Cordoba

I don’t think anything pisses me off more than the Republican predilection for historical revisionism.

The latest example is Newt Gingrich’s tirade against the proposed Islamic community center two blocks from ground zero tucked between an off track horse race betting stand and a strip club.

According to Newt-------

“The proposed "Cordoba House" overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks - is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.”

Why would anyone who gets their information from sources like Fox News question the former speaker of the house?

I remember those days. He was shocked by Bill Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes even though he was cheating on his wife at the time. When he was exposed, so to speak, I thought his political career had come to an end. We have very short memories don’t we?

In 766, Cordoba became capital of the independent Muslim emirate of al-Andulas, later a Caliphate itself. During the caliphate apogee (1000 AD), Córdoba had a population of roughly 400,000 inhabitants. In the 10th-11th centuries Córdoba was one of the most advanced cities in the world. The Great Mosque of Córdoba dates back to this time; under caliph Al-Hakam Córdoba received what was then the largest library in the world, housing from 400,000 to 1,000,000 volumes.

Muslims, Christians and Jews not only lived together they benefited from each others’ presence.

Cordoba’s degree of civilization has been compared to the Roman Empire and the Italian Renaissance. It is a symbol of our ability to get along.

The fact that people are so willing to rewrite history to fit a political agenda should be appalling to all of us. We have to start teaching history in our schools again, TV is not the place!