Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Isabella, Spain Needs You Now!


I have never seen a more graphic illustration of the insanity of multiculturalism than I have on a recent trip to Spain. I have a particular interest in the Reconquista, Moorish Spain and Washington Irving's writing (as the illustration of 'me' shows) about that time period in both "Tales of the Alhambra" and "Chronicles of the Reconquest of Granada". So this was my second trip in four years, and I was shocked by the changes in the Albaicín. Some background.

The Albaicín is the old Arab quarter- its resemblance to the Medina in Fez and other Arab countries in uncanny. Granada was the last city to fall to the Reconquista - the Iberian, Christian people's long struggle to free their land of the Moor, who invaded some 700 year earlier. It was Isabella and her husband, Ferdinand who accelerated the Reconquista, taking more territory and land than the previous 600 years of effort. The culmination was Granada and the fabled Alhambra - the Moorish palaces that rest on the large citadel overlooking the city.

The year was 1491. A man by the name of Christopher Colon was pestering both the soveiregns for money to fit out three ships for the spice islands, Isabella told him to come back when Granada surrendered, thus did Isabella grant Columbus the charter to sail in 1492 - from the Alhambra.

Because the reconquest of this city was the jewel in the crown of her efforts, it was Isabella's wish that her and her husband be buried in a simple chapel on the grounds of the Alhambra - (now shamelessly converted to a hotel) her grandson thought this too humble a grave for a queen that had done so much and moved her and her husbands remains to an elaborate chapel at the foot of the Alhambra, bordering the Albaicín.

Fast forward to today. I was shocked - the last time I visted there was no notice of any muslim/arab presence and now the entire neighborhood has been converted and the first mosque opened in Granada since the reconquista. The EU bureaucrats praise this as diversity, I felt from the bottom of my stomach - the first real gut feeling I have had in years- that it is patent insanity.

It is well known that the EU seeks to break national identity (thus consolidating power) by bringing in foreign elements - but Muslims - from North Africa -who see the land of Al-Andulus - Andalusia - as theirs? Some families still have the deeds and keys to their properties. Is there any better illustration that ideology makes you blind to reality?

As I walked the streets, I saw a group of arab kids - the same alarm went off as was necessary for survival in New York in the 1970s. These kids were looking for trouble - they were 12-15, in a few years they will literally be raping and harassing white women, as similar immigrants have done in Oslo - which now has a rape rate six times that of New York, in Denmark, in France and as far away as Australia -the same pattern emerges - North African and African muslims specifically target white women, or white sluts as they say, for rape and the community is indifferent to it. .

If there are any people in the world with the right to discriminate and not tolerate Muslims, it is the people of Iberia. Their ancestors struggled, sacrificed and boldly challenged the Moorish conquerers so that their land would be restored to them. Now within less than a generation the EU and multicultural nutcases are reversing that. I hope to God some of the fighting spirit of their ancestors is left in the Spanish- they will need it. I hope their minds don't become numbed by globalization, starbucks and MTV to forget what their ancestors fought and died for.

postscript: At Sevilla airport, I had my less than one inch pen knife seized by security, as a terrorist risk. Apparently, one Anglo Saxon sometimes artist's dull knife he uses as a pencil sharpener is a security threat, while letting thousands of Muslims resettle in Granada is not. Such is the mad world we live in.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

very well expressed and impressive--certainly logical. The illustrations were lovely.