MARCO POLO ETAIT-IL ISLAMOPHOBE ?

Marco Polo Knew Islam

Posted on May 2, 2010
by creepingsharia

An excerpt from Raymond Ibrahim’s

Was Marco Polo an ‘Islamophobe’?: A Study in Continuity:

If today it is “Islamophobic,” that is, irrational, to claim that Islam advocates war against and subjugation for infidels, permitting the latter to be abused, plundered, and enslaved in the process — what does one make of the fact that, some 700 years ago, the same exact claims were made by our Venetian traveler?

Indeed, what does one make of the fact that, centuries before and after Polo,

a diverse host of writers — including John of Damascus (d.749) Theophanes the chronicler (d.818), Francis of Assisi (d.1226), Joinville the crusader (d.13^th century), and Manuel the Byzantine emperor (d.1425) — all made the same “Islamophobic” observations about Islam?

(The latter’s writings, when merely quoted by the pope, caused an uproar in the Muslim world.) This, of course, is to say nothing of the countless Muslim ulema who regularly affirm that Islam teaches war, subjugation, slavery, and plunder vis-a-vis the infidel, tracing it back to the words of the Koran and Muhammad.

In short, the word “Islamophobia” is a ruse — also permitted in Islam under the doctrine of taqiyya — meant to paralyze all discussion concerning Muslim doctrine; and it has been successful: the United Nations has already presided over a conference titled “Confronting Islamophobia” and a Council of Europe summit condemned “Islamophobia.” Moreover, the influential Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) regularly lambasts the specter of Islamophobia, calling it the “worst form of terrorism,” and publishing two reports on the phenomenon.

Yet, in a classic twist of irony, the opening assertion of the OIC’s first report — “Islamophobia has existed since the time of inception of Islam” — contradicts its entire argument, for it begs the following question: How can something, in this case “unfounded fear of and hostility towards Islam” — to use CAIR’s definition of Islamophobia — be a constant aspect of Islam’s fourteen-hundred year history, and yet still be regarded as “unfounded”?

Raymond Ibrahim is associate director of the Middle East Forum, author of The Al Qaeda Reader, and guest lecturer at the National Defense Intelligence College.

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