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

by Raymond Ibrahim

That Muhammad had only won over some one hundred followers after a decade of peaceful preaching in Mecca—but nearly the whole of Arabia after a decade of successful raiding, “an average of no fewer than nine campaigns annually”5—speaks for itself. As Edward Gibbon observed, Muhammad “employ[ed] even the vices of mankind as the instruments of their salvation,” and the “use of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice, were often subservient to the propagation of the faith.”

The appeal of Muhammad’s message lay in its compatibility with the tribal mores of his society, three in particular: loyalty to one’s tribe, enmity for other tribes, and raids on the latter to enrich and empower the former.

the tribe was what humanity is to modern people: to be part of it was to be treated humanely; to be outside of it was to be treated inhumanely.

Islamic law’s, or sharia’s, mandate that Dar al-Islam (the “Abode of Islam”) must battle Dar al-Kufr (the “Abode of Infidelity”) in perpetuity until the former subsumes the latter.

Muhammad’s most enduring contribution to world history is that, in repackaging the tribal mores of seventh-century Arabia through a theological paradigm, he also deified tribalism, causing it to outlive its setting and spill into the modern era.

Whereas most world civilizations have been able to slough off their historic tribalism and enter into modernity, to break with tribalism for Muslims is to break with Muhammad and his laws—to break with cardinal Islamic teachings.

“Lining up for battle in the path of Allah,” Muhammad said, “is worthier than 60 years of worship.”

Nor—and this is pivotal—were those who undertook jihad obligated to have sincere or pious intentions.‡ The cold, businesslike language of the Koran makes this clear. Whoever wages jihad makes a “fine loan to Allah,” which the latter guarantees to pay back “many times over,” always commensurate with their efforts (e.g., Koran 2:245, 4:95). Simply put, “Allah has bought from the believers their lives and worldly goods, and in return has promised them Paradise: they shall fight in the way of Allah and shall kill and be killed.… Rejoice then in the bargain you have struck, for that is the supreme triumph” (Koran 9:111, emphasis added).§

The instant forgiveness of sins granted to believers naturally became a license to sin for less believing Muslims. So long as they proclaim the shahada and pledge allegiance to Muhammad/Allah/umma, they can join and reap the rewards of jihad, no questions asked.

Fighting in Islam’s service—with the risk of dying—is all the proof of piety needed. Indeed, sometimes fighting has precedence over piety: many dispensations, including not upholding prayers and...

Despite the popular claim that Islam bans forced conversion, the martyrdom of early Christians who refused to convert to Islam permeates both Muslim and Christian sources—it is still a very real phenomenon today—and was one of the chief reasons that premodern Christians saw only the spirit of Antichrist in Islam.†

He is deceiving. For do prophets come with swords and chariot? Verily, these events of today are works of confusion.… You will discover nothing true from the said prophet except human bloodshed. —Jewish scribe, c. 6342

Moreover, whereas the European transatlantic African slave trade was fueled by a racial bias, the Muslim slave trade of Europeans—which in the sixteenth century far exceeded the former—was fueled by that old sadistic contempt for infidels.

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.

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.