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Entry: Hitchens' Haj Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/hitchens_haj#7198 Post contents: "Moorish spain was an aberration, a filthy colony colonized by the swill from the south. Civilization entered Spain with the Reconquista, thanks to the Catholic monarchs." Civilization did not enter spain through the reconquista, but through the Moors, and then proceeded through the rest of europe. In fact, the enlightenment can be traced to the scientific achievements of Moorish Spain. And Arabic was the language of scholarship at the first university in Europe, Toledo. Arabic was even the language of scholarship when Oxford was founded. If the Moors were so uncivilized, why would the smartest men of Christian Europe study their language??? Also, since medieval Islam did not proscribe scientific inquiry as an affront to God and properly recognized that we cannot derive all knowledge for a text, man or institution (as opposed to the Catholic Church), science flourished in Moorish Spain precisely because it was not under the control of the Catholic Church. The lack of scholarship in Catholic Spain and the eventual collapse of the Spanish empire demonstrate that the ineptitude of those Catholic Monarchs and Catholic churrch to foster scientific inquiry and other hallmarks of civilized society. (and this is why scientific inquiry developed in northern europe, not southern). Furthermore, these "civilized conquerors" on the order of a catholic bishop burned all the books in the library of Granada (over 10,000 volumes) b/c they couldn't read them and assumed they were all copies of the Qur'an. Using this as their standard, they proceeded to burn all the books of the Aztecs and Maya, once again, b/c they couldn't read them. This is civilization??? Lastly, regarding the "filth" comment, there were over 300 baths in the city of Cordoba before its capture during the reconquista. After its' capture, all of the baths were destroyed because the catholic church believed that bathing was evil and an act of devil worship. So, if the spainards were not bathing and the moors were, then, who, exactly, was filthy??? Sent at: 2008 07 08