Humanities Update

Man, today my Humanities professor was in rare form. Class started with another of the off topic open discussion, which is to say that it was her and the two echo boxes talking. As I was sitting down she was talking about how the English had killed hundreds of millions of native as the US was stolen away. Hundreds? That means a minimum of 200,000,000 American Indians as anything less would not be “hundreds”. In 1776 the population of the US was about 13 million. In fact the US didn’t hit the 200 million mark until during the Vietnam war. Where in the world did these hundreds of millions of people live and how did they lose a fight in which they so greatly out numbered their enemy? Her hyperbole knows no bounds.

After that she talked about Bill Clinton. She stated that he was the smartest and best president the US has ever had. She went further to declare that Monica Lewinsky was a Republican plant. Wow.

Then we started the class with an hour of the movie Cleopatra. This was our education on the Roman Empire. After that she gave 30 minutes of lecture starting from the assassination of Julius Caesar, going through the fall of the western empire and the rise of Christianity, the establishment of Constantinople up to the year 610. Six and a half centuries of history in 30 minutes.

It was now the normal time she ends class. She thought out loud if she should touch on Islam now or wait until the next class, she decided to ‘touch” on it today. For the next 45 minutes – at which point we got kicked out by the next class – she managed to cover the 15 or so years from when Mohammed got a job at age 12 and when he left Mecca for Medina.

She is enthralled by Islam and today she taught me that:

Islam means “peace”, when it actually means “submission”.

The violence of Islam is a result of American actions. So then the conquest of Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian and Christian lands centuries before Columbus even sailed forth must have just been a big misunderstanding.

Mohammed left Mecca on a pilgrimage to Medina where he then recited the Koran. That’s one way of saying it. Another way would be to say that he and his band of warriors had to retreat from Mecca after having lost a battle in which they failed to seize control of the city. Yet another way to say it would be that having lost his first war against the Meccans he took his band of warriors north where they were able to defeat the weaker Medians, seize control of their land and use it as a base of operations to raid caravans and neighboring lands while he recited the rest of the Koran. You say tomayto, I say tomahto.

Mohammed was just like Jesus Christ. With the slight difference of having been a general who lead troops into battle, taking and selling people into slavery, ordering the executions of people, ordering the massacre of women and children, teaching his followers to hate and despise their neighbors instead of loving them, having multiple wives to give him sons to take over his kingdom from him, not dying on a cross, not being raised from the dead, amassing wealth versus teaching poverty. Ya, he was just like Jesus. A regular carbon copy.

That’s what she taught in a 45 minute “touching” of Islam, I’m looking forward to see how much whitewash she uses in the next class in which she plans to take up through the teachings of Islam.