At the suggestion of Takuan Seiyo, our French correspondent l’échappée belle translated the following letter from Prof. André Savelli to the President of Algeria. Mr. Seiyo assisted with the translation, and includes an explanatory preface.
This letter was issued in 2007 by the French (Morocco born) Algerian expatriate professor of medicine, André Savelli. It was probably in reply to a speech that Algeria’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, had given in Paris on April 17, 2006. As reported in The Scotsman a day later, Bouteflika stated that French colonization had wrought “the genocide of our identity, of our history, of our language, of our traditions.” Even stronger accusations of literal genocide and “barbarity” by the French in Algeria had been made profusely since the 1960s, including in this 2001 interview with Algeria’s first president Ahmed Ben Bela.
The lefto-white, self-flagellating establishment, riding shotgun for biased Algerian polemicists, sees the history of the French occupation of Algeria in the same way, e.g. here. It is the only side to which American students are exposed, if at all, and probably the same is true in France as well.
There is a cultural war going on, in France and elsewhere in the West. While it’s certain that various accusations against French colonial rule can be validly supported, there is a very vast other side — and that side is taboo. We thought it would be fair to peek at that side.
The topic is highly sensitive in France, for historical reasons for which many Frenchmen died in the mid-20th century Algerian War and before, but also because of the Euromed-flogging French PC regime and its appeasement of France’s large and volatile Maghrebian minority.
Professor Savelli’s letter made a big splash and was the subject of much discussion in the French media after its release. It was a quick letter, and it does not dwell nearly fully on where most of the barbarity was perpetrated in that conflict. That can be learned from interviews with the surviving French settlers and soldiers of the Algerian war. We reproduce the letter below, translated from the French text that was posted in the blog of the prestigious French newspaper Le Monde in December 2007.
Letter of André Savelli to Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President of the Republic of Algeria
Mr. President,
In throwing the insult of “genocide of Algerian identity” by France in our face, you knew well that this “identity” never existed before 1830. Mr. Ferrat Abbas and the first nationalists acknowledged having sought it in vain. You demand now repentance for barbarity, but you invert the roles! It was the Maghreb or Ifriqiya, from Libya to Morocco that was barbarous. These people, of Phoenician (Punic), Berber (Numidian) and Roman origins were, before the VIIIth century, majority Christian (with 500 bishoprics, including that of St. Augustine, Hippo/Annaba). These farming regions were prosperous.
Should we forget that the Arabs, recently Islamized nomads coming from the Middle East, invaded the Maghreb and forcibly converted these peoples “béçif” (by the sword)? “Fight your enemies in the war for religion. Kill your enemies anywhere you will find them” (Koran, sura II, 186-7). The religious motivation was then broadened by the opportunity to take spoils, silver, precious stones, treasure, cattle…including human cattle, bringing back hundreds of thousands of herded Berber slaves; all of this legitimized by the Koran as rewards to the fighters of the holy war (XLVIII, 19, 20). And after several centuries of Arab-Islamic domination, there was nothing left of the Punic-Berber-Roman era, so rich, but ruins (Abder-Rahman ibn Khaldoun el Hadrami, History of the Berbers, T I, p.36-37,40,45-46. 1382)
Should we also forget that the Ottoman Turks invaded the Maghreb over three centuries, keeping the Arab and Berber tribes in semi-slavery, despite sharing the same religion, letting them fight amongst themselves and taking their cut, without constructing anything in exchange?
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Should we forget that these Turks developed high-sea piracy using their slaves? The Barbary pirates boarded all the merchant vessels in the Mediterranean, allowing, besides the taking of booty, the traffic of Christian slaves… men, women and children. In the Algiers of 16th century corsairs, there were more than 30,000 slaves in chains. Hence the attempts to destroy these bases since the time of Charles Quint, followed by English, Dutch and even American bombardments … The Beys of Algiers and other cities sustained themselves by trickery and force. The Bey of Constantine, destitute at our arrival, swore to have chopped off 12,000 heads during his reign. Should it be forgotten that slavery existed in Africa for ages and still exists? Well-off Moslem families all had African slaves. The first slave traders, Mr. President, were themselves blacks who sold their brothers to the Moslems of the Middle-East, in the Indies and in Africa (especially North Africa), centuries before the appearance of the Trade Triangle with the Americas and the Antilles, which does not at all excuse the latter, even if domestic slaves were often well treated.
Should we forget that in 1830, the French came to Algiers to destroy the barbaric Ottoman dens who ransacked the Mediterranean Sea, and to liberate the slaves and, finally, to lift the Turkish yoke from the oppressed Arab and Berber tribes? Should we forget that in 1830, there were around 5,000 Turks, 100,000 mixed Turko-Arabs, 350,000 Arabs and 400,000 Berbers in this region of Maghreb where an organized country never existed since the time of the Romans? Every tribe made its own laws and fought the other tribes; this was encouraged by the Ottomans in order to divide and conquer.
Should we forget that in 1830, the populace was under- developed, subjected to epidemics and to malaria? The most evolved talebs, who served as doctors (hakems), followed the recipes of the great man of science “Bou Krat” (Hippocrates), which were over 2,000 years old at the time. Medicine has seriously evolved since!
Should we forget that, contrary to genocide, such as the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks, the massacre of the Indians by the Americans, the massacre of the Aborigines by the English and the massacre of the Romano-Berbers by the Arabs between 700 and 1500, France treated, thanks to French doctors (servicemen at first, then civilians) the entire Maghreb population, bringing it from less than a million in 1830 in Algeria, to ten million in 1962.
Should we forget that France respected the Arab language, imposing it even to the detriment of Berber, of tamashek and other dialects, and respected religion (unlike the Arabs, who forced Christian Berbers to Islamize or be killed, from which the name “Kabyle” (“I accept”) originates?)
Should we forget that in 1962, despite serious errors and injustices, France left the Algerian population in a state of massive demographic growth? Although often poor, (lacking the time to pass from the medieval age into the 20th century), they were in good health, with agriculture that again became rich thanks to the French-planted test gardens, factories, dams, mines, oil, gas, harbors, airports, road and rail networks, schools, a Pasteur Institute, hospitals and a university, and a postal system. There was nothing before 1830. The installation of long-term facilities and the disarming of the tribes was key for the birth of the State of Algeria.
Should we forget that the French settlers drained, inter alia, the malarial marshes of Mitidja, at the cost of many lives, to develop the most fecund plain of Algeria, a storehouse of fruits and vegetables, transformed, since their departure, into industrial wasteland?
Should we forget that France fostered the progressive evolution of social institutions from a tribal system into a Nation State, the evolution of men from a condition of subjection to that of nascent citizenship, (although, I admit, not rapidly enough)? Colonialism, or rather colonization, launched the Maghreb, via Algeria, into the epoch of globalization.
Should we forget that in 1962, a million Europeans were forced to leave Algeria, abandoning their property so as not to be slaughtered or, at best, to become second-class citizens, dhimmis, despised and victimized, like in so many Islamized countries? The same is true of some hundred thousands of Israelites, whose forefathers had established themselves there 1000 years before the first Arab Muslim settlers. Was this a war of independence or of religion? Should we forget that, during our departure in 1962, besides the savage slaughter of at least 75,000 Harkis, a true crime against humanity, and thousands of Europeans killed or missing, (before and after the excesses of the OAS), there were more than 200,000 Algerians killed, those who refused a single party, many more than during the war of Algeria. It is this war of independence, with its atrocities and terror on both sides that founded Algerian identity. Men are made that way!
Mr. President, you know that France educates good doctors, as well as good teachers. You chose, with your prime minister, to be treated by my associates at the Val de Grâce Hospital. One of them, Lucien Baudens, created the first School of Medicine of Algiers in 1832, insisting on the enrollment of indigenous students. These historical reminders will encourage you, perhaps, Mr. President, to acknowledge that France left you the richest country that she knew how to build, thanks to the work of all populations, from the poorest to wealthiest, the latter having often experienced precarious beginnings. France also created your country’s name which replaced that of Barbary. Nobody will ask you to apologize for having let it all go downhill, but how do you explain why so many of your subjects, every day, leave Algeria for France? In fact, is not the past, demonized and deliberately misrepresented, used by one faction to control the Algerian territory? I offer my respects to the President of the Algerian Republic, because I honor this office. A French citizen,
André Savelli,
Professeur, Val de Grâce Hospital
Professor André Savelli was born in 1927 in Rabat (Morocco) to parents originating from Blida and Oued El Aleug. The eldest of seven boys, he attended high school in Rabat. He entered the Medical University of Algiers in 1945, then the School of Public Health in Lyon. He passed his thesis in Algiers under the direction of Professor Benhamou and spent three years as a military doctor in In Salah before joining the 1st Franco-Algerian Infantry Division in Blida. In 1961, Prof. Savelli became head of the psychiatric service of the Maillot Hospital and then was named Full Professor at the Val de Grâce Military Teaching Hospital — perhaps the most prestigious hospital in France, in which the addressee of his letter, President Bouteflika, has been treated. He then taught psychopathology at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Montpellier and Criminal Psychiatry at its Law Faculty. He is the author of some one hundred publications in psychopathology. Prof. Savelli is a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, Officer of the National Order of Merit and member of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities of the University of Montpellier.
38 comments:
I encounter this same mindset in Afrikaners. The combination of Christian charity and colonial people farming (all in the best tradition of the enlightenment project to create a new improved humanity) inspires a hatred that not even a rapist paedophile can acquire. The same mentality is behind Euromed and the European Union. It creates a hysterical victim mentality when the subjugated demand their pride and dignity and freedom. The coloniser says: "How could you possibly hate us and want to kill us? We have done so much to help you. You must be a congenitally defective savage!". Colonialism leaves the coloniser morally blind and unable to encounter the otherness of his subjects. The coloniser cannot examine his character and develop deeper knowledge of himself, the inner punishment of conscience eludes the coloniser. Finally the colonisers are unable to make a better world for anybody, not even themselves, as they repeat the same process even in their home country.
The case against the French and the West in general, might be more plausable without the example of the Japanese,and lately the Chinese and Koreans who, faced with Western industrial civilization were determined to modernize and eventually beat us at our own game.Instead of portraying themselves as victims Moslems should realize that their religion and institutions are the real cause of failed Islamic societies,not the West.
Pres. Bouteflika suffers from the usual Third World 'selective amnesia' where large sections of inconvenient history disappear.Perhaps he would have preferred that the French, on leaving North Africa,had erased all traces of modern institutions and reduced the region to the state in which they found it--the usual Islamic chaos.
Yet more testimony regarding the "scars" of European colonialism. As the curtain of Moral and Cultural Relativism is drawn back from Islam's history, Northern European colonial endeavors and their legacy continue to gain luster even as the near-constant Muslim predations which preceded and followed that era are exposed for the truly genocidal campaigns they have always been.
It comes as little surprise that these Islamized satellites have adopted the usual Muslim cries of victimhood even as they themselves are victimized by Islam. Cognitive dissonance on a grand scale is one of Islam's supreme hallmarks. Bouteflika's inability to give French colonial contributions their due is symptomatic of the purposeful dismissal which so much of European and American global contributions routinely receive in this era of inverted priorities.
There was a recent case of what HH, mace and Zenster refer to: the fabled system of profitable hothouses that the Israeli settlers left intact in Gaza upon being forced out by their own (Sharon) government for the sake of "peace." Within days of taking possession, the Palestinians trashed the hothouses to shards of glass and twisted metal. Much easier to live off whitey's $billions in subsidies and plot eternal revenge for one's own gross inadequacies.
One interesting takeaway from this letter is that French intervention in Algeria in historical terms was relatively brief, benign, and guilt-ridden, while Arab and Ottoman involvement was lengthy, deep, painful, enslaving, and unrepentant.
There’s no question whatsoever that the French had developed a well run society (with the help of Algerian labour?) in Algeria by the time they eventually withdrew from the country in 1962. Yes they established hospitals, schools, built roads, improved infrastructure and agriculture in the country which a large percentage of the natives benefitted greatly from. But is that sufficient reason to justify the French annexation of Algeria? The French didn’t immigrate to Algeria to become Algerians; rather they wanted to turn Algeria into a French colony and introduce the French way of life there. The French weren’t willing to assimilate into the Algerian society and respect the local customs and traditions. They were and they would probably always be, if they had stayed on ‘outsiders’. And I doubt very much that the French always had the best interest of the natives and always treated them with the upmost respect.
Homophobic Horse mentioned the EU in his response to the main article, and I consider that to be a great analogy. If we are to follow the logic of the main article, isn’t then the EU a good and noble organization if it has improved the lives of the populations of the new member states? Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland has seen a tremendous growth in their countries upon joining the EU, but on the other hand they have also seen a tremendous inflow of third world immigrants who doesn’t necessarily assimilate into their societies and take on a new adopted identity.
For arguments sake let’s say that Saudi Arabia decided to colonize Bosnia and move large numbers of its people to this country. Would this be acceptable provided that the Saudi’s invested billions of dollars on infrastructure projects and made sure that the living standards of the local Bosnian population improved drastically? The Saudi’s have massive oil reserves so there’s no question that they could afford to carry out such an enterprise. Would this then be a good thing, or would there be reasons to criticize this move simply because the Saudi’s in the process of improving the overall infrastructure and quality of living standards brutally suppressed any opposition against their presence in the country by the local Bosnians and killed and tortured scores of the natives in the process?
Could Muslim immigration to poorer European countries ever be accepted provided that the Muslims improved the quality of life in ways of improving living and infrastructure standards? Or would it be totally unacceptable as this would be interpreted as Muslim colonization and an attempt to gain a small step into Europe that could eventually lead an expansion of their colonies? Personally I believe that a people’s identity can’t be replaced by all the money in the world. If someone were to try and eradicate all the traces of my identity and replace it with a foreign one, I for one would resist and not give up without a fight.
@ kritisk borger
We are not trying to justify colonialism here. We are just trying to redress the truthful balance of facts.
You may have fallen victim to the syndrome that has laid waste to practically the entire Western intelligentsia. I call it the Presentism – Relativism syndrome. On one hand, we judge 1230, 1830 or 1950 Whites according to our present more evolved understanding. On the other hand, we never judge the nonwhites of 1230, 1830, 1950 or even 2010 according to the same evolved understanding.
But it gets worse. Play a little virtual scenario and imagine that the Berbers, the desert tribes of Araby, the Pashtuns, the Zulu, the Fulani were strong enough in the early 1800s to invade Europe: what would the tale of colonialism look like then? Moreover, had they been so strong, they would have certainly invaded.
It’s worse yet. Think now about the earlier times when “the other” did have the strength to invade Europe and colonialize some parts of it. How would you compare the conduct and contributions of the Mongol, Hun, Moor, Tatar, Turk invaders/colonialists of Europe versus the conduct and contributions of the European invaders of Africa and Asia?
It’s worse even than that. There is no morally good reason for the French annexation of Algeria and occupation of Maghreb. But what had been the morally good reason for the annexation, pillage, mass murder and enslaving oppression of that former citadel of Roman Christianity by Muslim hordes? It’s so easy to forget that the entire Mediterranean basin was once an important part of Christian Europe...
Takuan Seiyo: Within days of taking possession, the Palestinians trashed the hothouses ... Much easier to live off whitey's $billions in subsidies and plot eternal revenge for one's own gross inadequacies.
Even further along on the tragi-comic scale of Islam in general and the Palestinians in particular is how Gazan terrorists diverted steel piping intended for effluent disposal and repurposed them as their legendarily inaccurate Qassam rockets.
Deprived of this vital infrastructure component, the Palestinians did what they do best and adamantly ignored the growing problem by using stopgap measures of the usually minimal efficacy.
The end result? A "Sewage Tsunami" that swept through the Sa'ad El-Ansari area, killing at least five people including an elderly woman and two small boys. Some 25 houses were submerged in the raw sewage that originated from an open-air cesspit designed to accommodate 50,000 people and NOT the 190,000 that eventually overloaded it.
The irony of Palestinians complaining about hunger as they smash greenhouses that annually provided MILLIONS OF DOLLARS worth of produce even as they then DROWN IN THEIR OWN EXCREMENT can only be the most abject form of poetic justice imaginable. Especially so for all of us who must continually bear witness to the perfidy of those who reside in Gaza.
As with so many of the running sores that Islam proudly flaunts in the West's face, they are self-inflicted and a direct result of Muslim backwardness that has been brought about by centuries of voluntary enslavement.
kritisk_borger: But is that sufficient reason to justify the French annexation of Algeria?
While subsequent history has cast colonialism in an entirely different light, it is still difficult to ignore the relatively benign aspect of France's role in Algeria.
If we are to follow the logic of the main article, isn’t then the EU a good and noble organization if it has improved the lives of the populations of the new member states?
Not if one of its principal objectives remains the obliteration of White Judeo-Christian European culture. To date, all evidence shows that this goal is paramount among the EU's aims.
For arguments sake let’s say that Saudi Arabia decided to colonize Bosnia and move large numbers of its people to this country. Would this be acceptable provided that the Saudi’s invested billions of dollars on infrastructure projects and made sure that the living standards of the local Bosnian population improved drastically?
Most likely not as the historical record is replete with many examples of Islam eradicating the entire heritage of preceding cultures. Iran's shi'a thugs are busy obliterating the tomb of King Cyrus:
The Iranian ayatollahs are planning on destroying the tomb [of King Cyrus] as part of a general campaign to sever the Persian people from their non-Islamic heritage ... the measures being taken … include the destruction of archaeological sites significant to this heritage.
“The government is in the final stages of constructing a dam in southern Iran that will submerge the archaeological sites of Pasargad and Persopolis ... “The site, which is considered exceptional in terms of its archaeological wealth and historical importance, houses the tomb of the Persian King Cyrus.”
The same thing is happing in Jerusalem as the Waqf destroy priceless ancient Jewish artifacts that they excavate from under the al Aqsa mosque. Obsessed with erasing all traces of prior Jewish occupation, these archaeological vandals are, in fact, destabilizing the very foundations of the Dome of the Rock. If it collapses, guess who will be blamed.
Would this then be a good thing, or would there be reasons to criticize this move simply because the Saudi’s in the process of improving the overall infrastructure and quality of living standards brutally suppressed any opposition against their presence in the country by the local Bosnians and killed and tortured scores of the natives in the process?
Asked and answered by your own self and addressed by my comments above. The total lack of benign intent on Islam’s part disqualifies it from even minor attempts at colonization. There is zero foreseeable change in this as Muslims will not tolerate even the smallest changes to the Qu'ran and its supremacist doctrine.
Could Muslim immigration to poorer European countries ever be accepted provided that the Muslims improved the quality of life in ways of improving living and infrastructure standards?
Again, emphatically not with Muslims because their own belief structure is the antithesis of such a notion.
Or would it be totally unacceptable as this would be interpreted as Muslim colonization and an attempt to gain a small step into Europe that could eventually lead an expansion of their colonies?
Emphatically, "Yes".
Islam remains one of the most malicious and retrograde forces in all of earth's history. There is absolutely no indication that this will change anytime soon, or even at all, no matter how far distant in the future.
Takuan Seiyo said...
“We are not trying to justify colonialism here. We are just trying to redress the truthful balance of facts.”
Well the way I see it Muslim colonization of the west is being condemned, and rightly so, but the previous colonization of Africa by various European states are being toned down and sugarcoated. What if the situation was the other way around like the scenario was with Spain and the Moors? Was this colonization totally unacceptable or can we find mitigating circumstances as in the case with the French colonization of Algeria?
“Play a little virtual scenario and imagine that the Berbers, the desert tribes of Araby, the Pashtuns, the Zulu, the Fulani were strong enough in the early 1800s to invade Europe: what would the tale of colonialism look like then? Moreover, had they been so strong, they would have certainly invaded.”
Would it be morally right to arrest, and in some cases perhaps put to death the innocent young children of murderers and psychopathic criminals, to ensure that these children would not end up as their parents, or would it be morally correct to address those issues only after these children have grown up and committed similar crimes?
And no I’m not condoning previous or present sins of Muslim aggressors, and I don’t think of these as somewhat more justifiable than the sins of former European aggressors. But I think it is wrong to place different set of standards on different sets of people. If colonization is morally wrong, then it’s always wrong and it doesn’t matter whether it’s organized by Peter, Jean Claude or Ali.
Zenster said..
“Would this then be a good thing, or would there be reasons to criticize this move simply because the Saudi’s in the process of improving the overall infrastructure and quality of living standards brutally suppressed any opposition against their presence in the country by the local Bosnians and killed and tortured scores of the natives in the process?
Asked and answered by your own self and addressed by my comments above. The total lack of benign intent on Islam’s part disqualifies it from even minor attempts at colonization. There is zero foreseeable change in this as Muslims will not tolerate even the smallest changes to the Qu'ran and its supremacist doctrine. “
But the French were also guilty of torture and other human rights violations during their military campaign in Algeria from 1954 to 1962, in which they unsuccessfully attempted to quash the Algerian independence struggle. And I’m sure that the French were guilty of equally horrendous crimes from the very first day that they set foot on Algerian soil in the early 19th century.
I’ve also heard stories about how the ruling French upper classes in Algeria treated the natives as second-class citizens. I believe in those types of circumstances that it’s the moral right of any individual to resist the occupying forces and take up arms. Wouldn’t you do the same if a foreign power managed to invade the US?
@kritisk_borger
“If colonization is morally wrong, then it’s always wrong.” Agreed -- but that wasn’t my point. The point is that it’s not very useful to condemn and feel shame for people of 1830 according to the standards of 2010. What matters is that ACCORDING TO THE STANDARDS OF 1830, these French, English and German colonialists (Belgian not so) were well within the norms of humane and benevolent behavior -- certainly more so than the indigenous people of the colonised territories. I am not interested to know that Shakespeare was an antisemite. What matters is whether and how he was so within the zeitgeist of the late 16th century.
All this is certainly even less useful in view of Western Civilization’s collective and entirely unilateral Mea Culpa and voluntary suicide as atonement for sins of the past, when ALL the civilizations that stand to inherit the Earth from guilt-stricken whitey feel no such need for reciprocal moral purity and are happy to sweep their own past malfeasance under the rug.
Zenster,
Re: Gaza
I wish someone organized a seminar where you could limn some facts and hypotheses for the benefit of the permanenently clueless U.S. State Dept. Not that Whitehall is better...
Takuan Seiyo,
Couldn't agree more, if not a 'mea culpa' some acknowledgement of their past atrocities from Moslems and others(particularly the Japanese) is well over due.Unfortunately, only Westerners seem to have the capacity for self-criticism.
Takuan Seiyo said...
“The point is that it’s not very useful to condemn and feel shame for people of 1830 according to the standards of 2010. What matters is that ACCORDING TO THE STANDARDS OF 1830, these French, English and German colonialists (Belgian not so) were well within the norms of humane and benevolent behavior”
Well if one is to apply those criteria to historical events one could argue that very few events in recorded history have been barbaric and cruel. One could argue that the Muslim invasions and attacks on Europe throughout history were normal events and not very barbaric, because European superpowers at the time were using the same tactics when dealing with their enemies.
It is also possible to take it one step further and say that no atrocities were committed during WW2, because all side were using tactics that were deemed normal and accepted at the time. The Russians were exterminating millions of innocent peasants and civilians, the US/English were murdering millions of innocent Germans and Japanese in firebombing campaigns and through atomic warfare and the Germans were murdering millions of Jews and others who they deemed to be ‘undesirables’.
The methods that colonial powers and armies were using in the past might have been accepted as normal back then, but that does not exclude these events from being scrutinized at the present and be called by its proper name, which is ‘human rights violations’. It’s also in my opinion meaningless to apply different sets of criteria to various historical events. By that I mean that it’s pointless to claim that the Muslim invasion of Spain was bad, but that the western colonization of Africa was in some cases acceptable.
kritisk_borger
The reductio ad absurdum is not a useful way for conducting an argument. And deliberately attributing nonexisting utterances or meanings to your interlocutor e.g. "colonization of Africa was in some cases acceptable" is not something we are used to here.
You keep missing my point, cannot see because you will not see. I will check out at this point as we are not on the same wavelength; it's a waste of time.
this letter tells the honest history that is lacking in all the schools today. it is lacking in the libraries as well. but most important it is lacking in the conscience of man.
the truth has been abandoned long ago.
Kritisk-borger does not seem to realize that most of Europe is already colonized by muslims although still in it's opening stage. If they are allowed to complete their colonization, it will not only lead to a blood shed of such proportions it will make WWI & II look like a walk in the park in sheer comparison! But we will also loose all our cultural and historical heritage. Stonehenge, Glastonbury, Newgrange and every other ancient sites or buildings will go BOOOOM just like the Buddha-statues in Afghanistan. Destroying the assimilated and converted peoples pre-islamic heritage is of such great importance and part of the ummahs Modus Operandi that they would most likely not manage to brainwash all those conquered and forcibly converted people at all if they still had a past to cling to.
I didn't know they planned to destroy the tomb of King Cyrus although it hardly surprises me. I knew they are destroying archelogical evidence in Jerusalem though. This troubles me very much I have to confess. This should not only be of concern for the iranians or the israelis. I consider such sites a world heritage. This just has to stop! Do you want to watch the pyramid of Cheops blow up on tv? I'm sure there are ragheads out there planning to annihilate those most grandiose achievments of human buildings of all time. After all they where erected long before that insane psychopath they follow was even born, thus it is irrelevant for them as it belongs to the "age of darkness". As far as I'm concerned the age of darkness has already been brought upon us by these backward inbred slimebags of the religion of pieces.
kritisk_borger: Well the way I see it Muslim colonization of the west is being condemned, and rightly so, but the previous colonization of Africa by various European states are being toned down and sugarcoated.
I doubt that anyone here wants to see the sordid aspects of Euro-African colonialism "sugarcoated". However, it is still vital to maintain a degree of perspective. Such an expanded view immediately indicates how far more vicious players have been at work in that same region, with Islam the foremost among them. If you are going to tar France then please make sure that Muslims get a proportionally greater dose of the same medicine, because Islam's atrocities make those of all others pale by comparison.
But the French were also guilty of torture and other human rights violations during their military campaign in Algeria from 1954 to 1962, in which they unsuccessfully attempted to quash the Algerian independence struggle. And I’m sure that the French were guilty of equally horrendous crimes from the very first day that they set foot on Algerian soil in the early 19th century.
Knowingly or not, you are indulging in "tu quoque".
Supposedly, Islam is somehow made less culpable of horrendous and repeated genocide because of France's relatively minor transgression in Algeria. Please reread the previous comments by Takuan Seiyo. You somehow fail to comprehend how terribly out of scale your comparison is.
Throughout its history, Islam has not only enslaved more people than Europe and America combined, but it most likely has also slaughtered more humans that Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse Dong put together. You do your own arguments and the historical record no favors by pretending that this is not the case.
Furthermore, the ongoing human rights violations and persistent crimes against humanity that are symptomatic of Islamic rule everywhere, puts the lie to any supposed brutality upon France's part. The blood on French hands is but a droplet in contrast to Islam's elbow-deep gore.
I’ve also heard stories about how the ruling French upper classes in Algeria treated the natives as second-class citizens. I believe in those types of circumstances that it’s the moral right of any individual to resist the occupying forces and take up arms. Wouldn’t you do the same if a foreign power managed to invade the US?
All this without a peep regarding Islam's vile practice of dhimmitude. This constitutes yet another glaring omission upon your part. Even as, more than once, you force Takuan Seiyo to rather stridently point out:
All this is certainly even less useful in view of Western Civilization’s collective and entirely unilateral Mea Culpa and voluntary suicide as atonement for sins of the past, when ALL the civilizations that stand to inherit the Earth from guilt-stricken whitey feel no such need for reciprocal moral purity and are happy to sweep their own past malfeasance under the rug.
Your seemingly willful dismissal of historical perspective renders further argument particularly futile.
Takuan Seiyo: Zenster,
Re: Gaza
I wish someone organized a seminar where you could limn some facts and hypotheses for the benefit of the permanenently clueless U.S. State Dept. Not that Whitehall is better...
Coming from you, Taksan, even the invitation to such an Augean task remains a signal honor.
kritisk_borger,
Yes,exactly, we should apply the same ethical standards to both Moslem and European behavior in the past.The point is that Moslems don't, as Savelli's letter indicates,the problem is their double standards and wilful ignorance,not ours.
@Robin Shadowes
Thanks for that info about Cyrus’ tomb. I did not know. I googled that and found some incidental info by the Iranian blogger Pooyan.
According to Strabo (that’s over 2000 years ago), the tomb, by then 500 years old, bore the inscription,
“Passer-by, I am Cyrus, who gave the Persians an empire, and was king of Asia. Grudge me not therefore this monument.”
How noble and worthy of reflection that is.
But, says Pooyan, “During the Islamic conquest of Iran, the Arab armies came upon the tomb and planned to destroy it, considering it to be in direct violation of the tenets of Islam. The caretakers of the grave managed to convince the Arab command that the tomb was not built to honor Cyrus, but instead housed the mother of King Solomon, thus sparing it from destruction. As a result, the inscription in the tomb was replaced by a verse of the Qur'an, and the tomb became known as "Qabr-e Madar-e Sulaiman," or the tomb of the mother of Solomon. It is still widely known by that name today.”
We are dealing with barbarians. It’s like a Star Trek episode where the Enterprise landing party is transported to a planet populated by 7th century desert brigands. Except, they have nukes and cell-phones, courtesy of years of moronic munificence by the Federation...
Zenster said..
“If you are going to tar France then please make sure that Muslims get a proportionally greater dose of the same medicine, because Islam's atrocities make those of all others pale by comparison.”
And what have Islam’s many atrocities against humanity got to do with the original article? We are not debating Islam’s many human rights violations in this specific post, we’re debating France’s supposedly benevolent role as a colonial power in North Africa. Some people seems to have completely missed that I have simply been trying to respond to the letter by André Savelli, in which he tells an elected representative of a former French colony, that this representative should be grateful that France colonized them and show gratitude for all the things the French did for them.
Yes, sure the French were instrumental in developing Algeria, as where the various other colonial powers of Europe at the time with their own colonies. But these colonial powers weren’t good Samaritans, eager to help the local population in reaching their standards of living. The colonial powers invested large amounts of money in their overseas colonies because they believe that they would always be in their possession. France annexed Algeria and made it a part of France. Do you sincerely believe that the French would have invested so much money and effort in Algeria if they knew they’d only keep it for 130 years? And if you know your history then I shouldn’t have to remind you that the only ‘dhimmis’ that existed in these colonies were the natives and not the conquerors. The local population in Algeria paid higher taxes than the French expats.
It is also quite hilarious that a blog that warns about and condemns ‘Islamic colonists’ for gradually taking over Europe and turning the continent’s local populous into second-class citizens doesn’t see the absurdity in praising former European colonists for having done the exact same thing in what is today an Islamic country. Do you really not see the irony in this Zenster?? And what does it matter if a colonial power raises the overall standard of living in a country, if the natives only see the colonialists as an occupying force? Would you accept a Chinese takeover of America if it meant that the standard of living in America was raised??
Takuan Seiyo said...
“The reductio ad absurdum is not a useful way for conducting an argument.”
Sorry, but I don’t see how I’m guilty of that. I believe I’ve been very objective and constructive in my postings here on this page. But if you don’t wish to discuss this matter anymore with me, than that is of course your given right.
Takuan, I can't take credit for the stuff about the tomb of Cyrus. I read about it in Zenster's post a bit further above mine. No probs though.
I missed that somehow. More the reason for Zenster in Washington (or Langley), instead of the dunces there.
The important part of this letter is the first half. The second half reminds me of this Monty Python gag. Not quite accurate, but even if it was it really doesn't work like that.
@kritisk_borger
"And what have Islam’s many atrocities against humanity got to do with the original article?"
Islamic and Arab atrocities in the region now called Algeria were mentioned in Savelli's letter, so it's hardly off-topic. BTW, it's not a thing of the past either. I'm not sure what's the situation there now, but for decades after the liberation of North Africa from the French, the Arab rulers did everything in their power to suppress the Berber ethnic-cultural-national identity and force Arabization on them (like they do everywhere else in the Middle East). For instance, they outlawed the Berber languages. So it's particularly ironic that the president of Algeria will now accuse France of “genocide of Algerian identity”.
@mace
"Couldn't agree more, if not a 'mea culpa' some acknowledgement of their past atrocities from Moslems and others (particularly the Japanese) is well over due. Unfortunately, only Westerners seem to have the capacity for self-criticism."
"Yes,exactly, we should apply the same ethical standards to both Moslem and European behavior in the past. The point is that Moslems don't, as Savelli's letter indicates, the problem is their double standards and wilful ignorance, not ours."
The West collaborates with that. That's why such a letter is important. Western culture has a well developed self criticism faculty, which is normally good and constructive, but in excess can become self destructive. The Muslim culture, on the other hand, doesn't exhibit such self criticism, at least when it comes to analyzing the causes for their own difficulties or backwardness which are always blamed on the west or on "Zionist conspiracies", and when it comes to the disasters they inflicted and continue to inflict upon others across the world. So on one side you have western excessive self criticism and self blame that at the same time ignores similar phenomena (imperialism, racism, slavery, genocide) in other cultures, and on the other side you have some non-western cultures that constantly blame the west for everything wrong with them and at the same time are totally blind to similar wrongdoings in their own history or present. These two trends reinforce each other, so you get an ever escalating attack on the west in the academy, MSM and general western and non-western consciousness. It became a form of anti-European or anti-white racism where all evil is somehow considered inherently white and white alone. This kind of racism is a dangerous delusion since when so many people attribute the source of all evil to one group - may it be Jews or whites or even Muslims - it might seem necessary to them to eliminate this group in order to "save humanity".
It isn't necessary to whitewash western history. What is necessary is to a.) stop revising history to make the west look worse than it was, b.) in education give equal weight to the good aspects of western civilization and there sure are many of these, c.) stop whitewashing non-western cultures and start criticizing them equally.
We need a balanced, rational and truthful view of history, the present and humanity rather than an official narrative with an extreme anti-western bias or other extreme biases.
The Muslim culture isn't going to develop self criticism when the west encourages them to blame the west for everything and almost blindly adopts the Muslim narrative and makes it the western narrative. When a Muslim attacks the west for imperialism-colonialism it's good to remind him of Islamic imperialism-colonialism, so he or other Muslims may connect the two and maybe even be able to imagine what it felt like for the people they conquered and subdued. If they don't criticize themselves and are not criticized from the outside as well, how are they going to develop self-criticism?
Well, the French should have took the farms, infrastructure and factories with them when they left, and also cut the welfare for good. And we need to not be weak and shocked by the consequences and realize that Africans aren't black skinned Europeans.
kristic, the Barbary states de facto declared war on Europe through their piracy acts, so yes, France had the moral authority to do whatever it wanted to it. Also, it's hilarious to me that you would make a moral equivalence in between European colonialism, which often improved the living standard of it's subjects with the Muslim one. By your standards, there should still be tribes in Africa that have no idea what a wheel is, that find crushing their enemies into slavery the ruling principle of their people and eating their enemies in order to humiliate them through defecating their remains as the highest degradation you can serve someone.
I would have no problem with the Muslim colonization of the West if this resulted in a better cultural and economic space, but it won't. And I agree with Takuan Seiyo on this one, your debating tacting is annoying and fruitless.
rebelliousvanilla,
Do you seriously argue for the total destruction of the country upon the withdrawal of the French in 1962? Then you are truly a cold hearted SOB.
Yes, the French invested in infrastructure in Algeria, but they were by no means good Samaritans only looking after the wellbeing of the natives. Land grabs and population displacement was carried out on a big scale and the local population was made to work for the new French rulers at a minimum wage. The colonization of Algeria also paid big dividends for the French and in the end they benefitted more from it than they lost.
As to your claim that the French had every moral right to invade the country, it’s pretty farfetched as the pirate activity in the area pretty much ceased in 1816, fourteen years before the French invaded, when the British and the Dutch bombarded Algiers and forced the rulers at the time to sign a peace treaty. The claim that France invaded to stop piracy was just a pretext for expanding their colonies. Kind of like the lies that were presented by the US in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.
And your claim that the French rule was benign and benevolent is pretty absurd when considering that nearly a third of the natives perished in the first couple of decades of the colonization. And yes it is pretty hilarious that this blog tries to whitewash the French colonization of Algeria, but are fervent in their condemnation of the current Islamic colonization of the west. As I have mentioned here earlier if colonization is morally wrong then it’s always wrong, not just when the ‘bad guys’ do it.
This has been a most interesting discussion, and I can understand how every invasion brought a purposeful destruction of the culture of the previous hegemonic culture. But I can at this point conceive of a time when the invading Muslim hordes demand the closing of museums of European culture like the Louvre, and then the destruction of Greek and Roman nude sculptures as offensive to the Koran, and finally the destruction of every bit of representational art in the Louvre and every other museum. It will happen if we let it, and this sickens me. I will not be here to see it, but my grandchildren might see such things happen. I can Cassandra-like foresee the destruction of all monuments of European culture and religion. Do we wish to be guilty of allowing this?
"Moslems should realize that their religion and institutions are the real cause of failed Islamic societies,not the West".
Arabic and Islamic culture has no concept of introspection nor accountability. How can it? Everything is ordained by Allah "Insh'allah". Interestingly though, they never accept that Allah wills them to lose out to Westerners. Suddenly the fatalism stops and Muslims externalize, blaming Westerners for their mountain of problems. They will never ever accept responsibility themselves. It is a primitive belief system mired in the 8th century and has stunted Muslim minds and reasoning ability.
As a result they can never succeed in a world where they are not showered with unearned riches (oil money) or catered to by western leftist enablers (Palestinian "refugees" would have resettled themselves ages ago if the United Nations weren't feeding this Arab Baby Huey.)
"One interesting takeaway from this letter is that French intervention in Algeria in historical terms was relatively brief, benign, and guilt-ridden, while Arab and Ottoman involvement was lengthy, deep, painful, enslaving, and unrepentant."
Being brown means never having to say your sorry.
Being white means having to say it forever with no endpoint in sight, not even when whites are made a minority in their own lands.
If we all agree that colonization of another people is unacceptable, can we also agree that some colonization is worse than others for the natives?
If the colonizer brings useful technology and habits that are ingrained in the locals and left for their use, is this not better than a colonizer who tries to drive an evolved society back into the Dark Ages as Muslims are attempting?
India is a functioning democracy with a rising standard of living and relatively peaceful largely building on the residue of British colonialism. It's been said that the problem in Africa wasn't that the British colonized but that they didn't stay there long enough to have an outcome more like India.
When a people have primitive (tribal) government, these are invariably very cruel, much more cruel than any of at least the British colonizers' excesses. Look at Zimbabwe. Mugabe was handed the breadbasket of Africa and has reduced it to a basket case unable to feed its own people let alone export food.
The pretense of concern for the colonized is hardly convincing when their plight under black thug dictators and primitive tribal rule is so much worse.
Talking to myself here, but wanted to go on record nevertheless...
@laine
“Being brown means never having to say your sorry. Being white means having to say it forever with no endpoint in sight, not even when whites are made a minority in their own lands.”
How true. That goes for all nonwhite cultures, per my considerable personal experience on the five main continents and their adjoining islands. For Muslims and Africans the very concept of truth does not exist. Truth is what furthers me over my cousin, my cousin and me over my clan, and so on. For the Confucian civilization, truth is socially construed – e.g. history is what my governing elite has decreed it to be in the best interest of my country. There are of course exceptions, e.g. I know Japanese who accept the truth of Japanese atrocities in WW2 and are in pain over that – but in the broad sense, this ethnocentric truthism and “malleable history” are prevalent.
Whitey is the only kind with an individual and more objective sense of truth and a feeling of obligation to plumb his people’s story per moral criteria that are not pre-skewed to render an unqualified approbation. While an admirable trait per se, when you have toxic toads who run your schools and all other cultural institutions, the brown and black and Muslim stories are accepted at face value, i.e. these are innocent, virtuous lambs, and the warts on the whites’ portrait are magnified while the nice underlying complexion is obscured. All that leads to a hugely exaggerated sense of guilt, self loathing and voluntary dhimmitude – group suicide, really.
I am not advocating prettifying our own portrait. But I am advocating scrapping the brown and black portraits that have been drawn for us by our quislings, and replacing them with more truthful renditions.
Laine said..
“If we all agree that colonization of another people is unacceptable, can we also agree that some colonization is worse than others for the natives?
If the colonizer brings useful technology and habits that are ingrained in the locals and left for their use, is this not better than a colonizer who tries to drive an evolved society back into the Dark Ages as Muslims are attempting?”
Well that wasn’t exactly the case in the US and Australia when the two continents were first colonized, and particularly not in the case for Australia where the indigenous population was pretty much decimated by the benign British colonial masters who built up the infrastructure and brought prosperity to the country.
At least the first Voortrekkers in South Africa where trying to get along with the natives even though they’ve been vilified for their apartheid policies in Europe. But even the Boers didn’t escape the good heartedness of the benign British who put their women and children in KZ camps and killed thousands of them.
But we should try not to not dwell too much on our own mistakes and try to ‘pretty-up’ our own image isn’t that the case Takuan? By the way what are your thoughts on holocaust revisionism? I mean those guys are also just trying to ‘pretty-up’ their ‘idols’ image.
kritisk_borger,
You make valid points, but you insist on avoiding my multiple points and the points of Dr. Savelli’s letter, that are also valid. This article was deliberately named “The other side of the coin.” It was not named, “This coin has only one side: ours.”
You might be a product of a younger generation than mine. I am a boomer, and in my generation we were taught history. In your generation, history has been refashioned into a bludgeon against whitey. It has been sieved to leave out all the good about white Euro people, and all the bad about the browns and blacks. You have been programmed in a certain way, and you don’t seem to be aware of it.
My thoughts on Holocaust revisionism are the thoughts of one who lost his family, wealth, social position and country in the Holocaust even before being born. Be careful where you tread. Moreover, it’s you who engages in revisionism of hundreds of holocausts in which whites had no share or did, as victims. Some of those (e.g. the Mughal conquest of India) were bigger in scope than the one we spell with a capital H. Cumulatively, since the birth of Islam if not limited to Islam alone, they are many times bigger. My advice to you is, study for a while the true history of the brown, black and Oriental peoples. Extremely difficult to do as you will have to rely mostly on books written 100 years ago.
Unless you have done that study and assimilated its lessons, please cease opining on this issue or at least count me out of the debate.
Takuan, believe me I don’t have an anti-western agenda here. I’m Caucasian and I love the freedoms that we as westerners enjoy, and whom most of us take for granted. I believe that our societies are far superior to any society where Islam is the dominant force. I truly hate the intolerant and fascistic mindset of the Islamists and I have been expressing my views about this on various online forums and blogs for nearly a decade.
Yes, the former colonial powers of Europe brought with them the modern world to their new colonies in Africa, and yes in the end they did improve the overall living standards for the natives. Like I mentioned in my first reply on this thread;
“There’s no question whatsoever that the French had developed a well run society (with the help of Algerian labour?) in Algeria by the time they eventually withdrew from the country in 1962. Yes they established hospitals, schools, built roads, improved infrastructure and agriculture in the country which a large percentage of the natives benefitted greatly from.”
But it is also an inescapable fact that this progress came at a heavy prize. The colonial powers were by no means goodhearted angels looking only after the best interest of the newly colonized. Atrocities were committed on a grand scale and in my opinion there’s no need to try to excuse this part of our history or to downplay it in any kind of way. It is the truth and there’s nothing we can do about it to change it.
With that said, I don’t believe that we should have to pay for the sins of our fathers. What’s done is done and we the people of the west today were not implicated in what took place back then, and I think it is meaningless for Africans to use our history against us and insist that we should make amends for our past. There’s only one way for the continent to lift itself up to our level of living standards and that is through hard work and discipline.
I’m only interested in accurate and truthful accounts of the past, whether they’re bad or good. I didn’t question the fact that the French brought prosperity to Algeria like you seem to suggest, and I believe that the excerpt from my first reply that I’ve reposted above indicates that. I was merely pointing out that the colonization came at a heavy price, that I think colonialism is/was bad and that only the indigenous people themselves can decide on which path they as a people are to follow, and not have outsiders dictating them what to do.
And no, I don’t think that I’m brainwashed or programmed to think and act in a certain way by society. And I’m sorry to hear that you and members of your family were affected by the many crimes against humanity that were committed during the last world war.
@kritisk_borger
I should like to invert your statement so that it reads, “It is meaningless for us to use Africa’s and Islam’s history against Africans and Muslims and insist that they should make amends for their past.”
Please, read more about the black African slavers and the Muslim slave merchants, read about the Muslim conquest and genocide of the Christian and Jewish populations of the Middle East and North Africa, even before they did the same to the Iberian Peninsula. Read about the Barbary pirates’ slaving raids to Italy and elsewhere around Europe’s Mediterranean coast, and reaching as far as Ireland. Read about the millions of slaughtered, raped and skinned-alive Slavs under unceasing assault by Muslim hordes from the East, read what the Muslim conquerors did to the once proud cultures and peoples of what’s now India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, read about the Turkish conquest of Famagusta. Read about the current trickling genocide of whites in South Africa, and of Christians in Iraq and Egypt.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you add to this the Mongol and Hun raids of Europe and India, what African and Mesoamerican tribes did to each other – believe me, you’ll understand that there is no need to sweep under the carpet or apologize for the many atrocities that white men too have committed. It happened, it’s the past, we have learned something since then, and it’s time to move on. But we’d have to be -- no, we are -- psychopathologicaly twisted to feel, uniquely of all the people on Earth, this guilt and shame unappeasable but through civilizational suicide.
Takuan, yes it is very true that Muslims have committed countless atrocities in their aggressive expansion policies in the past, and it is true that the former western superpowers certainly aren’t alone in having committed crimes on foreign soil. But what you seem incapable of grasping, or deliberately choose to ignore, is that in this particular case it was the French colonial rule in Algeria that was being examined and whose sins were downplayed.
I’ll be the first one to protest if someone tries to downplay Islamic colonialism and aggression. But as this is an anti-Islamic blog I think it highly unlikely that that is going to happen here on this site. Besides the subscribers of this blog don’t have to be told about the Islamic sins of the past and present as they already know everything there is to know about those.
I’d also like to add that I think that I’m pretty clued up on history, and I can also reveal to you that I’m quite clued up on the plight of Caucasians in Zimbabwe and South Africa as my in-laws are natives of those two countries. My father-in-law is from Bulawayo in Zimbabwe and my mother-in-law from Port Elisabeth in South Africa. I’ve also got several friends from both places and they have informed me about what life can be like back there if your not well off and live in a gated community. I should probably also mention that my mother-in-laws brother was killed during a heist when he was working as an armed guard in P.E.
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