Myths are powerful things, and it is always depressing when myths that promote a false picture of the world are promoted, especially when this is done by someone who really ought to know better. Just recently President Obama made a speech in which he claimed that Islam was woven into the fabric of American life since its founding. You can read about the speech, and an effective refutation of it, here.
Presumably, Mr Obama wished in this speech to conciliate Muslim opinion, and to make Muslims feel included in the American foundation myth. (I use the word advisedly: the foundation of America was something that happened in the clear light of history, but it also is seen as a mythical event by Americans, the beginning of a bright new dawn, and all the other things that contribute to the myth of American exceptionalism.) It is however a huge pity that he went about this task (which could have been done in another way) by telling a huge untruth, and by massaging facts until they resembled something else entirely.
Another great Presidential myth-maker is the President of Turkey, who also plays fast and loose with history. Mr Erdogan has embarked on what some call a neo-Ottoman policy, trying to take back the historical leadership role in the Muslim world once exercised by the Sultans in Istanbul. This seems to be the point of his huge palace in Ankara, where men in historical costume regularly form guards of honour.
Neo-Ottomanism is a sort of legitimate myth-making, in that one can hardly blame the Turks for trying to revive a role they think rightfully theirs. They can hardly object, though, to us non-Turks pointing out certain inconvenient truths, namely that the Ottoman Empire was heartily hated by all its subject peoples, as a wealth of historical evidence shows.
But where Mr Erdogan strays into the realm of the absurd is when he tells us that it was Muslims who discovered America. This is absurd because it is completely unsupported by an evidence (and let us remember that evidence and its evaluation is at the heart of the study of history); but it is also sinister in that it points to a desire to ignore the realities of history and substitute them with myth; in other words to make the past what you want it to be rather than what it objectively was. The sinister nature of what is taking place is seen with greater clarity when we consider that Mr Erdogan denies the Armenian genocide, the hundredth anniversary of which takes place this year. It never happened, he tells us. There is a huge amount of evidence that points to the fact that it did happen, but according to Mr Erdogan and others, it never happened.
Is Mr Erdogan mad? He denies reality, which is a sign of madness, but sadly it is worse than that. Mr Erdogan is someone who takes a world view inspired by his religious beliefs which involve, clearly, a rejection of the Enlightenment. This is worse than madness, because it is far more dangerous.
Mr Obama presides over a nation that was born of Enlightenment values. That he should stray into the same territory as his Turkish counterpart is inexplicable and worrying.
This manipulation of history, and the way fact is swept away by modern myth–making, is of course the stock in trade of totalitarian regimes. The facts of history and the iron law of reason should act as a break on the pretensions to power of would be dictators. It is deeply worrying that today there are several rulers, and one group of outlaws (the so-called Islamic Sate) that reject the sovereignty of reason. It is distressing that religious people, some of them Christians, support this stance. After all, God is the supreme reason, and He has allowed us to participate in reason in that we are rational creatures. Grace builds on nature, and faith and reason complement each other. This is something we need to hold onto as a matter of urgency.
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