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The History of Jihad: “A compelling saga of Islamic ascendancy which the West has opposed with cowardice”

Aug 20, 2018 8:41 pm By Robert Spencer

Edward Cline is a novelist; I am grateful to him for this detailed and thoughtful review of my new book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, which you can order here. Demand for the book has far exceeded expectations. Currently it is out of stock, but it is being reprinted and will be available again very soon. And if you order it from Amazon now, they’ll throw in the Kindle edition immediately for another three dollars, and send you the hard copy when it becomes available. Click here to order now.

“Review: The History of Jihad,” by Edward Cline, August 20, 2018:

The initial three quarters of Robert Spencer’s The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, is so packed with information about the 1,400-year jihad waged by Islam against the world that one can only read it with continuous, stunned astonishment. You wind up asking yourself: did so many millions die or become enslaved by the sword of Islam, AKA the “religion of peace”?

Well, yes, they did. Whole populations were slaughtered, cities were destroyed, and nations, on all four continents, were erased as though they had never existed (Persia, for example, was never Iran). Spencer meticulously traces the bloody depredations and history of Islam from the 19th century clear back to Mohammad’s time in the seventh century, citing current and contemporary works on the conquests and triumphs of Islam by both Western and Islamic writers and chroniclers. The jihad never stopped, and rarely lost steam, but if it lost impetus, it was only because of infighting between sects of Islam, which temporarily sapped and diverted its energy and appetite for conquest and dominance. But jihad was rarely forgotten.

It continues in our age of jet planes and nuclear power to wreck death and destruction. It guarantees more if the West does not reverse its ludicrously pacific and “tolerant” appraisal of Islam and condemn it as a power-hungry totalitarian “religion,” which it has always been, especially in the actions of the possibly fictive character of Muhammad. Spencer recreates and details Islam’s history as no writer in the past has done before or is likely to replicate. Spencer’s book should become required reading for any government policymaker or foreign affairs specialist committed to understanding our nemesis.

The beginnings of Islam are shrouded in mystery. There are thousands and thousands of reports (hadith…) of the words and deeds of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, but virtually all of them date from the eighth and ninth centuries, over a century after Muhammad’s death, which is traditionally set in 632. There is considerable reason to believe that the origins of Islam and the lives of its founding figures are quite different from how they are represented in Islamic sacred history. (Chapter1, p. 16)

(My own humble interpretation, as a novelist and [as an atheist], of the history of Islam, is that it has been fundamentally a work-in-progress, with no finishing due-date contemplated or even in sight. The curtain has not yet fallen on this blood-thirsty drama, and won’t until Islam has been refuted, once and for all.)

From Chapter 1 to Chapter 10 – “The West Loses the Will to Live” – one is immersed in the constant carnage and massacres by jihad until one is inured by the sword swinging and head lopping. From the Arabian Peninsula to India, from North Africa to Europe and the high seas, it is Spencer, like the chorus of Henry V, bringing to life – so to speak – the advance of Islam. Personally, I had trouble remembering all the players’ names, except perhaps Vlad the Impaler’s,

In 1461, Mehmet brought the sword of Islam against the Wallachian prince, Vlad Dracula, whose surname meant “son of the dragon,” after his father, who was known as the Dragon, or Dracul.

At one point, Dracula’s forces invaded Ottoman territory and then retreated; when Mehmet’s forces entered the area in Targoviste in modern-day Romania, they encountered the horrifying sight of twenty thousand corpses impaled on stakes, Vlad Dracula’s favorite method of execution — which earned him the named Vlad the Impaler. Mehmet pursued Dracula and finally drove him into exile; upon this victory, Mehmet’s commander presented him with the gift of two thousand heads of Dracula’s men. (Chapter Six, p. 201)

In a side note on the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Spencer remarks:

One consequence of the fall of Constantinople was the emigration of Greek intellectuals to Western Europe. Muslim territorial expansion at Byzantine expense led so many Greeks to seek refuge in the West that Western universities became filled with Platonists and Aristotelians to an unprecedented extent. This lead to the rediscovery of classical philosophy and literature and to an intellectual and cultural flowering the like of which the world had never seen (and still hasn’t). (Chapter Six, p. 200)

Chapter 10 can leave one depressed and outraged. Spencer details just how our political leaders, after 9/11, put their heads in the sand and gave Islam a free pass to continue its jihad. President Bush, after 9/11, said with a straight face that Islam had been “hijacked” by “extremists,” evading the knowledge that Islam is nothing but “extreme,” as its theologians and generals have asserted countless times over the centuries….Spencer touches briefly but tellingly on the official, non-intellctual stance of the West on Islam:

On September 17, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush appeared at the Islamic Center of Washinton, D.C. , in the company of several prominent Muslim leaders, and said:

These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the islamic faith. [They don’t; the Koran and Hadith repeatedly state that “innocents” are as much as Islam’s enemy as armed soldiers, and can also be slain.] In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For they that reject the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule.

The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.

When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that’s made brothers and sisters out of every race…. (Chapter 10, pp. 331-2) [Bush implies the fallacy that Islam is related to race.]

Few Western politicians and champions of “diversity” can grasp the essence of Islam or are willing to wipe the fuzz from their eyes even when it is enunciated so clearly – that the conflict between the West and Islam is an ideological battle….

From the butchery at Badr at the beginning of Islam and jihad in 624 to the Armenian Genocide to the beginning of Wahhabism to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in our time (in 1928), Spencer paints a compelling, doleful saga of Islamic ascendancy which the West has opposed either ineptly or with craven cowardice….

Read the rest here.

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Filed Under: Featured, History of jihad Tagged With: The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS


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Comments

  1. Old Fat Bald Socially Inept Ron says

    Aug 20, 2018 at 9:10 pm

    Mr Spencer please send a copy of your new book to President Trump.

    • Andy says

      Aug 22, 2018 at 3:40 pm

      I’m waiting for my copy of The History of Jihad book to arrive and have been telling everyone I know to buy a copy to support the cause.

  2. gravenimage says

    Aug 20, 2018 at 9:19 pm

    The History of Jihad: “A compelling saga of Islamic ascendancy which the West has opposed with cowardice”
    ……………………………

    Sobering review from Edward Cline.

    Luckily, we have also historically faced Islam with bravery and resolve. That is what Robert Spencer is doing, following in the footsteps of those who courageously opposed Islam, rather than folding in fear, or–much worse–colluding with Muslims against their own people.

  3. Terry Gain says

    Aug 20, 2018 at 9:49 pm

    On my Facebook a Page

    Another review of the seminal book of the world’s greatest and most honourable scholar of Islam, the great and wonderful Robert Spencer. This book should be read by every child in the free world.

  4. revereridesagain says

    Aug 20, 2018 at 10:29 pm

    So glad to hear it is going into another printing! Ed did a fine review! I’m still slogging through the horrific history of Islamic brutality against a too often ineffective opposition or downright prostration before the hordes of power-maddened fanatics of Islam. There is no way the apologists for Islam can contradict these appalling facts. So grateful to Robert for having the scholarly and moral fortitude to compile this history. I think sending a copy to President Trump is a great idea!

    Just starting the chapter on the Crusades. Finally, people in the West fighting back! Unfortunately, so far they are mainly fighting the Jews. Sad how history repeats itself.

  5. revereridesagain says

    Aug 20, 2018 at 10:30 pm

    Speaking of history repeating itself, is everyone — especially in the Minnesota area — aware of this?

    https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2018/08/20/minnesota-muslims-to-show-their-power-at-vikings-stadium-event-tomorrow-update/

    • StellaSaidSo says

      Aug 21, 2018 at 12:02 am

      Yes, this is the biggest single flexing of Mohammedan muscle event we have seen so far. Clearly designed to intimidate.

  6. Michael says

    Aug 21, 2018 at 11:58 am

    The West had its window of opportunity to exterminate the ulema when it ruled the Muslim world in the 19th century.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 21, 2018 at 10:54 pm

      We never ruled the whole Muslim world–for instance, there was that little Caliphate…

      And even if we had been so inclined, killing off Muslim scholars a hundred years ago would not have ended Islam.

      What we should have done is kept Islam isolated–it was not much of a threat to us until the past couple of decades.

  7. Jason Klingor says

    Aug 22, 2018 at 9:53 am

    You also should read “The misery of Islam” by Jaya Gopal from India. A really important book about Islam and Islamism!

  8. Tim Heekin says

    Aug 24, 2018 at 5:13 pm

    M.A. Khan’s book “Islamic Jihad” is a superb book that in many ways parallels Roberts book but does so from the standpoint of Islamic slavery. Slavery and slaughter are the two sides of the same Islamic coin. This book is an excellent companion book to Robert’s.

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