Should Europe Pay for America’s Racial Problems?
Many countries built their wealth on atrocities
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One of the places my young adult kids and I visited on our recent vacation was Spain. As the online brochures suggested, it didn’t disappoint.
Charming old cities with shops tucked into architecture that existed well before America’s founding.
Churches and other buildings that in some cases were over 1,000 years old. Views of the Mediterranean with boardwalks and open-air markets. Festivals that have taken place annually for half a millennium. Town squares that were built in the 1500s. Winding roads and alleyways that belong on postcards.
Crowds filled these beautiful places. People from all over Europe, Asia, the Middle East and, to a lesser extent, the United States.
One of the places we visited was Cordoba, Spain, a beautiful small city that was a heart of Jewish learning and Muslim accomplishment 800 years ago. It was the home of the most famous and impactful Jewish philosopher of all time, Maimonides. The home of the greatest Arab Muslim philosopher of all time, Averroes.
In the 9th and 10th centuries, Cordoba was Europe’s most cosmopolitan city. A place where Jews, Arabs and Christians all practiced their beliefs without persecution. With mutual respect and pluralism.
Cordoba was a place where amazing advances were made in virtually every area of human endeavor. Math, medicine, science, philosophy. It had the highest literacy rate in all of Spain if not the world. The largest library in the world was there, containing over 400,000 books.
Sadly, though, Spain as the benchmark of success and object of world envy came to a screeching halt when Catholic monarchs defeated and then expelled the ruling Moors in 1492. You know, when Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
Things then got ugly.
Something known as The Inquisition was the first of Spain’s many inflicted atrocities.
The Inquisition was initially a non-state-sanctioned tribunal started by Pope Gregory IX in 1232 for the suppression of anyone who did not practice his brand of religion. Jews, Muslims and other “non-believers” were tortured by church…
