Myth #4: Peaceful Arabs vs. Violent Nazi-Like Zionists?

This post is part IV of the Response to “Hate Mail” from an Israel-Hating Conspiracy Theorist series dealing with many of the biased and incorrect claims made against Israel. In this post, I address the suggestion that Arabs are somehow inherently peaceful without interference from evil third-party bogeyman (like the CIA or Mossad) and that it is the Zionists who are the violent ones, as well as the tendency to excuse or blame any violence on the part of Arabs on the “other.”

For this one, here’s what this particular Israel-hating conspiracy theorist claimed: “if you take a look at Arab history dated from the 8th century to the 14th century you will get an idea of how peaceful and productive Arabs can be without the interference of the Mossad and the CIA.”

****************************************

First, you sound, like many Israel-haters, to not only be incredibly ignorant when it comes to history, in particular Arab history, but also like a dangerous conspiracy theorist.

The CIA came into existence in 1947. The Mossad in 1949. Neither have anything to do with the violence, intolerance and tyranny that has been rampant in the Arab world for centuries before the United States of America was even an idea. Neither of them has anything, for example, to do with the Arab slave trade of indigenous Africans from the start of the 7^th Century until the start of the 20^th Century (between 650 C.E. and 1900 C.E.), which enslaved at least 20,000,000 indigenous Africans.

In fact, while most historians estimate that over 20 million enslaved indigenous Africans were delivered through the trans-Sahara slave trade route to the Arab world; in his 2001 book, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa, Dr. Alembillah Azumah estimates that over 80 million indigenous Africans died while being transported through the trans-Sahara slave route.

Which leads us to the portion of your claims that is not necessarily based on paranoid conspiracy theories, but is still just as historically inaccurate as the rest of your claims (the idea that Arab history between the 8^th and 14^th Century demonstrates how peaceful Arabs can be).

Notably, it is a little convenient that you start at the 8^th Century, which is after most of the Arab conquests of most of the Middle East and North Africa, which took place in the 7^th Century. But even then, your claim is patently belied by history.

With respect to its heinous treatment of indigenous Africans alone, Arab violence during the time period you are claiming as “peaceful” was remarkably and heinously violent.

Unlike the vile European and American slave trade, Arab slavery of indigenous Africans often dealt in the sale of castrated male slaves. African males as young as 8 years old would have their genitals completely cut off.

While approximately 70% of the victims of this castration procedure bled to death, to the Arab slave traders this was an acceptable risk because of the high price eunuchs fetched in the Arab controlled lands. It is estimated that during the 10^th Century, the Caliph of Baghdad had as many as 7000 African eunuchs working in his palace. Does that sound peaceful to you?

Even setting aside the horror of the Arab slave trade, the notion of a peaceful Arab world between the 8^th and 14^th Century is sadly, laughable.

As a preliminary matter, the 8^th Century is when the tide of the Arab conquest famously came to an end in the Siege of Constantinople with the Byzantines and the Battle of Tours with the Franks. Notably, neither of those losses could have had anything to do with either the Mossad or the CIA, though I imagine some Arab conspiracy theorists might be inclined to blame it on the Jews …).

Of course, these tremendous losses, which were the first significant losses suffered by the Arab colonialists since they first set out from Arabia in 622 A.D. to conquer, Arabicize and Islamize the world, did not make the Arabs after the 8^th Century any more peaceful. It was due to the vast amount of land they were ruling, first from Damascus and then from Baghdad, that made it difficult for them to conquer more land that extended beyond North Africa to the West and India to the East. But nevertheless violence (and not just too already conquered dhimmis or slaves) was still prevalent.

In the 9^th Century (878 to be precise), all of Sicily was conquered. In 922, Sufists were beginning to be executed in Baghdad for heresy (sadly, this sounds like something that could happen today in many Arab capitals). In 1076, the Almoravids of Morocco defeated the kingdom of Ghana and forced it to convert to Islam.

That same year, the Seliuqs invaded the areas now known as Israel and Syria to gain control of them from the Fatimids, which they succeeded in doing in 1079. Skipping over a lot of violence in North Africa, in 1250, the Mamluks of Egypt (Turkish military slaves) overthrew the sultan, terminating the Ayyubid dynasty and starting the Mamluk dynasty.

This is all without describing all of the incredible violence between the Arabs and the Crusaders on the one hand and the Arabs and the Mongols on the other, which resulted in the deaths of millions of people and would take pages to write about (during a time period you for some reason think was incredibly peaceful “without interference of the Mossad and CIA”). And in 1485 the Ottomans and the Mamluk went to war with each other for over 6 years. Doesn’t that sound peaceful?

Perhaps, if you were really interested in a peaceful Arab world, you would focus less on CIA and Mossad bogeyman, and more on getting real democracy, tolerance and respect for individual liberty in the Arab controlled lands. Less extremism, more tolerance, more freedom and more individual liberty would have a far greater impact on peace in the Middle East and North Africa than absurd and hateful conspiracy theories.