Here is a terrific review of my new book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS by Bruce Bawer.
“All Jihad, All the Time,” by Bruce Bawer, FrontPage, August 29, 2018:
[To order Robert Spencer’s new book, The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, CLICK HERE.]
It’s good to have something you love to do – something that brings zest and joy to your life. For the Prophet Muhammed, as Robert Spencer graphically establishes in the opening pages of his comprehensive yet concise History of Jihad, that something was murder – often followed by beheading, dismemberment, and ostentatious gloating. When he wasn’t committing murder, Muhammed was talking about murder or threatening to murder. Nor, to be sure, was it just ordinary murder. It was jihad – murder for the purpose of expanding the reach of Islam, which, by the time he died in 632, had been spread by the sword to the whole Arabian peninsula.
Indeed, the reason why the House of Islam continued to expand so fast after Muhammed’s death was that he taught his disciples well. The love of murder proved infectious, especially after he informed them – as Allah had informed him – that anyone who died in the act of jihad would go straight to Paradise. Following his death, as Spencer puts it, they pursued “a series of conquests unparalleled in human history for their rapidity and scope.” They totally eradicated one of the two great powers of the day, the Persian Empire, and took a big bite out of the other, the Eastern Roman Empire.
That was just the beginning. They subdued Spain (al-Andalus). They subjugated India. Everywhere they went, they razed houses of worship and destroyed religious art, and, as their Prophet had taught them, offered their Christian and Jewish victims three choices: convert, die, or live as dhimmis (subordinate peoples) paying a steep jizya (infidel tax). If in some times and places Muslims placed less emphasis on jihad than in others, it was, Spencer notes, not because their doctrine had altered but because of infighting.
In 732, Muslims from al-Andalus moved northward into France and were repelled at Tours by Charles Martel – who thereby likely saved all of Europe from imminent Islamization. But the next few centuries saw an almost unbroken record of Islamic triumph – in response to which, in 1095, Pope Urban II called on Europeans to reclaim formerly Christian parts of the Holy Land. This was the First Crusade. In 1099, the Crusaders won Jerusalem. But the Second Crusade, ordered in 1145, was a bust. In 1187, Jerusalem was lost to Saladin, the most celebrated jihadist of his time. The Third Crusade saw some gains, but the Fourth failed. There were further efforts, also in vain. By the late thirteenth century, the Crusader era was over, its conquests undone.
While admirably frank about the savagery of many of the Crusaders, Spencer leaves no doubt that apologists for Islam such as John Esposito are full of it when they depict the Crusades as ending centuries of “peaceful coexistence” of Christians, Jews, and Muslims under Islamic rule. To buy this lie is, among other things, to wilfully forget how those territories fell under Muslim control in the first place.
In any event, the Holy Land was only one of many fronts in the centuries-long clash between jihadists and infidels. In the east, Tamerlane secured India and Georgia for Islam and, in 1405, perished in present-day Kazakhstan on his way to Islamize China. In Spain, over the centuries, Christians took back Iberia one city at a time – Córdoba in 1236, Valencia in 1243, Seville in 1248 – until finally, in 1492, the entire peninsula had been reclaimed. (“To this day,” observes Spencer, “Spain remains one of the few places once ruled by Islam but no longer; usually what the jihadis have conquered, they’ve kept.” A sobering thought, to put it mildly.) In southeastern Europe, the leaders of what was, by then, the Ottoman Empire subdued Greece and the Balkans over the course of the fourteenth century, seized Constantinople in 1453, and, under Suleiman the Magnificent (the most notorious jihadist of his time), took Belgrade and Buda in 1526 and Baghdad in 1534. On September 12, 1683, came another decisive Christian victory when the Ottomans were turned back at the gates of Vienna.
After Vienna, jihad against the West went small-scale. For generations, the Barbary pirates raided coastal cities and enslaved infidels. Then, as Western power advanced, Islam fell into decline. Napoleon conquered Egypt. Britain annexed the subcontinent. The Ottoman Empire crumbled and gave way to a secular-run Turkey under Kemal Ataturk – but not before committing the massive act of jihad that is now known as the Armenian genocide.
But these changes were largely cosmetic. Islam endured. So did the jihadist imperative. In the twentieth century, new jihad-happy powers arose – Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2001 came the biggest act of jihad ever. But this time it was different.
For one thing, the enemy was not a government. For another, this time the West didn’t get it – or didn’t want to. Six days after 9/11, President George W. Bush went to a mosque and, reciting what would become the West’s new mantra, made the stupefying claim that Al-Qaeda had violated the tenets of Islam. Under both Bush and his successor, questioning this preposterous assertion became an act of bigotry. Even as the jihadist massacres multiplied, Western governments continued to welcome Muslim migrants by the million.
The history of jihad is a grisly one, and for inhabitants of the Western world in the early twenty-first century, no story could be more important. For centuries, Europeans might not have known much, but they knew the reality of Islam. It was an ever-present existential peril. They certainly had no romantic illusions about it – the very idea would have seemed a grotesque joke.
Alas, our generation of Westerners is suffering from a perfect storm of afflictions. We’re ignorant of our own history, and what we do know of it we’ve been encouraged to feel guilty about. We’ve been taught that other civilizations are and always have been our victims. We’ve been trained to see them as having no agency, so that whatever they do to us must be a reaction to something we’ve done to them. We also live in a secular society in which most of us – our political leaders and mainstream media in particular – are utterly incapable of imagining anyone taking his religion so seriously as to be willing to kill (or die) for it. Hence, even though jihadists have repeatedly made clear their motives, our elites tell us repeatedly that the real motives lie elsewhere.
And this is why we’re in big trouble. If we aren’t familiar with the story told in this book, we’re screwed. The good news is that Robert Spencer tells it in a way no one else could. He not only knows all this stuff cold – he knows just how to tell it. Chapter by chapter, anecdote by anecdote, he makes the most of this macabre material. He makes it gripping, and he keeps things moving; he’s eminently lucid, vivid, economical. By the time you reach the last chapter, which is darkly but not unjustly entitled “The West Loses the Will to Live,” it could not be clearer what a terrible pickle we’re all in. Even if you already know a good deal about the history recounted here, and already grasp its import – which, if you’re reading this review, is not unlikely – Spencer recounts it in such a way as to make that last chapter hit home with the power of fresh revelation. The question is, how to get this book into the hands of the smug and ignorant fools who need it the most? Perhaps the best advice is this: buy one for yourself – and another for the person in your life who can best use this vital wake-up call.
Dan Knight says
The History of Jihad is an excellent book suitable for a survey course in the topic or as a supplement in a course on Medieval history. Robert is right: We are living in a ‘perfect storm’ caught between the barbarians at the gates and the enemy within. Almost all of us have suffered the Big Lie of Omission, and we believe our culture – the West – and only our culture, and all of our culture is responsible for every sorrow ever suffered, every tear ever shed, and every grievance ever mongered. The storm is, in fact, the fruit of the Enlightenment, which has brought us to Critical Theory and Cultural Marxism. We have no flag, no banner, no rallying cry, and no high ground upon which we can all stand – to take a stand against Islam or its wicked sister. We have been robbed of our heritage, and robbed of our history.
For anyone with a homeschool, or who knows someone awakened by recent events, Robert’s book makes an invaluable contribution to restoring our history and recovering our heritage. The book makes no appeals to any ideologically flawed arguments, but simply lets the facts garnered largely from Arab and Muslim sources speak for themselves.
Andy says
The Social Media Purge of Conservatives is a Giant Election Meddling Scheme
Big Tech war on free speech is a ‘resistance’ plot
https://www.infowars.com/the-social-media-purge-of-conservatives-is-a-giant-election-meddling-scheme/
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
Indeed, the reason why the House of Islam continued to expand so fast after Muhammed’s death was that he taught his disciples well. The love of murder proved infectious, especially after he informed them – as Allah had informed him – that anyone who died in the act of jihad would go straight to Paradise.
Ahh, the motivating power of Paradise. Do some mass murder in the name of Allah and you live for eternity in porno bliss. With thrones and rivers of wine, no less. I won’t mention the eternal pedophilia… whoops, just did. Sorry.
Terry Gain says
Well who can argue against a perpetual erection and 72 Ever Virgins with doeful eyes and swelling breasts?
Jean says
Terry Gain.
Think again.
There is such a disease as priapism – an erection that won’t go away. It is extremely painful. –
Also, think about being shut up alone with these 72 bodies that look like humans but have no minds of their own, and suffer and bleed every time you have sex with them.
Sounds like the stuff of nightmare to me. And very lonely. Especially as the centuries roll by… I think even the greatest porn fan would realize sooner or later that this heaven was really a hell.
Allah, the Great Deceiver (the koran’s word for him), no doubt rolls in mirth every time this realization dawns on one more of the wretched souls he caught.
The devil is so terrible that even when he keeps his promises, they are a horror.
Terry Gain says
On my Facebook Page
“To understand Islam you need to read this book. The digital version is available on Amazon for less than $10.00. Perhaps this book review might pique your interest. Our culture is enlightened. Protect it and fight for it. Your grandchildren’s future may depend on you. You have nothing to lose but your complacency.”
James Lincoln says
Makes one wonder what would’ve happened if President George W. Bush had stated that Al-Qaeda was, in actuality, faithfully following the tenets of Islam.
And he had made the speech from the Oval Office.
Terry Gain says
Bush is too stupid to understand Islam. Next to Obama, Bush is the most overrated American President. I am admittedly bitter. I defended Bush more than he defended himself.
Michael Copeland says
Follow the hushed voice trail:
“They all trace back In a dead straight track to the duping of Bush by CAIR.”
“A particularly curious aspect of the Bush “Islam is peace” broadcast is the way in which the whole world suddenly, within a nanosecond as it were, forgot that Bush is not a source of general knowledge. As if under hypnosis, everyone suspended normal critical faculties and drank in this learned guru of Islam.”
From “The Duping of Cameron”
https://libertygb.org.uk/news/duping-cameron
mortimer says
Bruce Bawer read ‘The History of Jihad’ and he was clearly convinced that KILLING is a CENTRAL FOCUS OF ISLAMIC JIHAD as based on the sadism and psychopathy of Mohammed.
It is obvious that Mohammed loved causing pain, death and suffering and that he was not content until all his followers were also involved in mass killing.
‘The History of Jihad’ by Robert Spencer will change the minds of people who still harbor doubts that Islam teaches bigoted warfare against disbelievers.
Jihad is mostly aggressive war, but it can be non-violent aggression as well. ALL jihad is aggression to remove the human rights and civil liberties of women and non-Muslims.
gravenimage says
+1
gravenimage says
“All Jihad, All the Time: Robert Spencer’s essential history of jihad”
…………………..
Excellent review–and analysis–from Bruce Bawer, who is himself an important Anti-Jihadist.
Chand says
“To this day,” observes Spencer, “Spain remains one of the few places once ruled by Islam but no longer; usually what the jihadis have conquered, they’ve kept.”
Yup. And another is India.
Chand says
The Hindus rule there now.
gravenimage says
Well–yes and no. Hindus are the majority in India, but Muslims have disturbing growing influence. And Pakistan and Bangladesh were once part of India, and both are now oppressive Muslim states where few Hindus survive.
There are also a few other nations where Infidels have fought their way out from under the Islamic heel–Sicily, southern Italy, Greece, part of the Balkans, and Israel.
This is heartening. But, grimly, most places conquered by Islam have indeed stayed that way, with the Infidel population persecuted, forced to convert, and slaughtered outright. In many parts of Dar-al-Islam no Infidels survive.
Right now, we are likely seeing the last remnant of Christians in the Muslim Middle East.
Michael Copeland says
……”the smug and ignorant fools” who need this book the most. Yes. Bull’s eye.
Several of them are governing the UK.
jewdog says
Great review. The only discouraging thing is that Bruce Bawer is an intelligent realist, a very rare species nowadays.
Richard Winkel says
I’m sorry to muddy the waters but the relationship between 9/11 and islam isn’t as clear as you think. Islam has a well-tended framework of mythology which serves to perpetuate it, but so does the west. In fact political islam is an essential prop in the narrative of western empire-building.
The use of real or manufactured enemies is most clearly seen in the long string of false pretexts used to trick americans into war, beginning with the the dehumanization of native americans and proceeding to the bombing of the maine. the pre-arranged sinking of the lusitania, the set up for pearl harbor, the tonkin gulf fakery, the iraqi wmd deception and the most recent iteration, the western-cultivated rise of the taliban and its offshoots, al-qaeda and isis. The CIA actually facilitated the rise of khomeini in iran after the shah’s regime collapsed (See “Witness” by Mansur Rafizadeh). Western elites are quite flexible in their use of foreigners in extending their power. This is not to minimize the threat of islam, but it’s part of a larger story.
More specifically, at this point in time it’s ludicrous to claim that 9/11 could have happened without high-level participation of numerous governmental entities, including washington itself. The eyewitness testimony of a stand-down and the forensic evidence for controlled demolition at the WTC is simply beyond dispute. But I won’t attempt to argue that point here, the sides are too polarized and there’s not enough space.
Here’s an alternative paradigm explaining the recent history of islam which doesn’t contradict the historical narrative outlined above: whatever its origins, it is now being puppeted by the real governments of the west. Expansionist jihadis might as well be on the CIA payroll in terms of their usefulness to the neocons. See general Wesley Clark’s talk on “7 nations in 5 years”. These plans have existed since before Zbigniew Brzezinski fostered the rise of the mujahedeen in afghanistan.
There are wheels within wheels here.