Geoffrey Luck, a journalist for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for 26 years, has written the first Australian review of my book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS in the Australian publication Quadrant. It’s a thoughtful, deeply considered review, and I thank him for it. Get the book here.
“Muhammad’s Bloody Creed,” by Geoffrey Luck, Quadrant, November 1, 2018:
Islamic groups, leftists and empty-headed multiculturalists did everything they could to foil the publication of Robert Spencer’s new book on the history of jihad. No wonder. With the possible exception of thuggee stranglers, there has never been a religion more devoted to rape, murder and conquest
Once upon a time in a primitive land of polytheist idolaters far, far away, an egomaniac zealot with high ambitions hit on a bright idea. On learning of the ancient Jewish prophecy of a Messiah, and the newish Christian communities’ worship of Jesus as the “Chosen One”, he decided to nominate himself as the latest in the line – the Messenger of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets. If the Angel Gabriel could give the name ‘Jesus’ to Mary, why couldn’t Gabriel be recruited to authenticate Muhammad’s pronouncements?
The polytheists who worshipped 360 idols in the Ka’aba of Mecca thought this was fake news and made life difficult for the would-be prophet-poet. In thirteen years he attracted only 150 followers. So he decamped to another town. The Jews of Medina first welcomed him as a protector, but after they heard his story about travelling to Jerusalem and then to Paradise on a winged white horse with a human head, and questioned him on religion, they declared him a phony. Muhammad decided a new business model was needed: conversion by the sword. Beginning as a highwayman raiding passing caravans, he invented a unique rallying cry: “Allahu Akbar!” (My) God is the Greatest! The shout inspired his followers to kill, loot and enslave. It continues to terrify the world 1400 years. later.
I have paraphrased and simplified a complicated and disputed history of the origins of the most powerful movement the world has seen. Nobody can be certain of these events because the first account, by Ibn Ashaq [sic], relying on hearsay and legend, was not set down until a hundred years later. But what is clear from Islam’s texts is that Muhammad set himself up as spokesman for Allah and, therefore, gatekeeper to hell and paradise. What sets Islam apart from Western notions of warfare, and the horrific excesses of the most brutal dictatorships (which it resembles), is that holy war is a central tenet, waged essentially for spiritual reward. Often seemingly irrationally. But before his death Muhammad could claim: “I have been made victorious with terror.”
That is the important message in Robert Spencer’s new book, The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS. Heavily documented but eminently readable, its magisterial sweep reveals Jihad as a holy war to convert the world, or at least compel non-believers into submission. From the Battle of Badr in 624 to the latest suicide bombing or vehicle ram-raid, there has been a continuum of atrocities with a single purpose. The immense extent of the horrors of jihad are largely unknown, or have been forgotten. For too many, especially those in authority, they have been conveniently ignored, as they welcome millions of migrants into their midst.
Spencer’s 16 books on Islam, his speeches, broadcasts and pamphlets have made him a controversial figure in the United States. He has been attacked as Islamophobic and banned from entry to Britain by Prime Minister May as a presence “not conducive to the public good.” A descendant of a Christian family forced to flee from an area now part of Turkey, for the last fifteen years Spencer has published a blog Jihad Watch, which daily records and updates attacks by Muslims around the world. He is also closely associated with the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative think tank opposing the political left in the US.
Spencer’s thesis is simple – there are elements within Islam that pose a challenge to free societies. He cites chapter and verse from Islam’s own scriptures to support his assertions. But importantly, he does not say that every individual Muslim responds to the challenge to wage jihad. His message is more subtle: the Islamic imperative for Jihad remains, whether or not any Muslim individual decides to take it up. He condemns the refusal to recognise this in his final chapter entitled: “The West Loses the Will to Live.”
He cites as evidence the bizarre assertions of Western leaders that Islam is simply the “religion of peace”. After the 9/11 hijackers had done to the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon exactly as Islam had always taught, President Bush declared: “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.” Barack Obama, his successor, went further when visiting Cairo in 2009: “I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed…Partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t.” Most extreme in his stupidity, in Spencer’s view, was Pope Francis in 2013: “…authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Qur’an are opposed to every form of violence.” These fantasy views of Islam lead to calls for “respect” instead of reform. They result in the demonisation of people with real life experience of the problems Islam inflicts on the societies where it takes root — people such as Geert Wilders, apostate Ibn Warraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
In ten chapters, sourced at every relevant step from Islam’s own texts, he explains that Jihadists have always been candid about their reason for waging war – to subjugate infidels under the rule of Islam. Spencer starts with the 27 battles Muhammad waged from Medina, (many against his own tribe, the Quraysh), showing how conveniently Allah’s claimed pronouncements provided authority for his actions, and then became holy writ. Piety, not military might won battles, he said: “Victory is not except from Allah, the Exalted in Might, the Wise.” (Qur’an 3:123-126).
When his forces lost the Battle of Uhud, it was not Allah’s defeat, but the result of the Muslim’s failure of courage and lust for the things of this world. “Among you are some who desire this world, and among you are some who desire the Hereafter. Then he turned you back from them that He might test you.” (Qur’an 3:152).
In fact, like marauding armies throughout history, the warriors who waged jihad for Muhammad were essentially mercenaries. They fought for the booty, the treasure and especially the women they could acquire as sex slaves. As always the commander had first choice, and the defeated combatants were usually slaughtered. (The Prophet said, “The person who participates in (Holy battles) in Allah’s cause and nothing compels him to do so except belief in Allah and His Apostles, will be recompensed by Allah either with a reward, or booty or will be admitted to Paradise. (Bukhari Vol. 1 Book 2 Nr 35).
After subduing Arabia, Muhammad set out to take Jihad to what are now Iraq, Syria, the Byzantines and Persians. From the first raids on the Byzantine empire, he encountered significant populations of Jews and Christians. Spencer explains that from this point Muhammad declared that Jews and Christians were entitled to special consideration as ‘People of the Book’. They had three choices: convert to Islam, submit to Islamic rule and pay the special poll tax jizya, (They must pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued: Qur’an 9:38-39) or be slaughtered. The jizya became a form of Mafia protection racket which then financed Islam’s further expansion.
After Muhamad’s death the Arab armies swept out of Arabia with immense force and embarked on a series of conquests unparalleled in human history for their rapidity and scope. Spencer’s history records the years from 632 to 661 as the Golden Age, according to Muslim scholars. The jihad gave them almost all of Syria, entry to Jerusalem, Armenia, Cyprus and Egypt.
After a rapid subjugation of the former Roman colonies of northern Africa, the eighth century saw the launch of Muslim forces under a freed Berber slave, Tariq ibn Ziyad, across the strait to Gibraltar (Derivation: the mountain of Tariq) to confront the Visigoth rule in the Iberian peninsula. To focus his troops on conquest, he ordered all their boats to be burned….it was no surprise to find Spencer debunking the myth of multicultural convivencia in al-Andalusia, where Jews and Christians supposedly lived in mutually beneficial harmony with their Muslim overlords. Again, the jizya was the basis for subjugation. The occupation was swift, penetrating and brutal.
We don’t need to take Spencer’s word. Professor Dario Fernandez-Morera of Northwest University had already detailed the reality in his Myth of the Andalusian Paradise. Spain, he explained, was a violent society, of religious and cultural repression. Internecine conflict raged between the Umayyad caliphs and the Abbassids, and later the Berber Almoravids of Morocco. A Christian army that opposed this last invasion was routed; the Muslims beheaded the corpses of their enemies and arranged the heads into piles. The muezzins then climbed on top of the piles of heads to call the Muslims to prayer.
Even when Jews and Christians were not facing active persecution, as dhimmis (subsidiary citizens) they could be lawfully killed or sold into slavery under the Sharia. “Satan has gained the mastery over them, and caused them to forget God’s Remembrance. Those are Satan’s party; why, Satan’s party, surely they are the losers.” (Qur’an 58:20). The world tends to forget that France and the rest of Europe were saved from invasion in the Spanish jihad of 732 only by Charles Martel’s victory at the Battle of Tours. The same year, 711, that Tariq ibn Ziyad invaded Spain, the Islamic governor of Iraq sent a force into Sindh, now part of Pakistan. It was the start of the jihad conquest of India that lasted, intermittently for the next seven centuries, and has been largely overlooked by Western historians. It took tens, if not hundreds of millions of lives.
The Hindus, Jains and Buddhists the general Muhammad ibn Qasim encountered in Hindustan were not ‘People of the Book’, so no jizya could be demanded from them. Their choice was to convert to Islam, or face the sword of Islam. Hindu temples were considered centres of idolatry; thousands were destroyed. Revered idols of gold and precious stones were smashed and plundered. Spencer explains the viciousness of the invasion with the story of the punishment of ibn Qasim himself, despite his victories. When he sent the daughters of the king of Sindh as a gift of sex slaves to the Iraqi governor, one of the girls defended herself by saying she had already been raped by ibn Qasim. Enraged at being sent second-hand goods, he ordered the general to be shipped home in a rawhide sack. When he arrived, he was already dead.
The occupation of India was renewed in successive jihads – in the tenth, twelfth and fourteenth centuries. These included the seventeen large-scale jihad incursions into the Subcontinent by Mahmud of Ghazni. Over thirty years in the tenth century he converted thousands of temples into mosques. He met resistance when trying to subdue Gujarat, and 50,000 were killed. An account by an Islamic historian of Ghazni’s attack on Thanessar in Hindustan described the blood of the infidels as flowing so copiously that the stream was discoloured and people were unable to drink from it. The jihad in India continued under Muhammad Ghori, Qutbuddin Aibak, Shamsuddin Iltutmish and Jalaluddin Khalji, each responsible for tens of thousands slaughtered or sold into slavery.
There was one benefit only for civilization from the successive jihads in India. Hindu mathematicians had been the first to numeralise the zero, a concept the Arabs adopted, leading to the revolutionary numeral system 0-9, we know as Arabic, the foundation of modern mathematics.
As the jihad pressed into Europe -, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania and Croatia – it became inevitably the turn of Constantinople, the eastern pillar of Christendom. In 1339, the Byzantine emperor Andronicus III appealed to Pope Benedict XII to heal the schism between the churches, and help organize a crusade against the approaching Ottomans. His appeal was rejected. Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453.
Spencer draws a bitter comparison between that suicidal lack of resolve and modern refusal to recognise the threat of Islam: “Not until the days of Pope Francis would the See of Rome have an occupant more useful to the jihad force than Benedict XII”, he writes.
There are some surprises in the book. Suleiman the Magnificent’s failed siege of Vienna in 1529 is well known, but less mentioned in many histories is the subsequent attempt on the city by Mehmet IV. This ended in a crushing defeat by a Polish army led by Jan Sobieski in 1683 which led to the retreat of the Ottomans from the Balkans. A bigger surprise was the extent of the ravaging by the Barbary Pirates. A terrorist maritime force in the Mediterranean from their base in Libya, they even plundered the southern coasts of England, in the 17th century, burning ships and capturing hundreds of villagers for the African slave trade.
When the pirates attacked American trading ships, Thomas Jefferson’s protests received this response from Tripoli’s ambassador to London:
“Tripoli was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, and written in their Qur’an, that all nations who should not have answered [Islamic] authority were sinners, that it was the Muslim right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Muslim who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
The world jihad declined in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Spencer explains that 1856 was a major turning point when the British and French governments agreed to help the Ottoman empire against Russia only if it abolished the dhimma, the so-called contract of protection for Jews and Christians. But they were still not equal citizens; even today there is no Muslim-majority country in which all faiths have equal rights.
In modern history, the jihad has alternatively ebbed and raged. Spencer enumerates: The Armenian genocide; the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 (“Fight them until there is no fitnah (sedition) and worship is for Allah” : Qur’an 2:193); the Saudi embrace of Wahabism and their financing of mosques and madrassas all over the world; the PLO and attacks on the Jewish state (“Drive them out from where they drove you out”: Qur’an 2.191); the Iranian revolution (Ruhollah Khomeini: “Islam’s Holy War is a struggle against idolatry, sexual deviation, plunder, repression and cruelty…But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Island wants to conquer the whole world.”); Osama Bin Laden’s al-Quaeda (The Base); the Chechnya jihad against Russia; the September 11, 2001 attacks, and finally “The Promise of Allah”, the audacious attempt from 2014 to 2017 to restore the caliphate – The Islamic State.
After each reverse, Islam has found new means to continue the Jihad. The 30,000 foreign fighters from a hundred countries who had joined the caliphate in Iraq and Syria, returned home to individualise the struggle. Massacres and atrocities flourished all over the West, followed by candlelight prayer vigils and flower carpets as politicians blamed unspecified “terrorists” and appeased immigrants.
The response to this epic expose of Islam’s great game plan to conquer the world for sharia was to denounce Robert Spencer as an Islamophobe and his book as ‘hate speech’. The radical left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center in the U.S. pressured Visa and Mastercard to block all donations to the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and to cut off Spencer’s fund-raising. There were attempts by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood to stop Amazon selling his book. But that’s quite tame compared with the Brotherhood’s global objective. As Mohammed Morsi, the Brotherhood’s candidate in the Egyptian presidential campaign of 2012, declared:
“The Qur’an is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal …”
Spencer’s history demonstrates why the recurring terrorist atrocities in Western cities perpetrated by Muslims should not be dismissed as mere “lone wolf” attacks by deranged individuals. Individual efforts they may be, but they are explicit responses to Islam’s militant missionary movement – its age-old call for jihad against the kafirs (unbelievers)….
Read the whole thing here.
Challenge to buy the book says
Sadly, I can not find a book store in Australia that stocks Mr Spencer’s book.
Steve D says
Yup, the quisling dhimmis are everywhere.
Anjuli Pandavar says
It’s available electronically on Kindle.
Challenge to buy the book says
Don’t have a Kindle.
gravenimage says
I believe Spencer’s book is available in Australia though Barnes and Nobel.
carpediadem says
Get it off the web. or a library.
Challenge to buy the book. says
Not aware of any Barnes & Noble book stores in Australia.
I have tried to order a physical (non electronic) copy from numerous book stores in Australia. They don’t stock it and they are unable/unwilling to order it for me.
I don’t have an online account (and don’t want one).
I don’t have an Amazon account.
I don’t have Kindle.
I just would like a hard copy copy. But they can’t be found in Australia.
I recommend Mr Spencer do a book tour in Australia and bring some hard copy books with him.
They would sell like hot cakes.
gravenimage says
I believe that Barnes and Noble ships to Australia.
kuriakose says
It is available via Amazon, link: https://www.amazon.com.au/History-Jihad-Muhammad-Isis/dp/1682616592/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541147968&sr=8-1&keywords=jihad+robert+spencer
Norman Moffatt says
Amazon
kuriakose says
You can also get it from Angus and Robertson, via ebay it is almost A$39
DHazard says
Muhammad didn’t give his false religion any wiggle room for error. He wanted his religion to be the direct word of God; one that corrects the errors of Judaism and Christianity. Any error would therefore mean God didn’t write it or He is fallible. All the problems associated with Islam stem from people who refuse to believe there are any errors in the Quran and also follow, as closely as possible, Allah’s expectations of them as well as the example of Muhammad. But if one takes the Quran at it’s word, with no interpretation, then it nullifies itself by simulataneously claiming inerrancy while containing errors.
However, I have hope for humanity and believe that there are millions of silent apostates from Islam out there who can see past their inherited tradition. It’s a shame the left treat them so dismissively and with such cruelty. To the extent they have silenced valid criticism of Islam they are acommplices, in part, to murder.
FYI says
What exactly is a prophet?Clearly islam’s concept of a prophet is very different to the Biblical understanding: a prophet’s job is surely to preach obedience to God’s Exodus 20 Laws,the 2 chief laws of Love and be a morally good person.
Judaism
main prophet:Moses{Jewish}
Book:Torah
Emphasis,in the prophet’s life,on OBEDIENCE to the Exodus 20 commandments
The 10+2 chief commandment system is basis of Judaism
Christianity
main prophet:Jesus Christ{Jewish}
Book:the Gospel
Emphasis,in the prophet’s life, on OBEDIENCE to the Exodus 20 commandments with
the 2 chief commandments seen as being absolutely essential to knowing God{Matthew 22:37-40}
The 10+2 chief commandment system is the basis of Christianity.
Biblical{Jewish-christian} narrative:God is a God of Love and for ALL mankind
VERSUS
islam
main prophet:muhammed
Book:the koran
Emphasis,in the prophet’s life,on DISOBEDIENCE to the Exodus 20 Commandments.{look at his life!Mass murdering Jews[abu Dawud 4390] etc}
NO two chief commandments in islam and the 10 commandments are twisted by allah to allow muslims to get away with breaking them.
Thou may kill infidels k2:191
Thou may commit adultery k33:50/k4:24 “what the right hand possesses”
Thou may steal from infidels k48:20/ibn ishaq 764
Thou may bear FALSE WITNESS k3:38{taqqiya,tawriya,muruna,kitman,darura.taysin}
No 2nd chief commandment/no “love thy neighbor” in islam:quite the contrary in koran 5 v 51
koranic{islamic}narrative:allah is a moslem-only god,does NOT subscribe to the 2 chief commandments,does not preach love but hate{for Jews k2:65,Christians k9:30 etc}and endless violence.
Clearly..allah is NOT the Biblical God and the islamic concept of a prophet is NOT the Biblical concept of one.
muhammed cannot possibly be a prophet of the God{of Moses,of Jesus}
Raja says
You are right FYI,
Allah and Koran are antitheses of God and the Bible.
simpleton1 says
For the “millions of silent apostates from Islam out there who can see past their inherited tradition” we must know our selves.
Whether we be Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, secularists, etc. We must be strong in our beliefs. We must affirm free speech, democracy, and uphold the laws of our lands!
That way it gives a place for any muslims to apostatize from their religion, to abandon Mohammad’s vicious guidance, to be free and choose something else.
Yet they can still keep some of their customs, like hospitality, cuisine.
gravenimage says
Robert Spencer’s History of Jihad: “Heavily documented but eminently readable,” with a “magisterial sweep”
………………………….
Good stuff from Geoffrey Luck.
infidel says
Decades from now, as the world wakes up into the HARSH BRUTALITY of Islamic Jehaad all over this globe, Robert’s book will be championed as one of the best ever in this line of thought. Sadly, the true and deserved recognition for Robert may come only after his lifetime… Another fine gentleman that will be championed in the future will be the eminent Dr Bill Warner..
infidel says
In human history, many greats got universal recognition only after they passed away and sadly Robert and also Bill Warner may fall in this category… But universal recognition.. will surely come for these two men. I have no doubt about this. Even the great JRR TOKIEN of LOR fame, got universal recognition only after he passed away and so also Bruce Lee..The world could regret as to why Robert and Bill were not championed universally when they were alive.
infidel says
Robert’s work is not for now… He and Bill Warner’s works ARE THOSE THAT WILL FOREVER STAND THE TEST OF TIME!!!
mortimer says
Geoffrey Luck got it right when he said, “there has never been a religion more devoted to rape, murder and conquest”
That is 100% factual and proven by research into the PRIMARY SACRED SOURCE TEXTS.
Danish researcher Tina Magaard, Ph.D. concluded that Islam is the most warlike religion. After three years analyzing the original texts of ten different religions, Tina Magaard concluded that the Islamic texts stand out by encouraging terror and violence to a larger degree than other religions do. She stated that ‘Islamic texts encourage terror and fighting to a far larger degree than the original texts of other religions. The texts in Islam distinguish themselves from the texts of other religions by encouraging violence and aggression against people with other religious beliefs to a larger degree.’
“What is striking is not in itself that one can find murderous passages in the Islamic texts, as such passages can also be found in other religions. But it is striking how much space these passages take up in the Islamic texts, and how much they focus on an us-and-them logic in which infidels and apostates are characterized as dirty, rotten, criminal, hypocritical and dangerous. It is also striking how much these texts demand that the reader fight the infidels, both with words and with the sword. In many passages, Muhammad plays a central role as one who encourages the use of violence, whether it comes to stonings, beheadings, acts of war or execution of critics and poets.”
John says
Great review, but I never thought anyone from our ABC could write anything free of leftist taint. Their news people are unfurtunately guided by progressive left principles and I no longer bother listening to them, it is SO predictable.
kuriakose says
An excellent summary of islam by Geoffrey Luck.
Norman Moffatt says
There is one verse in the Qur’an that explains the future for us and Islam. Verse 8:39. Fight them until there is no more persecution, and religion becomes exclusively for Allah.
Anjuli Pandavar says
“I have hope for humanity and believe that there are millions of silent apostates from Islam out there who can see past their inherited tradition. It’s a shame the left treat them so dismissively and with such cruelty.”
—
Thank you.