Tamerlane, mass-killer for Allah

Here, at my own expense, is a typical example of the kind of ignorance that is appallingly common today. I’ve heard about the notorious Tamerlane, or Timur the Lame, one of the great killers of history, all my life. Yet I never knew, until I read Andrew Bostom’s recent article at The American Thinker, the simple, salient fact that Tamerlane was a Muslim, and, moreover, that his conquests and mass massacres of peoples were motivated by Muslim piety. The name Tamerlane was simply equated in my mind with cruelty, without any details or content (just as the name Benedict Arnold, until I read Willard Stern Randall’s superb biography of him some years ago, was simply associated in my mind with treason, without any details or content). Correcting this lacuna, Bostom quotes the Turkic chronicle Malfuzat-i-Timuri, thought to be Timur’s autobiography:

About this time there arose in my heart the desire to lead an expedition against the infidels, and to become a ghazi; for it had reached my ears that the slayer of infidels is a ghazi, and if he is slain he becomes a martyr. It was on this account that I formed this resolution, but I was undetermined in my mind whether I should direct my expedition against the infidels of China or against the infidels and polytheists of India. In this matter I sought an omen from the Qur’an, and the verse I opened upon [Q66:9] was this, “O Prophet, make war upon infidels and unbelievers, and treat them with severity.” My great officers told me that the inhabitants of Hindustan were infidels and unbelievers. In obedience to the order of Almighty Allah I ordered an expedition against them.

A very sophisticated thinking process, yes? Whether or not the Malfuzat-i-Timuri was actually written by Tamurlane, it reflects the consistent Muslim mentality over the ages: (1) Allah tells us the path to holiness and heaven is killing infidels; (2) there are some infidels over there; (3) let’s kill them. It’s utterly primitive. Entire civilizations and peoples have been wiped out, over and over down the centuries, because of this primitive bloodthirsty “faith,” which Daniel Pipes and George W. Bush call a religion of peace.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 05, 2005 08:00 PM | Send