Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

by Raymond Ibrahim

Things further came to a head—quite literally—when eight thousand Muslims marched before the Roman camp carrying the severed heads of four thousand Christian soldiers mounted atop their spears. These were the remains of five thousand reinforcements coming from Amman to join the main army at Yarmuk; the Muslims had ambushed and slaughtered them. Then, as resounding cries of “Allahu Akbar” filled the Muslim camp—and in keeping with Koran verses to “strike terror into the hearts of the infidels” by decapitating them (e.g., 8:12)—those Muslims standing behind the remaining one thousand Christian captives knocked them over and proceeded to hack their heads off before the eyes of their coreligionists, whom Arabic sources depict as looking on in “utter bewilderment.”