R. Cole

on: "Islam Was Always Part of Europe", interview with Michael Borgolte by Ralph Bollmann

Smoothing things over - a counter debate! "But Muslims ... had a decisive influence over the transfer of knowledge from ancient Greece, Rome and the East." Could one say that these were all the places Muslims conquered and adopted the knowledge as their own? As today - they are selective in what they are allowed to study/ learn and ultimately Islamic restrictions - brought achievements via - the Greek and Egyptian translations - to a crushing halt. Through Muslim warfare Christians were barred from travelling to the East. But once they were able to - Europeans largely discarded these rather bad Arab translations of Greek text - and started on the path of their own renaissance through these. Because Muslims were so extreme - they viewed much of their own achievements as un-Islamic - for this reason many of the early thinkers and inventors in Islam left the religion - but their achievements that were discarded by the Islamic world - were picked up by the West.

"The return of Islam to Europe, this time through peaceful immigration, is bringing the continent back to this normal state." Where is the guy living? Muslims have entered several areas peacefully - and when they reach sufficient numbers they always seek to exact Islamic law - which calls for the subjugation of all who are non-Muslim [this can't be argued with ~ it's in the Koran]. Where people are not required to join Islam - many Muslims believe that they are required to live under Islamic law. Hence the problem today - the disregarding of EU laws. In the Middle Ages: - "My impression is even that Christian heretics were combated more strongly than Muslims and Jews."

This is the thing - Muslim continue this practice of dealing harshly with their apostates - until today - and many expect EU laws to one day enforce this - medieval practice. As for anti-Semitism or anti-Judaism - it is very likely that it started when the Jews of the Middle East rejected Prophet Muhammad's new version of the old Kaaba religion - and this led to the death of 700 Meccan Jews - and the seriously cutting name calling that appears in the Koran. But also don't forget in the Balkans - Muslims took slaves - in fact today the offensive name for slave or non-Muslim still stands in places like Bulgaria. For many generations the southern coast of Europe was attacked by Muslims carrying out slaves - and when it was sufficiently fortified the Muslims turned to lower Africa for slaves. The Arabs of Arabia still call all Africans both N. & S. 'Arab' slaves. India though suffered the worst. I think that it is important - not to learn a glossy history but the real history - such as with the WWII and other Western atrocities - we must also learn the real history of Islam.