A historical glimpse into a problem with the "Great Brown Hope"

About a year ago, I was lucky enough to find an excellent history of the period just after the Spanish Reconquista (1492), an old dusty tome probably few Academics today in MESA Nostra would touch with a ten-foot pole:

Michel de Cervantes, sa vie, son temps, son oeuvre politique et littéraire

(“Miguel de Cervantes: His life, his time, his political and literary works”)

This study was written by an obscure 19th century French historian, Émile Chasles.  What is amazing about this book is that its theme is how Cervantes responded to the problem of Islam in his time (16th century).  It turns out that that greatest of Spanish poets (Spain's equivalent of a Shakespeare or a Dante) was positively consumed by the problem of Islam.  Readers interested in my essay on it which I published here many months ago, click here:

Cervantes and Islam.

Today's essay does not rehash that, but provides an interestingly disquieting glimpse buried deep in the dusty pages of that book (well, digitally dusty, since I accessed it via Google Books) into the problem of trusting any Muslims -- including even ex-Muslims.

The “Great Brown Hope” of my title refers to the Christian Wilsonians of the Counter-Jihad (e.g., David Wood and Sam Shamoun) whose starry eyes look forward to solving the problem of Islam through converting a critical mass of Muslims to Christianity (unless they are Christian apocalypticists; in which case they look forward to an eschatological solution to the problem of Islam, and hope their efforts at converting Muslims will save souls before the great tribulations arise to finally put an end to History).

I provide first an extended quote from the book to flesh out the historical predicament of the era; then end on a disquieting fact of history about the Moriscos who were not expelled from Spain but who were allowed to remain because they (ostensibly) converted to Christianity:

From 1453 to 1520, Europe had allowed itself to become penetrated by the Turks, and everything had recommenced for Spain. It was a second conflict: the Ottomans coming out of Asia conquered Constantinople and Belgrade. They subjugated the Slavic countries. They created a navy which dominated the east and the Mediterranean. Mahomet II, Selim I, Suleyman, founded an empire which expanded hour by hour. They took Rhodes and Cyprus, they assailed Malta — and also Greece, Italy and Spain would be, Allah willing, the three stages of their conquest. When Charles V rose to the top rank among the sovereigns of Christendom, it seemed to devolve in the face of Suleyman. Obliged to fight against the Turks, he tried to defend the northeast in assembling Germany and placating Ferdinand his brother, as well as Hungary. He protected the south in attacking Tunis and Algiers, and in entrusting Malta to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.

But this was not all: in the interior of Spain, the Moriscos revolted. They agitated and fomented division in the land and put the unity of the whole peninsula in doubt. Giving aid to their brothers in Africa, they introduced a new infusion of Islam in Europe, while Charles V died before this came to issue.

Let us pause to digest this. The “Moriscos” by that time (over 50 years after the liberation of Spain from Islam in 1492) were Muslims (probably a combination of Muslims and “reverts”) who had previously converted to Christianity upon the Reconquista. And yet, they proved to be such a security problem to the newly freed Spain, that the new King (Charles V) had to re-divert most of his energies from the Mediterranean problem just to take care of this rebellion.

Muslim attacks within Portugal continued to be such a problem for Charles’ successor, Phillip II, that he was unable to come to the desperate aid of Christians languishing in misery and torment under Muslim captivity; a predicament greatly lamented by Cervantes and his companions.

A sobering lesson for us today, when we think of trusting ex-Muslims.