Daniel Greenfield: Islam is Colonialism, Palestine is
Colonialism, by Daniel
Greenfield, 4/18/16. Politichicks, Sultan Knish
At
Israeli Apartheid Week, campus haters claim to be fighting “colonialism” by
fighting Jews. Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, dedicated to
a country that doesn’t exist and which has produced nothing worth studying
except terrorism, features diatribes such as Palestine Re-Covered: Reading a
Settler Colonial Landscape”. This word salad is a toxic stew of historical
revisionism being used to justify the Muslim settler colonization of the
indigenous Jewish population.
You
can’t colonize Palestine because you can’t colonize colonizers. The Muslim
population in Israel is a foreign colonist population. The indigenous Jewish
population can resettle its own country, but it can’t colonize it.
Muslims
invaded, conquered and settled Israel. They forced their language and laws on
the population. That’s the definition of colonialism. You can’t colonize and
then complain that you’re being colonized when the natives take back the power
that you stole from them.
There
are Muslims in Israel for the same reason that there are Muslims in India. They
are the remnants of a Muslim colonial regime that displaced and oppressed the
indigenous non-Muslim population. There are no serious historical arguments to
be made against any of this.
The
Muslim conquests and invasions are well-documented. The Muslim settlements fit
every historical template of colonialism complete with importing a foreign
population and social system that was imposed on the native population. Until
they began losing wars to the indigenous Jewish population, the Muslim settlers
were not ashamed of their colonial past, they gloried in it. Their historical
legacy was based on seizing indigenous sites, appropriating them and renaming
them after the new conquerors.
The
only reason there’s a debate about the Temple Mount is because Caliph Omar
conquered Jerusalem and ordered a mosque built on a holy Jewish site. The only
reason there’s a debate about East Jerusalem is because invading Muslim armies
seized half the city in 1948, bombed synagogues and ethnically cleansed the
Jewish population to achieve an artificial Muslim settler majority.
The
only Muslim claim to Jerusalem or to any other part of Israel is based purely
on the enterprise of colonial violence. There is no Muslim claim to Israel
based on anything other than colonialism, invasion and settlement.
Israel
is littered with Omar mosques, including one built in the courtyard of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, because Islam is a colonial entity whose mosques
testify to their invasive origins by celebrating colonialism as their true
religion. The faith of Islam is the sworn religion of the sword.
Islam
is a religion of colonialism that spread through invasion, settlement and
conquest. Its caliphs, from the original invaders, including Omar, to the
current Caliph of ISIS, wielded and wield religious authority in the service of
the Islamic colonial enterprise.
Allah
is the patron deity of colonialism. Jihad is just colonialism in Arabic.
Islamic theology is nothing but the manifest destiny of the Muslim conquest of
the world, colonial settler enterprises dressed up in the filmy trappings of
religion appropriated from the culture of conquered Jewish and Christian
minorities. Muslim terrorism is a reactionary colonial response to the liberation
movements of the indigenous Jewish population.
Even
“Allahu Akbar” did not originate as a religious sentiment. It does not mean
“God is Great”, as it is often mistranslated. It was Mohammed’s taunt to the
Jews he was ethnically cleansing. His purge of a minority group proved that
“Allah was Greater”. Islamic colonialism is used to demonstrate the existence
of Allah. And the best way to worship Allah is through the colonialism of the
Jihad.
Islam
would not have existed without colonialism. It still can’t exist without it.
That is why the violence continues. The only way to end the violence is for
Muslims to reject their theology of colonialism.
But
instead of taking ownership of their real history, the Muslim settler
population evades its guilt through propaganda by claiming to be the victims of
colonialism by the indigenous Jewish population. This twisted historical
revisionism is backed by bizarre nonsense such as claiming that Jesus was a
Palestinian or that the Arabs are descended from the Philistines. The Muslim
settlers insist on continuing to celebrate colonialism while claiming to be an
indigenous population that was always living in Israel.
You
can have one or the other. You can have your mosques celebrating the conquest
and suppression of the indigenous population or your claims of being the
indigenous population. But you can’t switch from being the indigenous
population to being its conquerors whenever it suits your pseudo-historical
narrative. You can’t claim to be the Philistines, the Jews and their Islamic
conquerors at the same time.
From
its Roman origins, Palestine has always been a colonial fantasy of remaking
Israel by erasing its original Jewish identity. The Arab mercenaries who were
deployed by the Romans in that original colonial enterprise continued it by
becoming self-employed conquerors for their own colonial empire. The name
Palestine remains a linguistic settlement for reimagining a country without a
people and a past as a blank slate on which the colonial identity of the
invaders can be written anew. That is still the role that the Palestine myth
and mythology serves.
Abdul
Rahim al-Shaikh complains about “linguistic colonialism”. When Muslims rename
the Spring of Elisha, a Jewish biblical figure, Ein as-Sultan in honor of an
Islamic colonial ruler, that’s linguistic colonialism. When Jews restore the
original indigenous names that Jewish sites held before Muslim colonialism,
that’s not colonization. It’s the exact opposite. It’s decolonization.
Promoting
mythical claims of a Palestinian state isn’t decolonization, it’s colonization.
Or recolonization. Advocates for “Palestine” are not fighting colonialism, but
promoting it. They are advocating for a discredited Muslim settler fantasy and
against the indigenous Jewish population of Israel.
Abdul
Rahim al-Shaikh complains about “geographic amnesia” among “Palestinians”.
There’s no geographic amnesia because you can’t remember what never existed.
There’s only paramnesia because there was never a country named Palestine.
Palestine
has no history. It has no people. It has no borders. It has never been anything
except a colonial invention. It is a name used by a variety of foreign settlers
operating on behalf of colonial empires. You can’t colonize Palestine. How can
you colonize a colonial myth? You can only decolonize it.
Every
Jewish home built on land formerly under the control of the Caliphs is
decolonization and decaliphization.
When
Jews ascend the Temple Mount, they are also engaging in decolonization and
decaliphization.
When
the liberation forces of the Jewish indigenous population shoot a Jihadist
colonist fighting to impose yet another Islamic State on Israel, that too is
decolonization and decaliphization.
Resistance
to Islamic terrorism is resistance to colonialism. And Jews have the longest
history of resisting the Islamic State under its various Caliphs throughout
history. Israel is still resisting the colonialist Jihadist plans for the
restorations of the Caliphate. Zionism is a machine that kills Islamic colonialism.
The
existence of Israel not only means the decolonization of Abdul Rahim
al-Shaikh’s imaginary colonial fantasies of “Palestine”, but inspires
resistance in peoples struggling against Islamic colonialism throughout the
region, from the Copts to the Berbers to secular intellectuals fighting for
freedom.
Islamic
colonialism has always been defeated, whether at the Gates of Vienna or in the
Sinai Desert. Its colonial fantasies are false and will be defeated as many
times as it takes, whether in the form of Palestine or ISIS.
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