https://europeanconservative.com/ar...pain-from-al-andalus-to-the-migration-crisis/
Recently, media attention has focused on Spain because of the public protests against its left-wing government. Widespread disapproval of the government is hardly surprising given the government’s unpopular policies regarding the economy, mass immigration, the constitution, education, and other important issues. Furthermore, with the mass influx of illegal Muslim migrants into Spain and the severe decline in Spanish birth rates, the nation finds itself at a crossroads, with its future far from certain.
A major problem that prevents many people from understanding Spain’s history with Islam is the false historiography, or even propaganda, that rewrites the history of Muslim-occupied medieval Spain and tries to portray it as a ‘bastion of peace and multiculturalism.’
After Islam’s emergence in Arabia during the 7th century, one of the first objectives of invading Arabs was the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in Europe. Parts of Spain and Portugal (which the Muslims called ‘al-Andalus’) were occupied and ruled by a succession of Islamic dynasties for almost 800 years, beginning in the 8th century. With the expansion of Islam, the Muslims seized almost the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula in less than a decade, from 711 to 718. The Visigothic Christian kingdom was defeated, and its last king, Rodrigo, was slain by the invaders.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute notes:
Al-Andalus was a slave state that included eunuchs and the widespread sexual slavery of non-Muslim women. Dr. Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, has documented the vast extent of jihad slavery in al-Andalus, including the aptly named ‘hideous trade’ of eunuch slavery. Bostom quotes Evariste Levi-Provencal (1894-1956), who was an influential modern scholar of Muslim-occupied Spain:
The people of Spain suffered for centuries under Islamic tyranny, and only after they had made great sacrifices were they able to liberate their lands and become once more a sovereign nation. Today, Spain is subjected to another phase of Islamization—this time through mass, illegal Muslim immigration—an ideological policy of the EU executive, who, with the Spanish government, has never sought the approval of the Spanish population. Gatestone Institute has for years extensively reported on the threat of Islamization faced by Spain in articles such as ”Spain: Migration Crisis Spirals Out of Control,” ”The Quiet Islamic Conquest of Spain,” “Muslims Demand ‘Right of Return’ to Spain,” ”Spain: New Gateway to Europe for Mass-Migration,” and “Spain: Jihad Continues.”
Islamist terrorist groups such as the Islamic State (IS) and affiliated groups of Al-Qaeda often call on their supporters to reconquer al-Andalus. The media arm of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is called Al-Andalus. Terrorism experts have even cited “a Salafist drift in parts of Spain, particularly in the autonomous region of Catalonia.” Speaking to France24 in 2017, Pierre Conesa, a former senior French Defense Ministry official and author of several books on political Islam, noted that ”Barcelona is a city that has long sheltered a form of radicalization, which for a time embraced the Muslim Brotherhood, Tabligh [a movement advocating a rigorous and literal interpretation of Islam] and then the Salafists.”
Attacking Spain has symbolic weight for Islamic State sympathizers. “There’s a bunch of evidence in recent years, in the IS group and other radical Islamist propaganda, which castigated Spain by recalling that part of its territory was Muslim for several centuries,” explains Alexandre Vautravers of the University of Geneva’s Global Studies Institute. Meanwhile, birth rates in Spain are in serious decline. Researchers W. Bradford Wilcox and Tim Sprunt have written about “the collapse of the Spanish family” and ”declining fertility rates,” calling them Spain’s “depopulation bomb”:
Recently, media attention has focused on Spain because of the public protests against its left-wing government. Widespread disapproval of the government is hardly surprising given the government’s unpopular policies regarding the economy, mass immigration, the constitution, education, and other important issues. Furthermore, with the mass influx of illegal Muslim migrants into Spain and the severe decline in Spanish birth rates, the nation finds itself at a crossroads, with its future far from certain.
A major problem that prevents many people from understanding Spain’s history with Islam is the false historiography, or even propaganda, that rewrites the history of Muslim-occupied medieval Spain and tries to portray it as a ‘bastion of peace and multiculturalism.’
After Islam’s emergence in Arabia during the 7th century, one of the first objectives of invading Arabs was the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in Europe. Parts of Spain and Portugal (which the Muslims called ‘al-Andalus’) were occupied and ruled by a succession of Islamic dynasties for almost 800 years, beginning in the 8th century. With the expansion of Islam, the Muslims seized almost the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula in less than a decade, from 711 to 718. The Visigothic Christian kingdom was defeated, and its last king, Rodrigo, was slain by the invaders.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute notes:
Some excerpts from the book include:
The history of Muslim-occupied Spain was largely marked by a severe persecution of Christians and Jews that included several expulsions and pogroms. In 1013, for instance, Muslims expelled the Jews from Cordoba and confiscated their wealth. In 1066, Muslims massacred almost the entire Jewish population of Granada in a pogrom that destroyed the city.
Al-Andalus was a slave state that included eunuchs and the widespread sexual slavery of non-Muslim women. Dr. Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, has documented the vast extent of jihad slavery in al-Andalus, including the aptly named ‘hideous trade’ of eunuch slavery. Bostom quotes Evariste Levi-Provencal (1894-1956), who was an influential modern scholar of Muslim-occupied Spain:
After being part of the Islamic caliphate for around 800 years, Spain finally liberated itself from its Muslim occupiers by fiercely fought wars of resistance. The Reconquista (Ibero-Romance for ‘reconquest’) or the fall of al-Andalus is a term used to describe the military campaigns that Christian kingdoms waged to free their lands from the Islamic occupiers. The beginning of the Reconquista is traditionally dated to the Battle of Covadonga in the eighth century, during which an Asturian army achieved the first Christian victory over the occupying forces of the Arab Umayyad Caliphate. But the Reconquista only culminated much later, in the fifteenth century, with the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada to the Catholic kings.
The people of Spain suffered for centuries under Islamic tyranny, and only after they had made great sacrifices were they able to liberate their lands and become once more a sovereign nation. Today, Spain is subjected to another phase of Islamization—this time through mass, illegal Muslim immigration—an ideological policy of the EU executive, who, with the Spanish government, has never sought the approval of the Spanish population. Gatestone Institute has for years extensively reported on the threat of Islamization faced by Spain in articles such as ”Spain: Migration Crisis Spirals Out of Control,” ”The Quiet Islamic Conquest of Spain,” “Muslims Demand ‘Right of Return’ to Spain,” ”Spain: New Gateway to Europe for Mass-Migration,” and “Spain: Jihad Continues.”
Islamist terrorist groups such as the Islamic State (IS) and affiliated groups of Al-Qaeda often call on their supporters to reconquer al-Andalus. The media arm of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is called Al-Andalus. Terrorism experts have even cited “a Salafist drift in parts of Spain, particularly in the autonomous region of Catalonia.” Speaking to France24 in 2017, Pierre Conesa, a former senior French Defense Ministry official and author of several books on political Islam, noted that ”Barcelona is a city that has long sheltered a form of radicalization, which for a time embraced the Muslim Brotherhood, Tabligh [a movement advocating a rigorous and literal interpretation of Islam] and then the Salafists.”
Attacking Spain has symbolic weight for Islamic State sympathizers. “There’s a bunch of evidence in recent years, in the IS group and other radical Islamist propaganda, which castigated Spain by recalling that part of its territory was Muslim for several centuries,” explains Alexandre Vautravers of the University of Geneva’s Global Studies Institute. Meanwhile, birth rates in Spain are in serious decline. Researchers W. Bradford Wilcox and Tim Sprunt have written about “the collapse of the Spanish family” and ”declining fertility rates,” calling them Spain’s “depopulation bomb”:
The ideology that promotes mass immigration seems to be ethno-nihilist in that it sees no problem with a demographic replacement that could eventually lead to the fall of entire civilizations in Europe. It is, therefore, vital to preserve Spain’s Christian cultural identity, as well as its democracy, sovereignty, and other aspects of its culture and history that make Spain the unique nation that it is. Spain and the rest of Europe urgently need a rational immigration policy that puts Europe first, as well as a truthful historiography that is devoid of political correctness and that openly addresses the crimes of Muslim-occupied Spain and the tyrannical teachings of Islamic doctrine.
