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

by Raymond Ibrahim

What is certain is that Uthman was disaffected by reports of ongoing Arab oppression of fellow Berbers in Spain and Africa (though Muslim, Arabs still continued to look down on and mistreat the Berbers).* He cooled on the jihad against infidels—were his people not Muslim and still being treated as infidels?—and like Eudes entered the alliance with an eye to breaking free from his overlords in Cordoba. This would not do. In 731, Abdul Rahman al-Ghafiqi—a “warlike man” and survivor of Toulouse who bore a special grudge against Francia—became the new governor of Spain.36 He learned that Uthman had not only ceased raiding but had allied himself to the infidels. Denouncing him as a renegade, Abdul “angrily prepared an expedition for battle and fiercely pursued” Uthman deep into the mountains, where, knowing what was in store for him if captured, the apostate leapt over the precipice to his death.