El Cid Versus the Mosque, Part 1

It was no accident of public relations that “Córdoba Initiative” was chosen as the title of the Ground Zero mosque project. The city of Córdoba was the capital of al-Andalus, the Umayyad Caliphate in Iberia, and the famous Córdoba Mosque was built atop the rubble of a destroyed church.

For the last several decades Islam has been expanding into the West using cunning and deceit facilitated by the treason of our governing elites, who have sold their own countries to the Islamic invaders. This peaceful conquest is a historical anomaly, however — from its inception until its long decline began in 1683, Islam expanded solely through violence.

Wherever Islam expanded violently, it built mosques at the sites of its victories. The minarets rose over the rubble of destroyed churches, synagogues, and temples to stand as symbols of Islam’s conquest of the kuffar. The Córdoba Mosque was an architectural announcement of the Moorish triumph over Christian Iberia.

The Córdoba Initiative thus provides an obvious historical analogy to the Islamic victory on September 11th, 2001, at Ground Zero. The significance of the name and place will not be lost on any educated Muslim who hears about the project.

As a counterweight to Imam Rauf’s propaganda coup, The El Cid Project aims to establish a different narrative around the hallowed ground in Lower Manhattan. The Castilian nobleman Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, popularly known as “El Cid”, led a successful campaign in the 11th century against the Moors. He is a hero of the Reconquista, the centuries-long Christian struggle to drive the Muslims out of Iberia.

In 1961 El Cid was made into a movie starring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren. It’s a gorgeous production — they don’t make movies like that anymore. Just imagine: Christian soldiers marching proudly into battle under the banner of the Cross — in a Hollywood movie!

What a difference fifty years makes.

The El Cid Project proposes screening the movie near the Ground Zero site. We’ll do our part by showing a YouTube version of it here in seventeen installments (subtitled in Portuguese, no less).

Imam Rauf is building a Ground Zero mosque, using the word Cordoba about the initiative, for its symbolism. The countermove is to use greater symbolism, via a name and movie: “El Cid.”

The historical figure of El Cid represents the reconquest of Spain by Christianity. The classic 1961 film depicts the defeat of radical Islam by an alliance of Christians and moderate Moors.

The images of the movie are stunning, for their sheer power, and for their striking relevance to what’s happening today. The scene of smoking rubble, shown directly after the fanatic Ben Yussef speech which opens the story, is eerily prophetic. This is a metaphor for Ground Zero. The parallel is inescapable. When I saw the film recently on a movie screen I sat transfixed and amazed in my seat.

Watch the movie on the largest screen you can, all the way through, to the knights praying on the beach after victory, accompanied by the words of the Spanish king, and you’ll know you’ve seen a masterpiece. You’ll also have seen a work of art crucially necessary for today.

SHOW THIS near Ground Zero.
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Moreover, it’s a movie which Imam Rauf and the New York media will have to support, because it’s a liberal movie. (Liberal circa 1961!) “El Cid” accepts moderate Islam, at the same time it unmistakably rejects the radical variety.

I’m inviting both Imam Rauf, and Mayor Bloomberg, to attend a screening of the movie. This is the El Cid Project.

Let’s use the power of art to resolve this crisis; to see where all parties truly stand.

“El Cid” Is NOW.

The video above is the first of seventeen parts. We’ll post an installment every weekday, with the final part on September 10th.

The image at the top of this post is from the very end of the movie.