April 5, 2016 Show with Darío Fernández-Morera on “The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host Chris Arnton. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet earth listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnton your host of Iron Sharpens Iron wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this fifth day of April 2016 and we apologize to all of you who were patiently waiting for Iron Sharpens Iron to actually begin.

We started six minutes late for reasons unknown to us at this point. We could not connect with the station in Texas, leading edge radio network that broadcasts and live streams our program so thankfully

God at the last minute, six minutes after four, got us re -plugged into the station, thankfully.

They can all set their watches back now. And I'm so glad that we are technically working fine, at least for now, is because we have a very,

I think, a fascinating subject that we're addressing for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Although we've had this subject of Islam addressed many times by various experts in the field and have even had

Muslims on the program to debate evangelical Christian scholars. Today we have a,

I think, a fascinating topic which is basically the myth of the

Andalusian paradise. Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic rule in medieval

Spain. And scholars, journalists, and politicians uphold Muslim -ruled medieval

Spain, Al -Andalus, as a multicultural paradise, a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in harmony.

There's only one problem with this widely accepted account, according to our guest today. It is a myth. In this groundbreaking book,

Northwestern University scholar Dario Fernandez Morela tells the full story of Islamic Spain.

The myth of the Andalusian paradise shines light on hidden features of this medieval culture by drawing on an abundance of primary sources that scholars have ignored, as well as archaeological evidence only recently unearthed.

And our guest today, Dario Fernandez Morela, is Associate Professor of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Northwestern University.

A former member of the National Council on the Humanities, he holds a BA from Stanford University, an

MA from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD from Harvard University. He has published several books and many articles on cultural, literary, historical, and methodological issues in Spain, Latin America, and the

United States, and it's my great honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dario Fernandez Morela.

Well, thank you very much for inviting me to your show, and I'm honored to be here.

And I ask of your apologies if I butchered the pronunciation of your name. I think you did pretty well.

And in studio with me, as he has been for the last couple of months, is the

Reverend Buzz Taylor, who is my co -host today again. Welcome back to the program, Reverend Buzz. Thank you.

Good to be here, especially for this topic again. And I'd like to also announce immediately our email address for those of you listening who would like to ask a question of our guest on this issue.

Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

United States. And we ask that you only remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable because of some pressing need that you have that you do not wish to be identified.

We will honor that request. But if you can provide at least your first name and your location, we would love to have that when you send in your questions.

And that's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Well, this is an interesting topic. We have a number of quotes here from people who seem to believe that the

Andalusian paradise is not a myth, but in fact is a historic reality, including our president,

Barack Obama. Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia.

And according to Yale University professor Maria Rosa Menocal, the new

Islamic polity in Spain not only allowed Jews and Christians to survive, but following Quranic mandate, by and large, protected them.

And we have many other instances of these types of quotes stating the issue of the

Andalusian paradise as historical fact. First of all, before we even get into the subject at hand of the book at greater depth, let our listeners know something about your personal background,

Dario, where you're from and why you pursued this study of the

Andalusian paradise. Well, the reason

I got involved in this topic was that I was researching

Miguel de Cervantes, the great Spanish novelist who wrote

Don Quixote, Don Quixote of La Mancha, a great novel. And I was researching

Cervantes' connection to Islam because he has some

Muslim characters in his Don Quixote, Don Quixote. And some of his characters deal with aspects of history of Islam in Spain.

And so I was researching that aspect. And then I found that most of what had been published on the subject was, shall we say, inaccurate.

So I did write that article, but then I went on to research the topic of Islam in Spain more properly.

And that eventually resulted in the present book. So that's how

I got to the subject that we're talking about today. Now, are you yourself from Spain or Portugal or where are you from?

I was born in Cuba. Oh, okay. Yes. And I came as a legal immigrant to this country from Panama, where I had been living for a while with my parents.

But that's a long story. And part of your education was right here in the fine state of Pennsylvania, where this program is being broadcast from.

Oh, that's also a coincidence. Although initially I lived for a number of years in California, where I went to a junior college first for two years.

And then I got a scholarship to go to Stanford University. And then when

I finished there, I went to the University of Pennsylvania. Well, why don't you let our listeners know something more about this

Andalusian paradise that this whole controversy is over.

Some of the details of what I just quoted Barack Obama over and the

Yale professor who believed that this is not only something that existed, but should be promoted as basically a reality that the

Quran and the religion of Islam innately will produce the cooperation and tolerance of Christians, Jews and Muslims under Islamic rule.

Well, if one looks at the chapters of my book, I abundantly quote from scholars and journalists and politicians who make the kind of claims that you have just underlined there.

And it's not only on the side of the Democratic Party, you know, we've had Republican presidents who have indicated a similar viewpoint, at least one

Republican candidate who is no longer a candidate, Carly Fiorina, I quote her as pointing out that, in fact, in the

Middle Ages, the Islamic caliphate was highly tolerant. All of that, of course, is not supported by the primary sources, which means the chronicles from Islamic writers from the 9th and the 10th and 11th and later centuries, and also from the

Christian chronicles from the 8th and the 9th and the 10th and the later centuries, and also by some of the archaeological evidence that is available.

So the facts of the matter do not support this general assessment of Islamic Spain.

Now, I have not investigated the Qur 'an. I don't claim to be an expert on the

Qur 'an. That's not necessary for what I have done. What I have done is examined the sources relevant to Islamic Spain, which, as I said, are chronicles of both sides, the

Christians and the Muslims, and also some Jewish materials, and also the legal documents from Islamic Spain.

By that I mean the documents that describe the form of Islamic law that was applied in Islamic Spain.

Normally we call that Sharia. More properly, it's Fiqh, which is the application of Sharia to the actual world.

Sharia is a more general term, which basically means the development of law according to the principles given by Allah to Muhammad, and the actual written down forms of that is called

Fiqh. So what I examined was the Fiqh documents from Islamic Spain, and again, none of that supports the rosy picture that we have been in a way sold.

We have been sold a bag of goods, as one says in English. So there you have it.

And I'm sure that some Muslims and even some liberals may claim, and it's ironic to me that so many liberals, political liberals and religious liberals, theological liberals, would ever run to the aid of Muslims because under Sharia law, these types of people are usually the first to be executed.

So I'm not understanding the affinity that liberals have with Islam, but you know that many may be claiming, if there are any listening, but I'm sure that eventually the more your book is being discovered that there are going to be liberals and Muslims saying that you had some kind of an anti -Islamic or anti -Muslim bias that caused you to even want to write this book.

Is there any of this the case? Did you have some kind of an axe to grind against Islam? Not really.

I think that from the practical point of view, the success of Islam is one of its best selling points.

In medieval times, it was very successful in conquering almost half the known world.

So there must be something there that at least at that time was particularly attractive and effective.

And by the way, what I have found out regarding Islamic Spain doesn't mean that there are not many

Muslims and many experts on Islam today who may be right in arguing that that was the wrong interpretation of Islam and that the correct interpretation is the one that they now propose, that Islam is not the way that it was, shall we say, applied in medieval times.

So there's always that falling back position. The first position would be to say that somehow the documents that I use,

I don't know how really they can say that, but I suppose one could say what they are wrong or they were written in Mars and somehow they got to Earth and they're not really

Islamic documents. I really don't know how they would defend that part of the program.

But more feasible would be to say, well, okay, yes, the medieval

Islam was rather, shall we say, harsh, even terrible, but that doesn't mean that Islam is that way.

That was one way of interpreting Islam. Islam actually is very different.

So those people were simply misinterpreting Islam as today, for example, the

Islamic caliphate of al -Baghdadi in Iraq and Syria is misinterpreting

Islam. So this is a much more plausible way of arguing than saying that the documents

I have found are erroneous or wrong or false, which cannot possibly be argued.

See what I mean? I mean, you could also say that those interpretations are wrong and that my interpretation, meaning some expert on Islam today, is the correct one, which may be the case.

No, I'm not an expert on Islam. Right. You're just stating what you believe are the facts, the documentable facts of history.

Yeah, my book is not about Islam. My book is about the presence of Islam in Islamic Spain, and I do use

Islamic and Christian and Jewish materials. So that doesn't necessarily mean that someone who is a

Muslim today is going to be acting the way

Muslims then seem to have acted according to the evidence that I have.

Right. There are very stark differences between different groups of individuals who identify themselves as Muslim all over the world.

There are obviously many peaceful Muslims who believe in peace, but obviously, though...

And then within Islam, even then and today, there were different forms of Islam.

There were Shiites whom the Sunnis considered heretics.

So one would have to take into account how do the Shiites look at Islam.

Those things are complicated. Yes. Even though there are, and perhaps always have been, peace -loving

Muslims, there can be no denying that a great number, even if you're going to say they are a minority, there are a great number, a frightening, a terrifying number, a terrifying and disturbing percentage of Muslims that are bloodthirsty and that do want to destroy all other religions and those who embrace those religions.

But Reverend Buzz Taylor... Well, yes. I'm just trying to think from our... When Chris told me what our subject was going to be,

I had never even heard of the Andalusian paradise. And here, you know, we're talking about the myth of it.

And of course, some people consider it a fact. But for our listeners, could you just back up a little bit?

And I'm sure I'm not the only one who has no clue what we are talking about. Yeah. Describe this myth, this paradise that you would claim and seek to document in your book, fairly lengthy book, that you would claim is a myth, that you would assert is a myth.

Tell us something about this alleged paradise and how even this story got started.

Well, before we get to how the story may have been started, the myth describes us, as our host has pointed out in the words of many authorities, that this

Islamic regime in Spain allowed the

Jews and Christians not only to survive, but actually protect them.

So that's one feature of the Andalusian paradise. Or, as President Barack Obama has pointed out,

I don't know if you've ever heard him say that, but he did say that in all

Andalusia, Islam had a proud tradition of tolerance. Yes, I have heard him say that.

That, again, is part of the Andalusian paradise, a conception, or the economist that well -known, as you know, has said that most

Muslim rulers of the past were far more tolerant of people of other faiths than were

Christian ones. For example, in our Andalus multicultural, multi -religious states ruled by Muslims gave way to a

Christian regime that was grossly intolerant. Those three quotations would give you an idea of the kind of perception of Al -Andalus that I'm talking about when

I describe it as the Andalusian paradise. When are we talking about?

When was this supposed to allegedly have existed? It's supposed to have existed from the 8th century, from the mid -8th century, all the way to the 13th or even the 15th century.

See, by the 13th century, most of Islamic Spain had been reconquered by the

Christians, but there was this little kingdom in Granada that lasted until 1492.

So, depending on how you look at it, you can say, well, you know, this paradise lasted until the fall of the

Umayyads, which was around the 11th century, or it lasted until the 15th century when the last

Muslim kingdom was finally conquered by the Catholic monarchs,

Isabel and Fernando. So, there you have it. That's the time period that we are talking about.

Well, tell us something about the effects of jihad, and then explain to our listeners, who may be unfamiliar with exactly what that means, explain to them what jihad is.

Well, I cannot talk about what jihad is. I can talk about what jihad meant then.

Yes. It may mean something else now, again. Maybe we can talk to a professor of Islamic studies today, who can tell us what jihad actually means for him.

And of course, he will generalize what it means for him to what it should mean for everybody else.

But that's not my concern in this book. My concern in this book is to find out what jihad meant for these medieval forces of Islam that conquered the entire

Middle East, then conquered North Africa, and eventually conquered most of Spain, and tried to conquer

Europe until they were stopped by Charles Martel in 732 at the

Battle of Poitiers. That's the concept of jihad that concerned me in my research, not what jihad means, but what jihad meant for the extension of Islam in those areas.

And what it meant was that the Muslim armies of the

Islamic Caliphate would get to a territory which was not

Islamized, and then they would give the inhabitants the choice of submitting to Islam if they were

Christians or Jews, or convert to Islam without any hesitation, or die.

Those were the three choices. That's what jihad meant. The religion of Islam had to be supreme over the other two religions.

People in the other religions could be, of course, allowed, as I said, to submit, and then under a number of restrictions, practice their religion.

If they were not Christian or Jewish, then the choice was more limited. They either converted or died.

That was what jihad meant at the time, and that's what it meant in Islamic Spain.

When those Muslim armies entered again, they gave the inhabitants those choices, and many inhabitants chose to submit rather than fight.

Why? Because they already had seen, in some cases experienced, what resisting meant.

And resisting meant that once you were defeated, the defeated men could be killed, exterminated, or turned into slaves, and their women certainly would be turned into slaves, as were the children, and their cities would be razed down or burned.

So, the choice was very clear. If you fight, you will lose, and once you lose, the consequences are very, very dire.

So, many, many cities surrendered. Other inhabitants, however, fled.

They fled to the northwest, to the mountains of Galicia and Asturias.

Those lands were never conquered by the Islamic forces. That's what jihad meant at that time.

And as far as I know from quite a number of Christian experts on the subject of Islam, those who are apologists, those who have studied the

Quran and the jihad, I mean the hadith, I'm sorry, many times over, and who have publicly debated the top apologists and clerics within Islam, they have come to the conclusion that that is the definition of jihad that goes back to Muhammad and the earliest

Muslim sources. So, this is nothing that, according to them anyway, in a very convincing way, these apologists that I know, this was not a development of jihad.

This is what the way jihad began. But we're going to be going to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, and we do have several questions, or we have several listeners already who have written questions to you that are waiting to hear those questions asked and answered.

We'll be getting to you as soon as possible after the break. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. And don't go away.

We're going to be right back with our guest, Dario Fernandez -Morera, and our discussion on the myth of the

Andalusian paradise. We'll be right back after these messages. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am

I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,

I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a

Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our

TV program entitled, Resting in Grace. You can find us at providencebaptistchurchma .org,

that's providencebaptistchurchma .org, or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read. He who never quotes will never be quoted.

He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered,

Christ -exalting books for all ages. We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com.

That's solid -ground -books .com, and see what priceless literary gems from the past or present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Thriving Financial is not your typical financial services provider.

As a membership organization, we help Christians be wise with money and live generously every day.

And for the fourth year in a row, we were named one of the world's most ethical companies by the

Ethisphere Institute, a leading international think tank dedicated to the creation, advancement, and sharing of best practices in business ethics.

Contact me, Mike Gallagher, Financial Consultant, at 717 -254 -6433.

Again, 717 -254 -6433 to learn more about the thriving difference.

So much more than ordinary life. Lending faith, finances, and generosity.

That's the Thrivent story. We were made to thrive.

Welcome back. This is Chris Zarnes, and if you just tuned in to Iron Sharpens Iron, our guest today is

Dario Fernandez -Morera, and we are discussing his book,

The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain.

And by the way, Dario, is it Dario or Dario? Well, in Spanish, it's

Dario. In English and Italian, it's Dario. And the

French pronounce it Dario. All right. Well, I'll try to pronounce it the way you would like me to pronounce it.

Is it Dario? I don't care. When Dario is fine with me, Dario is fine with me.

You know, I've been living in this country for many years, so I don't care. All right. We have several listeners.

One of them here is a very prestigious listener, Dr. Tony Costa, who is professor of apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary in Toronto, Canada.

Okay. He says, we hear occasionally that Jews lived better under Islamic rule than under Christian rule.

In other words, Jews were better treated by Muslims than by Christians. Is this true?

Well, again, I should confine myself to Islamic Spain.

Mm hmm. And what happened is we had to go back before the

Islamic invasion to understand the facts of the matter as the documents, both written and archaeological, describe the situation.

And what happened was that there was a Jewish community under Christian rule before Islam invaded the

Iberian Peninsula. And that Jewish community had been subject to a number of discriminatory laws by the rulers of the land.

The rulers wanted eventually to pressure this community to convert to Christianity.

So they made their everyday life very restricted. And so when the

Muslim invaders entered the land, they found that this

Jewish community, understandably, sided with them against the

Christian rulers and the Christian population. And as a result, when

Muslims conquered a city, for example, they could leave the

Jewish community in charge of the city and their forces could move on rapidly to appear suddenly in another city without having to guard their rear guard.

That was part of the success of the Muslim armies in the invasion. And again, as a result of this, the

Jewish community was given a much better way of life than it had before.

But I believe the documents showed this has nothing to do with how tolerant the invaders were.

It had to do with how intelligent the invaders were. Because the

Jewish community had them as a form of counterbalance to the much larger

Christian community that existed. The Muslim invaders initially were relatively small numbers.

So this has nothing to do with the tolerance of medieval Islam. It had to do with the smartness of medieval

Islamic conquerors. Jews were, in fact, subject to regulations that limited their forms of worship.

Jews were confined to Jewish neighborhoods, except for Jewish leaders who, of course, served the

Muslim rulers. But it was very clear that Jews, like Christians, had to be in a position of subordination, of subalternity to the ruling

Muslim community and leaders. And like the Christians, they had to pay a tax to be protected, which, as in the case of the

Christians, was a form of extortion. Pay to be protected or else.

Now we know where the mafia got it. Yes, exactly. It's a form of extortion.

And it's also a rhetorical triumph because these people who were subject to extortion were called protected people.

So yes, indeed, the Christians and the Jews were, as the professors, so many of them say, protected.

They have to pay for protection. But you don't hear that part about this protection.

Yeah. So yes, yes, the Jewish community was, of course, better off under the

Muslim rulers than they had been under the Christians. It didn't last forever, however. Eventually, new, more strict

Muslims invaded the peninsula. And then in order to unify the land, they decided that having a bunch of Christians and a bunch of Jews there was not conducive to having a unified front against the ever threatening

Christian kingdom from the north. So they decided we had to take care of this business here.

So Jews and Christians either convert or are killed.

And that's what happened. Christians, the remaining ones, fled or converted or were expelled to North Africa.

And Jews fled or converted. Many Jews fled to the north.

And eventually, Jews in Christian Europe became the majority of the

Jews in the Muslim world. So from the Muslim world, eventually, Jews fled to Christian Europe.

So of course, many people vote with their feet. Yeah. Obviously, obviously, they found

Christian Europe a better deal than Islamic North Africa.

And most of the remaining Jewish community there. But the bulk of the Jewish population in those areas went to Europe.

So again, people vote with their feet. Yeah, I like that line. There you have it. Yeah, and of course, this is not the subject that we are addressing, as you already gave a caveat for this.

But there is always going to be the comparison between the history of Christianity and the history of Islam, since both contained intolerance and torture and murder, and so on.

But the history of both contains both. However, I do not find in the

Christian New Testament the kind of statements that I have found in the

Muslim documents in Islamic Spain. There is no injunction to jihad in the

New Testament. There is no mention that you have to give non -Christians the choice of either submit to Islam and pay tax or combat or be killed.

There is no injunction to behead your enemies if they resist.

I have found all those injunctions in the

Sikh religious laws used in Islamic Spain.

There is no injunction in the New Testament about circumcising the female, for example.

I found that the legal laws in Islamic Spain describe circumcision for women.

In fact, circumcision was declared in those documents honorable for women and obligatory for men.

Now, if you are a daddy, you want your little girl to grow up to be an honorable woman, won't you?

So you are going to have her circumcised. And if you are a little girl, are you going to say, gee, you know,

I don't want to be circumcised when you are a little girl and you see that that's what little girls are supposed to be doing and your daddy and your mommy tell you it's the right thing to do.

So yes, circumcision was a practice in Islamic Spain. You don't read that, by the way, in the histories of Islamic Spain, even by reputable scholars.

Also, stoning, by the way, of the adulterous woman who was found guilty of adultery, the prescribed punishment of those

Islamic laws in medieval Spain was stoning. You don't find any of that in the

New Testament. So yes, there are horrors in Christianity, but you don't find prescriptions for those horrors in the

New Testament. And by the way, we call them horrors, but for people living at the time, they would not be horrors.

They would be the way things are and should be. And that is frequently forgotten today.

We don't realize that for those people, that was the way things should be.

There you have it. Yeah, that's why I was going to say that even though within the history of Christendom, there have been atrocities performed.

The question is, are those atrocities, or were they, innate to the actual religion of Christianity that stems from the teachings of Jesus Christ?

And of course, you just gave a resounding no to that, and there is... No, there is nothing of the sort in the

New Testament, or even the Acts of the Apostles, or in the Letters of Paul. It's just when sinful men who identify themselves as Christians go beyond what the

Scriptures have taught, as the Roman Catholic Church did with the Inquisition and so on, that we can find things like this, and even some of the atrocities that the

Majesty wrote. In which Inquisition, by the way, the Islamic rulers in Spain were pioneers.

Yes, indeed. For example, Abd al -Rahman III started a wonderfully effective system of Inquisition in Cordoba under his reign, and that was part of the success of his reign, that he had a system of Inquisition going on there long before the

Spanish Inquisition started in Spain. And by the way, may I recommend a very good book on the

Spanish Inquisition? Yes. By a scholar named Henry Kamen, K -A -M -E -N,

Henry Kamen. It's called The Spanish Inquisition, A Historical Reassessment, or something along those lines.

And also online these days, there is a BBC documentary. You can go online and on YouTube and type the myth of the

Spanish Inquisition, and you will find Henry Kamen and a couple of other scholars explaining what the actual documents that they have examined tell us about the

Spanish Inquisition. For example, they point out that in all the centuries of the

Spanish Inquisition in Spain, the Inquisition executed fewer people than Henry VIII of England killed in his reign all by himself.

But that is another story. Check that out online, The Myth of the

Spanish Inquisition, a BBC documentary featuring scholar

Henry Kamen and others. Anyway. Oh, fascinating stuff.

Dr. Costa also asks, Is the

Golden Age a conjectural myth made up by Islamic and naive

Western scholars? And if so, why? Why did this myth come about? And who actually cultivated and created and spread this myth?

Well, that question deserves a booking itself. But I'm not sure

I'm going to be writing any time soon. But certainly the intellectuals at the pay of rulers in any age tend to glorify the rule of those intellectuals who pay them, don't they?

Mm hmm. And Spanish, Islamic Spain was no different. So we have chronicles, those very chronicles that I examine, which they also extol the greatness of these rulers.

For example, on the same pages that we read about the Inquisition by Abba Rahman III, we also read what a great place

Cordoba was and how it was such an abode of art and so on and so forth.

So there was no contradiction between extolling some of the true achievements of the buildings and so forth.

And also, as if you are not really saying anything wrong, you point out how effective this great ruler's

Inquisition was. So that was one of the possible origins of the myth.

But there was much more to it than that. And it probably has to do with the

Enlightenment in Europe, which, as you know, was generally anti -Christian and specifically anti -Catholic.

The writers of the Enlightenment, like my admired Voltaire and Edward Gibbon and Montesquieu and so many others, who did not like at all the

Catholic Church and who found it advantageous to point out, look,

Spain, when there was no Catholic Church ruling, was so wonderful under Islam.

So that contributed, I believe, to the creation of this myth. And also, under the

Romantic writers, medieval Islamic Spain was looked at as something exotic and marvelous.

So you would find novels depicting the Romantic existence of Muslims in Islamic Spain.

But more recently, I think, the reasons are more complex. Although equally self -interested.

Look, if I am a professor of Islamic studies, and I'm going to talk about, say,

Islam in Islamic Spain, do you think I'm going to zero in on the horrors?

No. I'm going to zero in on the achievements, real or imaginary, of that period.

So there is an element of self -interest. But there is even more to it than that.

There is also today the need to find some kind of place, somewhere in time and geography, where actually the three religions lived side by side in harmony, so that we can point and say, look, multiculturalism and diversity actually worked.

Look how nice they lived together there, even though Muslims were ruling.

So it happened then, so it can happen now. So what is there to be afraid of?

And of course, in addition to that, research has been compromised.

Why? Because Islamic nations have donated huge amounts of money, endowments, to departments of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies in Western universities.

And that has been researched. In my book, I point out some researchers who have examined this problem.

And then on my own, I give some examples of major universities that have received these enormous endowments.

Yale, for example, I think it was two years ago, received an enormous amount of money from some sheik or prince from Saudi Arabia, or businessman, to their

Islamic studies department to study Islamic law.

Now, do you think that those professors there are going to be examining Islamic law the way that scholars for so many years have examined the effects of Christianity?

Do you think that they are going to examine, for example, the reality behind the historical figure of Muhammad, like they do with Christ?

Or the reality behind the creation of the Qur 'an, to show that the

Qur 'an, in fact, was not dictated by an angel, but is some actual document that was put together, the way they have done with the

New Testament, for example, the way all these scholars have treated the origins of Christianity?

I don't think so. So you see, there are all these factors that come together, and that I think explain to a large extent the perpetuation of this vision of Islamic Spain, and some of the present day consequences of it that we see, even about Islam in the present time.

Well, Dr. Costa, you're going to be receiving, as our way of saying thanks to you for writing in to the program of the question, you're receiving a free copy of The Myth of the

Andalusian Paradise, Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain, by our guest

Taurillo Fernandez -Morera. Chunks. I wish I could have one of them.

Wow. Well, maybe next time. I'd love to have you back, and you could autograph these. And this is also compliments of the

Intercollegiate Studies Institute, who published the book, and ironically, they have the same initials that my program has,

ISI, which I very frequently abbreviate Iron Sharpens Iron, ISI, and so do you.

Yeah, and I'm glad you don't have that if. That's right. In fact, somebody was just recently escorted off a plane because they were on their cell phone, and they had some kind of communication with somebody from ISI, and it had to do with a

Christian fraternal group named Iron Sharpens Iron. So the whole thing was a horrific mistake.

But I just want to let Dr. Costa know that we usually do not ship the free books outside of the

U .S. Due to your prestigious position at the University of Toronto Baptist Seminary, I'm going to make an exception and make sure that you get this free book mailed to you.

And thank you so much for contributing to today's program. And this is where we're going to take another break.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail dot com. Don't go away.

We're going to be right back with our guest, Dario Fernandez -Morera, and our discussion of his book,

The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise. Don't go away. We will be right back.

I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries. The New American Standard Bible is perfect for daily reading or in -depth study.

Used by pastors, scholars, and everyday readers, the NASB is widely embraced and trusted as a literal and readable

Bible translation. The NASB offers clarity and readability while maintaining high accuracy to the original languages which the

NASB is known for. The NASB is available in many editions like a topical reference Bible. Researched and prepared by biblical scholars devoted to accuracy, the new topical reference

Bible includes contemporary topics relevant to today's issues. From compact to giant print

Bibles, find an NASB that fits your needs very affordably at nasbible .com.

Trust, discover, and enjoy the NASB for yourself today. Go to nasbible .com.

That's nasbible .com. Tired of box store Christianity?

Of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert? Do you long for a more traditional and reverent style of worship?

And how about the preaching? Perhaps you've begun to think that in -depth biblical exposition has vanished from Long Island.

Well, there's good news. Wedding River Baptist Church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience featuring the systematic exposition of God's word.

And this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you. Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times.

631 -929 -3512. Or check out their website at wrbc .us.

That's wrbc .us. We provide guidance that reflects your values so you can protect what matters most.

We help members live generously and strengthen the communities where they live, work, and worship. Learn more about the thriving story by contacting me,

Mike Gallagher, Financial Consultant, at 717 -254 -6433.

Again, 717 -254 -6433. Blending faith, finances, and generosity.

That's the Thriving Story. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today, for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron, is

Darío Fernández Barrera. And he is the author of The Myth of the

Andalusian Paradise, Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain.

And if you'd like to join us on the air with your own questions, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. And please give us your first name, city, and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And by the way, I'd like to let our listeners know that there is an Andalusian paradise that is no myth.

It's about two blocks away from where I'm sitting. It's a restaurant that's called

Andalusia, and it has the most remarkable Spanish and Moroccan cuisine on North Hanover Street in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

No, it's a wonderful restaurant, and they don't even pay me to say this right now. They're not one of my sponsors.

They're not even aware that I'm plugging them for free right now. But you'll talk about food anytime. It's a great restaurant.

I had to plug them. We do have another listener, a very interesting individual who is a

Muslim convert to Christianity in Detroit, Michigan, C .L.

Edwards. I'm not sure what C .L. stands for, but C .L. asks the question,

What would it have been like, or what would have been the status of black

Africans in Andalusia under Muslim control? I don't know if you're aware of that, but do you have an answer to that question?

Yes, I deal with that in my book as part of the enormous presence of slavery.

In Islamic Spain, especially under the Umayyads, Islamic sources point out that most of the slaves that were found in the western part of the

Mediterranean basin originated in Umayyad Cordoba because Umayyad Cordoba was a hub for the commerce of slaves.

And of course, among those slaves, African blacks were extremely numerous.

Perhaps as numerous as the white slaves. And the black slaves were used in all sorts of functions.

They were used as slave warriors. In fact, Abdel Rahman I created an enormous army, at least half, if not more of an army, was made up of African slave warriors, along with white slave warriors and mercenaries.

So yes, black slavery was a central feature of Islamic Spain and especially of Umayyad Cordoba.

There are documents that I quote in my book, as well as secondary research by Spanish Arabists, by the way.

There's a lot of research done by Spanish Arabists. That is not known in the

English speaking world. And the documents that they have translated from Arabic into Spanish, which

I use profusely in my book. And in those documents, both original and that I directly have consulted in translation, and also in the secondary material from Spanish Arabists, they show the actual details of the commerce of slaves in the slave markets of Cordoba.

For example, the commerce of slave women was enormous.

And you find white women slaves and black women slaves.

The white women were more expensive. The cost, the documents even cite how much a white slave cost and a black female slave cost.

So you can see the white women slaves were more expensive. And also you read there how the seller of the slaves dressed the women to make them look better.

The white women were dressed in pink. The black women were dressed in yellow.

And their fingernails were painted yellow. The fingernails of the white women were painted pink.

A woman who could also sing, for example, a white slave that could sing, was worth about three times the price of a white female slave who could not sing or did not have some other skills.

So sexual slaves were valuable depending on their race and on the skills that they had.

So all these details I do mention in the book. So slavery in general and the slavery of blacks was enormous.

And I have also found that to give you an example of the extent of the use of slaves in the

Muslim world, a scholar has found that between 1600 and the 1700s, more than a million white slaves were transacted in the slave markets of the

Islamic world. A million white slaves alone between the 1500s and the 1700s.

In fact, Cervantes, we began our show with the mention of Cervantes, Miguel de

Cervantes, the great Spanish writer and author of Don Quixote. He himself was captured during a trip in the

Mediterranean and taken to North Africa by Muslim pirates and turned into slaves.

And he was a slave to the Muslims for about five years before a ransom for him was paid by the

Order of the Trinitarian Friars. The Order of the Trinitarians was a religious

Catholic order dedicated exclusively to helping

Christians captured by Muslims. This gives you an idea of the extent of the slavery of Christians by Muslims.

And this is not medieval Islam. This is already the 16th century. So an entirely religious order, the only purpose of it was to help the

Christians enslaved by the Muslims. And that was not the only order, by the way.

There were actually two orders dedicated to helping Christians. The other one was the

Order of the... What was the other one? I forget now the name of it.

There were two religious orders, not just one dedicated to helping Christian slaves.

So slavery was an extraordinary and central feature of medieval and even later

Islam. So the contemporary black individual, or even going back, you know, decades, when it was popular in this country to identify

Christianity as a white man's religion and Islam as a black man's religion, or at least much more favorable to those of the black race.

This is really a myth, isn't it? Oh, it's nonsense. Even though I don't go into that area of the world or that period, while I'm talking about slavery in Islamic Spain, I do quote the great historian

Al -Tawari, who was a 9th century Islamic Persian historian.

And Al -Tawari mentions an enormous rebellion of black slaves in Iraq in the early centuries of Islam.

They rebelled against the Islamic masters. So this business of black slavery that I talked about in connection with Islamic Spain existed also in the

Middle East as well. In fact, the Arabs were probably the earliest ones who did commerce in black slaves in Africa, long before the

Europeans. Geographical reasons were in part the reason for that.

But it was the Arab slave traders that first started that enormous trade in black slaves.

So all that is nonsense to talk about a different kind of myth. And Brother Edwards from Detroit, Michigan, if you would like a free copy of this book for sending in a question, the free copy of The Myth of the

Andalusian Paradise, please give us your full mailing address. We will not put that on the air, obviously.

And but we will ship you out a free copy of the book. So we would love to hear back from you with your mailing address, if you'd like a free copy of this book, compliments of the publishers.

And we do have, this is where I got the confusion of Illinois here. We do have a listener in Chicago, Illinois, Sam, who says, if the goal of the guest is to show that Jews and Christians were mistreated and abused by Muslims in Spain, then my objection would be, why do you pass judgment on Islam by looking to how some

Muslims acted towards other groups, when the honest thing to do is judge the actions of these Muslims in light of the

Quran and Sunnah, in order to see if they were acting in accord with their own sacred texts.

And the Quran is quite clear in texts such as Quran 2, 256, 60, 8 -9, and 109, 1 -6, that Muslims cannot impose their faith on others, but must tolerate them and seek to live in peace with them.

After all, you wouldn't condemn the Christian faith because of the atrocities which so -called Christians committed in the

Crusades, Inquisition, or even against Native American Indians, would you? Well, you addressed some of this already, do you have anything further to add in response to Sam?

Yes, that's a good question. Just to recapitulate and perhaps elaborate on what

I have said before regarding this particular issue, and one is that certainly an interpreter today who is knowledgeable about the

Quran may argue that the Quran is a book that promotes a religion of peace, and that may certainly be the case.

My interest, however, was to deal with a period that had been described as a period of peace, prosperity, and tolerance, and the extant documentation indicates otherwise, of course, again, those people then, who were actually closer to Islam than we are, to the origins of Islam than we are, seem to have interpreted the

Quran and the Ahadith differently, and did not think that it was such a, that what has been described by this listener was not the way to deal with the infidels.

In other words, they may certainly have been wrong. My purpose was not to argue that they were right.

That was not the point of my research. My research was to examine the facts of the matter then, which again,

I say, may not agree with what the Quran and the Ahadith actually say, but that's what the documents of the time say the

Muslim rulers did. By the way,

I forgot to mention, Sam, I will also be shipping you a free copy of The Myth of the

Andalusian Paradise, Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain by our guest today, compliments of the

Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, Delaware, who have published this monumental work here.

And so, thank you very much, Sam, for your insightful question. And just out of curiosity, have you gotten any negative feedback from the more liberal community associated with Harvard, your alma mater, and other places, and Muslims in general across the globe who have heard about this book?

The book is barely out. It became available at the end of February, so there is not enough time for the flack.

If you wait patiently, though. You know, it would not be surprising, and in a way would be to be expected.

Look, if you are a professor of Islamic Studies or a professor of Medieval Spanish History, and all your life you have been teaching about this

Andalusian Paradise, and even writing about it as the scholars that I quote in my book have, do you think you're going to like a book that basically says either you were lying or you were doing some really shoddy research?

No, you're not going to like that. So I expect that, human nature being what it is, a lot of scholars are not going to say, gee, you know,

I'm so thankful that this scholar actually showed that I was wrong, and I accept that I am wrong, and I doubt it.

See, some scientists do that. That's one difference with science. Occasionally you do hear about these wonderful situations in science in which a scientist recognizes that he or she was wrong.

But that, I think, is more rare in the humanities. But we'll see. And this undertaking that has gone into the creation and the writing of this book, how long did it take you to write this book?

Because this is a very thoroughly documented book you have here. Well, you know, in my profession what you do is you do your teaching and you do your research, and sometimes you do research more than one, you follow more than one, and you do a line of research at the same time.

There are reviews that come to you, you have to review the books, somebody writes to you about some kind of collection of articles that are needed, and could you write an article on such and such, so you interrupt your work, and then you do some work in that area, and then you come back.

Altogether, probably about seven years of work, yeah.

Wow. We do have a listener in Lyndonhurst, Long Island, New York, CJ, who wants to know, have you persuaded any of those who opposed your thesis after they have read your work?

Because, as I said, the book is just... In the past month, of course.

So my persuasive gifts have not been put to the test yet.

Well, obviously you've been speaking about this somewhere, though, right in the classroom or somewhere else before it actually came out in print, or have you kept this a secret until it came out in print, your views, your thesis?

No, I'm asking you, was this something that you kept secret, your views or your thesis, until the publisher?

No, because I have already published, let me see, my article on Cervantes and Islam came out over seven years ago, so that's been out there.

I have not been hurt yet physically because of that, or otherwise, actually.

So that one had no adverse effects on my persona, and I also published a short piece called

The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise in the Intercollegiate Review about five years ago, was it?

Which is like a mini version of this book. And there is also an article on Jews in Islamic Spain that came out in the

Comparative Civilizations Review available online, and again, my physical integrity was not jeopardized by that article.

So no, I have not suffered any consequences that I am aware of as a result of my publications yet.

But you haven't, to your knowledge, persuaded any of your opponents either? I have not found that some opponents have written to me saying, look, you know,

I have this view of Islamic Spain and you completely changed my view. I haven't heard that either.

So maybe there is total indifference up there, in the real world, you know, somebody sees that and says, no,

I just put it out of my mind what this guy wrote. Yeah, total indifference, perhaps.

By the way, CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, you're also getting a free copy of The Myth of the

Andalusian Paradise, compliments of the publishers. Thank you for writing in today. We have

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, to your knowledge, has there ever been a tolerant, peace -loving paradise where those of different religions ever lived under Islamic rule?

Again, I'm not an expert in Islam all over the world, so granted my lack of research in that area,

I must say, however, I don't know of any. Although I've heard of some, you know, in newspapers and things like that, that things were pretty good in, was it

Indonesia? But then I read some other reports saying that actually, no, that women are being tamed there because they were selling non -halal food in the market or something like that.

So really, no, I'm not aware of that. But then I may be, I'm probably wrong, given my ignorance, and maybe it exists.

Maybe it exists somewhere. Yes, and even our wonderful allies in Saudi Arabia, who are supposed to be officially very opposed to ISIS and the terrorism happening globally, they execute people.

Yeah, again, I have not done scholarly research on that, so I know as much as you do, but just by reading the newspaper accounts, that, and of course one has to be very weary of the media, because I have also found out that the media hides a lot of stuff.

I've been so surprised of that, that, you know, you really have to look at many different sources of information to approximate the truth of the matter.

For example, those things that were happening in Cologne, those massive cases of sexual assault in Germany were being not publicized by the

European press. I think it was Breitbart .com

that first broke the news about what had actually happened, and then all the other media sources finally said, well, look, something happened here.

So again, one has to really be very, very weary of the press.

But even so, yeah, the newspapers tell of that wonderful little kingdom of Saudi Arabia and how they apply

Islamic law there, and one can see some of the effects of that law in an ally of the

United States. We're not talking here about the Islamic State, the Islamic Caliphate in Iraq or Syria, no, we're talking here about Saudi Arabia, where we have an embassy which is our ally, and against which our government never says anything bad, or our government says, well, you know, the king of Saudi Arabia has to be replaced, like we say about, what's his name,

Assad. Assad has to go, but we never hear, well, the king of Saudi Arabia has to go. We should have democracy there, some free elections.

You never hear that. Yeah, in fact, I think that we saw our President George W.

Bush walking hand in hand with their leader back when he was in office through the gardens of the

White House. That's true, that's true. Yeah, we don't say anything bad about Saudi Arabia.

And you are getting a free copy of the book as well. Thank you for writing in. And we do have an anonymous listener in the

Bronx, New York, who says, don't you think that it is an unfortunate reality that Muslim dictators who are far less fundamental than some of the other sects, perhaps are

Muslim culturally and by name only, even though they are brutal and often have committed atrocities against other

Muslims, isn't it true that unfortunately they are necessary in this day and age to keep the peace and maintain a less catastrophic and explosive climate in the

Middle East where they are? Does that question make sense to you? Yes, but again, it's going a little bit outside my field of research.

So I would have to answer it as someone who is educated but who has not done particular research in the area.

So I don't really have much more authority than you or somebody else would have to answer that question, just some common sense.

And from the point of view of common sense, it would seem that some secular dictator like Hussein, for example, would have been preferable there than what we have now under al -Baghdadi and the

Islamic State. I mean, he kept the peace, he protected these religious minorities, and anybody who acted otherwise, he would kill.

So he kept things under control. So did Gaddafi, by the way, in Libya, from what

I understand. He kept the Islamic fundamentalists under control.

But then we decided to topple him to install their democracy and human freedom.

But it didn't work, did it? No. And our... We kept trying it.

But, you know, we tried it with Hussein, and whoops, we failed. Oh, well, we'll try it again.

We'll try it with Gaddafi in Libya. Oops, oh, it didn't work. Doesn't matter. Maybe on the third time we'll get it right.

Let's try it with Assad. Maybe if we topple Assad, things will be different. I'm sorry,

I just couldn't stop myself. Yeah, that's quite all right.

Our anonymous listener, if you provide us with your mailing address, and of course, I will keep your anonymity intact.

I'm not going to tell our listeners who you are, but our anonymous listener in the Bronx, if you email me your full mailing address, you also qualify.

You're the last person, actually, that we have enough books for. You will receive The Myth of the

Andalusian Paradise, the book by our guest today, Darío Fernández -Morera, compliments of the publisher.

So thank you for writing in. We're going to be going to our final break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air as well, we would love to hear from you at chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Don't go away.

We're going to be right back with our guest, Darío Fernández -Morera, right after these messages.

Linbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Linbrook, Long Island, is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century.

Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service. It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement. It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing.

We're a diverse family of all ages. Enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ. In fellowship, play, and together.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Linbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.

Or visit linbrookbaptist .org. That's linbrookbaptist .org. Thriving Financial is not your typical financial services provider.

As a membership organization, we help Christians be wise with money and live generously every day.

And for the fourth year in a row, we were named one of the world's most ethical companies by the

Ethisphere Institute, a leading international think tank dedicated to the creation, advancement, and sharing of best practices in business ethics.

Contact me, Mike Gallagher, Financial Consultant at 717 -254 -6433.

Again, 717 -254 -6433 to learn more about the

Thriving Difference. We were made for so much more than ordinary life.

Lending faith, finances, and generosity. That's the Thrivent story. We were made to thrive.

Attention coin collectors and investors. Long Island Galleries of Wading River, New York, has brilliant uncirculated 19th century

Morgan silver dollars for only $54 per coin. With free shipping and handling for a limited time.

There's a 40 coin limit, so order now while supplies last. Call 888 -260 -8111, 888 -260 -8111.

Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express welcome. Price is subject to change, so call now at 888 -260 -8111, 888 -260 -8111.

If you prefer ordering your brilliant uncirculated 19th century Morgan silver dollars by check, mail it today to Long Island Galleries, 9

Susan Drive, Wading River, New York, 11792. That's Long Island Galleries, 9

Susan Drive, Wading River, New York, 11792. Remember, they're only $54 per coin with free shipping and handling and a 40 coin limit.

New York State residents must add sales tax. Long Island Galleries is honored to sponsor

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. See the Long Island Galleries display ad at ironsharpensironradio .com.

Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you've just joined us for the last 90 minutes, we've been interviewing

Darío Fernández Morera about his book, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic rule in medieval

Spain. Before we return to our guest and our interview for the remaining half hour,

I just wanted to let you know that on Thursday, April 28th, from 11 a .m.

to 3 p .m., Iron Sharpens Iron will be having our spring pastor's luncheon at the beautiful, historic, and newly renovated thorn -walled mansion of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Our guest speaker, providentially, is David Wood, who is a Christian apologist specializing in Islamic studies.

He has debated Muslims all over the globe, prominent Muslim clerics and apologists, and he is the host of the

Jesus or Muhammad television program that airs on the

Trinity Channel television network, and that is not to be confused with the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which

I am personally very opposed to, but the Trinity Channel is where you can see

David's television program. He has been a guest many times on Iron Sharpens Iron, and he will be speaking on separating facts from fiction in regard to Islam.

And we have room for about 30 pastors left, so if you would like to be a part of this free event where, first of all, it's absolutely free of charge from beginning to end, you'll get a free delicious gourmet lunch provided by Spoons Cafe of Carlisle.

You'll get probably $400 worth of free books that have been donated from Christian publishers all over the

United States. You're going to be getting basically a shopping bag filled with quite a large number of free books that have been purposely selected for pastors, and you're going to hear, as I said, the message from David Wood, an apologist who actually was an atheist convert to Christianity.

But if you'd like to be a part of this, you have to be, number one, you have to be a man in leadership, and if you would like to travel to Carlisle, Pennsylvania from no matter where you are, or if you live near that area or know someone who is in leadership near there, please have them email me at chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And also, PNR Publishing, Presbyterian and Reform Publishing, they wanted me to announce to you the

Faithful Shepherd Conference, May 9th through 11th at Harvey Cedars in New Jersey, and that is featuring two speakers, both of whom

I have had on this program in the past, Dan Doriani and David Powlison, and if you'd like more information about that, go to alliancenet .org,

and click on Events at the top of the screen. That's Events after going to alliancenet .org.

And we thank PNR Publishing for providing free books for our pastor's luncheon along with many other publishers across this nation, and we thank you for viewing

Iron Sharpens Iron as a worthy entity to promote your businesses and ministries.

But going back to our discussion, one of the things that is constantly being hammered to us in this day and age, as you know, and you may have been on the receiving end of this, is that any discussion like this comes from some sort of hate or bigotry.

Is there any truth in that matter? Obviously, a person who is hateful or bigoted might not admit it, but how do you respond to that kind of an accusation,

Dario? Certainly, in the kind of discussions that we're having here,

I'm sure that there may be many cases in which people involved in the discussion have different motivations other than finding out the truth of the matter.

And they may have some other motivations, but that is normal in human activity.

We are all capable of having many different kinds of motivations, and not all of them are the search for the truth of the matter.

In my particular case, as I said, I came to it in a sort of indirect way, because I was researching materials related to Cervantes, and then

I found that what I was reading in secondary sources about the factors of the matter did not agree with what the primary sources said, and that led me to further research into the primary sources.

So I had no prior position on the matter of Islamic Spain before I started my research of the truth.

And related to this, perhaps, is a question that I ask with some trepidation. Is the result of this interview retrievable later on by going to a particular online...

Oh, yes, you are going to get an MP3 of this broadcast sometime,

God willing, within the next 24 to 48 hours. Okay, that's good, because that way

I can post it in my departmental page.

Oh, I would love for you to do that. I really appreciate you being on. It's been a pleasure.

We do have an anonymous listener who asks, Do you think that Americans should have any realistic fear of cities or states within our own nation coming under Sharia law, where there are a high population of Muslim citizens?

Well, again, that is the kind of question that to answer necessitates research.

What bothers me is that our government makes decisions not based on data, not based on information, but on seemingly unrelated reasons.

I mean, a lot of decisions are made for reasons that don't look like reasons.

They are either political, but even the politics of it don't make much sense, or the decisions are made because of some vague notions of compassion.

I mean, a lot of the decisions that have been made regarding the issue pointed out are not made on the basis of information.

What are the facts of the matter? Do we know the facts? And then based on as much information as possible, then responsible authorities should make decisions about what is best for the citizens of this country and for this country.

But I don't see that being done. So to answer the question that was asked, one needs a lot of information.

I don't have it. I haven't researched the matter. Other people should be doing that and providing the authorities with enough information so the authorities can make informed decisions.

I'm not sure that is happening. What can you tell us, if anything, about the current climate of Spain after this very turbulent history?

It seems interesting that where there has been a lot of religious persecution in Europe, and perhaps even you could point to even places like here in the

United States, like Massachusetts, where at some point in our history, there has been intolerance and persecution of those of other religions, where today it seems that those areas where that has existed, there seems to be such a fear of religion that they have become practically atheistic, if not ideologically atheist.

At least in practice, there seems to be a burn -over district or burnt -out district everywhere in the globe where you had a history of intolerance and brutality and torture and murder in the name of Christianity or Islam.

What can you tell us about Spain and why do you think it's that way today? I'm not sure if I understand your question.

Are you asking me what is the present climate in Spain regarding what?

Basically, religion in general. Religion in general has declined. The practice of religion in Spain has declined dramatically.

There are still practicing Catholics and so forth, but the number of practicing Catholics has declined dramatically in Spain, and the general level of faith has also declined dramatically.

Perhaps not as bad as it is in Germany, for example, but much, much, much different from, greatly different from the way it was, say, 50 years ago.

So, there is a gradual disappearance of practicing

Christians in Spain. Now, forgive me if I'm mispronouncing this, but what can you tell us about the chapter of your book,

The Christian Condition from Demise to Extinction? Well, that describes the way that Christians eventually became extinct in Islamic Spain, and the documents attest to that.

For example, by 1492, when the Catholic monarchs

Isabel and Fernando entered the city of Granada, the capital of the small kingdom of Granada, there were no

Christians living there anymore. But even before that, by the 13th century, there were very few

Christians, if any, living in Islamic Spain. They had become extinct.

Why? Because of a number of reasons. Many of them had converted to avoid the situation of subalternity in which they lived, or because they were genuinely interested in the wonderful features of Islam.

Or, they had fled to the north to avoid the wonderful conditions under which they lived in Islamic Spain for some reason.

Or, others had been expelled to Africa by the rulers to avoid their collaboration with the

Christians from the north. And also because of demographic reasons, and that requires a little bit more of explanation.

You see, under the Islamic law in medieval Spain, a

Muslim could marry a Christian woman, and the children must be raised as Muslims.

However, a Christian man could not marry a Muslim woman under pain of death, or even touch her or have sex with her.

That would be punishable with death. You can see how that impacts the growth of a

Muslim population and the decline of a Christian population.

In addition to that, another demographic factor was the polygyny that was dictated by Islamic law in medieval

Spain. Namely, a Muslim man could have up to three wives. With each one of those wives, he could have multiple children.

So you see how the demographics were also favoring the Muslim population against the

Christian population. If to that you add the previous factors that I mentioned, you could see, you could explain why

Christians had become extinct in Islamic Spain by the 15th century.

And that is a fact. And this term, dhimis, or dhimi, that is an

Arabic term. Yes, it basically means protected. They are under the dhima contract.

The dhima contract is the one that is stipulated that as long as the dhimis followed the rules given to them by the

Muslim authorities, they would be protected and allowed to practice their religion in their own neighborhoods, inside their churches, without any crosses being displayed outside, without any professionals taking place on the streets, without any bells being rung, and without any buildings being of the same height as Muslim buildings.

And of course, certainly not higher than a Muslim building. And as long as they paid the jizya, the tax, which by the way, the

Islamic documents, the legal documents in Islamic Spain stipulate was also intended not only to get wealth from the

Christians, but also to humiliate them, to indicate that they were subaltern to Islam, indicated by the fact that they had to pay to be allowed to practice their religion.

So there was not a wholesale slaughter of these

Christians and Jews in Andalusia. They were just treated severely and harshly as second -class citizens, but they were in some sphere able to continue practicing their religion, correct?

Well, they were not even second -class citizens. You see, it was a hierarchical society where Arabs occupied the upper echelons, followed by Berbers, followed by converts from Christianity or Judaism to Islam, followed by slaves who had converted to Islam and now were free, and then followed by the

Dineen. So the Dineen were really more like fourth or fifth class citizens, and they had a function in that system.

They provided wealth to the rulers. They would be exterminated if they rebelled, of course, or expelled, as they were in many cases.

But there was not this intention to exterminate them. Why would they be exterminated when they could be used as a source of revenue and as a demonstration of the superiority of Islam?

Right. In fact, many of our listeners may know a more contemporary example of this from Nazi Germany.

Anybody who has seen Schindler's List, the true account of a businessman who started off using the

Jews as really slave labor, but began to have some kind of a conversion of heart where he had compassion for these

Jews and wanted to protect them. But the reason why the Nazis did not continue slaughtering these men under Schindler's care was because of the fact that they were providing a great service at the time.

They could be used as laborers. Yes, yes. And I know you're not a

Qur 'anic expert, but the Qur 'an does talk about at least at some point in Muhammad's life, early on in his formulation of the

Islamic religion, he considered the Jew and the Christian people of the book, and he did have a certain affection towards them at that point before there seems to have been a rapid rise in persecution and ruthlessness when he himself transformed from being a minority to a person of military power.

So is there something reflective of that in the situation you describe in Andalusia?

Well, actually, in my quotations from Muslim scholars of the time,

I do have references to, constantly references to the life of Muhammad, because that's what the

Ahadith are all about. And the legal system in Islamic Spain is what was based, according to the interpretation of those documents, on those documents.

And in a number of cases, I do quote those documents, which in turn quote

Ahadith and even the Qur 'an. There was a famous Islamic cleric in Islamic Spain.

His name was Ibn Hazm. He was an extraordinary man, very, very learned, very, very bright.

He was of Christian descent. His family had converted to Islam. And when he talks about jihad, for example, he talks only about jihad in the sense we have been talking about, namely, let's say, religious war.

And in the course of talking about that, he does quote the Qur 'an. He quotes some verses from Surah number five, which

I believe was the last, one of the last surah, presumably written by Muhammad towards the end of his life.

And he quotes that famous surah, which is, I believe, called the

Song of the Sword, in which Muhammad gives the injunction to fight the polytheists until they submit to Islam.

Those two surahs are very important from what I understand. Those were the last two surahs written in the

Qur 'an by Muhammad. And they are number nine and number five.

Anyone who knows the Qur 'an, he should go through those two and read them.

And they are very instructive about the presumed teachings of Muhammad.

Now, just as we had mentioned earlier, as a result, I believe, of a listener question, where unfortunately it is a reality that tyrannical dictators have kept the greater number of Islamic terrorists and extremists at bay and under control.

And when they are toppled, the extremists and the terrorists gain control and so on.

But you see, that's only because we didn't try harder. Well, we toppled those dictators.

If we had tried harder with Hussein, then maybe this would not have happened. If we had tried harder with Gaddafi, maybe this would not have tried harder.

At least that's the explanation I hear. So if we try harder now with Assad, that will not happen.

Well, in reference to that same kind of situation going way back to Andalusia and the climate of what we are talking about in medieval times, was it the brutality of the

Crusades that inevitably led to it being a much safer place in Spain and Europe and other places that were under this

Islamic rule? Well, there was one crusade proclaimed by the

Pope in the early 13th century against the

Islamic caliphate of the Almohads, and that crusade was successful.

They beat the Islamic caliphate of the Almohads. I talk about that in my book, in the great battle of Navas de

Tolosa in, I think it was the 16th of July of 1212, if I remember correctly.

And after that, the Islamic retreat became general in Spain, and the

Christians reconquered most of the land. And of course, you can only speculate about what would have happened if the

Christians had not achieved victory. But certainly, the Christian victory stopped the presence of female circumcision, the stoning of adulterous women, the situation of subalternity of the

Christians, and a number of other undesirable features from the point of view of the people that existed in Islamic Spain.

So it certainly did its work, that crusade proclaimed by the

Pope. There is a very good work on the crusades in general, the ones in the

Middle East. His name is Paul Crawford, and I recommend that people look up his work.

Some of his writings are available online. Paul Crawford, and he's an expert on the crusades.

In fact, I saw him in a document that was done on some areas of the

Middle East, and I was surprised to see him there. So he's very good in that regard. I don't know if I answered your question.

Yes, and I'd like you to now, since we have several minutes left, I want to make sure that everything that you want to be said, that perhaps

I overlooked, did not ask you, but I want what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners to be said as much as you can, obviously, in summary form over the next several minutes.

Well, of course, there's no substitute for buying my book. I will definitely be promoting that.

Right. So the first thing I would suggest, go get the book. It's available from the publisher,

ISI Books, and also from Amazon, and it's available both in hard copy.

I don't know for how long it's selling like hotcakes, but it's also available in e -book form.

And it's isibooks .org, isibooks .org. I'd like to also add that one of the sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Services, cvbbs .com,

cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs, biblebookservice .com. They are a great source for all of the books that we discuss on Iron Sharpens Iron, and they have very competitive prices.

So you might want to try ordering this book from cvbbs .com

as well, cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs, biblebookservice .com. But if you could continue with your summary of what you most want our listeners to remember when they leave the room.

Yes, yes. I would like listeners, and I tell that to my students.

I tell them, don't trust your professors. Don't trust me. And I tell them, if you find that statement of mine too radical, because I'm a radical guy, but if you find that statement of mine too radical, then perhaps take the advice of a very successful American politician who said, in the context of the relations between the

United States and then Marxist and Leninist Russia, and he said, trust but verify.

And I advise the same thing regarding most of the important questions of our time that appear in the press and the media and on television.

Don't trust outright what you see or hear or read.

Check it out. You will find that in some cases you are not being given the truth of the matter or things have been left out or they have been, shall we say, misinterpreted.

So that's a very important lesson that I have suspected, but this research really confirmed it.

One really has to find as many sources about a subject matter as one can.

One cannot trust even the experts on a particular matter. This is a humanistic matter.

Perhaps something like that happens also in the sciences. In my introduction

I talked briefly about this and in one of the end notes I quote a number of authors who have done meta -research, that is research on research.

And for example in the area of psychology, a meta -researcher has found that about 90 % of the papers written in scholarly journals on the subject of psychology are scholarly defective.

And mind you, these papers have been vetted by peers before they are published.

But this meta -research shows that the conclusions of about 90 % of those papers are not substantiated by the kind of evidence they present in the papers themselves.

And if this is true about, well I suppose you could call it science, psychology, imagine how it must be in subjects of politics or history or some even religion.

So that would be one thing that I would advise the listener, be wary of what you hear from the authorities.

And I'm sure that either those listening live, some of those listening to us live right now, or some who hear this program at a later date through the recording, they may be wondering how could

I get Dario Fernandez -Morera to speak at my school or at my organization's function, some kind of a special event where they're having a forum on Islamic studies and on history and so on.

How could they get a hold of you to invite you to do such a thing? You can contact

ISI directly and you can go to the

ISI site directly and contact the editor.

His name is Jed Donahue and he can make the necessary arrangements, either him directly or he can ask a publicist who works for ISI to handle the matter.

Yes, and I know that once again the website is isibooks .org.

That's the website of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, Delaware, who have very graciously provided the books that we gave away today, the copies of our guest's book,

The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, Muslims, Christians, and Jews Under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain.

And I just want to thank you so very much for being a part of the program today,

Dario, and I hope that you could just hang on a little bit after the program is over so I can speak to you off the air.

Of course. And I would love to get your contact information and so on. All right. And I just want to re -announce to our listeners that on Thursday, April 28th, if you know any pastors or men in ministry who are either in the

Carlisle, Pennsylvania area or willing to travel to Carlisle, we have about 30 seats left available for men in ministry who want to attend the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Spring Pastors Luncheon. You don't have to be a pastor, but you do have to be a man in ministry leadership.

And as I said, we are getting probably about 100 pounds of books for each.

That's an exaggeration, but we're getting a lot of books donated to us from publishers all over the

United States to give to each of the pastors in attendance. We're also having a lecture on Islam separating fact from fiction by David Wood, a world -renowned apologist specializing in Islamic studies, a

Christian who has debated many of the most highly sought after and admired and respected

Muslim clerics and scholars and apologists across the world. And he is going to be speaking on that subject of separating fact from fiction on Islam at this free event, totally free of charge.

You can email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater savior than you are a sinner.

Thank you for listening to Iron Sharpens Iron, and we look forward to receiving your questions for our guests tomorrow and in the days to come on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.