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Notes
on Books by
THE SWORD OF THE PROPHET
Educated
in England, receiving a PhD at the University of Southampton, and doing
postdoctoral research at the Hoover Institute, Serge Trifkovic has worked as a
broadcaster for BBC and a reporter in southeast Europe for U.S. News & World
Report and The Washington Times. In
The Sword of the Prophet (Boston: Regina
Orthodox Pr3ss, Inc., 2002), he sets forth a “politically incorrect”
perspective on Islam, its “history, theology, and impact on the world.”
He sees today’s conflicts as simply a recent manifestation of an
ancient religious struggle.
In his
Foreword to the book, a former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and
Albania, endorses Trifkovic’s position, noting that “something is wrong in
the Muslim world” (p. 3). It’s a
poverty-stricken, dictator-dominated realm, and the recent resurgence of
militant Islam poses “the greatest danger to ‘Western’ values since the
end of the Cold War” (p. 4). “This
is a book,” Ambassador Bissett says, “that deals with what many consider to
be the major issue of our time--the question of whether the Western and Muslim
civilizations can live together in peace” (p. 5).
Sadly enough, he admits, it seems “that, just as the Western
democracies refused to acknowledge the danger inherent in the rise of Nazi and
Communist ideologies, our refusal to confront militant Islam may cost us
dearly” (p. 5).
Trifkovic
begins his book with the assertion that the Muslim attack on the United States
on September 11, 2001, demonstrated an antipathy against the Christian world
deeply rooted in Islam. That so many
refer to Islam as a “religion of peace” shows that “the problem of
collective historical ignorance--or even deliberately induced amnesia--is the
main difficulty in addressing the history of Islam in today’s English speaking
world, where claims about far-away lands and cultures are made on the basis of
domestic multiculturalism assumptions rather than on evidence” (p. 8).
Just as pro-communist publicists long avoided condemning the evils of
Stalinist Russia, pro-Muslim “experts” have skillfully spread skillful
propaganda to gloss over the truth concerning Islam.
To set forth the facts—to counteract the propaganda—this book was
written.
First, we
learn much about Muhammad. Born in
Mecca in 570 A.D., early orphaned, he spent his early years working at utterly
menial jobs, including shepherding sheep. Then,
fortuitously, he met a wealthy widow, Khadija, 15 years his senior, for whom he
worked and ultimately married. Freed
from survival concerns, he began to spend time in the solitude, especially in
some caves near Mecca, and, in A.D. 610, received a message from an angel
designating him as “the Messenger of God.”
When he shared his message, he won as converts only his wife and a few
kinsmen. Most of the folks in Mecca merely scoffed at the new zealot.
But his visions continued, and his wife and a politically powerful uncle
protected him from persecution for a few years.
In A.D. 622,
however opposition in Mecca escalated to the point that Muhammed and 70
followers fled north to the more hospitable city of Medina.
This event--the hijrah--marks Islam’s true beginning point.
Here, importantly, Muhammad shifted his emphasis from religion to
politics, from persuasion to coercion. His
followers became bands of brigands, and as they raided camel caravans they
brought money to the “prophet” and his movement.
Small-scale scirmish victories brought admiration and acclaim from the
warrior-minded Arabs, and a battle at Badr in 624 proved particularly momentous,
for the principles of jihad came to the fore.
No mercy was extended to unbelievers or captives.
“The Kuran contains the accompanying revelation from on high:
‘It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he hath made
slaughter in the land.’ Fresh
revelations described the unbelievers as ‘the worst animals.’
The Prophet was now the ‘enemy of infidels.’
Killing, or in the case of Jews and Christians, enslaving and robbing
them, was not only divinely sanctioned but mandated” (p. 38).
Within a decade, at the head of a victorious army, swollen by warriors
fattened by plunder and power, Muhammed conquered Mecca, dying there in A.D.
632.
Evaluating
the prophet’s career, Trifkovic says: “Muhammad’s
practice and constant encouragement of bloodshed are unique in the history of
religions. Murder pillage, rape, and
more murder are in the Kuran and in the Traditions ‘seem to have impressed his
followers with a profound belief in the value of bloodshed as opening the gates
of Paradise’ and prompted countless Muslim governors, caliphs, and viziers to
refer to Muhammad’s example to justify their mass killings, looting, and
destruction. ‘Kill, kill the
unbelievers wherever you find ‘them’ is an injunction both unambiguous and
powerful” (p. 51).
Here Alexis
de Tocqueville’s appraisal seems remarkable:
“’ I studied the Kuran a great deal. . . .
I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there
have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.
As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so
visible today in the Muslim world, and, though less absurd than the polytheism
of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion infinitely more to
be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form
of progress in relation to paganism itself’” (p. 208).
Muhammad‘s
example and teachings led quickly, following his death, to “jihad without
end.” Trifkovic insists:
“The view of modern Islamic activists, that ‘Islam must rule the
world and until Islam does rule the world we will continue to sacrifice our
lives,’ is neither extreme nor even remarkable from the standpoint of
traditional Islam” (p. 87). The
century following Muhammad’s death (A.D. 632-732) witnessed the success of
Muslim armies, conquering much of the known world, creating “an Arab empire
ruled by a small elite of Muslim warriors who lived entirely on the spoils of
war, the poll and land taxes paid by the subjugated peoples” (p. 89).
Lush agricultural lands, under Muslim rule, slowly turned to deserts.
Thriving economies, subordinated to Muslim dictates, slowly sank into
impoverishment. “The periods of
civilization under Islam, however brief, were predicated on the readiness of the
conquerors to borrow from earlier cultures, to compile, translate, learn, and
absorb. Islam per se never
encouraged science, meaning “disinterested inquiry,” because the only
knowledge it accepts is religious knowledge” (p. 196).
The primary
victims of Muslim oppression were Christians, even in Spain, the alleged
“jewel of supposed Islamic tolerance“ (p. 108).
The oft-denigrated, and ultimately unsuccessful, Crusades were but “a
belated military response of Christian Europe to over three centuries of Muslim
aggression against Christian lands, the systematic mistreatment of the
indigenous Christian population of those lands, and harassment of Christian
pilgrims” (p. 97). As a modern
parallel, Trifkovic notes that the Crusades were designed as “a recon quest of
something taken by force from its rightful owners, ‘no more offensive than was
the American invasion of Normandy’” (p. 102).
Though less well-known in the West, the Muslim conquest of India led to
what Will Durant called “probably the bloodiest story in history” (p. 111).
It was far worse than the Holocaust, worse than the killings of American
Indians by the Spanish and Portuguese. Muslims
slaughtered Indians indiscriminately--killing 50,000 Hindus in a temple in
Somnath, for example. The Ottomans
did the same in the Balkans, as did the Turks in Armenia.
In sum: “Islam is and
always has been a religion of intolerance, a jihad without an end” (p. 132).
Indeed, it resembles, in many ways, Bolshevism and National Socialism in
the 20th century.
Turning to
the “fruits” of Islam, Trifkovic discusses such things as the absolute lack
of religious liberty, the subjugation of women, the widespread practice of
enslaving non-Muslims. He also shows
how deeply embedded is the hatred for Jews in the Muslim world.
For example, during WWII the Mufti of Jerusalem and former President of
the Supreme Muslim Council of Palestine, Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, urged
Muslims to support Hitler. In a
radio broadcast from Berlin, he said: “’Arabs!
Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights.
Kill the Jews wherever you find them‘” (p. 186).
He supported the extermination of European Jewry.
Trifkovic
concludes his treatise with an examination of “Western Appeasement,” showing
how in Bosnia and Kosovo, Indonesia and Africa, leaders in the West have been so
subservient to the economic power of Mid-Eastern oil and so conflicted
concerning their own cultural traditions that they failed to resist militant
Muslims. “The West,” he insists,
“cannot wage ‘war on terror’ while maintaining its dependence on Arab oil,
appeasing Islamist aggression around the world, turning a blind eye to the
Islamic destruction of peoples who are animists, Hindus and Christians, and
allowing mass immigration of Muslims into its own lands” (p. 260).
Added to his concern is “Jihad’s Fifth Column” alive and well in
the U.S. and other Western nations.
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For those
who find fiction a more palatable vehicle for historical and cultural
information, Craig Winn and Ken Power’s Tea with Terrorists:
Who They Are; Why They Kill; What Will Stop Them (CricketSong
Books, c. 2003) provides an engrossing study of Islam’s threat to the world.
There’s adventure, romance, suspense—plus Christian apologetics,
countless quotations from Islam’s primary texts, and an unrelenting warning
that we Americans are just beginning a life-and-death struggle against an
implacable foe. The story centers
upon a heroic Navy Seal, Thor Adams, who leads a disastrous expedition into
Afghanistan, following which he launches an intellectual search to understand
what motivated the Muslims he’d encountered.
The publicity he garnered granted him a podium, and he told the nation
the truth he discovered about Islam. That
led to political acclaim and success. (Since
I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone who wants to read it, I’ll say no
more about the adventure and romance, but it is engrossing enough to sustain
interest for 600 pages!)
The more
historical and philosophical sections of the book, however, deserve attention,
for they stress many of the same points earlier discussed in Trifkovic’s The
Sword of the Prophet. World War III
began, the Winn and Power make clear, on September 11, 2001.
The Muslims who steered the planes into American landmarks represented
millions of Muhammad’s modern disciples who are deeply committed to
jihad—the holy war that will end only when Islam rules the globe.
Terrorist acts, at the moment, are the strategies of choice, as they have
been from the beginning, for “Muhammad was a terrorist” (p. 116).
Indeed a careful reading of Islam’s sacred texts reveals a disturbing
celebration of death, a continual call to kill all “infidels,” a
justification of any crime or enormity if it furthers the sacred cause.
“Islamic scriptures promote war, lying, thievery, rape, bigamy,
genocide” (p. 434). Just as
Muhammad’s success followed his decision to shift from preaching a
“religious” message to leading an armed band of brigands and killers that
ultimately conquered Mecca, today’s Muslims resort to treachery and
intimidation in their quest for pleasure and power.
Today’s
Muslim terrorists are not, Winn and Power insist, abnormal.
Islam is not, and never has been, a “religion of peace.”
Peaceful Muslims, in the past, have often been coerced converts, not true
believers, generally living in lands far from Arabia.
Lots of less-than-fervent faithful clearly crave normal routines, free
from violence. But devout Muslims,
seeking to live out Muhammad’s precepts, have always embraced a violent
agenda. They reveal the fact that
“Allah is as different from God as Muhammad is from Jesus” (p. 354).
Indeed, they simply carry on the most ancient Islamic agenda, and the
cancers cells of el-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas are wildly metastasizing
offshoots of “the cancer [that] is Islam itself” (p. 467).
The authors
argue that Islam is a “perverted religion” most nearly akin to dictatorial
ideologies such as Communism and Nazism.
They even devote 10 pages to showing some amazing resemblances between
the “Messenger” Muhammad and the “Leader” Adolph Hitler.
“Violence was the key to victory for both men” (p. 436).
Both gained and maintained political power through intimidation and
manipulative rhetoric. Both
“became anti-Jew and anti-Christian” (p. 443).
Both led movements that led to the deaths of multiplied millions of
innocent people.