Reassessing the Dark Ages

In the latest edition of the New English Review Emmet Scott summarizes the argument put forth in his new book, Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited. In it he surveys centuries of scholarship on the subject of the collapse of Classical civilization and the beginnings of Europe's "Dark Ages". He notes that the barbarian kingdoms that precipitated the fall of Rome adopted and spread, rather than destroying classical culture. He also notes that archaeology has shown that the collapse of that culture, taking place in the seventh rather than the fifth century, was not unique. A similar contemporaneous pattern of disruption can be seen in the great Christian centers of Anatolia, the Levant, and North Africa. He concludes that it was the expansion of Islam, rather than the barbarian invasions that signaled the death knell of classical civilization. Moreover, far from being a beacon of enlightenment in dark age Europe, Islam bequeathed to it the far more destructive concepts of holy war and absolute spiritual authority. This is a remarkable interpretation that stands in contrast to the Islamophilia and self-loathing that has characterized Western scholarship on the subject in recent years.

Read Scott's article here.

Buy the book here.

Killing Children

This lovely young lady is dead -- her father had her killed. Her sister lives in constant fear for her own life. Such is life and death under Sharia.

From the Daily Mail:

She has no family to turn to, few friends, and has to lie to new acquaintances about who she is and where she is from. She is constantly looking over her shoulder.

"My life will always be at risk," says 22-year-old Bekhal. "There are people in my community who want to see me dead, and they will not rest until I am. I will never be safe. I wear the veil so no one can recognise me."

It is a desperately lonely and isolated existence, but at least she is alive - unlike her younger sister Banaz.

Both young women brought "shame" on their strict Muslim Iraqi Kurdish family by disobeying their father Mahmod.

Bekhal, 22, ran away aged 16 rather than agree to an arranged marriage to a cousin in Iraq.

She survived an attempted killing by her brother, but her sister Banaz, 20, paid the ultimate price for leaving her own arranged marriage and then falling in love with an "unsuitable man" of her own choice.

On the orders of her 52-year-old father and uncle, Ari Mahmod, 50, she was strangled with a bootlace by Kurdish assassins, her body stuffed in a suitcase and buried six feet down in the garden of a house belonging to an associate in Birmingham.

Two of the murderers, who fled back to Iraq after this horrific so-called "honour killing", have since boasted of raping Banaz before she died in January 2006.

Remember, the Kurds are supposed to be the good guys.