What Cordoba really means to me

Olbermann's comments about Park 51:"There is no 'Ground Zero Mosque'"

Until now, I never really read much Olbermann or had reason to quote him. But he's right about this.

I can confirm, from my memories of Medieval History class, that the characterization of "Cordoba" by Newt Gingrich misses the point.

"Cordoba" is, in part, a microcosm of the history of Islam - it's bloody civil wars, its rise under relative prosperity, the stagnation that accompanies a large and diverse empire, and the collapse when the previous regime is seen as decadent, to be replaced by progressively more extreme and reactionary forms of governance. It’s a fascinating history – if nothing else, the journey of Abd ar-Rahman I, the last surviving member of the Umayyad dynasty fleeing Damascus in the face of revolt and murder and flight to Al-Andalus, as the region was known under Muslim rule, is worth reading just for its drama.

The "Andalusian moment", a term often applied to a cultural blossoming during the early Umayyad reign of Al-Andalus, is an apt term, especially from my perspective as a physicist. "Moment" refers not only to a brief period of time; in math and physics, it refers to the cross product of two vectors. In the context of rotational dynamics, the moment of inertia is the rotational equivalent of "mass" - a higher moment means it takes a larger force to rotationally accelerate an object.

The Andalusian moment refers to a brief period of time in which the Iberian Peninsula flourished, with Cordoba a center of culture, commerce, and science. This happened because of tolerant policies - in particular, toward Jews - and alliances with Christian states in Northern Iberia. In this way, Cordoba became the center of the world, the axis upon which science and Jewry survived through a period of the Dark Ages - a "moment" in the physical sense.

The alliances were partly a result of necessity, just as the Kingdom of Jerusalem's alliance with Saladin was mutually beneficial to monarchs needing to deal with rebellion among their coreligionists. Yet they also stemmed from a philosophical choice by their rulers on what a "Kingdom of Heaven" would look like.

The lessons from both are important and many: you can get rich and improve security by making business, not war, provided you can provide a security environment and adequately speak for/control members of "your side". Similarly, you are vulnerable to the plots of those who feel disenfranchised by peace, who find leaders among those who are willing to use that schism for their own purposes.

Gingrich is partly right – Cordoba was taken over by a more reactionary government, then lost to the Christians. It shrank and nearly died as a community. But the lesson inferred is the wrong one – we must not trade prosperity and tolerance for poverty and fear. It’s bad for business, it’s bad for peace, and it’s a horrible way to live.

Most of all, it’s unworthy as a way of trying to sell books – at least the usurpers in Cordoba and Jerusalem had higher goals when they betrayed their communities and principles.