I am involved in a discussion on my Facebook page with some real mouth breathing neandertals about the proposed Cordoba House. As you know this is the name of the Muslim center being contemplated near the WTC site.
I won’t bore you with the details of the argument thus far. I kind of half-way wish some of with sharper wits (and pens) than I would friend request me just to watch you slaughter these guys. PM me if you thirst for redneck blood.
Anyhoo…the debate is about to turn towards the suggested name, and that it has undertones of muslim conquest of the West. To the best of my knowledge Cordoba is a place in Spain from which muslims ruled for quite a while. I seem to recall the muslim reign in Spain was marked by icky things like “science” and “technological advances” and “tolerance” and stuff like that. But these fellows seem to think it is signifies the muslim conquest of NYC, a book end to the 9-11 attacks.
What is the debate? Was the name "Cordoba House chosen to signify muslim domination of the West?
Just wanted to say that I’m in the exact same boat, and I’ll be watching this thread with interest. Yes, the Muslims built mosques on the site of captured cites. So? The West built churches. That’s my proposed counter-argument, anyway.
I don’t think it’s per se provocative. As Shodan hints, I’d change my mind if I discovered it was the winner of a “How Can We Best Say Fuck You to the Great Satan America with an Innocuous-Sounding Name?” contest, but absent that, this name is a non-issue.
No, but it could be indicative of an attitude that some Muslims hold - namely, that any place that was once ruled by Muslims is considered “Muslim land” for all eternity. This obviously doesn’t apply to New York; however, when directed at places like Spain or Israel, it can have some unpleasant implications.
Well, yeah, Cordoba was the capital of the, well, the Cordoban Caliphate, when there was one; that is, from the time when it attained independence until it split up into Taifas. So? Should people from Artajona expect to be sued by Jews over having their patron saint be Our Lady of Jerusalem? Do American towns called Berlin and Hamburg signify that the brave American patriots shook off the British yoke only to replace it with a Germanic brand?
I visited Cordoba last year. The cathedral is the great mosque; before being the mosque, it was a church; before being the church, it was a roman temple. Holy ground all the way until archeologists aren’t sure when. Cordoba is one of the towns which form the network “ciudades de las tres culturas”, tri-cultural towns, by which they actually mean “of the three religions, during medieval times”; historically-important people born there include Roman philosopher Seneca, Abderraman III, Averroes, the Jewish doctor and philosopher Maimónides, Al-gafiqi (a Muslim doctor whose name derived into the Spanish word gafas, eyeglasses)… The World Heritage Site includes all of Old Town, not just the Cathedral: white-painted, flower-filled patios covered with denim toldos to keep the sun away; narrow cobbled streets which again do their best to keep people hidden from the heat; the Jewish baths, two Synagogues; the Alcázar of the Reyes Católicos…
I see nothing about it to lend credence to the notion of choosing the name “to show that we pwned the West”, but then and if someone wants to put things in those terms, I only have to go for a walk (preferably after sundown, right now Al-Andalus is on the hot side) to Plaza de España or Seville’s Old Town to remember that they eventually got pwned back.
Oh sure. They want to ‘Park’ themselves right smack dab in the middle of Ground Zero. And is it any coincidence that 51 is exactly 21 less then 72 (number of virgins in the afterlife) when 21, as everybody knows is the international Muslim code for ‘Black Jack’? I.e. – ‘We Win!’
The muslims will be dragged kicking and screaming into the present century before The Decadent West submits to Allah. The sooner radical muslims realise this, the better this planet will be.
I was wondering where the ‘OMG-the moslems insert rant here !!1!’ thread was wrt to the news that plans to demolish the existing building, were passed unanimously yesterday, making way for the ‘9/11 Victory Mosque’.
Perhaps something shiny has their attention at the min…
No offense, but I am not really hinting anything - I would like to know if they had a reason. I know what the people who wrote on the Facebook page think is their motive. I would like to hear from the other side before I decide.
Now that they have changed it to Park51, no doubt someone or other will believe that it was chosen because it is a variant on Area 51, and that Muslims are really space aliens looking to anally probe us in retaliation for us dissecting one of their women, thus displaying what they really look like outside those burkhas.
Not to veer into material inappropriate for this forum, but usually when you can’t win a debate, it means you have to acknowledge that the other guy might have a point. Calling for backup means you’re convinced you’re right even though you know you’re losing the argument. Isn’t that a form of prejudice?
Why, to figure out some deep secret like this, you’d need to travel deep into the bowels of some ancient and long lost library and try to discover ancient records that date back to the founding of the Cordoba Inititive, no doubt guarded by some ancient evil that will try and obstruct your path.
Or visit CordobaInititive.net, the apparently well maintained website of the group and click on the link “why cordoba” on the front of the main page:
So its more or less the opposite of what the people quoted by the OP say, Cordoba is symbolic for the group of a time when Muslims, Christians and Jews were tolerant of each other. I’m not sure how historically accurate that is, but its a nice thought anyways.
In short, they’re the Muslims we should be encouraging and supporting, rather then prosecuting.
I’m not sure that’s going to help much. Tolerant or not, Muslims still ruled Cordoba and al-Andalus. It’s not as though Jews and Christians were equal partners in a power-sharing arrangement or something.
On the other hand, the Caliphs were certainly a lot more tolerant of both Christians and Jews than any contemporary Christian ruler.
Not just in Cordoba, but all throughout Middle-Ages Spain, the amounts of (in)tolerance varied wildly; Maimónides (link in my previous post) had to leave Cordoba because of intolerant policies, but at other times things were much less… tense. For example, under the second Caliph.
The cathedral in my home town has a part which was the main Mosque for the town and another which was the Synagogue, and all three were in use simultaneously; that town’s Governors under Muslim domination were from a Jewish family; after it had been in Christian hands for over a century, a separate area (with its own walls, so there was an outer city wall and another wall separating this part) was set aside for the Muslims, but this was brought about by Muslims complaining about the cleanliness practices of their neighbors - it was intended to be for practical purposes, rather than a discrimination issue, and if you want it could be said that the ones being intolerant were the Muslims, which are the ones who moved (they were given the land and exchanged the old houses for the new ones). Muslim bricklayers worked on Leon’s old cathedral; Christian stonecutters on Cordoba’s Mosque. While 800 years of almost-continuous war can’t be mistaken for a bunch of hippies singing kumbayah, and of course the whole thing came to a quite-screeching-end with Ferdinand’s expulsions (note that they were completely his doing: he started in his own Kingdom of Aragon, proceeded with Navarra - which he’d invaded and which ignored his decree for as long as possible, and wasn’t able to expel the Muslims and Jews from Castille until he was made Regent), I sincerely believe on their daily lives most people were more worried about whether the neighbor’s servants sang too loudly than about what religion they were.
Sorry, but no. The School of Translators in Toledo attracted a lot of Muslim and Jewish scholars, see the information provided above re. Maimónides, re. artisans (and other skilled workers, such as lawyers or scribes) moving around and re. the cathedral-synagogue-mosque in my home town. You can’t say “any” contemporary Christian ruler, at all. Some Caliphs were tolerant, some Kings were tolerant, some on both sides were perfect assholes.
But the question isn’t “what was the historical reality in Cordoba”, it was “why did the Cordoba initiative choose Cordoba as their namesake”. The group itself published their reasons, and it has nothing to do with Muslim rule, it was because “For nearly 800 years, the city of Cordoba in Spain endured as a shining example of tolerance among the three monotheistic religions. Muslim, Christian and Jew cohabited in prosperity during a period known for its outstanding literary and scientific productivity.”