Osama Bin Laden and Ward Churchill Both Hate Columbus Day! (October 12)

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People who follow the Ward Churchill saga know that the University of Colorado's Tenured Plagiarist of Ethnic Studies hates Columbus Day (October 12) and has been arrested for interfering with its observance.

Reuven Koret's 2001 Columbus Day article, "Bin Laden, Columbus, and the Jews," points out that Osama Bin Laden also hates Columbus and is nursing a 500-year-old grudge about the expulsion of Muslims from Spain in 1492.

Koret also notes that terrorist attacks often happen on Columbus Day:

Just before midnight [On Columbus Day 2001], a powerful car-bomb exploded in an underground parking lot in Madrid's Plaza Colon, named for Christopher Columbus and the site of a monument in his honor. The car had been towed to the lot after being illegally parked near the crowded site where the former King of Spain, Juan Carlos, appeared earlier in the day. As a result, no one was seriously injured. No terrorist group has yet claimed responsibility for the blast.

The late professor Eqbal Ahmad, who is described in the article as a follower of Osama Bin Laden, spoke on 10-12-98 at the University of Colorado in Boulder on about Columbus' legacy of genocide and alluded to the killing of Custer, another Ward Churchill theme. The whole purpose of these events is not to learn from history but to undermine our history and replace it with one-sided propaganda. Ahmad closed his speech with the words: "These are the chickens of the Afghanistan war coming home to roost." [Text of Ahmad's 1998 Columbus Day speech at CU Boulder---"Courtesy University of Colorado"]

This is almost certainly the same Eqbal Ahmad who was once accused of plotting to kidnap Henry Kissinger. I wonder who invited Ahmad to UC Boulder for Columbus Day?

[The site that posted Ahmad's Columbus Day speech http://www.sangam.org/ANALYSIS/Ahmad.htm seems to be these folks http://www.sangam.org/ I wonder if this is some front for the Tamil Tigers.]

Koret shows that Bin Laden is still nursing a grudge because the Muslims lost Spain:

"Let the whole world know that we shall never accept that the tragedy of Andalusia be repeated in Palestine," Osama bin Laden said in his taped cave-side address. "We cannot accept that Palestine will become Jewish."

The allusion to Andalusia evidently refers to the Christian re-conquest of Spain from Muslims in 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella led the Spanish forces in seizing control of the glorious Moorish palace of Alhambra, a turning point in the drive to expel the Moors from the European continent...

In bin Laden's remark we see the extent to which historical humiliations inform his thinking. He seeks to avenge the defeat of the Muslims at Granada by the Catholics, and the defeat of the Muslims by the Jews in Palestine. We see, too, how he thinks in symbols: Andalusia 1492 is being repeated in modern-day Israel.

Columbus Day, October 12, commemorates the European "discovery" of America in 1492, and 1492 represents the year in which Islam began to be pushed out of Spain. In bin Laden's mind, these two events are inextricably linked.

On October 12, 2000, the USS Cole was attacked at sea by two suicide bombers on a speedboat.

Exactly one year earlier, on October 12, 1999, a covert operation to send 60 Pakistani commandos to Afghanistan to capture or kill bin Laden was aborted when a military coup overthrew Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Exactly one year before that, on October 12, 1998, the late Eqbal Ahmad, a follower of bin Laden and a Professor at Hampshire College, gave a presentation at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He said: "History unfortunately recognizes and accords visibility to power and not to weakness. Therefore, visibility has been accorded historically to dominant groups. In our time, the time that began with this day, Columbus Day."

Professor Ahmad explained: "The time that begins with Columbus Day is a time of extraordinary unrecorded holocausts. Great civilizations have been wiped out. The Mayas, the Incas, the Aztecs, the American Indians, the Canadian Indians were all wiped out. Their voices have not been heard, even to this day fully. Now they are beginning to be heard, but not fully. They are heard, yes, but only when the dominant power suffers, only when resistance has a semblance of costing, of exacting a price. When a Custer is killed… that's when you know that there were Indians fighting." [Full text]