RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise:
Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain
by Darío Fernández-Morera Wilmington, DE: ISI Books 336 pp., $29.95

Over the past two decades a great chasm has opened up between the tenured American professoriate specializing in the humanities and social sciences, and the meaningful discussion of its subjects in the public arena. It is hard to find a recent work by an academic authority on social, historical, and cultural anthropology in general, or on the specific issues of religion, family, race, immigration, education, gender, and sexuality, that is not “informed” by the legacy of critical theory and its conceptual and methodological framework. The authors may divide themselves into different “schools” (constructivist, postmodern, poststructuralist), but they are all initiates of the same sect.

Almost a century after Julien Benda coined the phrase, the trahison des clercs has morphed into a new form. By rejecting the notions of objectivity, truth, and historical reality in favor of the approved forms of ideological “antihegemonistic discourse,” the treasonous clercs of our time have severed the link between what can or should be known and the knowledge itself. The result is a myriad of myths covering every area of human endeavor, past and present. Some have had far-reaching political consequences: The myth of “diversity” has engendered a massive state apparat dedicated to social engineering and control, while the chimera of “human rights” has produced an assault on the institution of marriage hardly imaginable a generation ago. What they all have in common is their visceral antipathy to Western civilization, and to the Christian concept of personhood (dignitas personae) and its related historical “constructs.”

Seen against this cultural and ideological backdrop, Darío Fernández-Morera’s Myth of the Andalusian Paradise is doubly subversive. It is a first-rate work of scholarship that demolishes the fabrication of the multiethnic, multiconfessional convivencia in Spain under Muslim rule. The book is also an exposé of the endemic problems of contemporary Western academe, as manifested in the dishonesty, corruption, and dogmatic intolerance of the Islamic-studies establishment both here and in Europe. The author ascribes this phenomenon to a mix of “stakeholder interests and incentives,” “motivated blindness,” “Occidentalism” and “Christianophobia,” and to the corrosive influence of the multimillion-dollar grants that many leading Islamic-studies departments receive from the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and others.

Fernández-Morera’s book presents a clear and present danger to the “stakeholders.” It undermines one of their cherished orthodoxies so comprehensively that it potentially threatens many careers and reputations. They will take note. An optimistic reviewer has predicted that “[i]t will soon find its place on the shelves of premier academic institutions,” but there is reason to fear the opposite. It is more likely to be demonized, as Sylvain Gouguenheim’s debunking of the myth of Islam’s key contribution to the late-medieval civilization of Europe was demonized in France in 2008; or else ignored, as Raphael Israeli’s prescient Islamic Challenge in Europe was in that same year and after.

The book’s seven chapters deal with the Islamic conquest and subsequent Christian reconquest of Spain; the jihadist destruction of the nascent Visigothic civilization; the daily realities of al-Andalus; the myth of Ummayad tolerance; and the condition of women, Jews, and Christians. Each chapter starts with two or three quotations by prominent academic authorities asserting some elements of the myth, which Fernández-Morera proceeds to discredit point by point. His narrative is supported by massive research: There are 95 small-font pages of Notes, citing hitherto unknown or neglected Muslim, Christian, and Jewish primary sources. Fernández-Morera also relies on dozens of scholarly monographs and articles, many of them published in Spanish and duly ignored—with breathtaking arrogance—by the promoters of the establishmentarian narrative who write in English.

Three days after ISIS’s mass-casualty assault on Paris, Barack Obama proclaimed that the U.S. policy he had authorized to defeat the terrorist organization was nonetheless working. “We have the right strategy,” he told reporters who had come with him to Turkey for the G-20 Summit, “and we’re gonna see it through.” The international press was incredulous. The president seemed to be standing behind his claim, made the day before the attacks, that ISIS was “contained.” How could Obama still say that the fight was succeeding? Reporters fired back with a series of questions. An AFP correspondent set the tone: “One hundred and twenty-nine people were killed in Paris on Friday night,” he said. “ISIL claimed responsibility for the massacre, sending the message that they could now target civilians all over the world. The equation has clearly changed. Isn’t it time for your strategy to change?”

It was the thought on everyone’s mind—and it seemed to offend the leader of the free world. He became impatient, and assured one journalist after another he was correct. By the time CNN’s Jim Acosta asked bluntly, “Why can’t we take out these bastards?” Obama was in high dudgeon.

“If folks want to pop off and have opinions about what they think they would do, present a specific plan,” he said. “If they think that somehow their advisers are better than the chairman of my joint chiefs of staff and the folks who are actually on the ground, I want to meet them. And we can have that debate.”

Eighteen days later, on December 2, U.S. citizen Syed Farook and his Pakistani wife, Tashfeen Malik, shot up a party at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California. They killed 14 people, wounded 21 others, and were discovered to have built an arsenal of pipe bombs in their apartment. As information on the couple trickled in that Wednesday afternoon, Obama was giving an interview to CBS News about national security. “ISIL will not pose an existential threat to us. They are a dangerous organization like al-Qaeda was, but we have hardened our defenses,” he said. “The American people should feel confident that, you know, we are going to be able to defend ourselves and make sure that, you know, we have a good holiday and go about our lives.” Two days later, authorities discovered that Malik had pledged fealty to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

It is no longer in dispute that the president has been overtaken by events. While he alternately scolds and reassures, ISIS fights on, gaining power and claiming lives.

But Obama has not been blindsided; he has chosen policies that have emboldened ISIS and has rejected other options at every turn. In fact, his words in Turkey were patently false. Obama doesn’t need an introduction to those who would have done things differently; he knows them well. They include two of his secretaries of defense, his former under secretary of defense, his former secretary of state, his former head of the CIA, his former Army chief of staff, the last commanding general of forces in Iraq, his former ambassador to Syria, his former deputy national-security adviser, and, yes, even his former joint chiefs chairman—among others.

To the many officials, civilian and military, who have opposed Obama on strategy pertaining to Iraq, Syria, and ISIS, his remonstrance in Turkey was surely surreal. Posturing aside, Obama has rejected or marginalized virtually all dissent on these issues. And as a result of his persistent obstinacy, he has chosen poorly again and again, creating a linked set of escalating crises. They began with the misguided U.S. departure from Iraq. They continued with the meltdown of Syria and Obama’s persistently botched responses to it. And they have reached their apogee (so far) with the creation of more than 4 million refugees—the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our age—and ISIS’s establishment of an Islamic caliphate of increasing global reach.

In a Senate hearing last week, the State Department’s third-ranking official issued a stern warning to the Kremlin concerning its planned sale of the S-300 air defense system to Iran. “We have made it very clear to the Russians,” declared Under Secretary for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon, “that we consider this to be a bad move, that we consider it to be destabilizing and not in keeping with what we’ve been trying to accomplish, not only through the JCPOA, but broadly in terms of our engagement with Iran.”

Vladimir Putin begs to differ. Yesterday, to the sound of crickets at Foggy Bottom, Tehran announced that Moscow had delivered the first part of the surface-to-air missile system. The Russian leader’s defiance should come as no surprise. After all, Putin is trying to accomplish very different things from what the State Department wants, not only through the nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but broadly in terms of his engagement with Iran.

The Russian and Iranian regimes typically describe the S-300 as a defensive weapon, and so it is. It can shoot down planes or cruise missiles up to 90 miles away and would complicate any American or Israeli effort to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. But the S-300 also constitutes an offensive system, and it harbors the potential to shift the military balance of power in the region, which is yet another reason Tehran wants it so badly — and Moscow, one of its most important allies, remains eager to sell it.

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For example, Iran could move the truck-mounted and highly mobile S-300 to support its Houthi proxies in Yemen, which could then shoot down Saudi fighter jets. Putin himself has referred to such a possibility, noting last year, during a call-in TV show in Russia, that the S-300 could serve as “a deterrent factor in connection with the situation in Yemen.” Tehran could also export the system to the Assad regime or the terrorist group Hezbollah, which could then use it to deter Israeli air strikes from across the Lebanese or Syrian border. Alternatively, if Iran positioned the S-300 on its southern border, it could detect American and allied military flights in nearby bases and disrupt civilian air traffic.

In effect, the S-300 enables Tehran to threaten the airspace of its neighbors. In this sense, Russia’s own use of the S-300 functions as a model. As Will Cathcart, a former media adviser to the president of Georgia, observed last April at the Daily Beast: “Putin has sent S-300 missile systems to Crimea and just about every breakaway Russia region on the map. This is not to protect those regions, of course. The point of the S-300 is to project power and achieve armed tactical control over the airspace of those territories.”