There is an all-out an ongoing effort by Western “journalists” to condition Western non-Muslims to accept Islam and think of it as an integral part of the West, Islam’s 1,400-year jihad against Christendom and post-Christendom notwithstanding. Here is yet more of it. Will The Tablet tout some Christian influence on, say, Rumi or Omar Khayyam? Not on your life.
“Dante’s debt to Islam,” by Ian Thomson, The Tablet, July 22, 2021:
In The Divine Comedy, the Prophet Muhammad, along with four popes, is pictured suffering the torments of Hell; what is less well-known is how much Dante’s masterpiece owes to the vibrant culture of early medieval Islam
It might seem strange that the poem most emblematic of medieval Christian Europe, The Divine Comedy, should contain so many Arabic loan-words (“assassin”, “alchemy, “zenith”, “alcohol”) as well as references to Islamic intellectual life. Eastern treatises on medicine, natural science and mathematics entered the Italian peninsula chiefly by way of Muslim Spain and Sicily, and their fingerprints are all over this masterwork by Dante Alighieri, whose death 700 years ago we are marking this year.
In the face of Islam’s rapid westward expansion, however, Dante absorbed also a fierce dislike and incomprehension of Islam. Pointedly, the only Arabic word in his three-volume journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise that refers to Islam as a religion is meschite (“mosques”). Mosques, in the Tuscan poet’s medieval Christian judgement, were a symbol of stubborn heretical allegiance and false belief. In the poem’s first volume, “The Inferno”, the pilgrim-poet Dante approaches the fortified Islamic citadel of Dis in Lower Hell, where gleaming red meschite of the sort seen by Crusaders in the Holy Land emerge from the charred and fatty air….
Jim says
Not very impressive. Adopting words does not mean legitimating the ideas and historical practices and policies in their back story. The vibrant culture of Islam seems like a misnomer. The Islamic world did its best to suppress and destroy Western ideas and cultures that did not please it. Is that also vibrant? They destroyed the churches and temples of other religions, was that also part of their vibrancy?
mortimer says
Absurd! Dante’s total disdain for Islam could only be misconstrued as admiration by someone who refuses to see.
As an ideology, Islam is the IDEOLOGY of ANTI-ROMANISM … one of the chief goals of Islam is to CONQUER ROME after conquering Persia … and thereupon, to destroy the religion and culture of Romanized Europe.
Muslims today hope to do so through immigration. Is the writer for ‘THE TABLET’ on drugs?
gravenimage says
Agreed, Jim.
spiro says
If I read this correctly
Muhammad and 4 popes are in he’ll
That maybe be a correct prediction
I’m sure some one will correct me but didn’t the Arabic number system we use come from India when the moslems invaded India. If so it’s not a great Muslim intellectual breakthrough as many of us were taught in school
overman says
Yes – Astronomy, Mathematics, Medicine, Geography etc. all stolen from translated lndian sanskrit text. lslam has always been parasitic through violent domination.
Wellington says
Dante had an “incomprehension of Islam?” Au contraire, Dante understood Islam quite well. How much better off the West would be if people like Bush 43, Biden (and his handlers), Johnson, Merkel, et al. had the same comprehension of Islam that Dante did.
How pathetic the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has become. I fear it may be irreversible.
Ecosse1314 says
With pope heretic now vitually banning the Latin Mass, mainly due to conservatives liking it. I fear the end is nigh
GreekEmpress says
+1
Very troubling.
gravenimage says
Yes–this is very troubling. Pope Benedict loosed restrictions on the Latin mass–now Francis is restricting them even further.
gravenimage says
Dante certainly understood Islam a lot better than these tools at The Tablet.
rubiconcrest says
My God, Ian Thomson, ‘…Islam’s rapid westward expansion…’ by this you mean Islam’s coastal slave and plundering raids followed by invasion and after invasion, piles of severed heads and crucified captives? Islam’s atrocities we see today are of a different type but no less savage. Dante was right. He put Mohammad where he belongs. The church is lost if it feigns any debts to Islam be they anything other than visions from hell.
gravenimage says
Spot on, rubiconcrest.
Kepha says
I saw the fresco of Muhammad in Hell in the Church of San Petronio on the Piazza Maiore in Bologna. The place also has the coronoation chapel of Charles V and a famous pendulum. One result of the Islamic furor was that access to the church was by one door only, which was guarded by armed soldiers. Further, tired tourists are no longer allowed to rest on the step in front.
I’m sure that many a papal church in Europe shows the like of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, Bugenhagen, and whoever in Hell, too. But God-bless-King-Billy Protestant that I am, I am not about to throw a bomb.
gravenimage says
If it is not a sin, I envy you your visit to the Church of San Petronio in Bologna, Kepha. 🙂
Raja says
Kepha,
It is hardly surprising that Luther and others were shown to be in hell by the Catholic church. This was the way the church dealt with cries for reformation, though the origin of protestant “movement” was political (in UK). The ideology of Catholic church is just incompatible to the church of the bible, hence the constant wranglings in the realm of “spirituality”
What should infuriate us (at least some) in JW is how the Catholic church takes its obnoxious ways to more absurd levels or next level. They have jelled well with one of the most evil ideologies of all times, namely Marxism that adds woes to human kind faced by 1400 years of islam..That is why God says:
For a fool speaks nonsense, And his heart inclines toward wickedness: To practice ungodliness and to speak error against the LORD, To keep the hungry person unsatisfied And to withhold drink from the thirsty.
The term fool is generally referred to atheists and their offshoots.
If the church is reference here, still wants to hobnob with islam, God will honor their commitment to siding with evil, and its leaders and followers will be lost for forever.
As a precursor, God has give us this verse for this world. Romans 1:21, 22 and 32
21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing to be wise, they became fools…..
32 and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
gravenimage says
UK Catholic weekly The Tablet touts ‘Dante’s debt to Islam’
………………..
How–in finding an inhabitant *of hell*? Good lord…
JamesC. says
And words like “doolally”, and “kedgeree”, and “thug”, are derived from India. That does not mean that British culture was or is Hindu.
Beside, “assassin” means “taker of hashish”, from the behaviour of the mediaeval Muslim sect. There was nothing peculiar to Muslim or murderers in taking hashish.
Adopting a few words from a culture or language is very weak evidence of being significantly influenced by either. Is everyone who refers to “whisky” influenced by Scots Gaelic culture ? Is everyone who speaks of Mah-Jongg strongly influenced by Chinese culture ? There are thousands of words of Latin origin in English – is everyone who uses Latin (as Dante did, indeed) strongly influenced by Roman culture ?
Ecosse1314 says
+1