Sword and Scimitar Quotes

“Shocking as it may seem, love—not of the modern, sentimental variety, but a medieval, muscular one, characterized by Christian altruism, agape—was the primary driving force behind the crusades.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Constantinople’s perennial conspirators destroyed yet another man who had fought for God and empire; and in both cases Muslim posterity told of Allah’s vengeance on the Dogs of Rome who most defied him.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“The archeological facts speak for themselves: although churches dotted Spain’s landscape when Islam came in 711, “today, the remains of even small ‘Mozarabic’ [dhimmi] churches can be found only outside the former ‘al-Andalus,’ and none of them in major urban centers.”21”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Even the ancient Visigothic church of Saint Vincent, the main basilica of Cordoba, which the invaders initially vouchsafed to Christians on condition of surrender, was coercively “purchased,” razed to the ground, and its precious materials cannibalized to construct the Great Mosque of Cordoba—on the heads of northern Christian slaves no less.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Due to some widespread and entrenched myths concerning the purported tolerance and enlightenment of al-Andalus, here it is necessary to document the reverse and establish context for the forthcoming centuries of war. For starters, the destruction and spoliation of churches was hardly limited to the initial conquest years (711–715). It was a constant—and deliberate—affair. Once Abd al-Rahman I (d. 788) became emir of Cordoba, all churches still standing “were immediately pulled down,” writes al-Maqqari.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“perhaps the most unforeseen and ironic aspect of the crusades is that a distorted and demonized version of them was eventually disseminated in and continues to haunt the West—while exonerating ongoing Muslim aggression as “payback”—to this very day.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“All that is known of the True Cross’s fate is that Saladin ordered it to be paraded upside down in the streets of Damascus. From there, the Cross—discovered under Constantine, seized by Persians but recovered by Heraclius, smuggled to Constantinople during the Islamic siege of Jerusalem in 637 but then sent back to the Holy City when it was restored to Christendom—disappears from history and enters legend.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“How could the crusaders be motivated by love and piety, considering all the brutal violence and bloodshed they committed? Not only is such a question anachronistic—violence was part and parcel of the medieval world—but centuries before Islam, Christian theologians had concluded that “the so called charity texts of the New Testament that preached passivism and forgiveness, not retaliation, were firmly defined as applying to the beliefs and behavior of the private person” and not the state, explains historian Christopher Tyerman. Christ himself distinguished between political and spiritual obligations (Matt. 22:21). He praised a Roman centurion without calling on him to “repent” by resigning from one of the most brutal militaries of history (Matt. 8: 5–13). When a group of soldiers asked John the Baptist how they should repent, he advised them always to be content with their army wages (Luke 3:14). Paul urged Christians to pray for “kings and all that are in authority” (1 Tim. 2:2). In short, “there was no intrinsic contradiction in a doctrine of personal, individual forgiveness condoning certain forms of necessary public violence to ensure the security in which, in St. Paul’s phrase, Christians ‘may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty’ (1 Tim. 2:2).”27 Or as that chief articulator of “Just War” theory, Saint Augustine (d. 430), concluded, “It is the injustice of the opposing side, that lays on the wise man the duty to wage war.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“when Urban made his call in 1095, Christians everywhere felt ready to take the war to—instead of always receiving it from—the ancient foe.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“As Rodney Stark puts it, “Almost generation after generation, Christian writers recorded acts of persecution and harassment, to the point of slaughter and destruction, suffered at the hands of Muslim [Arab, Persian, and Turkish] rulers.”9 That said, the persecution and carnage had reached apocalyptic levels by the 1090s. THE CALL FROM CLERMONT It was in this context that, on November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II (r. 1088–1099) made his famous appeal to the knights of Christendom.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“In 809, and again in 813, multiple monasteries, convents, and churches were attacked in and around Jerusalem; Christians of both sexes were gang raped and massacred. In 929, on Palm Sunday,* another wave of atrocities broke out; churches were destroyed and Christians slaughtered.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“As Steven Runciman put it, “The Battle of Manzikert was the most decisive disaster in Byzantine history. The Byzantines themselves had no illusions about it. Again and again their historians refer to that ‘dreadful day.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“The Eastern Roman Empire lost much after Manzikert. It lost the richest and most fertile part of its empire, whence its hardiest soldiers and not a few warrior-emperors (including Leo III and Nikephoros II) historically came from; it lost its prestige and reputation as the world’s greatest power for seven centuries—not just in the eyes of Muslims who had still been reeling under the shadow of defeat from the empire’s tenth-century comeback, but Western eyes as well.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“In short, Manzikert was for the Turks what Yarmuk was for the Arabs. In both battles—and according to the Muslim narrative—outnumbered Muslims won because, seeing their readiness to be martyred for his cause, Allah had enabled them to triumph over the infidels.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Here one could see an appalling sight,” reflected the contemporary chronicler John Skylitzes (b. 1040). The men were “deprived of their full armour,” lacked “swords and other weapons of war,” and were “short of war horses and other equipment† because no emperor had campaigned in this area for a long time.… All that caused great despondency in the hearts of those who saw them, when they reflected on the state to which the Roman armies had come and from which they had fallen.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“The best they did is make treaties with Sultan Tughril; and when roaming bands of Turks broke the treaty by invading and terrorizing Christian territory, and Constantinople objected, the sly sultan feigned innocence by saying he was unable to control these premodern “lone wolves,” even as they continued raiding deeper and deeper into western Anatolia.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“After portraying Arabs as “wild, untamable (animals) and dumb beasts of prey,” he wrote, “In the West, the nomadic Berbers… are their counterparts, and in the East, the Kurds, the Turkomans, and the Turks.”31 In short, “if taking lives and ravaging the lands of the infidel were the means by which the ends of expanding Islam were served, then the new [Turkic] converts’ traditional pleasures were now happily endowed with a pious rationale.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Due to a century of successes at the hands of the aforementioned emperors—from Basil I to Basil II—a false sense of security prevailed. Vigilance was abandoned; rule “passed into the hands of a series of dotards, sensualists and courtesans—female rule once again predominated.” The twenty-nine-year reign of Empress Zoe, “a middle-aged harlot,” saw her marry and divorce—often by blinding or murdering—several men.27 Concern for the frontier and the struggle against Islam was dropped; the empire’s resources were squandered on the fancies of the civil bureaucracy, which came to rule in all but name.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“In previous wars with the Muslims the Byzantines had all too often been on the defensive, with the retaining of Christian territory their aim, not its expansion. However, both Nicephorus and John declared their wars to be for the glory of Christendom”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“[t]he campaigns of Nicephorus Phocas and John Tzimiskes once again made the Byzantine empire a great power in the east.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“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.”30 What is true is that whoever survived the indoctrination and dehumanization of this ordeal of fire emerged with a fanatical appetite for war on infidels and became the most feared element of the Ottoman army: a Janissary, a “new soldier.” That they exhibited a “dog-like devotion to the sultan,” the man responsible for abducting them from their families and faith, and engaged in “wild behavior” against his enemies31—that is, against their former families and faith—is further proof that they are among recorded history’s earliest victims of Stockholm Syndrome.*”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“At one point, Allah’s warriors surrounded and trapped Charles, but “he fought as fiercely as the hungry wolf falls upon the stag. By the grace of Our Lord, he wrought a great slaughter upon the enemies of Christian faith,” Denis the chronicler extolled. “Then was he first called ‘Martel,’ for as a hammer of iron, of steel, and of every other metal, even so he dashed and smote in the battle all his enemies.”54”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Muhammad’s chief reason for denouncing Christianity revolved around Christ. While he agreed that Jesus was born of a virgin, performed miracles, and was essentially sinless, he rejected claims that Christ was crucified and resurrected.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“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.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“From here the argument can be made that 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.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Muhammad upheld the dichotomy of tribalism, but by prioritizing fellow Muslims over blood relatives. Thus the umma—the Islamic “Super-Tribe” that transcends racial, national, and linguistic barriers—was born*; and its natural enemy remained everyone outside it.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“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.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“In the context of proving that irrational teachings cannot emanate from God, he argued that these three options are “extremely absurd,” particularly the notion that, if being a non-Muslim is so bad, why should money, jizya, allow one to “buy the opportunity to lead an impious life”? (Quotes from Demetracopoulos n.d., 270, and Manuel 2009).”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Many parents did what they could to prevent the snatching of their sons’ bodies—which could further “end up as victims of Turkish pederasty,”26 or the “Turkish Disease”—and souls.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“The rest of the city’s population—as many as forty-five thousand—were hauled off in chains to be sold into Eastern slavery.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West