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Robert Spencer in PJ Media: This Month in the History of Jihad

Dec 4, 2018 5:00 pm By Robert Spencer

December was the month of numerous jihad conquests. My latest in PJ Media:

December has been a favorable month for the advancing jihad since its earliest days. (Note: citations for all quotations below can be found in The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS.)

In December 633, the legendary Muslim warrior Khalid ibn al-Walid arrived at al-Firad, a fortress of one of the great powers of the day, the Sassanid Persian Empire. The other great power, the Byzantine Empire, seeing the Muslim advances all over Iraq, decided to aid the Persians against Khalid even though they had just fought a series of exhausting wars against each other. The Ninth Century Muslim historian Tabari has the Persians and Byzantines exchanging intelligence about Khalid: “This is a man who is fighting on the basis of religion. He has intelligence and knowledge. By God, he will most definitely be victorious, whereas we will most certainly fail.”

It is doubtful that Seventh Century Roman and Persian commanders were actually that defeatist, but they were certainly correct that Khalid was “fighting on the basis of religion.” Everywhere he had gone in Persia, he had called the people to accept Islam or pay the jizya, the Qur’an-mandated tax for the “People of the Book.” For Khalid, the invasion of Persia was an expedition to bring Islam to the Sassanid Empire, or to subjugate the Zoroastrians and Christians in Persia under the rule of the Muslims.

The Persians and Byzantines had every reason to be concerned. Khalid told his men: “Press your pursuit of them. Do not grant them any respite.” The Muslims won a decisive victory. Tabari notes that “the cavalry commander would corner a group of them with the spears of his men; having collected them, they would kill them. On the day of al-Firad, one hundred thousand men were slain in the battle and the pursuit.”

Around the same time, the Muslims were conquering the Holy Land. Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, in a sermon delivered in December 636 or 637, lamented the advent of “the Saracens” (he never referred to them as Muslims), “who, on account of our sins, have now risen up against us unexpectedly and ravage all with cruel and feral design, with impious and godless audacity.”

Sophronius deplored “so much destruction and plunder” and the “incessant outpourings of human blood.” He said that churches had been “pulled down” and “the cross mocked,” and that the “vengeful and God-hating Saracens … plunder cities, devastate fields, burn down villages, set on fire the holy churches, overturn the sacred monasteries, oppose the Byzantine armies arrayed against them, and in fighting raise up the trophies [of war] and add victory to victory.”

Once those victories had secured the conquest of a particular region, the native population had to be subjugated, with dire consequences if it forgot its subordinate station. On December 30, 1066, rioting Muslims — enraged by the humiliation of a Jew having been appointed to rule over Muslims — murdered four thousand Jews in Granada, in reputedly tolerant Muslim Spain. The maddened Muslim mob crucified the Jewish ruler, Joseph ibn Naghrila, and plundered the homes of the Jews.

Efforts to regain the territory lost to the jihadis were unsuccessful, except in Spain. Pope Eugene III in December 1145 called for a second Crusade, and an army was amassed, but it was soundly defeated by the Turks in Asia Minor and never even got close to achieving its objective of recapturing Edessa. The Muslim commander Nur ed-Din worked hard to revive the spirit of jihad among the Muslims, using a combination of threats and enticements. One emir who received his call to aid him in jihad against the Franks complained: “If I do not rush to Nur al-Din’s aid, he will strip me of my domain, for he has already written to the devotees and ascetics to request the aid of their prayers and to encourage them to incite the Muslims to jihad.”

If non-Muslims tried to free themselves from Islamic rule, they could lawfully be killed according to Islamic law. In the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 19th Century, Armenian desire for independence led to the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. At Urfa in December 1895, Armenians gathered in their cathedral and requested Ottoman government protection, which the officer in charge granted, surrounding the cathedral with troops. Then other Ottoman troops, along with local Muslim civilians, rampaged through the city, slaughtering Armenians and plundering their houses. A large group of young Armenians was taken to the local imam, who ordered them to be held down. An eyewitness said that the sheikh then recited some verses of the Qur’an and “cut their throats after the Mecca rite of sacrificing sheep.”

Throughout Islamic history, killing those who were considered to be enemies of Islam was considered a meritorious act. In 1948, Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna ordered one young member of the Brotherhood, a 23-year-old student named Abdel Magid Ahmed Hassan, to do his duty before Allah — which, a sheikh explained to the young man, involved killing “the enemies of Islam and of Arabism.” Hassan agreed to murder anyone al-Banna told him to, and so on December 28, 1948, the young man gunned down Egypt’s prime minister, Mahmoud El Nokrashy Pasha.

Killing the enemies of Islam could also be done on an industrial scale. On December 22, 2011, U.S. District judge George B. Daniels ruled in Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al., that Iran and Hizballah were liable for damages to be paid to relatives of the victims of the September 11, 2001 jihad attacks in New York and Washington, as both the Islamic Republic and its Lebanese proxy had actively aided al-Qaeda in planning and executing those attacks. Daniels found that Iran and Hizballah had cooperated and collaborated with al-Qaeda before 9/11 and continued to do so after the attacks.

Muslims also could be the victims of this violence. On December 15, 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) — which then controlled a significant expanse of territory in Iraq and Syria — released a document entitled “Clarification [regarding] the Hudud,” punishments Allah specifies in the Qur’an. This was essentially the Islamic State’s penal code. Blasphemy against Islam was punishable by death, as per the Qur’an: “If they violate their oaths after pledging to keep their covenants, and attack your religion, you may fight the leaders of paganism — you are no longer bound by your covenant with them — that they may refrain” (Qur’an 9:12). Adulterers were to be stoned to death; fornicators would be given one hundred lashes and exile. Sodomy (homosexuality) was also to be punished by death, as per Muhammad’s reported words: “If you find anyone doing as Lot’s people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done.”

This sensibility has come to the West, as is abundantly documented in The History of Jihad, and not just on 9/11, or in the form of terror attacks….

Read the rest here.

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


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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    Dec 4, 2018 at 5:47 pm

    Early on, in December of 636 or 637, THERE WAS NO ISLAMIC RELIGION… only a bunch of GODLESS, MERCILESS PLUNDERERS attacking lightly defended or even UNDEFENDED Byzantine Roman Christians. The plundering THUGS were not ‘Muslims’ or ‘Arabs’ … they were godless hoodlums.

    Bishop Sophonius lamented the advent of “the Saracens” (he never referred to them as Muslims), “who, on account of our sins, have now risen up against us unexpectedly and ravage all with cruel and feral design, with impious and godless audacity.”

    • Andy says

      Dec 4, 2018 at 8:42 pm

      MOre Jihad

      BRUTAL ATTACK Man punches his partner in the face and tells cops ‘it’s part of my culture to hit women’

      https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7901575/man-hit-wife-part-of-his-culture-kirklees-brighouse/

      • gravenimage says

        Dec 4, 2018 at 9:04 pm

        Appalling, Andy. I *hope* UK authorities throw the book at him.

        • Andy says

          Dec 4, 2018 at 9:13 pm

          +1

    • J D S says

      Dec 5, 2018 at 9:39 am

      Ninth century “Muslim” historian???? Could any Muslim historian be expected to tell the truth? especially in the ninth century Or any Muslim historian for that matter. They would have taken their lead from Muhammad’s history writing and we know how that turned out.

  2. Elisha says

    Dec 4, 2018 at 6:14 pm

    “The plundering THUGS were not ‘Muslims’ or ‘Arabs’ … they were godless hoodlums.”

    They still are because they hate God. 1 John 2:22 – Who is the liar, if it is not the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son.

    • Wellington says

      Dec 4, 2018 at 6:56 pm

      Your criticism, Elisha, of those who deny Jesus is God is too broad—and not helpful, to put it mildly.

      Many in today’s world do not accept Jesus as God, as personally present on earth for a third of a century some two thousand years ago, but they are not people who should be castigated, be they Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, agnostics, atheists, et al.

      We need as broad of a coalition against what Islam intends for us all, of whatever faith other than Islam or even of no faith. Can’t you see this? Your post above very much indicates you don’t see this.

      I invite you to prove me wrong. I challenge you to do so and tell me why, in specifics, why devout Christians should not form a broad coalition with Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Jainists, Jews, atheists, agnostics, etc., few of whom, contra Muslims, want to force their assessment of the cosmos and existence upon others. Reconsider please.

      • gravenimage says

        Dec 4, 2018 at 8:13 pm

        Yes, Wellington–we *all* need to stand against the threat of Islam.

        • Andy says

          Dec 4, 2018 at 10:05 pm

          What is Really Happening in France?

      • b.a. freeman says

        Dec 4, 2018 at 9:55 pm

        well put, Wellington; thank U.
        +1

      • Johnny says

        Dec 5, 2018 at 4:09 am

        Wellington, search Isis videos on clarionproject.org and #knowthyenemy that seeks about the United States like a lion waiting to devour you with terror. We can’t reason with those who are intolerant. They won’t allow us to reason with them.
        https://youtu.be/Qqb3p3bgHrw
        https://youtu.be/-t2gzOCSHRk

    • J D S says

      Dec 5, 2018 at 9:48 am

      Caravan raiders turned religious thugs is fitting.
      I have always believed that Muhammad’s band BEDOUIN nomadic robbers were beginning to become as educated as muhammad and he was afraid they were going overturn his operation in favor of themselves so he came up with this religious farce of being contacted be one of God’s angles who promoted him to be a prophet and we know THE REST OF THE STOTY.

  3. gravenimage says

    Dec 4, 2018 at 8:10 pm

    Robert Spencer in PJ Media: This Month in the History of Jihad
    ……………………..

    Just awful. There was more, as well–an invading Jihad force entered the Sinai in December of 639,

    And I imagine most other months are pretty nasty, as well.

  4. Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says

    Dec 5, 2018 at 12:52 am

    “December has been a favorable month for the advancing jihad since its earliest days.”

    How ecumenically thoughtful of our jihadi brethren to coordinate their operations with Pope Gregory’s calendar.

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