ISLAMIC EXPANSION AND DECLINE

Chapter 15: Conclusion

This paper is a historical survey examining the nature of Islamic civilization and the factors underlying its expansion, peak and decline. It is not meant to provide answers to every obscure question that may arise regarding Muslim history. Nor is it meant to give prescriptions to cure every problem associated with the rise of contemporary radical Islam. However, there are a number of implications that the reader might want to seriously consider.

Educational reform should be an urgent priority in the western world. Understanding history objectively is essential if the civilization-killing bias infecting the education establishment is to end. As Bat Yeor puts it:

What I see and hear today I recognize it, as it is endlessly repeated in past chronicles. Maybe we should start to learn this history to understand what is happening to us, as a first step to find a solution, to retrieve our lost basic liberties to life and security, and our self-esteem.[1]

Energy independence is essential. Reducing our dependence on foreign oil would be a good thing for many reasons, not the least of which would be to reduce the financial means through which Islam expands.

The fragile democracies of the West cannot, indefinitely, withstand the massive transfer of excess population from lands that refuse to implement responsible demographic policies. Such large movements of population would be a serious problem in and of itself. When combined with a large Muslim component such migration is a sure recipe for disaster. Immigration reform including an indefinite moratorium on Muslim immigration is necessary for the survival of Western culture.

A realistic foreign policy regarding the Islamic world is also essential. Western style democracy cannot be imposed on populations suffering with a legacy of centuries of the Islamic slave mentality. Of course, there should be encouragement and support given to true Muslim reformers and secularists within Islamic countries. Accompanying that should be the ending of the Western jizya in terms of foreign aid. Wealthy Muslim nations should bear the burden of aiding their impoverished co-religionists without any fundamentalist strings attached. In addition mutual

respect and forbearance should be expected on the part of Muslim states claiming to seek friendship. They should be required to cease financial support for terrorists, seek good relations with their neighbors, cease funding propaganda, replace sharia with modern law, implement a true separation of mosque and state, cease persecuting minorities and provide the latter with equal rights of citizenship.

The basic theory of expansion and decline in the Islamic world as presented in previous chapters may be recapitulated as follows.

All Muslim societies show remarkable similarities in the patterns of expansion and decline occurring during and subsequent to the political establishment of Islam. In the majority of cases Islam expands via conquest, usually by vigorous recently converted nomadic warriors. Islam is in essence a powerful meme with great appeal to nomads and other primitive peoples.

Muhammad, the founder of Islam was a charismatic leader with many admirable qualities and a clear sense of an obligation to elevate his violent and primitive countrymen to a higher level of culture. Unfortunately, he was unable to overcome a number of personal flaws. The religion he founded was inextricably contaminated with the shortcomings of its great prophet.

However, the ideology expressed in the Prophets meme became the most powerful and successful engine of conquest in history, right up to the modern era. Arab Muslim imperialists, in an amazingly brief period of time conquered the entire Middle East, North Africa, most of Spain and parts of India and Central Asia. The ideology of Islam and holy war provided powerful incentives in terms of material and sexual advantages for its male followers. At a later date the Islamic meme was carried primarily by various Turco-Mongolian peoples originating in north central Asia. The latter spread Islam further into Central Asia, conquered most of India, overthrew the ancient Byzantine Empire and brought the frontiers of Islam deep into central Europe and southern Russia. Other Islamic expansions followed a more peaceful course; these were carried by merchants and missionaries into sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and China. Nevertheless, the latter history of these peaceful expansions usually saw the rise of jihads carried out by local Muslim settlers or by converted native rulers who used the holy war ideology as a means of subduing their neighbors and expanding their territory.

Of course, Islamic imperialism, like all others, eventually reaches geographic limits. Its lines of communication and supply are overextended and a spirit of grim resistance arises on the part of yet unconquered nations. Thus, the expansions of the various Muslim empires were eventually halted and in many cases other civilizations adopted parts of the martial spirit of holy war in imitation of the Islamic meme.

However, the learning curve on the part of those living on the Islamic frontier was distressingly protracted. This is shown by a repeated pattern of treachery and betrayal on the part of factions and religious minorities in the bordering lands. In other cases unscrupulous politicians sought to utilize the Islamic warrior zeal to serve their own ambitions. The shortsightedness of these ethnic, religious and factional leaders in underestimating the power and permanence of Islam is a recurring feature in the history of Islamic conquest.

Such shortsightedness did not take account of a number of characteristics in the ideology and development of Islam that made it both more contagious and tenacious than was true of other imperialisms before or since. In the first place, Islam had an inherent tendency toward proselytism and conversion. This tendency was not expressed in the wake of the earliest years of the Arab Empire; but eventually it came to the fore. When combined with the economic and social disabilities inflicted on the conquered population, conversion to Islam was an attractive option for vast numbers of non-Muslims. The Muslim breeding system was another important factor making for the permanence of Islam. Polygamy and the legalized rape represented by the system of sexual slavery and concubinage solidified the hold of Islamic culture in the generations following the initial conquests. Slavery was the third major reason for the spread and tenacity of Islam. Vast numbers of slaves accompanied by the movement of large populations was a permanent characteristic of Islamic civilization. These immense deracinated slave populations having their own cultural traditions erased adopted in total the culture and religion of their conquerors and masters.

Inevitably, despite the success of the Islamic meme, the erasure of long-established cultures was never complete. The older traditions of the conquered survived in various Islamic cults which were often highly syncretistic as well as in many cultural survivals which were sometimes only slightly altered to conform to Islamic norms. The most successful cultural survival occurred in Iran. The early conversion of many of the Persian elite was accompanied by a strategy whereby

Islamic military might became the means of spreading Iranian civilization to the tribes of central Asia who ultimately carried it into India. In addition, one of these central Asian peoples, the Turks, helped settle the ancient Persian grudge against Greece and Rome by conquering Byzantium. In much of the Islamic world, in fact, Persian culture eventually rivaled that of the Arabs in importance.

All Islamic civilizations followed, with minor variations, the same basic pattern of political evolution. This would start with a period of tribal egalitarianism, which did not, of course, extend to the conquered masses. This would be followed by a phase of increasing Oriental despotism, the first part of which might often be marked by a liberal outlook of tolerance and learning. Inevitably, however, there would follow a decline into a rigid and repressive despotism.

Islamic societies were invariably parasitic, consuming the economic and intellectual resources of indigenous non-Muslim populations. Under the conditions of an early Pax Islamica following the initial conquest, these resources, now liberated from chronic warfare and disorder, could engender a brilliant flowering of civilization which historians somewhat deceptively refer to as an Islamic golden age. The most brilliant of such golden ages occurred, a century after the first Arab conquests, in Baghdad. However, as the resources were consumed, Islam became more widespread and entrenched, and the pre-Islamic civilization was submerged, these golden ages always ended in a period of irreversible decline. There were additional reasons for the decline of Islamic civilization. The increasingly repressive political despotism sapped the energy and destroyed the initiative of both Muslims and dhimmis. The slave mentality inherent in Muslim theology became more ingrained. The fatalism of Islam eventually undermined intellectual curiosity. The continuing dependence on vast numbers of slaves destroyed the incentive for invention and innovation. The Muslim system of sexual slavery working at the highest levels of the governing class created a chronic condition of harem intrigue which weakened the administration of the state.

After three centuries of quiescence due to the technological dominance of the West, Islam is once again on the offensive. The re-emergence of Islam is due to the exhaustion of the West after a century of war, the petroleum windfall and the demographic explosion in Islamic countries at the same time as demographic collapse in the West. The most important factor, however, is the social suicide of the West. The betrayal of western civilization by members of its own elite is reminiscent

of the pattern of treason that has, throughout history, facilitated the triumph of Islam.

Finally, reforming Islamic society is not a task that can be imposed from the outside. The most troublesome characteristics of Islam are deeply rooted within Muslim society since these are the very factors underlying Islams historic success. Furthermore, in the absence of any strong opposition, these factors give promise to the adherents of the Islamic meme of the ultimate attainment of world-wide domination. The jihad ideology of war and violence, present in the root scriptures of Islam, has not diminished over time. The fatalism and anti-intellectualism of these scriptures are still potent in modern times. The legacy of slavery, concubinage and the dhimmi system continues to exist even where these institutions have, in theory, been abolished.

Muslims, themselves, must be open to both scriptural reinterpretation and to embracing a secular society with all citizens having equal rights under the law and freedom from persecution. To truly enter the modern world, they must follow in the footsteps pioneered by the philosophers of the Enlightenment and critically examine their own institutions and history. Above all, they must be willing to embrace and not belittle the long and glorious achievements of their pre-Islamic ancestors.

[1] Bat Yeor, in Symposium: The Death of Multiculturalism? FrontPageMagazine.com, September 8, 2006.

Chapter 14: The Fire This Time

After three centuries of suspended animation the Islamic meme has re-awakened with a vengeance. Muslim self-assertiveness has been on the rise throughout the 20th century and particularly so during the last three decades. There are a number of self-calming assertions touted by the progressive intelligentsia regarding the causes of the modern Islamic resurgence and the consequent strife and terrorism. The most fashionable theory, of course, is that Muslim grievances are almost entirely a result of the maltreatment of Palestinians by Israel. Occasionally, it is conceded that the Indian occupation of Kashmir, the Russian oppression of Chechnya or the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo by the Serbs are additional contributing factors. While this point of view may be ideologically comforting, it ignores the obvious fact that these local conflicts are too widespread to serve as an explanation for Muslim rage. Wherever the Muslim population reaches some critical mass, conflict follows. One is required to believe that Muslims are uniquely oppressed by whatever culture they live in the midst of, or adjacent to. Thus they are oppressed by

Jews in Palestine, Orthodox Christian Serbs in the Balkans, Russians in Chechnya, Catholic Filipinos, Timorese Christians, Australian tourists in Bali, Hindus in Kashmir and India, Ibo Christians in Nigeria, Buddhists in Thailand, Communists in Sinkiang, secular authorities in Western Europe, Danish cartoonists, Lebanese Maronites, Greek Cypriots, Armenians in the Caucasus and, of course, office workers in New York. Furthermore, one must believe that Muslim Palestinians have lately been subject to oppression by their erstwhile Christian Palestinian allies, Egyptian Muslims are suffering at the hands of the Coptic minority and Arab Sudanese Muslims are oppressed by black Christians and animists and even by non-Arab black Muslims. Occams razor, it would seem, requires a more parsimonious explanation.

Another favorite reason purported to be the cause of Muslim rage is European and American imperialism. This ignores the obvious historical fact that the conflict between Islam and the West predates modern European imperialism as well as the very existence of the American nation. Equally spurious is the contention of some conservatives that Islamic fury is a result of the decadent life style characteristic of the modern West. In fact the anger of modern Islamist thinkers at the freedom of expression and at the easier relations between the sexes that characterizes western culture began decades before the beginning of the era of anything goes.

The real factors underlying the rise of modern Islam are more opportunistic. Moreover, the modern jihadist spirit was not caused by these factors, but simply released from centuries long suppression. Intra-civilizational western warfare which characterized much of the last century severely weakened the fabric of western civilization in the same way as the long Peloponnesian War fatally weakened the civilization of the Greek city states. These conflicts led to the twilight of European imperialism which allowed Muslim peoples to resume their cultural imperatives without external constraint. The end of European imperial might was accompanied by the last conflict within western civilization, that of the Cold War. American and Russian Cold War exhaustion, like the chronic Byzantine-Sasanian conflict, opened up a new avenue for Islamic expansion. Interestingly, during the course of this Cold War, both America and Russia, armed and empowered various Muslim and Arab clients, in the same way as Byzantium and Persia cultivated and armed various Arab tribal allies along their borders.

Also of great importance is the fortuitous accident of geology which caused a massive accumulation of petrodollars in the hands of certain Muslim ruling elites. The latter were often

fanatical fundamentalists who used their windfall to fund Islamic proselytism, purchase the services of greedy western political, business and media leaders, and finance extremist Muslim groups. Another cause of the Islamic resurgence is demographic. The rapid growth of Muslim populations has been facilitated by modern technology and medicine brought to them by the hated West.

Above all, however, the revival of Islam in modern times is a direct result of western psychological and spiritual weakness. French novelist Jean Raspail emphasizes the importance of more subtle spiritual factors to the course of conflict between nations and cultures:

At every level nations, races, cultures, as well as individuals it is always the soul that wins the decisive battles. It is only the soul that forms the weave of gold and brass from which the shields that save the strong are fashioned.[1]

Unraveling of Western Society

The Western soul has been winning very few battles in recent decades. On the contrary, many time-honored institutions have been unraveling with the willing connivance of Western elites. Accompanying this self destruction is an almost dhimmi-like accommodation to Muslim powers abroad and to the growing Muslim population at home. It is evocative of the crippling of Byzantine institutions in Anatolia under Muslim rule. The Turkish conquests reduced the church to a state of extreme penury, which in turn barred it from effective social and economic action. The crippling of the ecclesiastical administrative apparatus left the demoralized Christian communities leaderless in a period of great psychological and economic crisis.[2]

Of course, subsequent to the Islamic military conquest, the institutions of the conquered continued to exist only with the acquiescence of Muslim authorities. These authorities pursued policies that eventually led to the extinction of dhimmi institutions over wide areas. The conversion of the native population, though not always through force, had a strong element of intimidation for dhimmis subject to humiliation and persecution implemented by the Muslim ruling class. At this time in the West, however, the wounds are self-inflicted.

Premonitions of Cultural Extinction: The Social Death Wish

Many modern western intellectuals indulge themselves in the conceit that they are special and unique in their self-reflection and embrace of the other. However, the modern cults of

multiculturalism, political correctness and so-called diversity are not particularly special. In fact, the modern ideology of rejecting ones own society and embracing other cultures as equal, and even superior, has many historical precedents. The effect of such social self-abnegation is to ease the way for the total elimination of ones own nation or civilization. There are, of course, different means by which this phenomenon finds expression. Sometimes it takes the form of myth, legend or prophecy. At other times it may occur as part of social criticism or of movements for reform.

One historical expression of this peculiar tendency, which is of particular relevance today, was the Byzantine epic of Digenes Akrites. This legend prepared the way for later events by reconciling the inhabitants of Anatolia to the ultimate and inevitable triumph of Islam many years before this event actually occurred. In this epic poem, Digenes accomplishes great deeds and fights for Christianity and Byzantium. However, the original prototype has been said to be not Christian but the half-legendary champion of Islam, Saiyid Battal Ghazi. Furthermore, extremely interesting connections have been discovered between the Byzantine epic and Arabian and Turkish epics.[3]This legend, in fact, easily passed from the conquered Greeks into the folklore of the Turks. In later tradition, as Sayyid Ghazi, al Battal became one of the Turkish national heroes. His was another instance of an illustrious Moslem for whom Christians have raised a statue in one of their churches.[4] The legend of Digenes may well be an expression of the severe war weariness which must have afflicted the Christian population of Anatolia who were chronically beleaguered by the attacks of one Muslim group after another. It was, in some sense, a wish for some kind of ethnic and religious reconciliation. The intense life on the eastern border with its almost incessant warfare offered a wide field for brave deeds and dangerous adventures. The deepest and most durable impression was left in the memory of the people by the hero of these border provinces, Basil Digenes Akrites. The name Digenes indicates that his father was an Arab Muslim and his mother a Greek Christian.[5]

A more famous example of a mythical premonition of the fall of a civilization, and one unrelated to Islamic expansion, comes from pre-Columbian Mexico. When Cortes landed in Mexico, his way was eased by the legend of Quetzalcoatl.

So certain was the king of Texcoco that the prophecy of the blond, blue-eyed god was about to become a reality that he abandoned his reign, dismissed his armies, and told everyone to enjoy what little time was left. And the emperor [Moctezuma] went into penance, sweeping his palace with a broom and dressed only in a loincloth, as omens of

disaster accumulated over the terrified city. a messenger arrived from the coast and told him that floating houses had approached from the east, bearing men These men were white, bearded, some of them even blond and blueeyed. The gods had returned, the prophecy had been fulfilled.[6]

Another such prophecy from the New World, which was also most convenient to the Spanish conquistadors, occurred in Peru. The downfall of the Incas was also prefigured and facilitated by myth and prophecy. The Inca king Huayna Capac prophesied that bearded men would soon come over the sea and destroy the world of the Incas. These men would be messengers of the Incan god, Viracocha, who like Quetzalcoatl, created humanity and then sailed off to the west, promising to return.[7] Naipaul notes that the Arab penetration into India was facilitated by prophecies similar to those of the Aztecs and Incas eight centuries later. He writes that interestingly, both in Mexico in 1519 and in Sind in 710 people were weakened by prophecies of conquest.[8]

An even starker instance of myth-based social suicide occurred among the Xhosa people of southern Africa. Archaeologist David Webster documented this example of civilizational collapse due to ideological pathology.

Late in the summer of 1856, the Xhosa, a Bantu-speaking people of southeast Africa, began to methodically kill their cattle, horses, goats, sheep, and fowl. They also consumed or threw away all the grain in their storage bins and stopped preparations to plant crops. They had listened to the prophecies of a girl who claimed to hear messages from beyond, telling her that once her people had stripped themselves down to nothing the world would be reborn. Of course, what actually happened was that untold thousands starved in one of the greatest self-inflicted immolations in all of history.

The case of the Xhosa shows that under extraordinary circumstances whole societies can virtually will themselves out of existence.[9]

A more rational variety of the phenomenon of self-willed social extinction is the embrace of the cult of xenophilia by both well-meaning social critics and by demoralized or disaffected citizens. Such are well characterized by the satirist W. S. Gilbert in the Mikado as the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own. In first century Rome, Tacitus compared the noble simplicity of the Germans with the vices of contemporary

Rome.[10] In his eagerness to instruct his fellow citizens, Tacitus greatly exaggerates the virtues of the Germanic tribes and the freedom enjoyed by individual Germans, while deprecating the civilization and political system of his own country.

Tacituss anger at the fashionable immorality of contemporary Rome leads him to idealize German life Their avoidance of unnecessary display manifests a seriousness clearly opposed to the frivolity of Roman society.

The Germania also emphasizes the political freedom of the Germans who make all-important decisions collectively: the power of kings is neither absolute nor arbitrary.[11]

Tacitus writings were an early example of a phenomenon that afflicted Rome in later centuries and was an important factor in the re-barbarization of the Roman West. Roman citizens admiringly adopted the customs of their barbarian neighbors. This began at a time when Rome was still militarily strong and long before the occupation of large swaths of Roman territory by barbarian invaders. Classical historian Michael Grant notes a law enacted as early as the year 370 that set a total veto on intermarriage and even prohibited Roman citizens from adopting barbarian dress.[12] The enactment of such a law must have been in response to widespread behavior of that sort.

This tendency to imitating the customs of the barbarians, of course, increased after the migration of large numbers of invaders into Roman territory and the establishment of autonomous barbarian kingdoms. Nevertheless, even under such circumstances, Roman culture was largely intact and might easily have survived if it were not that Romans themselves willed their civilization to die. Historian Edward James notes that by the sixth century it was becoming quite fashionable for Romans, even aristocratic Romans to take Germanic names and, furthermore, in the course of the sixth and seventh centuries Gallo-Romans and other subjects of the Frankish kings adopted the customs of the Franks.[13] The depth of admiration for barbarian customs and consequent rejection of Roman culture were expressed by the writer Sidonius. Such men as Sidonius described had formed the backbone of the Roman armies in northern Gaul for a long time, and Sidonius seems to be describing these Franks with the enthusiasm of many civilians for a well-turned out troop of soldiers.[14]

Enlightenment Philosophers

The philosophers and social critics of early modern Europe have followed in the footsteps of their Roman predecessors, Tacitus and Sidonius. The myth of the brilliant flowering of Islamic civilization among western academics and intellectuals had its origin in the sixteenth century and reached its height during the Enlightenment. Certain philosophers, such as Montesquieu and Voltaire, needed a means of criticizing their society by introducing a supposedly objective nonWestern viewpoint. They chose the neighboring civilization of Islam and exaggerated its moral and intellectual achievements as a stick with which to beat their complacent fellow Europeans. Religious warfare and persecution characterizing relations between Catholics and Protestants was one of the primary reasons for the disaffection of European intellectuals. In reaction to intraEuropean war and institutions such as the Inquisition, European philosophers contrived the invention of the noble savage followed by that of the wise Muslim. They were apparently unaware of the barbarism and incessant warfare that marked the primitive existences of the noble savages. However, these philosophers had even less excuse for their willful ignorance of Muslim warfare, atrocities and persecutions, for the ravaging of Constantinople and Timurs massacre of hundreds of thousands of Hindus were both recent and well-attested. As the Enlightenment unfolded, the general myth of the wise Muslim turned into that of the openminded and tolerant Turk. Alyssa Lappen remarks on the misapprehension of Muslim Turks by Enlightenment philosophers:

Actually, 18th century Turkey was no interfaith utopia. In 1758, a British ambassador noted that Sultan Mustafa III had non-Muslim Christians and Jews executed for wearing banned clothing. In 1770, another ambassador reported that Greeks, Armenians and Jews seen outside their homes after dark were hanged. In 1785, a third noted that Muslim mobs had dismantled churches after Christians had secretly repaired them.

The golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam, Bernard Lewis wrote in 1968 in the Encyclopedia of Islam. The myth was invented in 19th century Europe as a reproach to Christiansand taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews.[15]

The myth of the noble savage was first invented by Montaigne and was later popularized by Rousseau. Montaigne invented this myth as early as 1580 based on dubious secondhand information in order to condemn his own civilization. Later writers substituted Islam for savages to condemn Christendom and materialism.[16]As Warraq points out, the uncritical attitude to Islam and the genesis of the myth of Islamic tolerance must be seen against the general

intellectual background of Europes first encounter with non-European civilizations especially in the sixteenth century when the notion of the noble savage was first fully developed.[17]

Huguenot pastor Pierre Jurieu was among the first to tout the relative tolerance of Islam. In the late 17th century, in an amazing exaggeration, he exclaimed that Christians had spilt more blood on St. Bartholemew's Day than had the Saracens in all their persecutions of Christians.[18] The seventeenth century philosopher Pierre Bayle joined Jurieu in apologizing for Islam as a means of social criticism; in particular comparing the persecutions inflicted by the Catholic Church with the alleged tolerance of Islam.[19]

Jurieu and Bayle were soon followed by Henri de Boulainvilliers who promoted the myth of Muhammad as a wise and tolerant ruler in an apologetic biography of Muhammad which appeared posthumously in London in 1730. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this book in shaping Europes view of Islam and its founder, Muhammad; it certainly much influenced Voltaire and Gibbon.[20]

The great historian Gibbon, who was a deist, viewed Islam as both a rational and priest-free faith with Muhammad as the wise and tolerant lawgiver rather like Solon. His view enormously influenced the way all Europe perceived their sister religion for years to come.[21] Voltaire joined these philosophers in idealizing Muslim society as a foil for exposing the hypocrisies in their own societies. Thus, at the conclusion of Voltaires Candide, the travelers encounter an irritable but wise dervish followed by an old Turkish gentleman imparting further words of wisdom for the benefit of the confused Europeans. Voltaires fellow philosophe, Montesquieu, in the Persian Letters utilizes the fictional experiences of two exotic outsiders as a means of critiquing European society. While neither Voltaire nor Montesquieu meant to apologize for the neighboring Islamic culture, the result of these works was to help create the impression of Islam as being a reservoir of wisdom, or at the least a certain innocent and objective outlook which was lacking in Europe.

The Treason of the Historians

Enlightenment philosophers have admiring and willing followers in modern academic circles. The former, however imperfect their knowledge or methods, at least had some dedication to the truth. Willful denial of the truth along with demonizing those heretics who dare depart from the modern

historical dogma, characterize the latter. Bostom quotes the philosopher and theologian Jacques Ellul, who in Les Chretientes dOrient entre Jihad et Dhimmitude. VIIe - XXe siecle, (1991) shows this whitewashing of Islam by contemporary historians:

In a major encyclopedia, one reads phrases such as: Islam expanded in the eighth or ninth centuries; This or that country passed into Muslim hands But care is taken not to say how Islam expanded, how countries passed into [Muslim] handsIndeed, it would seem as if events happened by themselves, through a miraculous or amicable operationRegarding this expansion, little is said about jihad. And yet it all happened through war!

the jihad is an institution, and not an event, that is to say it is a part of the normal functioning of the Muslim worldThe conquered populations change status (they become dhimmis), and the sharia tends to be put into effect integrally, overthrowing the former law of the country. The conquered territories do not simply change owners.[22]

Objectivity and pursuit of truth have reached new lows among scholars currently active in Islamic history. However, as shown in the following examples, even long established and authoritative historians feel the need to whitewash Islam. The cases cited are, of course, a minuscule sample typical of recent historical scholarship.

The eminent historian Albert Hourani describes Muhammads relations with the Jewish tribes of Arabia as follows:

The development of the Prophets teaching may have been connected with changes in his relations with the Jews of Madina. Although they had formed part of the original alliance, their position became more difficult as Muhammads claim for his mission expanded. They could not accept him as a genuine messenger of God within their own tradition, and he in turn is said to have accused them of perverting the revelation given to them: you have concealed what you were ordered to make plain. Finally some of the clans were expelled and others killed. [23]

It is interesting to note the matter of fact way in which Hourani cursorily relates this historical account. There is no detailed description of the events, no note of who or how many were killed and no mention of the rape and enslavement of the surviving women and children. Above all, there is no expression of irony that such an event could occur with the permission or even under

the direction of the founder of one of the worlds great religions.

In another example, Hourani, in discussing the intellectual flowering taking place during the Arab golden age, writes:

The motives of the translators and of their patrons, the caliphs, may have been partly practical; medical skill was in demand, and control over natural forces could bring power and success. There was also, however, a wide intellectual curiosity These words express not only the excitement which the discovery of the Greek tradition could arouse, but also the self confidence of an imperial culture[24]

Houranis paragraph is typical of the patronizing of most historians as they incessantly point out Islamic civilizations intellectual advances almost as if they have no real confidence in the reality of such achievements. As we have seen, the intellectual curiosity regarding such theoretical activity as Greek philosophy was due to its practical use. Abstract Greek philosophical thought was not valued for itself, but only for its use in advancing the Islamic dogma to more intellectually oriented Muslims and to the large non-Muslim subject population.

Bernard Lewis, probably the foremost modern western scholar in the field of Islamic history, gives every indication that he is aware of the shortcomings of Islam. However, he writes of the Prophet as follows:

Much righteous indignation has been expressed at the spectacle of an Apostle of God leading the faithful in predatory raids but in the conditions of the time and to the moral ideas of the Arabs raiding was a natural and legitimate occupation, and no discredit attaches to the Prophet for having adopted it.[25]

Thus, even that most authoritative contemporary historian of Islam, feels impelled to whitewash the record of Muhammad, having no thought that a holy man ought to set an example by behavior that is at least slightly above the standards of his time and culture. Lewis follows by using one brief and almost dismissive sentence to describe Muslim behavior following the victory over the Quraish after the battle of the ditch. This victory was followed by the extermination of the Jewish tribe of Quraiza.[26]

In another work Bernard Lewis writes regarding the Turks:

Even the much-condemned devshirme levy had its positive aspects. By this means the humblest villager could rise to the highest and most powerful offices in the state. Many did so and also brought their families with them - a form of social mobility impossible in the aristocratic societies of contemporary Christendom.[27]

As he did with the Prophets massacre of the Jews, Lewis dismisses the suffering and humiliation attendant on an institution which was of questionable legality even by the less than sterling standards of Muslim law. He makes the devshirme sound so attractive that perhaps we should consider reviving this practice in modern times.

Huston Smith, the eminent scholar of comparative religion also writes of Muhammads rise to power and the massacre of the Jews:

Exercising superb statecraft, he welded the five heterogeneous and conflicting tribes of the city, two of which were Jewish, into an orderly confederation. The task was not an easy one and despite the freedom he permitted the Jews considerable blood was spilt in the process. But in the end he succeeded in awakening in the citizens a spirit of union unknown in the citys history.[28]

Indeed he did! The willful refusal of western scholars to truthfully and fully characterize the behavior of Muhammad and his successors goes back a long way. It can only be compared to the denial exhibited by a codependent in justifying the behavior of a beloved addict.

In discussing the Barbary slave trade in a turn of phrase reminiscent of southern apologists for the peculiar institution, social historian Reuben Levy writes: Yet the lot of many, both in private possessions and in the public service, was in many respects tolerable enough, and reports of some travelers and monks seem to be exaggerated, if comparison is made with those of others who visited the corsairs headquarters. In the very next sentence Levy belies what he has just written. Perhaps the most famous of the pirates captives was Cervantes, who spent five years loaded with chains and in circumstances of the greatest wretchedness.[29] Such artful shifting and dodging, exemplified in the passages by Smith and Levy is a necessity for those scholars who wish to offer excuses for Islam while, at the same time maintaining their credibility.

Lord Kinross, the great historian of the Ottoman Empire writes:

The process of enslavement was applied to prisoners of war and the inhabitants of captured places. A law gave to the Ottoman soldier an absolute right to the possession of captives unless they consented to profess and practice Islam. He might keep them he might sell them subject to the governments right to a fifth of the market value of the total captured.[30]

Note his facile mention of a law, as if it were some minor statute peculiar to the Ottomans and presumably recently enacted, instead of a principle enshrined within the Sharia itself, the holy law and foundation of Islam.

Finally, typical of the presentation of Islam in many modern popular historical anthologies and reference books is the following in the Life World History series penned by Desmond Stewart. He cavalierly dismisses the Ottoman institution of the devshirme which enslaved uncounted children over a period of centuries. A cross between the guardians of Platos Republic and the Praetorian Guard of the Roman emperors, the members of the Janissary corps were recruited from the strongest and most agile Christian children in the empire.[31] There is no mention of the pain caused to parents or children during this recruitment. No historian would dare refer to the institution of Southern slavery in this manner.

Nevertheless, a number of modern historians are willing and eager to pursue the truth about Islamic history wherever it may lead. The specialist in central Asian history, Svat Soucek, is representative of those historians willing to reveal Islams blemishes. He writes regarding the advantages the warlike Islamic meme had with respect to the more peaceful and civilized Chinese:

but the main cause of Muslim success and Chinese failure lay in the fact that the Celestial Empire was not fired by any comparable proselytizing zeal. In contrast, the Arabs were driven by the ideal of the jihad or Holy War, and the fact that the fruits of victory also brought the conquerors great material rewards[32]

The famous historian Will Durant also had a refreshing sense of reality in contrast to very many contemporary scholars. Writing about the plight of India at the bloody hands of the Muslim conquerors he writes: The bitter lesson that may be drawn from this tragedy is that eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but keep its powder dry.[33]

One of the foremost social thinkers and philosophers of the Middle Ages was the great Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun. He was a devout Muslim who, nevertheless, saw no reason to deceive his readers regarding the nature of Islam. Khaldun is brutally honest when compared with many modern western historians. In the Muslim community, the jihad is a religious duty because of the Islamic mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force the other religions had no such universal mission and the holy war was [therefore] not a religious duty to them apart from self defense.[34] Similarly uncompromising in his reporting of the facts is the modern Sudanese Arab historian Yusuf Fadl Hasan, the author of The Arabs and The Sudan, who documents the enslavement and ethnic cleansing practiced by the Arabs in the Sudan since the inception of Islam and which accelerated during the 14th century.

The Demographic Imperative

The rapid growth of the Muslim population provides a vast reservoir of angry young males susceptible to the temptations of the jihad. The simultaneous depopulation of western nations creates a vacuum waiting to be filled by the burgeoning populations of the Islamic world. The following estimates were given in the 2001 World Population Prospects of the UN Population Division:

Of Europes forty-seven nations, only one, Muslim Albania, was by 2000, maintaining a birthrate sufficient to keep it alive indefinitely. In 2000, the total population of Europe, from Iceland to Russia, was 728 million. At present birthrates, however, without new immigration, her population will crash to 600 million by 2050.[35]

Moreover, Islam is on the verge of replacing Christianity as the worlds largest religion.

In 2000, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians comprised 30 percent of the global population and Muslims 19 percent. But one estimate predicts that if present trends continue, by 2025 Muslims will substantially outnumber Christians, comprising 30 percent of the worlds people, with Christians constituting 25 percent.[36]

The Wests downward demographic spiral is accompanied by the ill-conceived lowering of barriers to immigration.

Demographers project the Middle East alone (including Iran) could reach a population of three-hundred to fourhundred million by 2030. If large numbers of Middle Eastern and African migrants swarm into Europe in the

2000s and beyond, the result will not only be a migration of individuals, it will be a migration of Islam. Europe wont be the only place Muslim refugees will flock to. Many will cross the Atlantic Ocean to join the millions of Muslims already in the United States.[37]

Thus, according to Spencer if demographic trends continue, jihad may not be necessary. The Islamicization of the West will happen, but in a slower, less dramatic way. By the year 2002 the Muslim population of France stood at 7%, Germanys Muslim population was approaching 4% and 4.4 percent of the Netherlands population was Muslim. Furthermore there were one million Muslims in Italy and one-half million in Spain.[38] Of course, the Muslim population of Europe has been steadily increasing in the years since.

Ominous Parallels
The tragedies of history may not always repeat themselves as farce. The long march of Islam through the history of three continents has not ended. There are a number of chilling parallels in the contemporary world to those factors that brought about the past triumphs of Islam.

The long mutually debilitating war between Sasanian Persia and Byzantium, which was quickly fatal to Persia and ultimately fatal to the Byzantines, was repeated in the first half of the twentieth century in the destructive intra-European conflicts. This was followed by the Cold War which dismantled the Soviet Union and weakened even the fabulously productive United States. At about the same time as the Arab invasions Byzantium was also weakened by the incessant migration of Slavs and central Asian tribes crossing the Danube frontier. Eerily the United States today is attempting to cope with a massive number of Hispanics illegally crossing the Rio Grande frontier. In addition to Muslims, there are massive numbers of non-Islamic immigrants to both the U.S. and Europe with an inevitable weakening of the sociopolitical order.

Muslims today are the beneficiaries of the windfall of petroleum. The petrodollar accumulation available to Muslim nations in the Persian Gulf is reminiscent of circumstances in ancient Arabia. Mecca was close to the seaport of Jeddah and about halfway between Yemen and Syria, which enabled it to develop as an important trading center connecting the caravans from India and Persia with those from the West. In addition since Meccas shrines were a major pilgrimage destination, religion made east-central Arabia an important center bringing great prosperity. [39]Once Muhammad gained control of that part of Arabia, its wealth became available for

financing the initial Arab campaigns. Today, of course, it is the great wealth from petroleum to Muslim countries, mostly on that same Arabian Peninsula, which is financing the present day expansion of Islam though both violent and peaceful means.

There was throughout Muslim history a long list, in the infidel camp, of political dissidents and ambitious politicians who thought they could make use of and channel the forces of Islam. This phenomenon may be termed the Cantacuzene syndrome, after the Byzantine noble who gave the Turks their European foothold. In most cases, of course, it was Islam that ended up making use of these numerous Cantacuzenes. The West today abounds with politicians, government officials, businessmen, media luminaries and academics who suffer from this same syndrome. Melanie Phillips writes of a British intellectual elite who were persuaded to sing from the same subversive hymn-sheet so that the moral beliefs of the majority would be replaced by the values of those on the margins of society, the perfect ambience in which the Muslim grievance culture could be fanned into the flames of extremism. The left says it can put aside its differences with the Islamists simply because they too are against the state.[40]

Unfortunately, it is not simply a case of deluded leftist intellectuals in search of a new and highly aggressive revolutionary vanguard that is at work. Conservative pundits have persuaded themselves that Muslims are natural allies in their conflict with a degenerate left. They are joined by pandering politicians scrounging for votes and businessmen in search of lucrative contracts with the holders of petrodollars. There is also a class of politicians and advocates of Arab Christian origin who see themselves as power brokers mediating between recent Muslim immigrants and the Western establishment. Possibly of greatest importance is an army of paid propagandists feeding at the Arab oil trough. These include former politicians and officials, well paid for their lobbying and speaking on behalf of Arab paymasters, and assorted public relations experts.

Revolutionary ardor, political advantage and commercial greed, however, do not explain the full depth of collaboration. Beyond that is outright cultural self-hatred, as manifested by Karen Armstrong in her tendency to blame Christianity for all the misdeeds of Islam, and by Bill Clinton when he blamed the Crusades and American slavery for the September 11 terrorist attacks.[41] Thus, there exists a modern cult of the Other which sees the Western elites, like the Aztec ruler Montezuma or the aristocrats of declining Rome, welcoming their own dispossession

at the hands of invaders.

Religious dissidents, ethnic minorities, exploited lower classes and disestablished political factions have been profitably utilized by Muslim invaders since the Arab armies first stormed out of Arabia. Disaffected groups in the modern West are, similarly, potential allies in the modern Islamic revival.

Converts to Islam are a growing element. religious nomads; former drug addicts and petty thieves; and blacks, Latinos and persons of mixed race. Drug addicts and thieves are seeking structure and support. Some young blacks and Latinos find radical Islam a rebuke to a European or American society they feel has rejected them.[42]

Historically, the long term consequences of Islamic dominance were often underestimated by those elements of the indigenous population who, because of class, ethnic or religious conflict was disaffected. The same may be happening today. Such is the moral and intellectual fallout of Londonistan, where, to a dismaying extent, the indigenous British have signed up to the false narrative of those who are laying siege to their society.[43]

The legacy of the Harem Culture and Islamic slavery is beginning to gain a foothold in the contemporary West. This can be seen, for instance in the sexually charged terrorism resulting from radical Islamic indoctrination into the more lurid scriptural passages describing the Muslim paradise. Film-maker Pierre Rehov describes this quite well in the following excerpt:

The result of all this pathology is that you end up with 16 to 20 year old men, with a strong libido, who have never approached a woman, don't even know what they look like, consider them as evil, and have this high level of energy, literally ready to blow themselves up out of frustration. It then becomes very easy to convince them that they have a duty to destroy impurity, symbolized by the Occidental world, and that they will be rewarded by 72 virgins in the afterlife. Their entire society is built on the absolute belief in this afterlife, so much better than the miserable life they have on earth -- thanks to the teachings of their leaders.[44]

Another modern manifestation of the Harem Culture is the rape epidemic perpetrated by young Muslim men in the West. A Norwegian commentator describes this phenomenon in contemporary Europe:

The number of rapes committed by Muslim immigrants in Western nations are so extremely high that it is difficult to view them only as random acts of individuals. It resembles warfare. Muhammad himself had forced sex (rape) with several of his slave girls/concubines. This is perfectly allowed, both in the sunna and in the Koran. If you postulate that many of the Muslims in Europe view themselves as a conquering army and that European women are simply war booty, it all makes perfect sense and is in full accordance with Islamic law. Western women are not so much regarded by most Muslims as individuals, but as "their women," the women who "belong" to hostile Infidels. They are booty, to be taken, just as the land of the Infidels someday will drop, it is believed, into Muslim hand. This is not mere crime, but ideologically-justified crime or rather, in Muslim eyes, attacks on Infidels scarcely qualify as crime. Western women are cheap and offensive. We Muslims are here, here to stay, and we have a right to take advantage of this situation. It is our view of the matter that should prevail. Western goods, like the land on which we now live, belong to Allah and to the best of men -- his Believers. Western women, too, essentially belong to us -- our future booty. No wonder there is a deep and increasing suspicion against Muslims in the Swedish and European public.[45]

In Australia as well, rapes committed by Muslim youths are on the rise, in some cases leading to retaliation on the part of young Whites. Lebanese were in the habit of loitering around bikiniclad white girls, calling them prostitutes and exhorting them to cover up, as have they been implicated in a string of racially motivated, gang-rapes of young white girls.[46]Honor killings of Muslim females by their male relatives are still another manifestation of the Islamic sexual system to be imported into the West.

The institution of Muslim sexual slavery, as reported by the Denver Post, has now appeared in America. In 2004, Saudi national Homaidan Al-Turki, 37, a linguistics doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder was charged with kidnapping and sexual assault. A jury convicted Al-Turki on reduced charges of false imprisonment and unlawful sexual contact. AlTurki kept a 24-year-old woman from Indonesia as a virtual slave forcing her to perform domestic service and take care of his five children at almost no pay. In addition Al-Turki forced the woman to perform sex acts and ultimately raped her.

Another case of slavery was reported in the Los Angeles Times on July 2, 2006:

An Irvine man and his former wife pleaded guilty Thursday to forcing a 12-year-old illegal immigrant from Egypt to work as their domestic slave.

Under terms of a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Abdel Nasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim, 45, and his former wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib, 43, each face up to three years in prison.

The girl, whose name was not released, was brought to the United States in 2000. Every morning she helped the couple's youngest children get ready for school, washed clothes, cleaned the house and prepared food. Following up on an anonymous tip, police in 2002 found the girl living in squalor in a 12-by-8-foot converted area of the family's garage.

Ibrahim and Motelib, who were married at the time and have five children, had both slapped the girl at least once and told her that if police saw her outside their home alone, they would arrest her, prosecutors said.

The girl, now 16, is living with a foster family in Southern California and attending a public high school where "she is doing great," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert J. Keenan. She has received a green card granting her permanent residency.

The case shed light on a common though illegal practice in Egypt in which children from poor families are sent to work for the well-to-do. The servants, known as Khadamah, usually range in age from 9 to 18 and often are forced to sleep in kitchens.

Western cultural self hatred is rapidly approaching a social death wish. Free speech is under siege throughout Europe and even in the United States. In the same ways as the Aztecs were conditioned by prophecy to accept their demise, and as the Byzantines were reconciled to future Muslim rule by means of folklore, so it is that Western populations are being prepared for a new Islamic ascendancy long before the Muslims themselves are strong enough to impose it. While Western institutions are denigrated and traditional cultural practices are forbidden, Islamic indoctrination is not only permitted but even in some instances required. The following excerpt from an interview with Abby Nye, recently graduated from Butler University in Indianapolis illustrates the preference given to Islamic culture at a college in the American heartland. Such exaggerated deference to Islam has become commonplace at all levels of American education.

Nye: I've had professors say Jesus was a homosexual, the god of Islam is the same god of Christianity, and sneer at the Bible calling it a book of myth - "that book with the talking snake and magic fruit." These statements were made

in core content classes required by all students. ... Nye: In terms of the professors who engage in this behavior are, first and foremost, chicken. They know that Christians are a safe target. By and large, we take that "love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you (Matt 5:44)" seriously. On the other hand, they know Muslims offer a quite different response.

In terms of the hypocrisy, it doesn't make sense to me. They don't even try to hide it. For example, all students at Butler were required to take a course on Islam. We were required to purchase the Koran and handle it with respect. If we were carrying a stack of books the Koran had to be on top. One day, my professor even had us act out the five pillars of Islam in class. If you ask me, that's going too far. It'd be equivalent to having a required course on the Bible (which, like you said, would never happen) and partaking in communion or baptism during class.[47]

Regarding such trends geographer Lee Madland sounds a warning. A question remaining to be resolved in the West is whether a turnaround in its own cultural self esteem will come in time to save intact the essence of Western civilization and American culture.[48]

As we have seen, throughout the long and triumphal march of Islamic imperialism, Muslim rulers and warriors were dependent on the learning, skills and energy of non-Muslims. The wealth looted and the taxes extracted from vanquished dhimmis financed Muslim armies. Non-Muslim scientists, craftsmen and military engineers provided Islamic generals and admirals with the technology needed for battle. Even Muslim propagandists found the writings of Greek philosophers useful for winning hearts and minds to the cause of Islam. The parasitic dependence on non-Muslim science and technology continues, as Victor Davis Hanson notes, to this day:

They obviously want Western technology--whether the Internet or the plastic munition--but never the decadence of freedom, democracy, and tolerance that creates the very appurtenances they crave. It is like sacking European Constantinople and then moving into it as your new Window-on-the-West capital, with the requisite minarets plopped on Santa Sophia.

Such parasitism proves no lasting palliative, but only the goad for more envy and frustration. The stark truth is that the radical Middle East is religiously observant, but spiritually poor. Naturally wealthy, it is mostly materially impoverished--and as anti-Western in ideology as addicted in fact to Western attention and consumerism.[49]

Unfinished Business
Empowered by an accident of geology, augmented in numbers by western medical science, equipped by means of foreign technology and encouraged by corrupt non-Muslim leaders and self-hating Western intellectuals, the Islamic meme is once again on the march. The immediate target, of course, is the state of Israel. But the expulsion or slaughter of the Jews inhabiting the onetime territory of Palestine will not appease the ravenous meme for more than a brief time. Even before the accomplishment of that goal, war, terrorism or threats are directed at a number of lands that once were within the dar-al-Islam.

The following lands, once ruled by Muslims or with large Muslim minorities are, even now, within the sights of the Jihadists: India, Ethiopia, Thailand, Philippines, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Spain, and the non-Muslim parts of Lebanon, Indonesia, Sudan and Nigeria. The short-run objective is the re-conquest of Palestine; the intermediate goal is to be the restoration of Muslim rule to, and the conversion, expulsion or restoration of dhimmi status for non-Muslims in the above-mentioned territories. The ultimate goal, however, is to bring to the whole world the dubious benefits of Islamic rule.

Chapter 13: Myth and Reality

A number of misconceptions regarding Muslim history prevail in the West. Probably the most important of these myths concerns the alleged toleration Muslim society had for practitioners of other faiths. Since it is undeniable that Islam, like other monotheistic religions, is less tolerant than the faiths practiced in India and East Asia, the proponents of this view usually fall back on the idea that, at the very least, Islam is more tolerant than Christianity. This notion of a superior Muslim tolerance as compared to Christianity feeds the legend of peace-loving Muslims victimized by barbaric Christian crusaders. And this idea, in turn, is related to the assertion that at a time that western Europeans led a squalid and brutish existence, Muslims were cultured lovers of learning whose cities were the ornaments of the world. The myth of Muslim achievement was exposed in a previous chapter[1], therefore, the relative primitiveness of Dark Ages Europe warrants a closer examination. One additional assertion, which is that of Muslim society being free of racism, has also been effectively refuted in a preceding chapter.[2]

The Myth of Muslim Tolerance

There are a number of excellent works questioning the prevailing myth of a tolerant Islam, so that the issue will be only briefly dealt with here. Ibn Warraq, for one, gives many examples of persecution of religious dissenters and heretics throughout the Islamic world.[3] Bat Yeor also discusses in depth the intolerant treatment of minority religions at all times in Muslim history. [4]Robert Spencer also examines the question of Muslim tolerance and concludes with the following:

Did Muslims treat Christians and Jews better than Christians treated Muslims and Jews? both sides have a lot to answer for. But this much is clear: the conventional wisdom that religious minorities had a better quality of life in the House of Islam than in Christendom is at least open to question.[5]

The favorable treatment meted out to Jews in Islamic society is one example of tolerance that is often cited. This is, however, contradicted by the documented persecution undergone by such prominent figures as Maimonides. Bostom describes the experience of a less renowned Jewish philosopher:

Moreover, we cannot ignore the testimony of Isaac b. Samuel of Acre (1270-1350 C.E.), one of the most outstanding Kabbalists of his time. Conversant with Islamic theology and often using Arabic in his exegesis, Isaac nevertheless believed that it was preferable to live under the yoke of Christendom rather than that of Islamdom.[6]

Thus, Isaac b. Samuel fled from the Holy Land to Italy and ultimately to Christian Spain. There he wrote as follows:

The word ziz in Arabic is derogatory, for when they wish to say in that tongue, Strike him upon the head, Give him a blow upon the neck, they say zazzhu (hit him)Indeed, on account of our sins they strike upon the head the children of Israel who dwell in their lands and they thus extort money from them by force. For they say in their tongue, mal al-yahudi mubah, it is lawful to take money of the Jews. For, in the eyes of the Muslims, the children of Israel are as open to abuse as an unprotected field. Even in their law and statutes they rule that the testimony of a Muslim is always to be believed against that of a Jew.[7]

All religious minorities were subject to humiliation and extortion. Far worse were the sporadic pogroms and massacres:

The myth of Islamic tolerance is defied by the massacre and extermination of the Zoroastrians in Iran; the million Armenians in Turkey; the Buddhists and Hindus in India; the more than six thousand Jews in Fez, Morocco, in 1033; hundreds of Jews killed in Cordoba between 1010 and 1013; the entire Jewish community of Granada in 1066; the Jews in Marrakesh in 1232; the Jews of Tetuan, Morocco in 1790; the Jews of Baghdad in 1828; and so on ad nauseum.[8]

Even into modern times, Western ambassadors frequently remarked on the persecution suffered by religious minorities in the Ottoman Empire. In the 18th century Turkey was no interfaith utopia. In 1758, the British ambassador observed the Sultan executing Christians and Jews for violating the Dhimmi dress code. Twelve years later another ambassador reported that Greeks, Armenians and Jews seen outside their homes after dark were hanged. In 1785, a third noted that Muslim mobs had dismantled churches after Christians had secretly repaired them.[9] Bernard Lewis notes that the so-called golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause of Jewish sympathy for Islamic societies. Furthermore, the myth was invented in 19th century Europe as a reproach to Christiansand taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews.[10]

Furthermore, the primary reason for whatever Muslim tolerance may have existed is that it was realized by pragmatic Islamic leaders, following the initial conquests that persecuting the large conquered population would have had a number of unfortunate results. Any attempt by Muslims to forcibly convert or drive out all infidels would have led to mass rebellion and a stiffened military resistance on the part of the yet unconquered population. It would have also destroyed the economic base of the conquered territories which provided Muslim warriors with the resources for further expansion. And, in fact, once enough of the population became Muslim, the possibility of rebellion receded and the economic dependence on non-Muslims lessened. Under these circumstances, Muslim authorities became less accommodating and put increased pressure on the remaining non-Muslims to emigrate or convert.

In addition, the nature of Islamic expansion was quite unlike the history of Christian expansion in Europe. In their rapid conquests Muslims found many different sects of nonbelievers in the conquered population. Muslim leaders found it advantageous to play off one set of infidels against another. They also found it advantageous to cultivate alliances with persecuted sects against the governing authorities in the still unconquered dar-al-harb. This would, naturally, give the illusion

that Muslims were more tolerant, when in fact those infidel groups presently favored were simply pawns in a greater political game.

Fabled Andalusia was supposedly the very model of Islamic tolerance. The prevailing view is that Andalusia under Islamic rule was a proto-multiculturalist paradigm which is all the more appealing to modern post-Christian Westerners because this paradise of tolerance was not constructed under the auspices of Christianity, thereby seeming to vindicate their long insistence that all cultures are equal and that some particularly non-Christian ones are more equal than others.[11] This myth of Andalusia is summed up by Yeor.

Andalusia represents the paradisiacal life of Jews and Christians living under the sharia in the Moorish caliphate of the early Middle Ages. Jews and Christians were grateful to be protected and to learn from the achievements of Muslim scholars This vision propagates and imposes the theory that only in Islamic lands did science, art and civilization flourish while Christendom was still immersed in barbarism and illiteracy.[12]

Both Spencer and Yeor effectively demolish the myth of the tolerant Andalusia. Stillman, a specialist in the history of the Jews under Islam provides an additional perspective. In iconic Spain there was a depth of anti-Jewish sentiment as seen in the rabble-rousing poetry of Abu Ishaq of Elvira. Following the assassination of the Jewish vizier Joseph ha-Nagid a mob went on a rampage in the Jewish quarter of Granada, slaughtering its inhabitants and razing the quarter to the ground.[13] The Almohad rulers ended whatever small degree of toleration of the Jews still remained in Spain. By 1172 the Almohads tolerated neither Jews nor Christians within their empire. There were mass conversions of Jews to Islam. Many fled over the frontier into Christian Spain, while others made their way to the more tolerant Muslim East. Jewish life in Islamic Spain ceased to exist altogether.[14] Thus, Jews were expelled from Muslim Spain centuries before their more famous expulsion at the hands of the Christians.

Muslim Spain, therefore, was no paragon of religious toleration for the peoples of the book. However, the circumstances for Christians and Jews in the Maghreb were far worse. In fact Christianity in the land of St. Augustine ultimately became extinct under Muslim rule. Thus in contemporary North Africa, however, there were no native Christians to absorb some of the Muslim hostility against nonbelievers. For that reason, the persecution of the Jews of North Africa paralleled that occurring anywhere in medieval Christian Europe.[15] In Almohad North

Africa the urban Jewish population from Tunisia to Morocco had outwardly professed Islam during the height of the Almohad terror. Those communities that resisted were put to the sword. The Almohad regime also dealt the final blow to North African Christianity. The Jews became the dhimmis par excellence in North African society, for no native Christian population seems to have survived the Almohad persecution.[16]

Muslim persecution of the Jews in the Maghreb, however, eased somewhat under the Merinids of 14th century Morocco who found the Jews to be useful allies and go-betweens with respect to the rising Portuguese power. The Merinids employed Jews in their service because of the latters extreme vulnerability and, hence, according to Islamic political psychology, dependability.[17]Christians in conflict with Muslims, of course, were equally capable of playing that game. In 16th century Morocco most of the Jewish newcomers seem to have preferred living in the Portuguese-held coastal towns rather than the Islamic interior. They joined in the defense of these enclaves against Muslim attacks. The practical-minded Portuguese were notably tolerant toward the Jews in their African possessions long after Jews were expelled from Portugal proper in 1497.[18]

Egypt differed from the rest of North Africa, in that a strong Christian minority survived; the consequence was a slight mitigation in the situation of the Jews. In the Mamluk Empire, the Jews were not the only infidels. The Copts more frequently and more immediately took the brunt of anti-dhimmi persecution.[19] Muslim rulers often found it useful to play one group of dhimmis off against another.

The Real Imperialism

A fantasy almost unique to modern western intellectuals of a progressive outlook is that Muslims are natural allies in the struggle against imperialism. This conceit ignores the fact that it is Islamic imperialism that was by far the most successful version. It turns out that the Arabs were the most successful imperialists of all time, since to be conquered by them (and then to be like them) is still, in the minds of the faithful, to be saved.[20]

Muslim imperialism was much more durable and robust than any existing in the ancient world. The ancient Persians conquered a large territory but were content to leave the native cultures in place or even, as in the case of the return of the Jews from exile, to preserve them. The

Macedonian Greek conquests were as rapid and extensive as that of the early Arabs. However, their effect on the conquered population was superficial and their empire ephemeral. The Romans also conquered a vast territory. But in contrast to the Arab conquests, the Roman Empire took three centuries to build. Moreover, while Roman culture penetrated all of Western Europe, modern Europeans, even those speaking Latin languages do not regard themselves as Roman. On the other hand, Muslim descendants of Egyptians, Babylonians and Berbers consider themselves Arab:

Arabic penetrated the conquered peoples to such an extent that at the beginning of the eighth century it had evolved into the official imperial language. by adopting the Arabic language, the conquered peoples Iranians, Syrians, Greeks, Copts, Berbers, Jews and Christians placed their abundant talents and learning at the service of their conquerors [21]

The ultimate adoption of the Arabic language and Islamic religion by indigenous populations was accompanied by the neglect and erasure of ancient traditions. A similar process followed the later Turkish conquests. Even where native languages were preserved, the adoption of Islam by the conquered led to the extirpation of much of the pre-existing culture at the hands of the Muslim imperialists.

Five centuries later the Mongols conquered an empire as large as that of the Arabs in a similar short amount of time. However, their imperialism was a failure in comparison. The Mongols wrought much devastation, but the civilization of the vanquished survived; there was no mass adoption of Mongol language or culture.

The modern empires of Western Europe encircled the globe. However, with the exception of certain sparsely populated lands, mostly in North America and Australia, there was no irrevocable displacement of aboriginal cultures. Even in the superficially Christianized lands conquered by the Spaniards the native Aztec, Mayan and Incan outlooks remain strong and have even undergone something of a modern revival. European imperialism was, paradoxically, beneficial to certain native cultures which were under attack by Islam. The British and French put an end to the African slave trade. British rule in India protected many Hindus from further Muslim depredations. And, far from attempting to replace Hindu culture, many Britons became ardent students and popularizers of Indian culture and the Hindu classics.

Furthermore, according to the historian Paul Fregosi, even the recent colonial experience of Islamic lands under European rule was much milder than that of Christian lands conquered by Muslims. When he compares the Muslim occupation of Christian lands in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa to European colonialism, he finds that the latter was much briefer and less culturally pervasive.[22]

Civilized Arabs and Barbarian Europeans

The apologists for Islam point to the high level of civilization in the Muslim world when compared to that of early medieval Europe. They would be rather more convincing in their assertion, if the Muslim raids and conquests themselves were not a major cause of decline in the civilization of an already beleaguered West.

The effect of the Arab conquests in the Mediterranean and their continued raids and incursions on Western Europe was severe. When the Roman Empire fell into the hands of the barbarians, there was a period of upheaval. Within a short time, however, civilization in the West began to recover. Then for a few centuries beginning with the seventh, new waves of barbarians descended on Europe. From the north seafaring Vikings began their destructive incursions and at the same time Europe was attacked from the east by nomadic horsemen from the steppes. In both of these cases the invaders were eventually contained and then absorbed into the Christian civilization of Europe. However there was a third wave of invaders from the east and south. These were, of course, the Arabs, whose religion of Islam, was a much more formidable threat and was to constitute a continuing disruptive force to western European civilization and to Byzantium. The almost permanent war, the disruption of trade and the sundering of the Mediterranean were a constant drain on the economy of Europe and retarded the full recovery of western civilization right up to the time of the Renaissance. The noted authority on medieval Europe, Christopher Dawson notes the following regarding the dark ages in Europe.

But the worst had not yet come. In the seventh century the Arabs conquered Byzantine Africa, the most civilized province of the West Early in the eighth century the tide of Moslem invasion swept over Christian Spain and threatened Gaul itself. Christendom had become an island isolated between the Moslem south and the Barbarian north.[23]

The Muslim invasion was, thus, a primary factor in the slow recovery of civilization in Europe after the shock resulting from the fall of Rome. Other distinguished historians also note the importance of continual warfare brought by Muslims in causing the decline of civilization in Europe. According to Henri Pirenne the Arab advance changed the face of the world. The rapid Arab advance destroyed the classical civilization of Europe and put an end to the Mediterranean commonwealth in which it had gathered its strength.[24] Historian Walter Kircher asserts that with the conquests of the Moslems and their domination of Mediterranean trade routes, largescale commercial activity, and with it the coining and use of money almost ceased in Western Europe.[25]

The Arab assault upon the west continued into later centuries. The navy of the Aghlabids of North Africa (800-909), harried the coasts of Italy, France, Corsica and Sardinia. They conquered Sicily in 902. Besides Sicily, Malta and Sardinia were seized mainly by pirates whose raids extended as far as Rome.[26]Moreover, as we have seen, there were continuing raids by Muslim corsairs seeking booty and slaves on the coasts and shipping of Western Europe. Despite this harassment, civilization in the West recovered and eventually far surpassed that of Islam.

Therefore, the temporary superiority of Muslim civilization in the seventh through the tenth century is irrelevant. Islam came into possession of the most advanced and civilized lands in the world. And, as was shown in Chapter 11, after a brief period of high culture, Muslims squandered this advantage. At the same time, Muslim predation helped to cause and then to prolong the European dark ages.

Western Europe was not the only region whose civilization was retarded by Islamic aggression. Byzantium was also under constant pressure from Muslims. This may, at least partly, explain the long stagnation of Byzantine civilization. This Byzantine stagnation continued until the later middle ages. The late Byzantine renaissance that then occurred, ironically, may have been due to a deep recognition on the part of cultured Byzantines that their end at the hands of the implacable Muslims was inevitable leading them to devote resources to one final amazing effort. Without the constant Islamic attacks one can only speculate what heights the Byzantine genius might have attained. As it turned out the last Byzantine renaissance was effectively displaced to safer soil in Italy and the West. The unfortunate fate of the ancient Hindu civilization is still another example of the destructive nature of the Islamic meme with respect to adjacent cultures.

In general, any non-Muslim population subject either to razzias or to direct Muslim rule suffered from cultural atrophy. Any intellectual resources arising in such cultures were appropriated, through conversion, slavery or dhimmitude, to serve the interests of the Islamic state. In Ottoman ruled Europe there was an absence of any great achievement at the very time that the neighboring European nations were experiencing rapid advancement. The historian A. H. Lybyer notes the disincentive to achievement experienced by populations subjected to Muslim warfare or conquest:

The Ottoman system took children forever from parents, discouraged family cares among its members through their most active years, allowed them no certain hold upon property, gave them no definite promise that their sons and daughters would profit by their success and sacrifice, raised and lowered them with no regard for ancestry or previous distinction, taught them a strange law, ethics and religion, and ever kept them conscious of a sword raised above their heads which might put an end at any moment to a brilliant career.[27]

That the Balkans, once the site of the last brilliant Byzantine renaissance, did not produce great art and science under the Ottomans is no mystery.[28]

The Myth of the Crusades

Few things are more certain to put Westerners on the defensive than the mention of the Crusades. Virtually all Westerners have learned to apologize for the Crusades. Less noted is the fact that these campaigns have an Islamic counterpart for which no one is apologizing and of which few are even aware.[29]

The notion of hordes of violent barbaric Europeans descending on civilized Muslims who had, since time immemorial, lived in peace on their ancestral lands is a fabrication. In the late eleventh century, as we have seen, western Christendom finally imbibed the ideology of holy war from its longtime Muslim adversaries the speech of Pope Urban at Clermont in 1095 initiating both the crusades and the gathering speed of the Spanish reconquista. Christians were certainly no slackers when it came to warfare and violence, but the condemnation of such actions in the New Testament presented Christian religious leaders with an almost insurmountable obstacle in finding scriptural sanction for unleashing war on distant lands. Trifkovic describes the dilemma:

What the Crusaders did to the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem in 1099 was as bad as what the Muslims had done

to countless Christian cities before and after that time, but the carnage was less pardonable because, unlike the Muslims, it was not justifiable by Christian religious tenets. From the distance of almost a millennium, however, it is time to see the phenomenon as Christendoms reaction to Muslim aggression. It was a reconquest of something taken by force from its rightful owners [30]

This alleged Western aggression was, therefore, simply a retaking of lost Christian territory for if Westerners had no right to invade these putative Muslim places, then Muslims had no right to conquer them to begin with.[31] It is, of course, true that

these sins of the Muslims do not excuse the sins that the Christians committed against them in return. One massacre doesnt cancel out another. But clearly what we now call human rights abuses have not come only from the Western side, and the recent defensiveness of the West before the House of Islam and the world on this issue is hardly justified by the facts.[32]

Furthermore, the Crusades were ineffective in ending Muslim aggression against Christian lands. Long after the Crusades had become a distant memory in the West, the warriors of jihad continued to press into the heart of Europe. The fall of the Crusader stronghold of Acre in 1291 put an end to crusading activity in the Muslim east. Through the next four centuries, however, Muslim armies solidified their hold on southeastern Europe and kept advancing whenever and wherever it was possible to do so.[33]

Islam and Christianity

It is one of the delights of modern historians to unfavorably compare Christianity with Islam. Both religions, of course, are the offspring of Judaism. However, their early histories could not be more different. Christianity came to power after centuries as a marginal and often persecuted sect. Islam, after less than a decade of persecution, became a distinct religion at the same time that it assumed political power. Islam from its beginning was always more of a political than a religious movement.

The difference between the two faiths is exemplified by the activities of pious reformers. Pietistic and monastic movements arising within the framework of Christian society were invariably pacific and quietist, seeking a return to the basic New Testament principles. Similar movements within Islam, however, were usually warlike, aggressive and militant in conformity with basic

Koranic doctrine. One need only compare and contrast the activities of St. Francis and his followers with those of the communal military sects of North Africa founded by pious Muslim scholars. Warlike, angry and violent Christians, while marking most of Christian history acted in direct contradiction to the teachings of the founder of the religion. Similar warlike and violent Muslims behaved according to the precepts of their Prophet.

Furthermore, the experience of the newly triumphant Christianity following the conversion of the emperor Constantine contrasts with that of conquering Islam. The early Muslim rulers had to deal with the existence of populations following other higher religions. Christians, on the other hand, were only confronted by an outmoded paganism and a small population of Jews. Muslim rulers, as a practical matter, had to tolerate large non-Muslim populations for many years. Similarly, as a practical matter, Christian rulers had to tolerate paganism for several centuries after assuming political power. Long afterward, paganism continued to exist in a subterranean manner sometimes surfacing as witchcraft, or as the Neo-Platonism which openly emerged during the Renaissance. Christianity also adopted many pagan practices, as Islam inevitably incorporated beliefs and practices of preceding religions.

While Muslims ruled over both Christian and Jewish dhimmis, Christian rulers only had to contend with the existence of Jews as a rival religion. The experience of dhimmis under Islam paralleled that of Jews under Christianity. Christian and Jewish dhimmis were sometimes persecuted and sometimes protected or even utilized by Muslim rulers. Similarly, Jews in Christian Europe were often persecuted but also often protected or even favored by tolerant or practical secular or religious leaders. Often their talents and international connections were utilized by Christian monarchs as they were by Muslim sultans. There were times that Christian reformers, e.g. Cromwell and the Puritans, showed friendship to Jews as a way of making theological points. Also in some instances, as in Byzantium and Venice, itinerant Muslims were granted some measure of tolerance. Similarly in Reconquista Spain up until the 16th century, various Muslim populations lived under the protection of Christian rulers in a sort of reverse dhimmitude. On the whole, therefore, the experience of other religious groups living under both Christianity and Islam were similar.

Although established Christian and Muslim societies share many common features, with respect to proselytism and conversion, the historical experience of the two religions were quite different.

The initial spread of Christianity was peaceful, whereas that of Islam was the result of violence. Walter Brandmller outlines the different ways that Christianity and Islam began:

For the Christians, conversion was something that must be voluntary and individual, obtained primarily through preaching and example, and this is how Christianity did in fact spread during its first centuries. Obviously, we must immediately note that this conception of early Christianity underwent changes in later eras, connected with the diffusion of a spirit of religious intolerance in Western culture. John Paul II himself acknowledged that in this regard the Churchs children must return with a spirit of repentance [for] the acquiescence given, especially in certain centuries, to intolerance and even the use of violence in the service of truth. (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 35).

But on the part of the Muslims, from the earliest times, even while Mohammed was still alive, conversion was imposed through the use of force. The expansion and extension of Islams sphere of influence came through war with the tribes that did not accept conversion peacefully, and this went hand in hand with submission to Islamic political authority. Islamism, unlike Christianity, expressed a comprehensive religious, cultural, social, and political strategy. While Christianity spread during its first three centuries in spite of persecution and martyrdom, and in many ways in opposition to Roman domination, introducing a clear separation between the spiritual and political spheres, Islam was imposed through the power of political domination.[34]

Moreover, neither religion had a monopoly on either toleration or persecution of religious minorities. The continued existence of Jews in Europe could not have occurred if there were no philosemitic or at least pragmatic members of the ruling elite. Practical Christian rulers also tolerated Muslims in reconquered territory as was the case in Sicily and early Reconquista Spain and later in Russia and the Balkans. And, of course, mercantile minded Christian rulers as in Constantinople and Venice mandated freedom of worship for Muslim merchants.

Muslims were quite as capable of persecuting Jews as were Christians. The rabbi Isaac b. Samuel (cf. above) wrote the following:

For this reason our rabbis of blessed memory have said, Rather beneath the yoke of Edom [Christendom] than that of Ishmael. They plead for mercy before the Holy One, Blessed be He, saying, Master of the World, either let us live beneath Thy shadow or else beneath that of the children of Edom (a Talmudic verse)[35]

Thus, Muslims were not always more tolerant of Jews than were Christians nor was the flow of Jewish refugees as between Christian and Muslim lands always one way, as the conventional wisdom would have us believe. Indeed, under the fanatical Almohads the position of both Christians and Jews in Spain became quite untenable.

The succeeding Almohads (1130-1232) wrought tremendous destruction upon both the Jewish and Christian populations in Spain and North Africa. This devastationmassacre, captivity, and forced conversionwas described by the Jewish chronicler Abraham Ibn Daud, and the poet Abraham Ibn Ezra. Suspicious of the sincerity of the Jewish converts to Islam, Muslim inquisitors (i.e., antedating their Christian Spanish counterparts by three centuries) removed the children from such families, placing them in the care of Muslim educators.

These brutal, discriminatory practices resulted in a massive emigration of Jews and Jewish converts to Islam to the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula, from both Muslim-controlled Al-Andalus and the North African Maghreb. During the first half of the 13th century, Jaime I of Aragon, in particular, advanced policies of protecting Jews within his territories, granting safe-conduct and letters of naturalization to all Jews who made their way by land or sea, and established themselves in the states of Majorca, Catalonia, and Valencia. Jewish converts to Islam were permitted to return to Judaism if they wished so. Within 250 years, however, the descendants of these Jews who had escaped the Muslim Almohad depredations would be subjected to the fanatical rage of the Spanish Inquisition, and some of them would find refuge under the suzerainty of the Muslim Ottoman empire, especially in the region of Salonika, at the end of the 15th century. To complete this morose cycle of persecution, the vacuum filled by Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition was created when their co-religionist counterpartsthe Jews living under Byzantine (and Venetian) rule in Thracewere subjected to massacre, pillage, enslavement, and deportation by these same Ottoman conquerors, during their jihad campaigns of the early to mid-15th century.[36]

Both religions zealously persecuted heretics and apostates. However, centuries before the inquisition was institutionalized, Muslim rulers were executing and often burning heretics. In 742 Djad Ibn Dirham was put to death for believing in free will and that the Koran was created. Ibn al-Muqaffa, well known for his rational and unorthodox religious views, was burned in 760. Furthermore under the caliph Mansurs successors, al-Mahdi (775-785 C.E.) and al-Hadi (785786 C.E.) repression, persecution, and executions were applied with even greater ferocity. Special magistrates were appointed to pursue the heretics, and the whole inquisition was masterminded by the Grand Inquisitor, called the Sahih al-Zanadiqa. It was enough for a simple rumor to be aired for the Inquisitor to take immediate steps to incriminate the suspect.[37] It is noteworthy

that the Catholic country where the Inquisition was practiced with the most zeal and greatest effect was Spain, which had been under Muslim rule for centuries. Even the family of the prophet, the Hashimites, was not safe from this early inquisition. Several members of the family were executed or died in prison.[38] The scholar Al-Sarakhsi was executed in 899 after he incurred the wrath of the caliph for his public discussion of heretical doctrines.[39]

As demonstrated by the Crusades, Christianity was also able to mount religious war. Warfare, in general, among Christians was frequent. However, neither Christianity nor any other religion has ever had a doctrine like jihad. Ibn Khaldun acknowledges this The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty to them, save only for purposes of defense. Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.[40] It is an undeniable fact that the Crusaders who pillaged Jerusalem were transgressing the bounds of their religion in all sorts of ways. However, the Muslim warriors who murdered, raped, pillaged and enslaved, were following Muhammads example.[41]

Modern progressives are profuse in their condemnation of the treatment of women in Christian societies. However, the condition of women in Muslim ruled lands is incomparably worse. Bernard Lewis makes the following succinct, but apt, cultural comparison:

The women of Christian Europe were very far from achieving any kind of equality, but they were not subject to polygamy or legal concubinage. Even the limited measure of freedom and participation that they enjoyed never failed to shock a succession of Muslim visitors all of them male to Western lands. Western civilization was richer for womens presence; Muslim civilization poorer by their absence.[42]

The institution of Muslim slavery was discussed at length.[43] The difference between Christian and Muslim attitudes toward this institution is also noted by Lewis:

Although it was known in medieval Europe, slavery was of minor importance there, far less significant in the social and economic life of Europe than in pre-Columbian America or in Muslim and non-Muslim Africa. The inventiveness and cupidity of Europe, learning from and drawing on the plantation systems and the slave trade of Africa and the Islamic world, found this answer. Colonial slavery and the seaborne slave trade became a major factor in the crisscrossing interchanges between the four shores of the Atlantic western Europe, western Africa, North America, and South America.

But it was Europe, too, that first decided to set the slaves free: at home, then in the colonies, and finally in all the world. Western technology made slavery unnecessary; Western ideas made it intolerable. There have been many slaveries, but there has been only one abolition, which eventually shattered even the rooted and ramified slave systems of the Old World.[44]

Moreover, it is of interest to note that the Spanish and Portuguese, the Christians most influenced by Islamic culture, were the first to apply large scale colonial slavery and whose traders introduced it to other western colonial powers.

In the next chapter, the origins of these prevailing myths regarding Islam are considered. In addition, the reasons for the abrupt revival of the aggressive Islamic meme, after several centuries of somnolence are examined.