Wednesday, April 04, 2007

British Pluck

The Brussels Journal reports that British schoolteachers are dropping mention of the Crusades and the Holocaust. Any ideas why?

Without recourse to the "truth that will set you free" -- cf. below, "The Chaplet of Divine Mercy," -- one cannot hold one's ground, and one falls under the dread of the primitive sacred. In this case, symbolized by the scimitar.

Bernard Lewis in a recent speech, mentioned the two moments in European history when Islam was turned back successfully.
He had mentioned the two Muslim assaults on Europe: the Arab one that ended in the West, near Poitiers with the victory of Charles Martel in 732. And the one that started in the East, with the Turks, which was marked by the two assaults on Vienna, the second one in 1683, the high-water mark of Ottoman power in Europe.
And so, just toward the end, was this unremarked but remarkable sentence:

"Third time lucky?"
We will see.

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