| Prologue Jared Diamond opened his latest book: Guns, Germs and Steel, with a question. In 1972, when he worked as a biologist in New Guinea, he was walking along the beach and met Yali, a local politician. They were going in the same direction and they walked together. Yali asked Jared Diamond a question, and his book is the answer to that question: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people have little cargo of our own?" It was a pertinent question. The same question is asked many times in different formats, but always with the same meaning. Why is it that England conquered India, and not India England? Why is it that European barbarians, who were still climbing trees wearing bearskins, when in the Middle East they already had advanced civilizations, still overcame them in all respects, wealth, science, everything. As Prof. Diamond got the inspiration for the book from Yali's question, I also had inspirations for this book. My first inspiration came during a visit to Paris, which is my spiritual capital as it is that of many other Europeans. I heard about a book, which appeared in 1973 in France and wanted to purchase it in the original. The book was written by Jean Raspail and its title :"Le Camp des Saints". It is an apocalyptic book, about the invasion of France by illegal immigrants who eventually swamp the country and Europe too. Immigrants already living in France assist the 'invasion'. It is not a racist book, but it is very outspoken. I went into a number of bookshops and asked for the book. I could not find it, I even received polite answers, but somehow I felt like someone who asks for directions to the nearest pornshop in a convent. After a few attempts I gave up, and eventually bought an English translation. Even that was difficult to find. I received my second inspiration from a BBC documentary, about the situation of Arab immigrants in France, showing alienation, violence and racism. In the documentary, the reporter showed a number of Arab boys, standing at the entrance to a block of flats, greeting the reporter and her crew by drawing their fingers across their throats to demonstrate what they intend to do to them. The reporter did not comment on it, only repeated the scene a number of times. She must have been a brave woman, to risk the stigma of being stamped as racist to poor, misunderstood immigrants. I hope she got away with her crime. After all, to show the real intentions of the immigrants is not 'politically correct'. They must be shown at all times as undeserved victims of neo-Nazis, skinheads and similar groups. She made the documentary in France, but she could have made the same documentary in Brixton or Liverpool, or in Germany. If anything, that BBC documentary was an illustration of Raspail's 'Le Camp des Saints'. But it was not only that TV documentary. When I looked, I found everyone from that book, the left-wing journalist, the TV commentator, the talk show host, the radical priest, the self-serving politician, the publicity-seeking actress; they were all around. And not only the scenes from Europe. Hijacked planes, blown-up buildings, slaughtered hostages and perennial rituals of flagburning by frenzied Middle Eastern mobs are recurring scenes on TV screens. They testify to a swelling up of an inhuman, primeval hatred, which has no counterpart in any other intercivilizational relationships. My experience with the book, the documentary and the daily dose of televised horror resulted in a question I put to myself, not unlike the question put to Prof. Diamond. What is going on here? The huge drab blocks of flats, the policemen who go only in pairs, the local people who are afraid to be out at night, are closer to a battlefield than one of the most liberal countries in West Europe. If it is a war, and it certainly is, then when did it start and why? What was the 'Sarajevo' of this war, and could it have been avoided? The questions did not leave me. I had to find answers. The answers are here in this book. I believe that the answers that are presented in the book are as honest and as accurate as possible. Even if the scene of the conflict were smaller than it is, there is no possibility of empirical proof in history. There is only a possibility of measuring the known historical data against some hypothesis to check whether they match or not. The conflict that is evaluated here is probably the longest conflict in human history, its roots going back to the very roots of agriculture and civilization. In spatial terms, it stretches over a great part of three continents. In order to find satisfactory answers, a basic hypothesis had to be formulated and the historical data, both as individual data and as a sequence of events, was measured against the parameters of the hypothesis. The very extent of the basic problem demanded a creation of some special way of measurement. When Fernand Braudel wanted to categorize historical research, he defined that research on a civilizational level should be carried out on phenomena that can be measured by a century or more. In this particular research, whose scope is wider than research on a civilizational level, no limits of time or space were set. Instead, a method was used which can be called the 'bird's eye view' of history. It means that historical data, which are distant from each other both chronologically and spatially, but are tied by some logical connection, can be matched against each other. This method was frequently used; indeed by using the normal 'worm's eye view' of historical research it would not have been possible to reach results and receive answers. Therefore, a historical hypothesis was built, and was proven as far as any historical hypothesis can be proven, e.g. no historical data, or sequence of events, were found which are in contradiction to the hypothesis. After a rigorous application of critical criteria, it can be stated that the hypothesis has a high degree of accuracy, without internal or external contradictions. Now it is the reader's turn to judge, |
