In “Islam’s Expansion Across Europe: Not Martin Luther’s Fault,” one Paul Gottfried pretends to respond to my article, “The Pro-Islamic West: Born 500 years Ago.” While many of his own readers saw through and exposed his misrepresentations in the comments section more thoroughly than I ever would have, Gottfried’s piece is still worth examining if only for the important lessons surrounding it.
First, if you seek an example of or are uncertain what a “strawman argument” is—typically defined as “giving the impression of refuting an opponent’s argument, while refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent”—then look no further than to Gottfried’s “rebuttal” which exemplifies the strawman fallacy in a very special way, beginning with its title: “Islam’s Expansion Across Europe: Not Martin Luther’s Fault.” Bravo, Gottfried—what an insight! But who ever said “Islam’s expansion across Europe” was Luther’s fault? Well, if you read Gottfried’s piece without crosschecking his claims against my article, apparently I did. Of course, back in the real world, I never did. Indeed, as someone who just finished writing a (forthcoming) book about the history of Islamic jihad against Europe—at least 75 percent of which occurred before not after Luther—the claim strikes me more than most as absurd.
Gottfried’s next obvious distortion appears in his very opening sentence: “In one of the stranger manifestations of misguided Catholic piety or repugnance for the Protestant Reformation, being exhibited on the occasion of its 500th anniversary, Raymond Ibrahim reveals a bizarre version of the blame game.” I will address the “repugnance” thing below; for now, why does Gottfried offer as a possibility that I might have been motivated by “misguided Catholic piety” when I had clearly written that “I am, for the record, neither Protestant nor Catholic”?
Only two conclusions exist: either Gottfried never read my article (which is pathetic for someone claiming to “rebut” it), or else he is willfully misrepresenting. Although my first instinct was inclined to the former, other “techniques” employed by Gottfried point to willful deception. For example, he never quotes me as saying the things he claims I say—the way I am quoting him here—except on two occasions: in both, he claims I wrote that Luther urged “passivity” against the hostile Muslim invaders. In reality, I had written that “Luther originally preached passivity,” which, of course, is an indisputable fact. Lest there remain any confusion on this point, along with the several quotes and sources I cited in my original article—including Luther’s own words that although the Muslim sultan “rages most intensely by murdering Christians in the body … he, after all, does nothing by this but fill heaven with saints”—here are some more Western authorities:
According to S.J. Allen and Emilie Amt, university professors and editors of The Crusades: A Reader: “The Protestant leader Martin Luther had earlier preached against an Ottoman crusade, believing that it was a Catholic cause, and therefore wrong in the eyes of God. Luther changed his mind after Vienna, when the threat moved closer to home…” (p. 413).
Ditto for Thomas Madden (Crusades historian): “Luther set the tone for Protestant thought on the Turkish threat. When [Pope] Leo X was still trying to resurrect his crusade in 1520, Luther wrote that ‘to fight against the Turks is to oppose the judgement God visits upon our iniquities through them.’ In Luther’s view, crusades against the Ottomans were wars against God…. After the siege of Vienna in 1529, the Turkish threat became much more dire to Germans, and so Luther changed his mind” (A New Concise History of the Crusades, pp. 209-210).
Be that as it may; the relevant question here is, why does Gottfried intentionally misquote me—twice—as saying that Luther preached “passivity” when I wrote that he “originally preached passivity”? Simple: my formulation is correct, whereas something as “subtle” as omitting my qualifier (“originally”) leads to the formulation that Gottfried needs to knock out his strawman.
One can go on and on, but the point should be clear by now. Anyone interested in seeing more observations concerning Gottfried’s distortions is encouraged to go through the comments section of his article.[*]
As for the second, more important lesson. Although many Protestants made it a point to agree with my original article, for others, the Reformation and especially Luther seem to be beyond reproach. Now, on the one hand, I understand the frustration, especially among pro-Israel Protestants: they’ve had to apologize for and be embarrassed by Luther’s notorious antisemitism—and they’ll be damned if Islam is also going to be laid at Luther’s feet; hence the kneejerk response to any claim that negatively associates Luther with Islam.
But this misses the point of my original article entirely: to trace how and why the image of Islam dramatically improved in the West over the last few centuries; and yes, like it or not, Protestantism and its leaders played a major if unintentional role in this change, particularly by using “good” and “noble” Islam as a foil to demonize “bad” and “corrupt” Catholicism with. This is not a “controversial” view; it is established fact confirmed by many historians, including Protestant ones. Nor does the mere acknowledgment of this fact reflect, as Gottfried claims, “a repugnance [on my part] for the Protestant Reformation.”
To reiterate—and for those hard of reading or worse—here is what I wrote in my original article:
That the Protestant Reformation unwittingly benefited Islam should not be interpreted as an attack on the Reformation or a defense of Catholicism. Nor does it say anything about the theological merits, or truths, of either…. Rather, the point here is that the actions of fallible men, of both religious persuasions, had unforeseen consequences. And, if the historic rifts within Christendom—beginning at Chalcedon in 451, when Orthodoxy (not Catholicism or Protestantism) broke apart—always worked to Islam’s advantage, it should come as no surprise that the greatest of all Christian sunderings also had the greatest impact.
Incidentally, the irony of all this is that it is I, not those who revere Luther, who emulates his approach. For I truly find no man—not just popes, but Protestants, including their founder—infallible. (Hence here I stand. I can do no other.)
From here we reach the greatest of all lessons: while increasing numbers of Western people are aware that Islam is hostile to the other, many fail to progress beyond this simple truism. The result is that they see only half the picture: yes, Islam is an intrinsically militant and supremacist creed—but that is not why the West is currently being terrorized by it. Rather, the West is being terrorized because of the West. Long gone are the days when Muslims, through sheer might alone, threatened and invaded the West. Today Islam is being enabled and empowered entirely thanks to a number of warped Western philosophies and “isms” that have metastasized among and crippled the populace from effectively responding to the suicidal road their civilization is speeding on.
As such, a little introspection is needed.
Plainly put, those who insist Islam is intolerant and violent—while equally insisting that nothing associated with them or theirs can ever be implicated in the equation—should consider if they are consigning themselves to a permanent state of limbo, forever taking one step forward followed by another step back in their struggle against jihad.
[*] Perhaps the most comprehensive fisking Gottfried received was at the keyboard of commenter Brian Kelly. Because it still continues to appear as “awaiting moderation” under the Gottfried article, relevant portions of it follow:
Everything from the title of this article on downwards is a misrepresentation of Ibrahim’s article. The article being complained about here by Gottfried just doesn’t exist. The one Gottfried links to just doesn’t say the things that Gottfried says it says. Let’s fisk out some examples, starting with the title:
Gottfried’s Title: ISLAM’S EXPANSION ACROSS EUROPE: NOT MARTIN LUTHER’S FAULT
Did Ibrahim say that Islams expansion into Europe was Martin Luther’s fault? No. In fact, he disavowed that claim of course.
Gottfried: “Raymond Ibrahim’s bizarre version of the blame game.”
What follows is Gottfried’s version of the blame game, which Ibrahim never participated in, and even disavowed.
Gottfried: “he places the blame for Muslim Turkish expansion across Eastern and Central Europe in the sixteenth century at the doorstep of Martin Luther.”
No he doesn’t. Why doesn’t Gottfried QUOTE Ibrahim placing the blame on Martin Luther? Answer: because Ibrahim doesn’t place the blame on Martin Luther.
Gottfried: “[implying that Ibrahim said] If this wayward monk had not nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the Wittenberg cathedral on October 31, 1517, and had not launched a rebellion against the Roman Church, the Muslim danger supposedly could have been contained.”
Says who? Gottfried again. Only Gottfried makes this BIZZARE claim. Not Ibrahim. Again, if Ibrahim had said this, Gottfried would have quoted it.
Gottfried says: “[implying that Ibrahim said] Not only did Luther and his followers weaken the unity of the Christian West, but also gave support to the Muslim penetration of Europe. While the Turkish army moved from Hungary westward toward Vienna, Luther was urging “passivity” before the hostile invaders and, according to Ibrahim, implicitly and explicitly aiding the Turks by weakening the resolve of Christian Europe.”
Again, Gottfried is implying that ‘Ibrahim says’, but not quoting him, because Ibrahim NEVER said it.
That’s a very unscholarly, very sloppy, and sensationalized misrepresentation of what Ibrahim said. He NEVER said that Luther ‘gave support’ to the Muslim penetration of Europe. It is words like ‘giving support’ which make the difference between unhelpful actions in favor of an enemy, and treason.
Gottfried says: There are so many holes in this anti-Protestant brief that one hardly knows where to begin one’s criticism.
However many “holes” one imagines one sees, a good place to begin one’s criticism is to actually READ the article properly to make sure the holes exist. Make sure you can represent a person properly before you disagree with him. Use quotes, like a professor teaches their students to do in cases like this. Quotes force the writer to be balanced.
Gottfried says: He did not urge “passivity” in the face of this civilizational crisis. Indeed, Luther was willing to join forces with Catholic princes, even though they were killing and expelling his followers, in order to combat the “Devil’s army.”
Ibrahim did say that Luther ORIGINALLY preached passivity towards Islam, but notice how Gottfried takes the ‘originally’ out and argues as if Ibrahim said it without the qualification of ‘originally’.
[…]
Gottfried said: “Moreover, between 1525 and 1530, even while the Turks were moving on Vienna, the Habsburg emperor and Europe’s premier defender of the Catholic faith, Charles V, was fighting against his fellow-Catholics, including Pope Clement VII, the French, the English, and the Republics of Venice and Florence.”
Well, yes. Which is exactly the kind of thing that Ibrahim himself drew attention to out in his balanced article, and a little more scholarly reading of Ibrahim’s article and less indignation would have spared Gottfried from indignantly adding the missing balance to Ibrahim’s article which Ibrahim had already *explicitly* added himself : Ibrahim said: ‘By 1535, “It was one of the bitterest truths,” writes historian Roger Crowley, “that the Catholic King [Charles V] would spend more time, money, and energy fighting the French and the Protestants than he ever devoted to the war with [Sultan] Suleiman” ‘
Ibrahim’s article itself has many other calm and scholarly disavowals all of the kinds of point that Gottfried is falsely accusing him of making:
Ibrahim said: That the Protestant Reformation unwittingly benefited Islam should not be interpreted as an attack on the Reformation or a defense of Catholicism.
So: the summary of the situation is that Gottfried’s article is a big, emotional, straw man. It is hysterical. As Ibrahim says, he does not have a ‘horse in this race’. Unfortunately, when there is a many-century-old fight going on, even if you don’t want to take part in it, people will perceive you that way, and it’s often the people who have a horse in the race who can’t but see you that way. Those whose views are biased and emotional see the opposing views of others as biased and emotional, even when they are not.
I thought your first article was very good, and clearly treated the question of a more favourable view of islam in the West as an unforeseen consequence of the Reformation. I hadn’t considered it that way. However, I think a far more dangerous tendency in Western thought and culture is relativism. It started with people like Benjamin Lee Whorf who wanted to recognise the value of indigenous cultures and languages. But it has become the HIV of Western thought and culture, undermining them from within, subverting the “immune system” of critical thought and scepticism.
There is apparently a “Church of Luther” among some protestant historians as there is a “Church of Lincoln” regarding Civil War historians. In both cases you will find well credentialed academics who will automatically find fault with any criticism of their hero, their icon. I believe the most precise failure of Gottfried’s article is that it is an authoritative strawman argument, though I believe invincible ignorance applies in this case as well. The decision by FPM to publish the Gottfried article is questionable, but in the comments section can be found freedom of speech at its best. The David Horowitz Freedom Center has not censored my comments and over time it appears that there is largely open permission of anyone to reply to articles. Sadly, I do not always find this same openness among other anti-jihadist writers or other groups purportedly advocating freedom of speech. The David Horowitz Freedom Center is great in this way, as in numerous other ways.
Thanks for that clarification, Raymond. But there is no reason to be concerned. I doubt that very many people (if any) read your article the way that Mr. Gottfried did. It is an unfortunate fact of life that most of us are woefully unprepared to understand the religious history of the world in any depth, and the woods are full of people with wildly inaccurate (and often partisan) views of the way things actually happened. The only rational response is to do as you are doing, and have always done, and continue to search for authentic source materials and to present them in a fair and impartial manner.
In the Bula Exurge Domine Pope Leo X condemns the following error of Luther, among many: “34. Battling the Turks is contrary to the will of God, who uses them to punish our iniquity.”
I am a Protestant who is grateful for the Reformation, and obviously rejects the claims of the Roman Church. No doubt Protestantism and Luther had the unintended effect of bolstering Islam against the Roman Church and Roman Church territory. There is a lot of blame to go around. Any honest Christian has to point the finger at their own Church at some point for enabling Islamism in the West. Today, the Pope and the hierarchy ( who are not incidental) are among the World’s most staunch promoters and enablers of Islamism in the West. Protestant Evangelicals, while LIKE MANY ROMAN CATHOLIC BELIEVERS AMONG THE LAITY, largely condemn and reject Islam, yet still have significant leadership that enables and promotes Islamizstion in the West. Luther and many Protestants are quoted saying, “let that Lion go” in reference to their support of freedom of speech, freedom of the press and indeed all of the rights guaranteed in classic liberalism. Islam is hostile to that liberty that Protestantism is responsible for implementing in the West. Will Protestants and Catholics who value our God given liberty, as reflected in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, defend that liberty or do things, intentionally like the current Roman Church leadership and some Evangelical leaders (e.g. “Christ At the Checkpoint”) or unintentionally, like Luther, that facilitate Islam.
I am a Protestant who is grateful for the Reformation, and obviously rejects the claims of the Roman Church. No doubt Protestantism and Luther had the unintended effect of bolstering Islam against the Roman Church and Roman Church territory. There is a lot of blame to go around. Any honest Christian has to point the finger at their own Church at some point for enabling Islamism in the West. Today, the Pope and the hierarchy ( who are not incidental) are among the World’s most staunch promoters and enablers of Islamism in the West. Protestant Evangelicals, while LIKE MANY ROMAN CATHOLIC BELIEVERS AMONG THE LAITY, largely condemn and reject Islam, yet still have significant leadership that enables and promotes Islamizstion in the West. Luther and many Protestants are quoted saying, “let that Lion go” in reference to their support of freedom of speech, freedom of the press and indeed all of the rights guaranteed in classic liberalism. Islam is hostile to that liberty that Protestantism is responsible for implementing in the West. Will Protestants and Catholics who value our God given liberty, as reflected in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, defend that liberty or do things, intentionally like the current Roman Church leadership and some Evangelical leaders (e.g. “Christ At the Checkpoint”) or unintentionally, like Luther, that facilitate Islam.
Yes, the big split in Christendom caused by the Protestant Reformation did make it harder to unite against Islam, and still does, but the rise of Science rocketed the West ahead of the Muslim World and more than made up for it. Now that we have the atomic bomb it’s becoming a parody of itself as the atheistic establishment refuses to use it to finish Islam off, while Muslims are working 24/7/365 to get the bomb for themselves to use on Westerners and resume Muhammad’s Great Jihad with nukes. The West is ours to lose, so let’s hope it can forget its many differences long enough one day to finish Islam off along the lines of my Winslow Plan for Defeating Islam Forever, but that day seems far off, probably requiring a horrible tragedy to wake the West up first. Read my plan by Googling it and see how dumb our leaders are nowadays and how a total 180 degree course correction will be required.
T.L., i agree with your view of islam, but do U really believe that the leaders of western and westernized republics are actually stupid? i submit that these people did not reach their positions by being stupid; rather, although many are indeed too lazy to verify islam for themselves, assuming that somebody further up the chain of responsibility has already checked it, those at the top have no such excuse, and are in all probability traitors. they are using pious muslims as a proxy army to destabilize the various governments of the nations in which they live and which they are “leading,” all in order to seize power once society begins to malfunction due to daily bloodshed in the streets. yes, there will be the occasional leader at the top who will assume that his predecessors verified that islam is safe, but especially in countries without a constitutional guarantee of free speech, in which anti-islam (as opposed to anti-*muslim*) fakebook and twister posts have resulted in jail sentences, it is beyond comprehension that an innocent-yet-ignorant “leader” would allow such sentences without verifying that islam is indeed safe. their very actions condemn them, revealing their treason.
The doctrine of papal infallibility does not claim any or all popes are perfect. It’s more nuanced than that. (See the difference between infallibility and impeccability.)
While Ibrahim is correct to criticize Gottfried’s mischaracterizations, he was not accurate in his original article by implying that Protestants began the sort of passivity towards Islamic conquest and rule that he describes. For example, Ibrahim title’s for the original title read “Pro-Islamic West was BORN 500 Years Ago Today” which is wrong. Also Ibrahim was inaccurate when he said Luther “initiated” the phenomenon of romanticizing or relativizing Islamic rulers and/or counciling passivity towards Islamic conquerors.
Ibrahim quoted Cardini to bolster his claim that Luther “initiated” what he describes, but in fact Cardini did not use the words “initiated.” Cardini’s word “boost” indicates that this sort of romanticizing Islamic rule and encouraging passive acceptance of Islamic conquest already existed and that is true. Protestants did NOT invent the phenomenon that Ibrahim is trying to describe. In fact SOME Eastern Christians, including SOME Coptic leaders, long before had whitewashed the treatment of Christians under Islamic rule claiming, on the basis of dubious evidence, that Muslim rulers treated non-Chaledonian Christians better than the Byzantines did. Read Robert Hoyland (Seeing Islam as Others Saw It and In God’s Path: The Arab Conquests…): he points out that some later, i.e. 9th century Monophysite Christian clerical writers started this trope, but it is not an idea expressed at the time by Eastern Christians conquered by Muslims from the Eastern Empire AT THE TIME OF THE CONQUEST. Read John of Nikiu, who actually experienced both Roman rule in Egypt AND Muslim conquest and rule. He never claims Muslim rulers were better than Roman rulers though he critcized both (for different sins). Contrast John of Nikiu’s treatment of early Muslim rule in Egypt with the treatment by the later writer (not someone who experienced the conquest firsthand) in the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria; it’s significantly more critical, likening Muslim rule to Pharoah’s harsh yoke. Also, in the 15th century SOME Greek Christians argued that they would be better treated by Muslim rulers than by Roman Catholics, which was used to argue against the proposed unification with Rome. Read chronicler Doukas: he describes some anti-unionist Greek Christians who argued better the “turban than the papal tiara” (including Grand Duke Notaras) and he points out how mistaken they were.(The Ottomans killed Notaras’ son in front of his eyes (to prevent a worse fate) at least according to Doukas, which Catholic rulers would not have done). Also Ibrahim notes some minor, weak Protestant princes allying with the Ottomans, but ignores the MUCH more important FRENCH alliance with the Ottomans to weaken the Hapsburgs. From the same period Catholic Jean Bodin tried to deny the cruelty of Ottoman conquest and rule against the Eastern Europeans who experienced both by arguing Muslims were tolerant of Christians. (Bodin did this to defend absolutist type rule, not Islam per se). And the more general phenomenon romanticizing non-Western polities to condemn Western ones was also engaged in by Montaigne (see “Cannabals”) and even some Catholics in the New World (Las Casas , Peter Martyr Angleria etc.) in the same Reformation/Counterreformation period .
One can say that some Protestants have contributed to a history of whitewashing the treatment of Christians by Muslim rulers and counciling indifference and passivity towards Muslim aggression but they did NOT invent it, nor were they the first to promote it.
Ibrahim needs to look at the much earlier phenomenon of some Eastern Christians, including some Coptic leaders, romanticizing Islamic rule and Muslim rulers and claiming, on the basis of very faulty evidence, that they were better than Christian rulers.
Luther completely missed the boat when he obtained his inspiration from Paul. Had he been inspired by Christ, the “horse’s mouth”, if you will permit the analogy, Luther would not have been misled by that which “fell away from the horse” — Paul.
While Luther should be credited for cutting 5 solae down to just 3, if Luther had studied Christ, Luther could’ve cut it down to just one: Solum Dei Amor: We owe our existence to God’s Love Alone.