Hatred Blinds Swedish to Burning Quran - Koran: Muhammad between King Charles Martel & King Charles III, Slavery Between Hussein Obama and Biden
Makes you realize what a small piece of the whole human story you are.
8.11am Helena Montana / 4.11pm Stockholm / 5.11pm Tel Aviv - Istanbul - Ankara / 10.11am DC / 3.11pm London
Woman I loved is Jew with (linkage) at least 4 (FOUR) nationalities but she decided to just have 1 citizenship (according to her new passport), and (from) a famous family who has frequently been the subject of conspiracy theories, many of which have antisemitic origins. I’m (as Indonesian) maybe not only Minang (one of the old-roots for at least 65% Malaysian today —— total Malaysia population is 33 million) - Javanese (biggest / dominant tribe in Indonesia), but maybe (also) Austronesia.
In the light of (today) Eid Adha, this holy-sacred day celebrated in commemoration of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ibrahim (in Quran version) or Ishmael (in Torah version) on God's command, as well as the end of the Hajj pilgrimage to the Kaaba. Jews and Christians say that the sacrifice was Isaac, whereas according to the Islamic tradition the sacrifice is Ishmael. The opposition between the two versions has not bothered any side that much because in the common mind "what we think is certainly right and those who think differently are necessarily wrong".
Muslims maintain that Abraham further asked God to bless both the lines of his progeny, of Isma'il (represent and or to be root of Islam) and Isḥaq / Isaac (represent and or to be root of Jewish), and to keep all of his descendants in the protection of God. In some cases, some believe these legends (sacrifice Ismail or Isaac, whatever version) in Islamic text may have influenced later Jewish tradition.
2 Days ago, US, Swedish prosecutors studied a graft complaint naming the son of Turkiye's President Erdogan. Is this a way to pressure Erdogan into ratifying Sweden’s membership into NATO? Turkish court blocks 93 Internet pages which reported on Reuters article that claims Erdogan family is involved in a graft investigation by Sweden and US ahead of NATO summit in Vilnius.
The court blocked also the initial Reuters article and is the first among the 93 Internet addresses. I do not recall whether any Reuters articles were blocked in the past. This may actually be the very first one. Erdogan’s Comms director says Turkey won’t be pressured by some lobbyists with unverified allegations of graft before the NATO-summit in Vilnius 2 weeks from now. He indirectly means that some actors are trying to pressure Turkey into ratifying Sweden’s NATO bid.
In April 2022, Danish extremist bigot Rasmus Paludan's announcement of a Koran burning "tour" for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan sparked riots across Sweden. January 20, 2023, Rasmus Paludan burned a Quran / Koran in front of the Turkish embassy in Sweden. 99.4% Turkiye population are Muslim.
The EU continues to put through Turkish citizens in visa ordeal, and rejection rates skyrocket. Brussels argue that increasing asylum applications is the reason. EU is hiding its politically motivated move with empty spins. Comparatively speaking, Albania and Georgia have thousands of asylum applications, much higher asylum seeking rate per population than Turkey / Turkiye which has 84 million citizens.
Countries like Venezuela, Colombia and Peru, which have visa-free travel regime with the EU, have high number of asylum applications. It is increasing every year. But the EU didn’t act. Turkey remains to be the only official EU candidate country in history that doesn’t enjoy visa-free travel to Europe. EU says Turkey didn’t meet the benchmarks. But Brussels didn’t seek similar benchmarks from the UAE, a notorious human rights abuser, under terrorism legislation. Even if Turkey completed all the benchmarks for the Schengen-visa travel, it isn’t clear when that would happen. It took 6 years for Kosovo to obtain such right despite the fact that they met all the requirements in 2018.
You may hate Erdogan as much as you want, but mostly dissident Turkish journalists, artists, and businessmen suffer from the EU visa ordeal. Ukraine got the visa free travel right to EU in 2017 after the annexation of Crimea. Georgia as well, a large part of its territory is under Russian occupation. Ukraine is literally in war with Russia. And they still have visa free travel to Europe
Again, in the spirit (holy - sacred day for Muslim) Eid Adha today, Sweden is permitting a hate crime under the guise of "freedom of speech" or some other nonsense. 3 Hours ago, Sweden police granted permission for a Koran / Quran burning protest outside the mosque.
Worth noting that the police in Sweden have NOT granted permission for burning a Qur'an (they have granted permission for a "protest"), as there is currently a ban on all fires and burning in Stockholm due to summer fire risk. Media report protester has burnt some pages from Qur'an and wiped shoes with others. The applicant for today's protest is a man who came to Sweden from Iraq. So, while burning the Qur'an is legal, he may face a fine for breaking fire safety rules.
Sometimes, a lot western doesn’t know that Muslim / Moslem actually very “near” with Western. Thanks to the prolonged - very long time Muslim / Caliphate conquered Europe especially Portugal, Spain, South of France, so the late Queen Elizabeth and of course King Charles III are descendants of Prophet Muhammad.
Her lineage has been traced by generations, and there are questions about Elizabeth's possible descent from a Muslim princess named Zaida, as well as about Zaida's own origins and children. The graphic included in journalist Arron Merat's tweet had been previously published by The Times, a British newspaper, in 2018.
Speaking to The Times on the topic in 2018, English historian and television personality David Starkey said the idea that Elizabeth was linked by lineage to Muhammad was "not at all outlandish," although it hadn't been verified or widely accepted by historians.
There were strong ties between Spain's royalty and the Islamic empire during Zaida's lifetime, and Starkey noted in comments to The Times that, "the medieval monarchs of Spain and the Islamic royal houses were very close and totally intermeshed." Parts of modern-day Spain were in fact ruled by the Umayyads, a Muslim caliphate.
The idea that the British royals, vis-a-vis Queen Elizabeth II, are descendants of the Prophet Muhammad doesn't exactly have the murky origins of an unfounded, sketchy internet rumor. It is certainly plausible.
A later Muslim incursion into France, in the ninth century, resulted in the establishment of Fraxinetum, a fortress in Provence that lasted for nearly a century. Several historians, such as Edward Gibbon, have credited the Christian victory in the battle as an important factor in curtailing the Islamization of Western Europe and Southern Europe. Muslims maintained their authority in Portugal, Spain, south of France for centuries.
Pepin's son, Charlemagne, fulfilled the Frankish goal of extending the defensive boundaries of the empire beyond Septimania and the Pyrenees, creating a strong barrier state between the Umayyad Emirate and Francia. This buffer zone known as the "Spanish March" would become a focus for the Reconquista. Pepin's son Charlemagne, grandson of Charles, extended the Frankish realms and became the first emperor in the West since the fall of Rome.
(Al Hakam II)
Al-Hakam II (915–976), was the second Umayyad Caliph of Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain). His personal library was of enormous proportions. Some accounts speak of him having more than 600,000 books. During his reign many books were translated from Latin and Greek into Arabic. If the Spanish (Queen Isabella) hadn't kicked them out in 1492 (with Reconquista), there would be no Spanish and Portuguese language -- Spain & Portugal would speak Arabic. If Christian victory (by Frankish, or Charles Martel, or Charlemagne, or Isabella) never happened, maybe more and more “Prophet Muhammad / Mohammad” descendants are still alive until today and not only King Charles III.
The historical views of this battle fall into three great phases, both in the East and especially in the West. Western historians, beginning with the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754, stressed the macrohistorical impact of the battle, as did the Continuations of Fredegar. This became a claim that Charles Martel had saved Christianity, as Gibbon and his generation of historians agreed that the Battle of Tours was unquestionably decisive in world history.
Modern historians have essentially fallen into two camps on the issue. The first camp essentially agrees with Gibbon, and the other argues that the Battle has been massively overstated – turned from a raid in force to an invasion, and from a mere annoyance to the Caliph to a shattering defeat that helped end the Islamic Expansion Era. It is essential, however, to note that within the first group, those who agree the Battle was of macrohistorical importance, there are a number of historians who take a more moderate and nuanced view of the significance of the battle, in contrast to the more dramatic and rhetorical approach of Gibbon. The best example of this school is William E. Watson, who does believe the battle has such importance, as will be discussed below, but analyzes it militarily, culturally, and politically, rather than seeing it as a classic "Muslim versus Christian" confrontation.
====
Thanks to prolonged Civil War in the U.S. President Joe Biden and every living former U.S. president except Donald Trump are direct descendants of slaveholders: Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama. Especially for Obama, this fact is really stunning.
He (Obama) faced racism during his campaign (2008; 2012). He was born to an American mother and a Kenyan father. His mother, Ann Dunham (1942–1995), was born in Wichita, Kansas and was of English, Welsh, German, Swiss, and Irish descent. In 2007 it was discovered her great-great-grandfather Falmouth Kearney emigrated from the village of Moneygall, Ireland to the US in 1850. In July 2012, Ancestry.com found a strong likelihood that Dunham was descended from John Punch, an enslaved African man who lived in the Colony of Virginia during the seventeenth century. Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr. (1934–1982), a Muslim Kenyan.
Last April 2023, actor Edward Harrison Norton says discovering one of his own ancestors owned enslaved Black people is an “uncomfortable” truth that “needs to be acknowledged” and contended with.
The Glass Onion (exclusive Netflix / a Netflix Series) star and Oscar winner discovered the ancestral connection during the season 9 premiere of PBS’ Finding Your Roots. In the episode, which also featured Julia Fiona Roberts, host Henry Louis Gates Jr. revealed that Norton’s third great-grandfather, John Winstead, had a record of owning enslaved people in the 1850 North Carolina census. The revelation — which coincided with Norton learning about being a direct descendant of the Indigenous American historical figure Pocahontas as well as a wealthy iron manufacturer-turned-Union soldier who wrote to Abraham Lincoln and a late 19th-century pro-union labor activist involved in the Pullman Strike — was something Norton said made him uneasy but that had to be addressed.
“The short answer is these things are uncomfortable and you should be uncomfortable with them. Everybody should be uncomfortable with it,” Norton said on Finding Your Roots. “It’s not a judgment on you and your own life, but it’s a judgment on the history of this country and it needs to be acknowledged first and foremost, and then it needs to be contended with.”
Julia Fiona Roberts also learned her ancestors, her fourth great-grandfather Edward Townsend, had owned enslaved people on a farm of 2,000 acres. It was something she assumed given her Georgia roots. “You have to figure if you’re from the South, you’re on one side of it or the other,” Roberts said on the show. Still, she said it was important to “understand” and “not shy away from.”
“You can’t turn your back on history even when you become a part of it in a way that doesn’t align with your personal compass,” the actress, whose family also has a direct connection to Martin Luther King, Jr. and his family, said.
When actress Julia Roberts was born 56 years ago in Smyrna, Ga., a couple swooped in and paid her parents’ hospital bill. It was Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King.
The story, not widely known, recently resurfaced on social media. A retweet of a video compilation of Roberts from a fan on Oct. 21 read: “Martin Luther King Jr paying for her birth is still a little known fact that sends me.”
The Kings’ kind deed was far from a myth. To mark Roberts’s birthday on Oct. 28, Zara Rahim, who has a significant social media following, shared a video clip on Twitter, in which Roberts confirms the story during an interview with television personality Gayle King.
“The day you were born, who paid for the hospital bill?” King asked Roberts during HISTORYTalks, a September event in D.C., hosted by the History Channel and A&E Networks.
“Her research is very good,” a seemingly surprised Roberts quipped.
Then, Roberts provided a definitive response: “The King family paid for my hospital bill.”
“Not my family,” King replied, clarifying that Roberts was referring to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. “Why did they do that?”
“My parents couldn’t pay for the hospital bill,” Roberts said.
She explained that her parents — Walter and Betty Roberts — owned a theater school in Atlanta called the Actors and Writers Workshop, which they welcomed the King children to attend.
“One day Coretta Scott King called my mother and asked if her kids could be part of the school, because they were having a hard time finding a place that would accept her kids,” Julia Roberts said. “My mom was like, ‘Sure, come on over.’ And so they just all became friends and they helped us out of a jam.”
Bernice King, the youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, tweeted that she was grateful the story was getting attention, “and that so many people have been awed by it. I know the story well, but it is moving for me to be reminded of my parents’ generosity and influence.”
While the tale of Roberts’s hospital bill wasn’t widely known until recently, stories had previously been told about the two families and their friendship in the 1960s, a time of Jim Crow laws and segregation in the South.
A 2001 CNN interview featuring Julia Roberts, her mother and Yolanda King — the firstborn child of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King — highlighted their connection.
“It was an extended family, it really was. And all of these Black kids and White kids getting along, no problems,” Yolanda King said.
A 2013 essay by Georgia-based author Phillip DePoy also discusses the families’ relationship — and how it led to turmoil and targeting. He described a story from 1965, when he — then a 15-year-old boy — was part of a production put on by the Roberts’ theatrical group. In the play, which was based on a story by writer Joel Chandler Harris, he and Yolanda King kissed, sparking uproar.
“I was primarily Caucasian and Yolanda wasn’t,” wrote DePoy, who did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post. “That’s what the trouble was about.”
According to him, “a tangential member of the Ku Klux Klan” witnessed the kiss and subsequently blew up a vehicle parked nearby. “The cops who had been watching the show just wandered over, talked to him, put him in handcuffs and took him away with very little energy.”
Beyond chronicling the incident, DePoy also explained the impact the Roberts family had on those who attended their theater school — and the Atlanta acting scene more broadly.
“Yolanda King spent the rest of her life involved in theater; my brother, Scott DePoy, who had joined the workshop before I had, continues to work all over the Southeast. Eric Roberts eventually went to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London,” he wrote.
Just as the Roberts left an impact on the King family, the same was true in the reverse.
Like her parents, Roberts has long been a racial justice advocate. While filming “Sleeping with the Enemy,” in the spring of 1990 in a small South Carolina town, Roberts got into a heated argument with a local bar owner, who denied entry to a crew member because he was Black.
“I was enraged, I was out of my mind,” Roberts said in a 2001 interview with CNN.
In response to hearing Roberts recount the hospital bill story, Gayle King said: “I think that’s extraordinary, and it sort of lays the groundwork for who you are.” “Oh, absolutely,” Roberts replied.
Back to Edward Norton. During the episode, Gates — who said Norton came ready with more detail about his past “than any guest I can recall” — also confirmed something the actor believed to be a legend: his connection to the daughter of Wahunsenacawh, a chief of the Powhatan, an Algonquian-speaking alliance from Tsenacommacah, the Tidewater region in Virginia.
“I understand that was family lore. Well, it is absolutely true,” Gates said of the “direct paper trail” linking Norton to the well-known figure. “John Rolfe and Pocahontas got married on April 5, 1614. Shakespeare dies in 1616, just to put this in perspective.”
“This is about as far back as you can go, unless you’re a Viking,” Norton jokes. “Makes you realize what a small piece of the whole human story you are.”
At least 100 members of the last sitting Congress are direct descendants of ancestors who enslaved Black people, representing at least 8% of Democrats in Congress and 28% of Republicans. The group includes Republican senators Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton and James Lankford, and Democrats Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan.
Governors of 11 of the 50 U.S. states in 2022 were descendants of slaveholders, as were two U.S. Supreme Court justices. The Congressional slaveholding ancestors were among the richest in America before the Civil War; three-quarters were among the richest 10%. In researching America’s political elite, Reuters found names of more than 700 people enslaved by ancestors of the leaders. Some 23% of respondents to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll said knowing that a candidate’s ancestors enslaved people would make them less likely to vote for that candidate, and white respondents who said they’re aware of having a slaveholding ancestor were more likely than other white people to support paying reparations for slavery.
=========END————
Thank you, as always, for reading. If you have anything like a spark file, or master thought list (spark file sounds so much cooler), let me know how you use it in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it.
If a friend sent this to you, you could subscribe here 👇. All content is free, and paid subscriptions are voluntary.
————
-prada- (Adi Mulia Pradana) is a Helper. Former adviser (President Indonesia) Jokowi for mapping 2-times election. I used to get paid to catch all these blunders—now I do it for free. Trying to work out what's going on, what happens next. Arch enemies of the tobacco industry, (still) survive after getting doxed.
(Very rare compliment and initiative pledge. Thank you. Yes, even a lot of people associated me PRAVDA, not part of MIUCCIA PRADA. I’m literally asshole on debate, since in college). Especially tonight heated between Putin and Prigozhin.
========
Thanks for reading Prada’s Newsletter. I was lured, inspired by someone writer, his post in LinkedIn months ago, “Currently after a routine daily writing newsletter in the last 10 years, my subscriber reaches 100,000. Maybe one of my subscribers is your boss.” After I get followed / subscribed by (literally) prominent AI and prominent Chief Product and Technology of mammoth global media (both: Sir, thank you so much), I try crafting more / better writing.
To get the ones who really appreciate your writing, and now prominent people appreciate my writing, priceless feeling. Prada ungated/no paywall every notes-but thank you for anyone open initiative pledge to me.
(Promoting to more engage in Substack) Seamless to listen to your favorite podcasts on Substack. You can buy a better headset to listen to a podcast here (GST DE352306207). Listeners on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or Pocket Casts simultaneously. podcasting can transform more of a conversation. Invite listeners to weigh in on episodes directly with you and with each other through discussion threads. At Substack, the process is to build with writers. Podcasts are an amazing feature of the Substack. I wish it had a feature to read the words we have written down without us having to do the speaking. Thanks for reading Prada’s Newsletter.