Jerusalem This Week : Ron Cantrell

The Rise of Al-Andalus
Posted: 16 May 2008 09:27 PM CDT

While Bush joined Israel's 60th celebration, undoubtedly, noble dreams of a Nobel achievement were in the back of his mind—the creation of a Palestinian State. However, his time has run out. In what may be considered a defeatist speech, or a set-up for the next administration, he predicted another 60 years of turmoil when he said:

"Israel will be celebrating its 120th anniversary as one of the world's greatest democracies. The Palestinian people will have a homeland, a democratic state that is governed by law, respects human rights and rejects terror. From Cairo to Riyadh to Baghdad and Beirut, people will live in free and independent societies."

The dream of a Palestinian State is an empty one. No one on earth will rise to this highly sought after political accomplishment. The doom of this goal has solid reasons. Palestine is a smoke screen for a much larger Islamist aspiration: the Greater Islamic umma, i.e., a resurrected Islamic worldwide empire. To Islamists, this goal is deemed holy unto Allah himself and all nationalism is secondary. Islamist claims are being widely ignored by the West in the politically-correct fever to mold Islam into a socially acceptable entity. While the West slumbers peacefully in its incorrect world view, Islamists work diligently on their agenda—legal Islam in Western nations. That does not mean tolerated Islam, that means Islam under Sharia Law in a host nation.

Palestinian History
Consider Palestine historically. The Arabs, living in the region the British named "Palestine," were in fact an amalgamation of Syrian, Egyptian, Saudi, and Iraqi Arabs. The term Palestine was abhorrent to them as the Zionists referred to the area as Palestine. "Philistia," was first officially used to describe all the Land of Israel after the third Jewish rebellion. The Bar Kokhba revolt had failed to win freedom from Roman domination of the Hebrew nation. The Romans named it Philistia in derision to historically disconnect the Jews from their homeland. The Jerusalem Post, Israel's prime English newspaper, was originally called The Palestine Post. Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier when asked about the Palestinians said, "Why, I'm a Palestinian, my passport says so."

In 1937, the Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul Hadi told the Peel Commission:

"There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented. Palestine is alien to us. Even your Bibles which call this land Palestine are in error."

In 1946, Princeton's Arab professor of Middle East history, Philip Hitti, told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry: "It's common knowledge, there is no such thing as Palestine in history." In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, an executive member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), said in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw:

"The 'Palestinian people' does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel."
--Dr. Harry Mendelbaum, May 2002, "Arabs in the Holy Land - Native or Alien?"

Sheikh Professor Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Secretary General of the Italian Muslim Assembly said,

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian, there never was a Palestine, it is a Madison Avenue fantasy."

So then, what is Palestine all about? The League of Nations, formed in 1919 after WWI, drew regional lines called Mandates which were enforced by the armies of the great nations. Three classes of Mandates were:

A. Former Ottoman Empire areas, mainly Middle East,
B. Former German colonies, and
C. Small and backward territories unable to govern themselves.

These lines in the sand were disputed later, however, nations were born in councils of the League of Nations. Palestine was one of them, and the great nation handed the Mandate over Palestine was Britain.

A 500-year-old Grudge
The previously mentioned Islamist claims falling on deaf ears include al-Andalus. Al-Andalus is the name for Spain between 711 and 1492 which was under the rule of Islam almost entirely. The cute elementary school aids to remember dates has branded 1492 on our minds, but with only one facet—Columbus sailing the ocean blue. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were occupied with driving Muslims from Spain back to North Africa.

Lt. Col. Jonathan D. Halevi of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs warns us:

•Sheikh Safar al-Hawali, who was one of the most powerful Islamist preachers in Saudi Arabia, wrote a letter to President George W. Bush on October 15, 2001 - after the 9/11 attacks - in which he explained:

"Imagine Mr. President, we still weep over Andalusia and remember what Ferdinand and Isabella did there to our religion, culture and honor! We dream of regaining it."
(Patrick Sookhdeo, Understanding Islamic Terrorism (Wiltshire: Isaac Publishing, 2004), p. 159.

• A children's magazine published by Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, called on Palestinian children to restore the city of Seville to Islamic rule as well as the rest of what was once Islamic Spain.

• Israel, therefore, is a small link in the greater confrontation between radical Islam and the West. Accepting the Arabs' terms for a Middle East settlement, or even going so far as "liberating" Palestine from Israeli rule, will not be the last stop in the radical Islamic journey being led by the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda, which share the vision of spreading Islam all over the world.

• Indeed, for the West, Israel constitutes a dike against the great wave of radical Islam. The very same principle invoked for waging war against Israel - recovery of what was once Islamic territory - is being applied to Spain, the Balkans, Southern Russia, and India. European pressure on Israel to make political concessions that endanger its security will only bring closer the next stage of Islam's offensive, this time aimed at the heart of Europe.

• Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy of Osama bin Laden in the al-Qaeda leadership, in a new tape publicized on 20 September 2007, referred to the global aspirations of the Islamic Revolution: "O, our Muslim nation in the Maghreb [North Africa], zone of deployment for battle and jihad! The return of Andalus [today's Spain] to Muslim hands is a duty for the [Islamic] nation in general and for you in particular. You will not be able to achieve this except by purifying the Islamic Maghreb of the French and the Spanish who have once again returned, after your fathers and grandfathers had expelled them unsparingly in the way of Allah. "
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
--Lt. Col. Jonathan D. Halevi

The Bigger Picture
There is much more to the bigger picture. The loss of al-Andalus was a thorn in the side of Islam in North Africa. Revenge was played out in savage raids upon south European Mediterranean villages, slaughtering all men and taking women and children hostage as slaves. The Barbary Pirates were not romantic characters from children's storybooks. They were savage thieves and slavers who sold slaves to all paying customers. Thomas Jefferson's Koran, used by Keith Ellison, America's first Muslim elected to Congress, as he was sworn into the U.S. Congress was purchased to aid America in understanding their enemy. Jefferson's copy is an English translation by George Sale published in the 1750s; it survived the 1851 fire that destroyed most of Jefferson's collection and has his customary initialing on the pages. Dr. Fishbein, Ph.D, a graduate from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at The Johns Hopkins Univesity, writes his thoughts on this subject. Here are some excerpts from Dr. Fishbein's article, titled "Echoes from the Barbary Coast":

"Launched in 1797, the USS Constitution, "Old Ironsides," and her sister ship, the USS Constellation, were built to wage war on the Muslim pirates operating along North Africa's Barbary coast. It was a wild, untamed region of petty states and warlords whose reach extended deep into the Mediterranean Sea, from Gibraltar to the borders of Egypt. Each owed his allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan, who demanded that payment of an annual tribute be made to his treasury in ex-change for the protection afforded by his Army. It was a tidy arrangement, one that worked well for the Sultan and those who knew their place in the social order."

That the local rulers were obliged to share a portion of their meager income with Constantinople meant that new, more assured opportunities for profit would have to be found. The solution was piracy. A bribe of $60,000 U.S. dollars was paid to keep the pirates from attacking American ships delivering goods to Britain. What would that amount to at today's dollar rate to assuage pirates?

Therefore, looking with clear-mindedness at the situation, one must draw very different conclusions than are presently being drawn. The Israeli Palestinian conflict is merely a tool of Islamofascism. Israel has served militant Islam as a training ground for tactics now being spread over the world. We must take into consideration Islam's tendency to capriciously decree land grabs as Allah's will. Kuwait was seen as Greater Iraq by Saddam Hussein, Lebanon has been decreed Greater Syria by both Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar, Iran has declared Bahrain to be Iranian territory and warned the Bahraini's to turn it back over to its mother, Jordan was viewed as Winston Churchill's creation by surrounding Arab nations, and those claiming to be Palestinian see Jordan as Greater Palestine. Conversely, Jordan's official policy was that all land west of the Jordan River was the Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan. Just Google "Jordanian stamps" to see the 1924 issue showing Jordan's map with no sign of an entity called Palestine.

The lessons are clear. The Islamist sees all lands once under the umbrella of Allah as "occupied territory." All those lands must be reclaimed. Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini launched the Islamic Revolution in 1979 to take Islam to the far corners of the world. Islamic Iranian students flooded into America's universities. We now live in the midst of one of the most successful religo-political moves in history.

_____________________________________________ Ron Cantrell --- Shalom Shalom Jerusalem Ministries -- 4101 West Green Oaks Blvd, Ste 305, PMB 574 -- Arlington, TX 76016