Conrad of the Gweilo Diairies posts some absolutely brilliant commentary on Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad and a number of the intellectual fallacies plaguing the Muslim world. Read the thing in its entirety, but here’s an appetizer below:
The Prime Minister praised Muslim leaders like Abdul Rahman III, AI-Mansur, Salah El Din AI Ayubi “who took to the battlefields at the head of their forces to protect Muslim land and the ummah.” Yet Abdul Rahman initiated military aggressive military campaigns, against the Fatimids and the kings of Leon and Navarre, not to defend the ummah but to expand its boundaries. Al-Mansur mounted military campaigns against Christian Spain, taking thousands of Christian women and children as slaves. Saladin invaded north Africa and conquered Yemen, Damascus, Syria and Palestine. Mahathir’s brave defenders of Muslim lands were, in reality, conquerors who, true to the message of “the Prophet” sought to impose Islam on non-believers by force of arms.
