The Guardian of London featured a “Middle East expert” who claims that landmarks of Western architecture such as the Notre Dame cathederal were stolen from the Islamic world.
The claims of Diana Darke, who contends Notre Dame’s design was ripped off from a fifth century church in Syria, are “nonsense,” writes author and Jihad Watch Director Robert Spencer.
Spencer, a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, noted that Islam arose in the seventh and eighth centuries.
“What exactly does the design of a pre-Islamic church in Syria have to do with the Islamic world? Nothing,” he wrote. “Nothing whatsoever. It just happens that the site of this church was conquered by Muslims several centuries after it was built, so for Diana Darke, the Guardian, and their luckless readers, this becomes an example of how the West ‘stole from’ or ‘plundered’ the Islamic world.”
The Guardian article, titled “Looted landmarks: how Notre-Dame, Big Ben and St Mark’s were stolen from the east,” said the three landmarks in the title “are beacons of western civilization.”
“But, says an explosive new book, the designs of Europe’s greatest buildings were plundered from the Islamic world – twin towers, rose windows, vaulted ceilings and all.”
The Guardian cited Darke saying the origins of Notre Dame are in a village just west of Aleppo, Syria, not in any “annals of European Christian history.”
“Notre Dame’s architectural design, like all gothic cathedrals in Europe, comes directly from Syria’s Qalb Lozeh fifth-century church,” Darke wrote on Twitter. “Crusaders brought the ‘twin tower flanking the rose window’ concept back to Europe in the 12th century.
“I thought more people knew, but there seems to be this great gulf of ignorance about the history of cultural appropriation,” she said. “Against a backdrop of rising Islamophobia, I thought it was about time someone straightened out the narrative.”
Her book “Stealing from the Saracens” was described by the Guardian as “an exhilarating, meticulously researched book that sheds light on centuries of borrowing, tracing the roots of Europe’s major buildings – from the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey to Chartres cathedral and St Mark’s basilica in Venice – back to their Middle Eastern precedents.”
She said most of the “cultural exchanges” were East to West. “Very little went the other way.”
Spencer called the claims “ridiculous.”
It is, he said, “yet another example of the UK elite’s ongoing efforts to compel Britons to believe that Islam is part of their own culture and heritage, so that they will be shamed into fearing to oppose mass Muslim migration into Britain, as well as jihad violence and Shariah oppression of women and others.”
“It’s just more of Britain’s continuing cultural suicide,” he said.
“In this case, the deception and sleight of hand are clumsy and obvious. Note that the subtitle of the Guardian article claims that ‘the designs of Europe’s greatest buildings were plundered from the Islamic world.’ A centerpiece of Diana Darke’s case for that is that ‘Notre-Dame’s architectural design, like all gothic cathedrals in Europe, comes directly from Syria’s Qalb Lozeh fifth-century church.'”
Spencer said “even more ridiculous is the claim that the Dome of the Rock was the basis for church architecture in Europe, when the Dome of the Rock itself was patterned after the great cathedral in Constantinople, Hagia Sophia.”
“St. Mark’s in Venice was also patterned after Hagia Sophia, although Darke claims it was based on the Dome of the Rock. The interior of St. Mark’s is covered on virtually every available space with Christian art, as was the interior of Hagia Sophia. Which is its more likely influence? If those who built St. Mark’s were imitating the Dome of the Rock, why didn’t they opt for a more austere interior?”
He said Darke’s work is part of a bigger campaign.
“Another example of the same cultural self-abnegation came last fall, when the British Museum ran a lavish exhibition called ‘Inspired by the East,’ about how Western art had been massively influenced by Islamic art. Never mind that the Islamic influence on Western art was severely limited by the fact that Shariah forbids representation of the human form.”
Spencer said the “objective here is to get Westerners to despise their own heritage, not revere it.”
