Europe Did the Work and Israel and Saudi Arabia Took the Credit

There is something grotesquely comic about the way history keeps rewarding the wrong civilizations. Europe labored for centuries, building cathedrals from granite, composing symphonies from silence, and creating democracies from blood and philosophy. Yet in the political and cultural imagination of the modern world, the moral authority and credit for “civilization” have been transferred to the deserts of Israel and Saudi Arabia—two nations that have produced more prophets than scientists, more holy wars than human rights, more revelation than reason. Europe bled to birth the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, and the Industrial Revolution; yet the modern West kneels before Jerusalem and Mecca as if the desert were the mother of liberty. The truth is scandalously simple: Europe did the work, and Israel and Saudi Arabia took the credit.

The claim that “Judeo-Christian values” form the foundation of the West is one of the most persistent frauds of modern political theology. What Europe inherited from Jerusalem was not reason but revelation, not democracy but dogma, not inquiry but obedience. Greece gave philosophy, Rome gave law, the Teutons gave liberty, the Celts gave imagination, the Slavs gave endurance—but Jerusalem gave guilt. The prophets of the desert contributed no equations, no architecture, no science, and no system of government based on human reason. They gave commandments, taboos, and tribal mythology dressed as universal truth. The irony is that the prophets who damned the world for its curiosity now receive posthumous applause for the civilization that only curiosity could build.

Saudi Arabia, the citadel of Islam, stands as the most successful beneficiary of this misdirection. A monarchy rooted in revelation and oil, it has managed to convert its deserts into geopolitical sanctity. The West, while preaching democracy, protects and enriches one of the most medieval theocracies on earth. The petroleum wealth that lubricated Europe’s industries came not from revelation but geology, yet the rulers of Riyadh drape it in divine providence. Meanwhile, the West bows to Mecca with deference disguised as diplomacy, terrified of offending faith while ignoring reason. Europe invented the machine that pumps the oil, built the refineries that process it, and developed the markets that buy it—but the moral and political credit goes to those who discovered that a god’s name could be stamped on every barrel.

Israel plays the same game with different rhetoric. Its propagandists insist that the “Judeo-Christian tradition” is the moral skeleton of the West. But the term itself is an invention of the twentieth century, a desperate theological compromise designed to rehabilitate Europe’s conscience after centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. It fuses two contradictory religions into a single myth and proclaims their union as the cradle of democracy. Yet democracy was born in Athens, not Jerusalem; philosophy was conceived by Socrates, not Solomon; the idea of human rights was written by Enlightenment deists, not by prophets who demanded circumcision and stoning. Israel has cleverly transformed ancient tribal law into a badge of universality, and Europe—guilt-ridden, sentimental, and politically cowardly—accepts the imposture.

The real credit for Western civilization belongs not to Jerusalem or Mecca, but to Florence, Paris, and London—to Euclid and Newton, to Erasmus and Voltaire, to Darwin and Marx. The architecture of Notre Dame has nothing in common with the tabernacle of Moses; the political liberty of the Magna Carta owes nothing to Leviticus; the rights of man were not revealed on Sinai. Europe’s genius was empirical, dialectical, and revolutionary. The Semitic prophets condemned that very spirit as arrogance, pride, and heresy. The desert demanded obedience; Europe demanded proof. The desert spoke of divine law; Europe discovered natural law. The desert promised paradise; Europe built civilization.

What makes this historical misallocation so corrosive is that it has reversed the moral hierarchy. Israel and Saudi Arabia, neither democratic in spirit nor secular in thought, are presented as moral partners of the West, while Europe’s own intellectual children—its secularists, scientists, and socialists—are treated as heretics. The alliance of the modern West with these theocracies is not cultural but commercial: oil in one hand, guilt in the other. America builds weapons for Riyadh and writes checks for Tel Aviv, while both regimes sanctify their privileges with the language of revelation. Europe invented the Enlightenment, but America exported evangelical politics; the result is a civilization that praises Galileo and funds inquisitors, worships liberty and supports monarchies, quotes Spinoza and kneels to prophets.

No fraud has been more politically profitable. Saudi Arabia converts its oil wealth into mosques, universities, and media outlets that preach submission, while Israel converts Western guilt into diplomatic immunity. The result is that both nations wield a moral authority far greater than their cultural or intellectual contributions justify. The irony is merciless: the same Europe that excommunicated its own philosophers now canonizes foreign prophets. The same West that once burned heretics now subsidizes theocracies. The same civilization that taught the world to doubt now punishes doubt when it offends religion. The credit that should belong to Europe’s workers, thinkers, and revolutionaries now flows to clerics and kings who would have silenced them.

What is most tragic is that Europe participates in its own humiliation. The churches that once feared science now rebrand themselves as custodians of “Western values.” The politicians who invoke “Judeo-Christian civilization” betray the Enlightenment that freed them from it. And the universities that once defended free inquiry now censor themselves for fear of blasphemy accusations. The ghost of the desert haunts the continent that conquered it. Jerusalem and Mecca no longer send armies—they send narratives. And Europe, disarmed by guilt and confused by multicultural piety, mistakes surrender for tolerance.

The solution is not hatred but honesty. The greatness of Europe came from rebellion, not revelation. The Renaissance was a recovery of pagan wisdom, not a fulfillment of prophecy. The Enlightenment was an act of emancipation from theology, not its refinement. The Industrial Revolution was powered by physics, not by faith. Europe must learn to celebrate what it actually achieved and stop apologizing to those who contributed nothing to it. The world owes its vaccines to laboratories, not temples; its liberty to constitutions, not commandments; its knowledge to telescopes, not testaments.It is time to say it without flinching: Europe did the work, and Israel and Saudi Arabia took the credit. The West bows to prophets it never needed and apologizes to the gods it outgrew. But civilization does not owe its life to revelation; it owes its life to rebellion. The cathedrals, symphonies, and parliaments of Europe are not gifts from heaven—they are victories of the human mind over superstition. The prophets may have written the prefaces to faith, but Europeans wrote the chapters of reason. And history, if it is to be honest, must finally close the book on imposture.

Citations

Anonymous. De Tribus Impostoribus [The Three Impostors]. Clandestine Enlightenment text, 1719 edition.
Kuenen, Abraham. National Religions and Universal Religions. London: Williams and Norgate, 1882.
Masuzawa, Tomoko. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Pfleiderer, Otto. Religion and Historic Faiths. London: Williams and Norgate, 1888.