By Chuck Warren
The people of Austrasia, greater in number of soldiers and formidably armed, killed the king, Abd al-Rahman, when they found him, striking him on the chest. But suddenly, within sight of the countless tents of the Arabs, the Franks despicably sheathed their swords, postponing the fight until the next day since night had fallen during the battle. Rising from their own camp at dawn, the Europeans saw the tents and canopies of the Arabs all arranged just as they had appeared the day before.
You probably have not heard of the Chronicle of 754, let alone read this passage. So let me tell you why it is important.
The Chronicle of 754 is about the Battle of Tours between the Medieval Franks—the ancestors of the French and Germans—and the Arab empire in today’s Spain. It was neither the first nor the last of those battles. What is important about this passage is the use of the word “Europeans.”
The use of the noun Europe dates back to ancient Greece, and it is about geography. But the people in Europe did not find much commonality among themselves. There was no European identity.
The European identity was born out of a conflict between the Christian people of Europe and Muslim Arab settler-colonialists. In other words, the people of Europe found commonality in fear of a shared enemy.
This European identity, for the most part, continued in this form. When the fear of Muslims was not in the mix, Europeans were fighting each other—the aforementioned Franks became Germans and French and stopped fighting each other only 80 years ago. But they would remember that they were Europeans and fight each other when they were threatened by Muslims or when they wanted to expel the Arabs and Moors from Europe.
In fact, this bond became even stronger as the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople and replaced the Byzantine Empire in 1453, which, technically speaking, was the Roman Empire.
A lot has changed since 754, when the adjective European was first used. Two things happened this year. First, a native British woman was sentenced to 31 months in prison for posting hateful content against Muslims on Facebook. Second, it was revealed that gangs of Muslim men were raping underage native British girls, and the U.K. government—under both Conservative and Labour Parties—had been covering it up to protect Muslim communities against hateful backlash.
The word European was created in reference to defending their lands against Muslim invaders. That is no longer the case, and a lot of it is for the better, to be sure, but it is time for Europeans to ask: has the pendulum of tolerance swung too far when being a good European now means welcoming Muslim immigrants with open arms and letting them commit all sorts of mayhem, including suppressing freedom of speech if it offends them? Is it not too much tolerance when people who oppose this end up in prison for years?
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
