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

by Raymond Ibrahim

Having learned to submit, they were next subjected to a draconian training system not unlike the ancient Spartan agoge: “They make them drudge day and night, and they give them no bed to sleep on and very little food.” They were allowed to “speak to each other only when it is urgently necessary” and were made to “pray together without fail at four prescribed times every day.” As “for any little offense, they beat them cruelly with sticks, rarely hitting them less than a hundred times, and often as much as a thousand. After punishments the boys have to come to them and kiss their clothing and thank them for the cudgelings they have received. You can see, then,” concluded the Italian observer, “that moral degradation and humiliation are part of the training system.”29 Ironically, however—and as with other historically Muslim institutions that have been whitewashed¶—this abduction, forced conversion, and jihadi indoctrination of Christian children is portrayed by several leading academics “as the equivalent of sending a child away for a prestigious education and training for a lucrative career.”

the latter’s courts, Muslim clerics regularly accosted Manuel about his Christian faith; he boldly responded in like manner, at one point arguing: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”† (When, in 2006, Pope Benedict quoted this assertion in the context of Manuel’s greater point, that “to act unreasonably is foreign to God,” anti-Christian riots erupted around the Muslim world, churches were burned, and an Italian nun who had devoted her life to serving the sick and needy of Somalia was murdered there.41)

When news of this disaster spread throughout Europe, “bitter despair and affliction reigned in all hearts,” writes a chronicler. Never again would the West unite and crusade in the East. “Henceforward it would be left to those whose borders were directly threatened to defend Christendom against the expansion of Islam.”

From Hungary, three hundred thousand were enslaved and “carried off in just a few days”; from Serbia and Transylvania one hundred thousand were hauled off.¶ “The massive enslavement of slavic populations during this period gave rise, in fact, to our word ‘slave’: in Bartolomeo’s time, to be a slave was to be a Slav.”77 Further telling is that “the Turkish word kiz, meaning ‘girl,’ ‘slave girl,’ and ‘sexual slave girl’ (or ‘concubine’) came to mean also ‘Christian woman’ in Islamic usage.”

Every day in Christian lands under Ottoman rule, “the most holy name of Christ is denied and Muhammad, the son of the devil, exalted,” fumed the Franciscan; everywhere churches, crosses, and chalices are “cast down and trampled underfoot!”

When, oh when, therefore, [continued Bartolomeo] shall these miserable [Western] Christians be roused [to action]?… Where is the glorious kingdom of the Franks now, which in ancient times drove the Saracens from Hispania? Where is the great power of the English? These two have been consumed [fighting] against one another. Where now is the king of Aragon, terror of the infidel? Where are the other powers and Christian princes? The Germans are hateful to the Hungarians and Bohemians, the Hungarians fight with the Poles. The pastors of the Church are at odds with the pastors, the barons with the barons, and cities use themselves up against other cities, so that even if no other persecution is inflicted from the outside, they are more than enough for their own ruin.

Many Europeans were convinced that if only they could reach the peoples east of Islam—who if not Christian were at least “not as yet infected by the Mahometan plague,” to quote Pope Nicholas6—together they could crush Islam between them.* This comes out clearly in Columbus’s own letters: in one he refers to Ferdinand and Isabella as “enemies of the wretched sect of Mohammet” who are “resolve[d] to send me to the regions of the Indies, to see” how the people thereof can help in the war effort;7 in another written to the monarchs after he reached the New World Columbus offers to raise an army “for the war and conquest of Jerusalem.”8

[For] can we expect peace from a nation which thirsts for our blood, which has already planted itself in [the southern portions of] Hungary after having subjugated Greece? Lay aside these infatuated hopes. Mahomet will never lay down his arms until he is either wholly victorious or completely vanquished. Each success will be only a stepping-stone to the next until he has mastered all the Western Monarchs, overthrown the Christian Faith, and imposed the law of his false prophet on the whole world.… Oh, that Godfrey, Baldwin, Eustace, Hugh, Bohemund, Tancred, and those other brave men who re-conquered Jerusalem were here! Truly they would not need so many words to persuade them.

Our faith was strong in th’ Orient It ruled in all of Asia In Moorish lands and Africa But now [since the seventh century] for us these lands are gone… We perish sleeping one and all The wolf has come into the stall And steals the Holy Church’s sheep The while the shepherd lies asleep Four sisters of our Church you find They’re of the patriarchic kind Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch But they’ve been forfeited and sacked And soon the head [Rome] will be attacked.39

A Catholic clergyman named Martin Luther (1483–1546) had initiated history’s Protestant Reformation. Whatever else can be said of him, Luther unwittingly did much to weaken European unity against invading Islam. Although he maintained the traditional Christian view on Islam—denouncing the Koran as a “cursed, shameful, desperate” book filled with “dreadful abominations”—he condemned the concept of crusading and originally preached passivity45 against the Muslim invaders,* saying that, although the sultan “rages most intensely by murdering Christians in the body… he, after all, does nothing by this but fill heaven with saints.”46 Perhaps worst of all, by portraying the Catholic pope as more of an “Antichrist” than the Ottoman sultan—an office held by Muslim leaders responsible for the slaughter and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Christians—Luther and other Reformation leaders† ushered in a sort of relativism that prevails to this day, one that cites (often distorted) episodes from Catholic history to minimize ongoing Muslim atrocities.‡

The Catholic Church responded with its own invective “and frequently tried to discredit Protestant doctrine by likening it to Islam—Muhammad was an early Protestant and the Protestants were latter day Saracens.”47 It finally got to the point that both Catholics and Protestants began “heaping praise upon the infidel” in an effort to portray each other as unparalleled evil.

At the head of some twenty thousand Polish, German, and Austrian horsemen, Sobieski, with his young son by his side, crashed with thunderous violence into the Ottoman line. Wearing heavy armor with eagles’ wings, carrying large lances, and astride even larger and heavily armored steeds of war, three thousand hussars—the elite cavalry of the Polish army that surrounded its king—were an especial sight to behold: to the besieged Viennese, some of whom were now sallying forth to join the fray, they looked like winged liberators; to the increasingly demoralized Muslims, they looked like avenging angels and “struck fear in the hearts of the Turks and their Tartar allies.”

Back in Congress, some agreed with Jefferson that “it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them.”137 In a letter to a friend, George Washington wondered: “In such an enlightened, in such a liberal age, how is it possible that the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical States of Barbary? Would to Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into nonexistence.”138 But the majority of Congress agreed with John Adams: “We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever.”139 Considering the perpetual, existential nature of Islamic hostility, Adams was probably more right than he knew.

Finally, on April 27, 1805—in what became the United States’ first historical victory as a nation—Eaton reached, attacked, and conquered Tripoli’s coastal town of Derne. Soon thereafter, as he was preparing to march on to Tripoli itself, he learned that, as of June 10, the war was over: U.S. consul-general Tobias Lear had negotiated what was later deemed an ignoble peace treaty with Tripoli; it included the surrender of Derne back to the Barbary state and the American payment of $60,000 to ransom the Philadelphia’s crew. Four months later, in October 1806, the first American edition of the Koran was printed in the United States. As the editor’s note makes clear, its publication was not for the “cultural enrichment” of Americans—as is often claimed today—but to inform them why they had been at war for the last four years. After opening up by saying, “This book is a long conference of God, the angels, and Mahomet, which that false prophet very grossly invented,” the editor concluded: “Thou wilt wonder that such absurdities hath infected the better part of the world, and wilt avouch, that the knowledge of what is contained in this book, wilt render that law [sharia] contemptible.”

Because “that law” commands Muslims to take the offensive against infidels whenever a favorable opportunity presents itself—including by breaking peace treaties*—when war between the United States and Britain broke out again in 1812, Barbary saw its chance and again began to raid American ships and enslave their crews. When peace with Britain was achieved in 1815, the United States decided to put an end to Barbary predations once and for all: what had become by now a massive navy (compared to Jefferson’s original six vessels of 1801) was deployed to and made quick work of the Barbary Coast. This time the peace treaty was dictated by the United States: Algiers had to release all Americans, make no more claims for tribute, and even pay $10,000 in indemnities for ships and other stolen property. Tunis had to pay $60,000 and Tripoli $30,000 for the ships and properties they had stolen. Thus the United States’ first war—which erupted before it could even elect its first president and intermittently lasted some thirty-two years—was against Islam; and the latter had initiated hostilities on the same rationale that had been used to initiate hostilities for the preceding 1,200 years.

They would seize a [Bulgarian] woman, strip her carefully to her chemise, laying aside articles of clothing that were valuable, with any ornaments and jewels she might have about her. Then as many of them as cared would violate her, and the last man would kill her or not as the humor took him.… [Skeletons of children were found] with frightful saber cuts in their little skulls. The number of children killed in these massacres is something enormous. They were often spitted on bayonets, and we have several stories from eye-witnesses who saw the little babes carried about the streets… on the points of bayonets. The reason is simple. When a Mohammedan has killed a certain number of infidels he is sure of Paradise, no matter what his sins may be.… The ordinary Mussulman takes the precept in broader acceptation, and counts women and children as well. The advantage of killing children is that it can be done without danger, and that a child counts for as much as an armed man [when it comes to earning paradise]. Here in Batak [in Bulgaria] the bashi bazouks, in order to swell the count, ripped open pregnant women, and killed the unborn infants.157

Every Muslim who is well aware of the history of Islam, knows that jihad against infidels is an integral part of Islam, and those who read history would know. —Islamic State

Millions of modern people of the white civilization—that is, the civilization of Europe and America—have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past.

When Muslim men sexually assault Western women while saying things like “You white women are good at it,” or “German women are there for sex,” or “All Australian women are sluts and deserve to be raped,”5 very few understand that they are drawing on a long tradition of seeing pale infidels as the epitome of promiscuity, as recounted in the preceding history. When Muslim migrants go on church-vandalizing sprees in the West—many hundreds of churches, crosses, and Christian statues have been respectively desecrated, broken, and beheaded in just Germany, France, and Austria6—very few understand that this modus operandi stretches back to and has been on continuous display since Islam’s first contact with Christian civilization, as recounted in the preceding history.

Once upon a time, the Islamic world was a superpower and its jihad an irresistible force to be reckoned with. Over two centuries ago, however, a rising Europe—which had experienced more than one millennium of Muslim conquests and atrocities—eclipsed and defanged Islam. As Muhammad’s civilization retreated into obscurity, the post-Christian West slowly came into being. Islam did not change, but the West did: Muslims still venerate their heritage and religion—which commands jihad against infidels—whereas the West has learned to despise its heritage and religion, causing it to become an unwitting ally of the jihad.

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