(Photo via Reuters)

“Muslim sailors reached the American continent 314 years before Columbus.” The recent remarks by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have left many surprised and baffled, but the Turkish president’s controversial comments are not new. Just a month ago, Erdogan caused another uproar when he told students at Istanbul’s Marmara University that new “Lawrence of Arabias” are tearing up the Middle East. These two incidents have offered some interesting insights not only on how the Turkish president views the world, but also on how intellectual shallowness is used by political Islam to cover the weakness of its core ideology.

 There is a tendency among political Islamists to hype up past glories and evade critical reviews of historical failures. Islamists have used such shallow views of the past to cover up the weaker aspects of their ideology.

 Although the Turkish president has certainly been the first politician to…