Part One is here. Churchill biographer Con Coughlin also describes their character in unflattering terms: “The Pashtuns invariably used violence to resolve their differences, which led to feuds between families lasting for generations. The Pashtun language even contains a specific word to define revenge between cousins. In many respects these frontiersmen were warriors in the […]
Winston Churchill and Islam (Part One)
In late 2001, I was sitting in the private library of the late David Littman, husband of the distinguished historian Bat Ye’or, in their beautiful villa overlooking Lake Geneva (Switzerland), when David received a phone call from his friend the official biographer of Sir Winston, Sir Martin Gilbert. Gilbert cited a memorable passage from The […]
Some Quotes to Remember for Exelauno Day
Anabasis (Greek for “a march from the coast to the interior”) is an account of a late 5th century BC military campaign in Persia, in which the Greek Xenophon led a group of 10,000 mercenary soldiers hired by the Persian king Cyrus the Younger. They were continually “marching forth” (in Greek, “exelauno” means to […]
Colm Gillis: The West Owes “an Immense Debt to Islam” (Part 3)
Colm Gillis also mentions, in his excoriation of Boris Johnson, as “an achievement of the sultans,” the architectural feats of Mimar Sinan (“the great architect Sinan”). But those feats were not achievements of the sultans — they merely paid the bills. They belonged to Sinan himself, as his personal achievement. And Sinan, it might be […]
Robert Spencer in PJ Media: UK Media Claims Churchill Was ‘Fascinated’ With Islam, May Have Been a Muslim
Revising history to make today’s unpleasant reality palatable. My latest in PJ Media: The UK’s Express reports: “Winston Churchill was fascinated by the Islamic faith and some of his family believed he might have even converted to the religion after his time in India with the British Army, an uncovered letter reveals.” This is yet […]
UK’s Express claims Churchill had “fascination with Islam,” may have converted to Islam
Yesterday I noted the Western intelligentsia’s seemingly endless “capacity for self-flagellation and self-hatred.” Another manifestation of the same tendency is what we can call the Jefferson’s Qur’an Effect: claiming that public figures of the past who had any interest in Islam for any reason, even if they publicly expressed negative views of the religion, were […]
Winston Churchill: Anti-German Hate Group Leader?
Imagine if this were 1930, and the Southern Poverty Law Center existed, and it issued a lavishly illustrated, apparently meticulously documented report on critics of the Nazis, dubbing them “anti-German hate group leaders.” There were profiles of Winston Churchill, Edgar Mowrer, and other early critics of Hitler, noting when they had made false claims about […]
Independent: Churchill’s family begged him not to convert to Islam
Why is the Independent publicizing this letter now, even while burying within the story that Churchill never seriously considered converting to Islam? Probably to blunt the force of Churchill’s remarks about Islam, which have become a rallying point for the few remaining Britons who are seriously resisting Islamization. The remarks are quoted in truncated form […]