Tyler O'Neil, PJ Media, April 9, 2018

Last month, Facebook censored a German historian who posted a message about Islam’s historic impact on Germany. Facebook banned the historian for 30 days, even though 76 percent of Germans agree that Islam does not “belong to Germany.”

Michael Hesemann, a journalist and Vatican historian with an honorary doctorate for his work in uncovering documents from the Armenian Genocide, posted a message that Facebook said did “not correspond to our community standards.” The offensive message was an accurate — if overstated — historical statement.

“Islam always plays only one role in the 1700-year-old history of the Christian Occident: the role of the sword of Damocles which hung above us, the threat of barbarism against which one needed to unite and fight,” Hesemann wrote, according to NRW Direkt. “In this sense, Islam is not part of German history, but the defense against Islam!”

Facebook argued that it would delete any comment that “attacks persons because of their race, ethnicity, national background, religious orientation, sexual orientation, sexual identity, or physical impairment,” the Catholic site OnePeterFive reported.

The historical relationship between Islam and Germany has become a hot topic in the last month, with the rise of the new Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. The former president of Germany, Christian Wulff, declared that “Islam belongs to Germany” — and Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed.

“No. Islam does not belong to Germany,” Seehofer declared shortly after taking office. “Germany is characterized by Christianity.” Even so, he added, “The Muslims living with us naturally belong to Germany.”

In a recent WELT-Trends poll, 76 percent of Germans agreed with Seehofer on this issue, with 61 percent saying they “strongly agree.” Only 20 percent of Germans disagreed, insisting that Islam is fundamental to Germany. A mere four percent said they were “undecided.”

The historian lamented the forced silence of political correctness on this issue. “It says a lot about the deplorable state of our democracy under Chancellor Angela Merkel, when a historian may not utter simple historical facts,” Hesemann told NRW Direkt.

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Without the presence of Islam as a perceived “threat of barbarism,” Europeans would not have discovered and colonized the Americas, with all the good and ill that came of their expeditions.

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Summarizing this tremendous impact, the Vatican historian Hesemann added, “So Islam certainly played an important role in the history of Europe, and especially in Germany, but not as part of our culture, in which it was never integrated — but as a threat against which to unite, and to overcome all borders and disagreements.”

“Say: without Islam, a Christian West would never have defined itself in that clarity,” Hesemann concluded.

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“But here, the historical assessment of Islam is simply censored and unworthy of a free society,” the historian quipped. “Obviously, any critical engagement with a religion that has spread through the subjugation of other peoples and still today follows a barbarian 7th-century law that follows Sharia with its brutal corporal and capital punishments, including stoning and crucifixion.”

“Apparently, every single critical historian must now shut up,” Hesemann said. “I strongly protest and plead for the right of freedom of expression and free discussion of historical facts.”

Indeed, recent events in Germany suggest that Islam is becoming something of a state religion. Criticism of the religion is considered unacceptable, and immigrants have gotten away with crimes as horrible as rape because of their cultural heritage.

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