http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/...erica.html
EXCERPT: [...] Richard Francaviglia, an adjunct professor of religious studies at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., argues that claims about pre-Columbian Muslims in the Americas, which have become increasingly popular since 9/11, provide a sense of ethnic pride for some contemporary Muslims. In an article in the current issue of the journal Terrae Incognitae, he writes, “The once seemingly esoteric subject of pre-Columbian Muslim exploration of the New World is now front and center in the so-called ‘Culture Wars’ of the early 21st century.” [...] Francaviglia does not dispute that Muslims could have beaten Columbus to the New World. They certainly possessed the technological expertise to have done so; but, so far, there is no reliable evidence that they did. There are, however, very good reasons for thinking that they didn't....
(Nov 5, 2014 02:08 AM)C C Wrote: [ -> ]Francaviglia does not dispute that Muslims could have beaten Columbus to the New World. They certainly possessed the technological expertise to have done so; but, so far, there is no reliable evidence that they did.
Exactly.
It's well known that Columbus wasn't the first European to make it to the Americas. The Vikings were here before him and even founded a short-lived settlement in Newfoundland. We know that not only because there are medieval written records of it, archaeologists have actually found and explored the site.
While one can speculate that Muslims might have made it here too, tangible evidence seems to be lacking. I've seen speculations that the Chinese made it across the Pacific too. There was even a fleet that an emperor once sent off in search of a mythical land of the rising sun in the east, that never returned...
The importance of Columbus isn't so much that he was first, but rather that his voyages stimulated a horde of others to make similar voyages and to create forts, settlements and colonies in the new continent in very short order. In other words, Columbus' voyages had world-historical importance that's impossible to forget.
Quote:Richard Francaviglia, an adjunct professor of religious studies at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., argues that claims about pre-Columbian Muslims in the Americas, which have become increasingly popular since 9/11, provide a sense of ethnic pride for some contemporary Muslims.
Yes, I'm sure of that.
Quote:In an article in the current issue of the journal Terrae Incognitae, he writes, “The once seemingly esoteric subject of pre-Columbian Muslim exploration of the New World is now front and center in the so-called ‘Culture Wars’ of the early 21st century.”
In the 21'st century, all of the humanities have been politicized.
It is kind of interesting how Muslims have been adopted as heroes by a segment of the contemporary academic left. These professors are former Marxists, cast adrift by the collapse of the Soviet block and by China's move towards market economics. It looked like the only culture in the world that seemed to be actively resisting was Islam, so many academic leftists have flocked to Islam's banner. They haven't converted to Islam exactly, but they do seem to idealize Islam as the opponent of an evil globalized world capitalist system.
It's doubly ironic that Islam or Islamism is explicitly and utterly not anti-Capitalist. It is anti-kaffir-Capitalist, and pro-Muslim capitalist. It is surely against non-Muslims holding money, property or land; non-Muslim minorities in some Islamic nations - Pakistan is particularly vicious in this regard - are consigned to the lower classes.
There is nothing at all that Islamism has against capitalism. It just prefers different people in charge. And that's why this communist isn't taken in by such illusions of common ground.