Opinion

QUAY: Stop Calling The Hamas Massacre ‘Medieval’

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(Photo by FRANCOIS NASCIMBENI / AFP) (Photo by FRANCOIS NASCIMBENI/AFP via Getty Images)

Grayson Quay News & Opinion Editor
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Abominable. Barbaric. Cruel. Depraved. Evil.

Plenty of words come to mind to describe the Oct. 7 attack against Israel, which saw Hamas terrorists murder over 1,400 people — including infants — and drag some 200 hostages back to Gaza. 

But despite the myriad resources of the English language, there’s one word that figures from across the political spectrum seem to return to again and again. 

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted that he was “appalled by the barbaric and medieval Hamas attacks.” 

Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt said “medieval” was the “appropriate word” for the massacres.

Conservative Jewish commentator Josh Hammer described Hamas as a “medieval genocidal Islamist death cult.” 

This is a mistake.

The idea of the “Middle Ages” — a term that refers generally to Western Europe in the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Renaissance — was popularized by Italian humanist scholars.

The concept would have been alien to most people at the time. For them, Christ’s incarnation was the turning point of history, hence the BC/AD dating system.

These early Renaissance figures took a different approach, dividing history into three periods — Classical, Medieval, and Modern. The old story was one of paganism enlightened by Christianity. In the new story, it was Christianity that brought the darkness. 

The tripartite model introduced a concept of secular progress that existed apart from the divine plan of salvation. When the Jacobins set out to “dechristianize” France and replace Christ with the goddess Reason, they did so to eradicate “medieval” superstitions, even as their own “goddess” inspired them to guillotine 17,000 people and go scorched-earth on the Vendée. Today, many people — including but not limited to fedora-tipping Reddit atheists — envision the medieval period as an era of stagnation without which we’d all be sipping stardust cocktails in the Andromeda Colonies by now.

Of course, the Middle Ages were far more than a mere interlude. Just visit the Sainte Chapelle, or read some Thomas Aquinas (whose principles of just war theory utterly condemn the kind of indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in which Hamas engaged). In a 2019 speech, future Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni reminded critics who called her proposals “medieval” that “the Middle Ages was also the time of cathedrals and abbeys; the time when the communes, universities and parliament were born; and the time of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, St. Francis, and St. Benedict.” (RELATED: Trudeau Grills Italian PM On ‘Two-Spirit,’ Trans Rights At Bilateral Meeting)

In the Islamic world, the Middle Ages were a golden age, a time of massive achievements in literature, mathematics, architecture and philosophy. The backwards, barbaric fundamentalism of Hamas or the Taliban is a very modern phenomenon.

Nevertheless, the attitudes engendered by this new division of history persist: everything old is bad, your ancestors were bigoted morons, religion is oppressive, progress is real and inevitable. 

These lies blind us to the reality that no epoch has a monopoly on evil. Violence against Jews has been justified by “medieval” appeals to religious bigotry, but also by the very modern claims of Nazi race science. Wars and purges launched in the name of secular ideas like communism (or even liberal democracy) have caused more devastation than any religious crusade or inquisition. Slavery went unquestioned in the Classical period, was largely abolished in the Middle Ages and came roaring back (with nasty racial overtones) in the Early Modern era. 

We’re inclined to recoil from some practices the medievals took for granted (such as the death penalty for unrepentant heretics), but no doubt they would have a similar reaction if they saw us cheering in the streets for abortion and hacking the breasts off of confused teenage girls. (RELATED: Fox Uses She/Her Pronouns In Article About Dylan Mulvaney’s ‘Woman Of The Year’ Win)

If I could go back in time and prevent the concept of the Middle Ages from being invented at all, I would. But at this point we’re pretty much stuck with it. At the very least, though, every Christian, conservative and traditionalist should know better than to use “medieval” as an insult. To do so is to implicitly accept a progressive framing of history that undermines everything you hold dear.

Don’t call evil things “old.” Just call them evil. The two words aren’t synonymous.

Grayson Quay is an editor at the Daily Caller.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.