The Triumph of Revisionism over Objective Argument

Submitted by Reuben Horne (Australia), Jun 20, 2006 at 19:21

Dr Pipes,

The Arab use of revisionism is not a surprising political M.O. it reminds me of the manner in which Adolph Hitler used the ancient Thulian civilisation and false strands of myth created in the late 19th century to justify his own crusade against the Jews. In point of fact if the migration of Nazi technocrats to Egypt at the end of WW2 is related to this new strand of argument in any way then it is likely that the Palestineans are copying this tactic directly from the Nazis.

Revisionism is a peculiar form of philosophical derangement that characterises alot of totalitarian movements. In a no less insidious form in the west it is a weapon of the left to try and force our judeo-christian civilisation which they so despise into self-flagelatory decline. To them we are the bad guys in every conflict we enter. The media which they appear to have so thoroughly captured spouts their filth at every turn without examining whether these holier than thou liberals have any real solutions to our problems.

With Islam in general the derangement is so complete that it undermines the notion that any Muslim could fully intergrate into a western society. The alternative version of history touted in the Koran is so ingrained that even the most relaxed and non-religious members of the sect subscribe to it. On two seperate occasions I have come across injurious falsehoods held on to by some of the most reasonable Muslims I have met. One a coworker maintained that Islam is in fact the oldest religion in the world. Save for its unjust appropriation of all that has come before and its attempt to write over all other religions (as seen in the desecration of St Sophia's church and its conversion into a mosque in Constantinople as well as a similar exercise on the Temple Mount) this is utterly untrue. Muslims have only been an identifiable group for around 1400 years.

The second falsehood I encountered pertained to Christ himself (having also been appropriated by this very eclectic of religions). This time a fellow student asserted that Christ was never crucified (and was an Islamic prophet) a view made popular by the Koran and held out as religious and historical fact. The crucifiction is perhaps one of the only historically verifiable events in the new testament with at least 30 independent contemporaries verifying that there was a teacher called Jesus who was crucified at around this time. Alot of these contemporaries were not Christians and the Jewish historian Josephus was openly critical of the Christian sect.

If a religion this political can construct a foundation on thin air ignoring straight out historical fact then it is a small thing to go a mite further and lie about ancient history involving Canaanite kings in order to lay claim to a country that is not yours. Returning to Adolph Hitler I believe he was famous for saying in "Mein Kampf" if you want to lie, tell big lies not small ones. His reasoning was people tell small lies every day but are less inclined to tell big ones and so are less likely to believe you are lying if your lies are big. Yassir Arafat apparently learned this lesson well.

Cordially,

Reuben Horne.

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