’s own biographer, Baha’ al-Din, who was present after the Battle of Hattin, Saladin ordered that the Christian knights he’d captured should be beheaded, boasting, “I shall purify the land of these … impure races.
After saying that some of these would-be executioners did not have the stomach to continue in the ritual slaughter, Baha’ al-Din focused on one — whom some commentators think was Saladin himself — who “killed unbelief to give life to Islam”:
Shocking Treatment
Indeed, even the one point that all of Saladin’s fans admire — his “magnanimous” treatment of the conquered Christians of Jerusalem, which “Christians might learn from” — is grossly distorted. While it is true that he allowed many Christians to be ransomed, Saladin also ordered those who could not afford it — some 15,000 Christians, mostly poor European women and children — to be sold into slavery.
Once again, we must turn to Muslim histories to find this truth. According to Muhammad al-Isfahani, another of Saladin’s entourage who was present at the capitulation of Christian Jerusalem, “Women and children together came to 8,000 and were quickly divided up among us, bringing a smile to Muslim faces at their lamentation.” Muhammad thereafter launched into a sadomasochistic tirade extolling the sexual debasement of European women at the hands of Muslim men:
No doubt, for many of these women — and children — death would have been more “magnanimous” than the actual fate to which Saladin abandoned them.
Obfuscating the Issue
One can go on and on with examples that fly in the face of Saladin’s fine reputation in the West. After expelling every last Crusader from the Holy Land, Saladin’s “retirement dream” was to invade and wage jihad on Christian Europe, “until there shall not remain on the face of this earth one unbeliever in Allah, or I will die in the attempt.”
As for his temperament, Baha’ al-Din says Saladin loved hearing Koran recitals, prayed punctually, and “hated philosophers, heretics, and materialists and all opponents of the sharia” (a fitting description of all those Western apologists who currently praise him).
Finally, if his quarrel with the Crusaders was about land, not religious hostility, why did he also severely persecute Egypt’s indigenous Christians, the Copts — including by crucifying or hanging many thousands of them and routinely breaking the crosses off and tarring their churches — even though the Copts, who refer to Saladin as “the Oppressor of the Cross Worshippers,” had nothing to do with the Franks or the crusades? (See A Sword Over the Nile, pp. 127, 131, 141, and 142.)
Such, then, is the true Saladin of recorded history. If more people knew it, there would be fewer doubts concerning the true nature of Islam, as Saladin would neatly fit into a continuum of centuries’ worth of jihadists straight from his own time to ISIS. But since people in the West have been continuously fed a Fake History, Saladin has become a wrench thrown into the otherwise smooth machinery of understanding Islam.
