Fading Memories

I ran across a deeply moving article penned by a Florida born woman now living in Virginia's Blue Ridge foothills, whose online identity is "Dymphna." She teams with "Baron Bodissey" on a widely read blog titled Gates of Vienna. The blog name is drawn from the Islamic seige of Vienna, Austria in 1683, the year the warring Muslims were turned back at Vienna's gates in their quest to conquer Europe. The subtitle for Gates of Vienna reads as follows: "At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war."

More on Dymphna's story below, but first a little background to it all.

President Bush has tagged our struggle against Al Quaeda and their cohorts, The War on Terror. And others even go so far as to label this struggle WWIII. But the deeper one looks, the more it becomes evident that this war with Islam is not new. In recent memory of course are the murders of eleven Israeli atheletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Steven Spielberg produced a movie about those events and the aftermath. In 1983, two major attacks occurred in Bierut, Lebanon, the first at the U.S. Embassy, and the second at a Marine barracks. In all, 304 people lost their lives in those heinous acts of war. In 1993, four terrorists attempted to blow up the World Trade Center in New York City, killing four and wounding 1,042. These all pale in comparison of course to the horrors of 9/11.

Noted above are just the major events. Israel has suffered a seemingly endless string of murderous terrorist attacks for many, many years. And not mentioned in detail here are many aircraft hijackings, and numerous random acts of terror over the last thirty years.

The New York Post carried an article on Thursday (May 11th) written by Amir Teheri which reveals a deeper meaning in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to president Bush. Here's what Teheri said:

"Ahmadinejad's move fits into a 14-century-long Muslim tradition, initiated by the Prophet Muhammad himself, of writing letters to "the rulers of the world." In 625 A.D., having consolidated his position in Medina and established a secure power base for his rule, the prophet decided it was time to call on "the infidel" to abandon their faith and submit to Islam. He dictated letters to Khosrow Parviz, the Persian king of kings (a Zoroastrian), and to Emperor Heraclius of Byzantium and the Ethiopian monarch Negus (both Christian).

"To each, the prophet's offer was simple: Convert to Islam and secure a place in paradise - or cling to your beliefs and face the sword of Islam."

So, are we to believe that Ahmadinejad's letter carries a double meaning? A prelude to war with Iran? Read Teheri's entire article here.

Now, on to Dymphna's story. In The Last Boat Out of Liverpool, Dymphna writes of her English mother's marriage to an American and their move to the U.S. on the cusp of WWII. Her mother, she explains, like many of that era, intuitively understood the horrors of Germany's Nazi power, particularly their hatred for all things Jewish. And yet, like so many, her mother never really discussed the Holocaust.

Dymphna connects those dark days of the past—days when so many practiced a denial of the Holocaust horrors—with trends in our own day and time. She writes:

"The most bizarre and perverted aspect of this phenomenon of self-hatred is the denial of the Holocaust itself. This symptom of our cultural depravity, even if it exists only on the fringes, is deeply disturbing for what it portends for the future of the West. If we are denied our remembrance of the past — and 9/11 is now entering this “VERBOTEN” zone — then what are we?

"What are we, with no history?"

Read the article. It's chilling!