Rushdie Haunted by his unholy Ghosts — Page 10
10 Mohamed Arshad Ahmedi happens and the power of a once great empire transfers from one hand to another. And this is what happened to the Muslim rule in the West at the turn of the 11th Century, which was directly in keep- ing with the Divine Plan as prophecied in the Holy Qur’an. A process of disintegration began in the 11th century and there was a break-up of Muslim rule which gave an opportunity to the Christian princes in north-west Spain, (hitherto semi-independent and paying tribute to the central Muslim government) to make themselves fully independent and to extend the territories that they controlled. Gradually, Muslim power was transferred from the Almoravids and the Berbers to the Almohads. After the disappearance of the Almohads, the Christian Reconquista made rapid progress. Although even the Spanish historians are divided about the interpretation of the Reconquista, what is quite evident is that it was initiated to stem the tide of Islamic culture and thinking which was about to sink that of the Christians. So advanced was the Islamic culture that the Christians were unable to rationalise why they had to remove the Muslims from Spain. Even as late as 1602, the Archbishop of Valencia, when pro- viding Philip III with reason for driving out the Muslims, com- mented that: ‘they commended nothing so much as that liberty of con- science, in all matters of religion, which the Turks and all other Muhammadans, suffer their subjects to enjoy. ’ The poor Christians were forced to worship in freedom, cel- ebrate openly, and the dastardly Muslims even helped them to build churches! Another historian, Hugh Trevor-Roper, in The Rise of Christian Europe has commented on the dubious motives of the Crusades which went hand in hand with other forms of European advance and had nothing to do with the rescue of the Holy Places :