'Scholar' Claims Landmarks of Western Architecture Were 'Stolen' from Islamic World

In yet another installment of what is apparently a never-ending series of articles designed to make their readers take no pride in their own culture and heritage, the UK’s Guardian on Thursday published a lengthy, breathlessly enthusiastic article entitled: “Looted landmarks: how Notre-Dame, Big Ben and St Mark’s were stolen from the east.”

They are beacons of western civilisation. But, says an explosive new book, the designs of Europe’s greatest buildings were plundered from the Islamic world – twin towers, rose windows, vaulted ceilings and all.

Plundered! Of course! When has the Judeo-Christian West done anything except steal, oppress, and kill?

The Guardian article highlights the “discoveries” of a “Middle East expert” named Diana Darke, author of a new book called (what else?) Stealing from the Saracens, which the Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright calls “an exhilarating, meticulously researched book that sheds light on centuries of borrowing.”

“Borrowing” is a more polite word than Diana Darke herself used, but otherwise Wainwright is completely on board with her project, reporting her dismay at finding that it was not common knowledge in the West that everything we have, everything we have done, everything we have made, has come from Islam: “I was astonished at the reaction,” she lamented. “I thought more people knew, but there seems to be this great gulf of ignorance about the history of cultural appropriation. Against a backdrop of rising Islamophobia, I thought it was about time someone straightened out the narrative.”

Sure. And who better to do that than the illustrious Diana Darke, who is often featured on the BBC, as well as in the Guardian. It’s easy to see why she would be the British intelligentsia’s favorite “Middle East expert”: her new book, with its ridiculous claims, is yet another example of the UK elite’s ongoing efforts to compel Britons to believe that Islam is part of their own culture and heritage, so that they will be shamed into fearing to oppose mass Muslim migration into Britain, as well as jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others. It’s just more of Britain’s continuing cultural suicide.

In this case, the deception and sleight of hand are clumsy and obvious. Note that the subtitle of the Guardian article claims that “the designs of Europe’s greatest buildings were plundered from the Islamic world.” A centerpiece of Diana Darke’s case for that is that “Notre-Dame’s architectural design, like all gothic cathedrals in Europe, comes directly from Syria’s Qalb Lozeh fifth-century church.”

A fifth-century church. Islam arose in the seventh and eighth centuries. What exactly does the design of a pre-Islamic church in Syria have to do with the Islamic world? Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. It just happens that the site of this church was conquered by Muslims several centuries after it was built, so for Diana Darke, the Guardian, and their luckless readers, this becomes an example of how the West “stole from” or “plundered” the Islamic world.

Even more ridiculous is the claim that the Dome of the Rock was the basis for church architecture in Europe, when the Dome of the Rock itself was patterned after the great cathedral in Constantinople, Hagia Sophia. St. Mark’s in Venice was also patterned after Hagia Sophia, although Darke claims it was based on the Dome of the Rock. The interior of St. Mark’s is covered on virtually every available space with Christian art, as was the interior of Hagia Sophia. Which is its more likely influence? If those who built St. Mark’s were imitating the Dome of the Rock, why didn’t they opt for a more austere interior?

This nonsense from Diana Darke is part of a much larger effort. Another example of the same cultural self-abnegation came last fall, when the British Museum ran a lavish exhibition called “Inspired by the East,” about how Western art had been massively influenced by Islamic art. Never mind that the Islamic influence on Western art was severely limited by the fact that Sharia forbids representation of the human form. That fact might have reflected negatively upon Islam and Sharia, and was left to the background.

Did the British Museum host an exhibition on how Western art influenced the Islamic world, a topic about which there is a great deal that could be said, ranging from the cultural appropriation of Byzantine church architecture to the stylistic similarities of Shi’ite iconography to Western art? Of course not. The objective here is to get Westerners to despise their own heritage, not revere it.

The British Museum, Diana Darke and the Guardian are doing the British public, and people all over the Western world, a grave disservice by misleading them about their own culture and heritage, and doing so in a way that is designed to render them complacent and defenseless in the face of a genuine threat: that of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others.

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President of NOW steps down amid racism allegations at feminist group

The president of the National Organization for Women (Now) has reportedly resigned following accusations of racism and a toxic work environment at America’s largest feminist group.

In an email to members of the organisation on Sunday night, citing health issues, Toni Van Pelt announced she will be leaving later this month and retiring, according to the Daily Beast.

Now did not immediately respond to a Guardian request for comment.

Vice-president Christian Nunes will reportedly replace Van Pelt as president of the group, which was founded in 1966 and has more than 500,000 members.

Van Pelt was elected in 2017. She reportedly wrote in her email that she had been struggling with a “very painful health issue” for a year and that her doctor had “implored me for months to stop working”.

She reportedly added: “I have been ignoring my doctor’s advice and my health for too long, so I have made the very hard decision to retire and step down as president of Now.”

Her resignation reportedly comes after an internal investigation into allegations of racism and a toxic work environment and as 26 chapter leaders called for Van Pelt to go.

Shortly after Van Pelt’s resignation email was sent, the Beast reported, Now leaders were sent another email stating that the investigation had found “governance issues and evidence of a toxic work environment” but that allegations of racial discrimination and retaliation had not been upheld.

It reportedly read: “Now is committed to addressing these issues and to working together to move forward and fight for the equality of all women.”

The Florida Now president, Kim Porteous, who was reportedly among leaders who called for Van Pelt’s resignation, told the Daily Beast putting Van Pelt’s resignation down to health issues was “offensive”.

“We cannot move forward with restorative justice by covering up racism or making excuses for people to leave,” she said.

A June investigation by the website found that Van Pelt had been accused of racist behaviour by more than 15 former staff members and interns and that former vice-president Gilda Yazzie had filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against Now.

A letter calling on Van Pelt to resign was reportedly signed by 26 of 35 state chapters and the boards of Washington DC and Twin Cities stepped down in protest. Nine of 15 national board members had also called for her to leave.

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Ninth Circuit Strikes Down CA Magazine Ban

The increasingly less liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 decision Friday, ruling that California’s ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds was unconstitutional.

Writing for the majority, Judge Kenneth Lee said, “California’s near-categorical ban of [large-capacity magazines] strikes at the core of the Second Amendment — the right to armed self-defense. Armed self-defense is a fundamental right rooted in tradition and the text of the Second Amendment. Indeed, from pre-colonial times to today’s post-modern era, the right to defend hearth and home has remained paramount. California’s law imposes a substantial burden on this right to self-defense.” Therefore, he concluded, “It cannot stand.” If standard-capacity magazines are illegal, what does the Second Amendment really protect? This is a small but important win for Americans’ Second Amendment rights in the nation’s most leftist state.

For one thing, the Ninth Circuit’s decision is a clear rebuke of Senator Kamala Harris’s stance against the Second Amendment. Of California’s former attorney general, National Shooting Sports Foundation spokesman Mark Oliva pointedly observed, “During her short-lived presidential campaign, she demanded gun-control legislation within 100 days and threatened executive actions if Congress didn’t deliver. Senator Harris was clear when she said gun control would be an administration priority. Her platform included entertaining forced confiscation of lawfully owned semiautomatic rifles, redefining ‘sporting purpose’ for lawful firearm possession, criminalizing private firearm transfers and repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. In fact, she supports politicizing the Department of Justice and using the weight of the federal government to harass a constitutionally protected industry in a series of frivolous lawsuits to bankrupt manufactures.”

Last October, Harris spoke to the leftist anti-gun lobby March for Our Lives and expressed her support for the forced confiscation of firearms. “We have to have a buyback program and I support a mandatory gun buyback program,” Harris said. “It’s got to be smart. We’ve got to do it the right way but there are five million [assault weapons] at least, some estimate as many as 10 million, and we’re going to have to have smart public policy that’s about taking those off the streets but doing it the right way.”

Once again, the facts on homicides using firearms and specifically the erroneous term “assault weapons” simply do not comport with the anti-gun lobby’s fallacious narrative. As Kevin Williamson astutely notes, “So-called assault rifles are instruments of homicide only rarely — so rarely, in fact, that government records rarely break them out as their own category. In 2018, all rifles — from scary-looking black ‘assault rifles’ to granddad’s deer rifle — accounted for fewer than 300 murders, according to the FBI. More Americans are beaten to death with fists or baseball bats than are shot to death with ‘assault rifles,’ and five times as many are stabbed to death.” That’s true even though rifles like the much-maligned AR-15 use standard-capacity magazines holding 30 rounds, far above California’s ridiculous limit of 10.

Joe Biden’s choice of Harris as his running mate only serves to further cement him as the anti-Second Amendment candidate. As the NRA’s Jason Ouimet observed, “You’re dealing with a guy who’s got a complete and total anti-gun platform. And for that little bit of moderate that he wanted to purport, I think that went out the window.” Indeed, picking Harris — not to mention the Ninth Circuit ruling — serves to show just how far left Biden’s platform is.

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Kentucky Photographer Wins Right to Refuse Service to Same-Sex Couples

A federal judge in Kentucky has blocked the city of Louisville from enforcing an anti-discrimination law against a Christian wedding photographer, allowing her to refuse to work same-sex weddings on grounds that her work is an expression of free speech and compelling it would be unconstitutional.

“A government can no more compel that speech than it can compel a freelance speechwriter to write for a political candidate she opposes,” U.S. District Judge Justin Walker wrote in a decision on August 14, explaining his rationale for issuing a preliminary injunction (pdf) in favor of photographer and blogger Chelsey Nelson.

Walker essentially sided with Nelson’s portrayal of her work as a form of “storytelling” and expression of free speech, ruling that it would violate her constitutional right for Louisville authorities to force her to express celebratory messages about same-sex weddings through photographs and blog posts.

“Under our Constitution, the government can’t force them to march for, or salute in favor of, or create an artistic expression that celebrates, a marriage that their conscience doesn’t condone. America is wide enough for those who applaud same-sex marriage and those who refuse to,” Walker wrote in the ruling.

Nelson filed a lawsuit against the city of Louisville in 2019 (pdf), in which her attorneys explained that “because Chelsey believes that God created marriage to be an exclusive covenant between one man and one woman, Chelsey cannot tell stories promoting or celebrating any wedding or marriage not between one man and one woman, such as same-sex marriage, polygamous marriage, or open marriage.”

Her lawyers argued that “Louisville’s law threatens Chelsey’s storytelling and livelihood,” referring to the city’s rule known as the “Fairness Ordinance.” Passed in 1999, it prevents discrimination based on sexual orientation for housing, employment, and public accommodations.

Walker’s decision prevents the city from enforcing this rule against Nelson while her lawsuit makes its way through the courts. His preliminary injunction indicates he thinks the courts will ultimately determine that the Louisville law violates Nelson’s free speech rights.

“Because the Accommodations Provision compels Nelson to express herself in a manner contrary to her conscience, the Court presumes that the provision—as applied to Nelson—is unconstitutional,” Walker wrote. “To be sure, without discovery or even an answer from Louisville, it’s premature to say Nelson will definitely prevail. But it’s highly likely.”

While Walker sided with Nelson’s argument that her work is a form of expression of free speech and so merits protection from Louisville’s law, he rejected the idea that the ruling flung open the door to discrimination.

“To be clear, most applications of antidiscrimination laws—including Louisville’s Fairness Ordinance—are constitutional. Today’s ruling is not a license to discriminate. Nor does it allow for the ‘serious stigma’ that results from a sign in the window announcing that an owner won’t serve gay and lesbian customers,” Walker wrote.

“In Louisville, since 1999 and still today, Marriott cannot refuse a room to a same-sex couple. McDonald’s cannot deny a man dinner simply because he is gay. Neither an empty hotel room, nor a Big Mac, is speech. And it is unnecessary today to decide any questions unrelated to speech.”

Jonathan Scruggs, a lawyer from the Alliance Defending Freedom who argued in favor of Nelson during court proceedings, hailed the court’s decision.

“Just like every American, photographers, and writers like Chelsey should be free to peacefully live and work according to their faith without fear of unjust punishment by the government,” Scruggs said, Kentucky Today reported. “The court was right to halt enforcement of Louisville’s law against Chelsey while her case moves forward. She serves everyone. She simply cannot endorse or participate in ceremonies she objects to, and the city has no right to eliminate the editorial control she has over her own photographs and blogs.”

The Department of Justice earlier weighed in, issuing a statement of interest in February.

“The central question presented in this case is whether the government can compel a wedding photographer to photograph, provide photography editing services for, and blog about weddings of which she does not approve, and does not wish to photograph or to promote,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband. “The answer is no.”

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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