Required Reading

Ralph Peters, on the Islamic obsession with the past:

In 1492, Grenada, the last Moorish kingdom, fell. Weakened from within, it needed only one last blow from without.

It’s a universal story. Constantinople, bastion of Christianity for a thousand years, fell to Ottoman armies aided by Italian gunners and Christian engineers – after being sacked by Western Crusaders. Following the Mughal invasions of India, Hindu princes danced over to the Muslim side. Within every faith, believers have been ready to slaughter their own kind over the number of imams in a religious succession or the contents of the Communion cup.

There is guilt and blood and loss on every side. And the past cannot be changed.

As a student of history alert to ugly surprises, my fear is that Islamic extremists may arouse passions dormant in the West. Muslim terrorists might do well to recall that there are far more Christian holy places in the Arab world than there are Muslim vestiges in Europe.

Suppose the Christians of tomorrow were provoked to demand the return of the apostolic churches of Asia minor? Or the vast lands of Orthodox Byzantium? Of historical Armenia? Or of Alexandria, the city that dominated early Christian thought? Before Mohammed’s triumph, even Mecca had a Christian minority – and Jews had a vital presence in Medina.

Read the whole thing — it’s required.