by Raymond Ibrahim
Invasions, enslavement, and jihad are being rewritten as celebrations of diversity.
On July 30, more than 72,000 Muslims surged from Morocco into Ceuta, leaving at least 96 dead, and prompting Italy to impose targeted border controls on arrivals from Spain.
But just as Italy tries to protect itself, Italians continue to be bombarded with a very different story about their past: mass migration and multiculturalism, they are told—particularly from the Islamic world—are part of the very essence of Italy, especially Sicily.
Consider one National Geographic article, “From Kasbahs to Couscous—How Sicily Has Celebrated Its Diversity Through the Centuries.”
Sicily, we are told, is the “Gates of Europe,” an island whose identity has always been shaped by foreigners: “immigration is not a footnote to Sicilian history; it’s part of the essence of an island shaped by outsiders.”
There is, however, one problem with this narrative: it treats jihadist conquests as mere episodes of “immigration.”
Thus, while discussing Mazara del Vallo, now home to Italy’s largest Arab community, the magazine asserts that modern Tunisian migration represents merely “the latest wave in a history of immigration from North Africa that goes back to the 9th century CE.”
And what sort of “immigration” occurred in the ninth century?
In National Geographic’s very next words, “a Tunisian-led army invaded Sicily, turning it into an Islamic emirate for the next 200 years.”
Read that again, in full context: