Chapter 14: The Fire This Time

After three centuries of suspended animation the Islamic meme has re-awakened with a vengeance. Muslim self-assertiveness has been on the rise throughout the 20th century and particularly so during the last three decades. There are a number of self-calming assertions touted by the progressive intelligentsia regarding the causes of the modern Islamic resurgence and the consequent strife and terrorism. The most fashionable theory, of course, is that Muslim grievances are almost entirely a result of the maltreatment of Palestinians by Israel. Occasionally, it is conceded that the Indian occupation of Kashmir, the Russian oppression of Chechnya or the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo by the Serbs are additional contributing factors. While this point of view may be ideologically comforting, it ignores the obvious fact that these local conflicts are too widespread to serve as an explanation for Muslim rage. Wherever the Muslim population reaches some critical mass, conflict follows. One is required to believe that Muslims are uniquely oppressed by whatever culture they live in the midst of, or adjacent to. Thus they are oppressed by Jews in Palestine, Orthodox Christian Serbs in the Balkans, Russians in Chechnya, Catholic Filipinos, Timorese Christians, Australian tourists in Bali, Hindus in Kashmir and India, Ibo Christians in Nigeria, Buddhists in Thailand, Communists in Sinkiang, secular authorities in Western Europe, Danish cartoonists, Lebanese Maronites, Greek Cypriots, Armenians in the Caucasus and, of course, office workers in New York. Furthermore, one must believe that Muslim Palestinians have lately been subject to oppression by their erstwhile Christian Palestinian allies, Egyptian Muslims are suffering at the hands of the Coptic minority and Arab Sudanese Muslims are oppressed by black Christians and animists and even by non-Arab black Muslims. Occam’s razor, it would seem, requires a more parsimonious explanation.

Another favorite reason purported to be the cause of Muslim rage is European and American imperialism. This ignores the obvious historical fact that the conflict between Islam and the West predates modern European imperialism as well as the very existence of the American nation. Equally spurious is the contention of some conservatives that Islamic fury is a result of the decadent life style characteristic of the modern West. In fact the anger of modern Islamist thinkers at the freedom of expression and at the easier relations between the sexes that characterizes western culture began decades before the beginning of the era of ‘anything goes’.

The real factors underlying the rise of modern Islam are more opportunistic. Moreover, the modern jihadist spirit was not caused by these factors, but simply released from centuries long suppression. Intra-civilizational western warfare which characterized much of the last century severely weakened the fabric of western civilization in the same way as the long Peloponnesian War fatally weakened the civilization of the Greek city states. These conflicts led to the twilight of European imperialism which allowed Muslim peoples to resume their cultural imperatives without external constraint. The end of European imperial might was accompanied by the last conflict within western civilization, that of the Cold War. American and Russian Cold War exhaustion, like the chronic Byzantine-Sasanian conflict, opened up a new avenue for Islamic expansion. Interestingly, during the course of this Cold War, both America and Russia, armed and empowered various Muslim and Arab clients, in the same way as Byzantium and Persia cultivated and armed various Arab tribal allies along their borders.

Also of great importance is the fortuitous accident of geology which caused a massive accumulation of petrodollars in the hands of certain Muslim ruling elites. The latter were often fanatical fundamentalists who used their windfall to fund Islamic proselytism, purchase the services of greedy western political, business and media leaders, and finance extremist Muslim groups. Another cause of the Islamic resurgence is demographic. The rapid growth of Muslim populations has been facilitated by modern technology and medicine brought to them by the hated West.

Above all, however, the revival of Islam in modern times is a direct result of western psychological and spiritual weakness. French novelist Jean Raspail emphasizes the importance of more subtle spiritual factors to the course of conflict between nations and cultures:

At every level – nations, races, cultures, as well as individuals – it is always the soul that wins the decisive battles. It is only the soul that forms the weave of gold and brass from which the shields that save the strong are fashioned.[1]

Unraveling of Western Society
The Western soul has been winning very few battles in recent decades. On the contrary, many time-honored institutions have been unraveling with the willing connivance of Western elites. Accompanying this self destruction is an almost dhimmi-like accommodation to Muslim powers abroad and to the growing Muslim population at home. It is evocative of the crippling of Byzantine institutions in Anatolia under Muslim rule. The Turkish “conquests reduced the church to a state of extreme penury, which in turn barred it from effective social and economic action. The crippling of the ecclesiastical administrative apparatus left the demoralized Christian communities leaderless in a period of great psychological and economic crisis.”[2]

Of course, subsequent to the Islamic military conquest, the institutions of the conquered continued to exist only with the acquiescence of Muslim authorities. These authorities pursued policies that eventually led to the extinction of dhimmi institutions over wide areas. The conversion of the native population, though not always through force, had a strong element of intimidation for dhimmis subject to humiliation and persecution implemented by the Muslim ruling class. At this time in the West, however, the wounds are self-inflicted.

Premonitions of Cultural Extinction: The Social Death Wish
Many modern western intellectuals indulge themselves in the conceit that they are special and unique in their self-reflection and embrace of the “other”. However, the modern cults of multiculturalism, political correctness and so-called diversity are not particularly special. In fact, the modern ideology of rejecting one’s own society and embracing other cultures as equal, and even superior, has many historical precedents. The effect of such social self-abnegation is to ease the way for the total elimination of one’s own nation or civilization. There are, of course, different means by which this phenomenon finds expression. Sometimes it takes the form of myth, legend or prophecy. At other times it may occur as part of social criticism or of movements for reform.

One historical expression of this peculiar tendency, which is of particular relevance today, was the Byzantine epic of Digenes Akrites. This legend prepared the way for later events by reconciling the inhabitants of Anatolia to the ultimate and inevitable triumph of Islam many years before this event actually occurred. In this epic poem, Digenes “accomplishes great deeds and fights for” Christianity and Byzantium. However, the “original prototype … has been said to be not Christian but the half-legendary champion of Islam, Saiyid Battal Ghazi.” Furthermore, “extremely interesting connections have been discovered between the Byzantine epic and Arabian and Turkish epics.”[3] This legend, in fact, easily passed from the conquered Greeks into the folklore of the Turks. “In later tradition, as Sayyid Ghazi, al Battal became one of the Turkish national heroes. … His was another instance of ‘an illustrious Moslem for whom Christians have raised a statue in one of their churches.”[4] The legend of Digenes may well be an expression of the severe war weariness which must have afflicted the Christian population of Anatolia who were chronically beleaguered by the attacks of one Muslim group after another. It was, in some sense, a wish for some kind of ethnic and religious reconciliation. “The intense life on the eastern border with its almost incessant warfare offered a wide field for brave deeds and dangerous adventures. The deepest and most durable impression was left in the memory of the people by the hero of these border provinces, Basil Digenes Akrites.” The name ‘Digenes’ indicates that his father was an Arab Muslim and his mother a Greek Christian.[5]

A more famous example of a mythical premonition of the fall of a civilization, and one unrelated to Islamic expansion, comes from pre-Columbian Mexico. When Cortes landed in Mexico, his way was eased by the legend of Quetzalcoatl.

So certain was the king of Texcoco that the prophecy of the blond, blue-eyed god was about to become a reality that he abandoned his reign, dismissed his armies, and told everyone to enjoy what little time was left. And the emperor [Moctezuma]… went into penance, sweeping his palace with a broom and dressed only in a loincloth, as omens of disaster accumulated over the terrified city. …a messenger arrived from the coast and told him that floating houses had approached from the east, bearing men … These men were white, bearded, some of them even blond and blue-eyed. … The gods had returned, the prophecy had been fulfilled.[6]

Another such prophecy from the New World, which was also most convenient to the Spanish conquistadors, occurred in Peru. The downfall of the Incas was also prefigured and facilitated by myth and prophecy. The Inca king Huayna Capac “prophesied that bearded men would soon come over the sea and destroy the world of the Incas. These men would be messengers of the Incan god, Viracocha, who like Quetzalcoatl, created humanity and then sailed off to the west, promising to return.”[7] Naipaul notes that the Arab penetration into India was facilitated by prophecies similar to those of the Aztecs and Incas eight centuries later. He writes that “interestingly, both in Mexico in 1519 and in Sind in 710 people were weakened by prophecies of conquest.”[8]

An even starker instance of myth-based social suicide occurred among the Xhosa people of southern Africa. Archaeologist David Webster documented this example of civilizational collapse due to ‘ideological pathology’.

’Late in the summer of 1856, the Xhosa, a Bantu-speaking people of southeast Africa, began to methodically kill their cattle, horses, goats, sheep, and fowl. They also consumed or threw away all the grain in their storage bins and stopped preparations to plant crops.’ … They had listened to the prophecies of a girl who claimed to hear messages from beyond, telling her that once her people had stripped themselves down to nothing ‘the world would be reborn.’ Of course, what actually happened was that ‘untold thousands starved’ in one of the ‘greatest self-inflicted immolations in all of history.’

The case of the Xhosa ‘shows that under extraordinary circumstances whole societies can virtually will themselves out of existence.’[9]

A more rational variety of the phenomenon of self-willed social extinction is the embrace of the cult of xenophilia by both well-meaning social critics and by demoralized or disaffected citizens. Such are well characterized by the satirist W. S. Gilbert in the Mikado as “the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.” In first century Rome, Tacitus “compared the noble simplicity of the Germans with the vices of contemporary Rome.”[10] In his eagerness to instruct his fellow citizens, Tacitus greatly exaggerates the virtues of the Germanic tribes and the freedom enjoyed by individual Germans, while deprecating the civilization and political system of his own country.

Tacitus’s anger at the fashionable immorality of contemporary Rome leads him to idealize German life … Their avoidance of unnecessary display … manifests a seriousness clearly opposed to the frivolity of Roman society.

The Germania also emphasizes the political freedom of the Germans who … make all-important decisions collectively: the power of kings is neither absolute nor arbitrary.[11]

Tacitus’ writings were an early example of a phenomenon that afflicted Rome in later centuries and was an important factor in the re-barbarization of the Roman West. Roman citizens admiringly adopted the customs of their barbarian neighbors. This began at a time when Rome was still militarily strong and long before the occupation of large swaths of Roman territory by barbarian invaders. Classical historian Michael Grant notes a law enacted as early as the year 370 that “set a total veto on intermarriage” and even prohibited Roman citizens from adopting barbarian dress.[12] The enactment of such a law must have been in response to widespread behavior of that sort.

This tendency to imitating the customs of the barbarians, of course, increased after the migration of large numbers of invaders into Roman territory and the establishment of autonomous barbarian kingdoms. Nevertheless, even under such circumstances, Roman culture was largely intact and might easily have survived if it were not that Romans themselves willed their civilization to die. Historian Edward James notes that “by the sixth century it was becoming quite fashionable for Romans, even aristocratic Romans to take Germanic names” and, furthermore, “in the course of the sixth and seventh centuries … Gallo-Romans and other subjects of the Frankish kings adopted” the customs of the Franks.[13] The depth of admiration for barbarian customs and consequent rejection of Roman culture were expressed by the writer Sidonius. “Such men as Sidonius described had formed the backbone of the Roman armies in northern Gaul for a long time, and Sidonius seems to be describing these Franks with the enthusiasm of many civilians for a well-turned out troop of soldiers.”[14]

Enlightenment Philosophers
The philosophers and social critics of early modern Europe have followed in the footsteps of their Roman predecessors, Tacitus and Sidonius. The myth of the brilliant flowering of Islamic civilization among western academics and intellectuals had its origin in the sixteenth century and reached its height during the Enlightenment. Certain philosophers, such as Montesquieu and Voltaire, needed a means of criticizing their society by introducing a supposedly objective non-Western viewpoint. They chose the neighboring civilization of Islam and exaggerated its moral and intellectual achievements as a stick with which to beat their complacent fellow Europeans. Religious warfare and persecution characterizing relations between Catholics and Protestants was one of the primary reasons for the disaffection of European intellectuals. In reaction to intra-European war and institutions such as the Inquisition, European philosophers contrived the invention of the “noble savage” followed by that of the wise Muslim. They were apparently unaware of the barbarism and incessant warfare that marked the primitive existences of the “noble savages.” However, these philosophers had even less excuse for their willful ignorance of Muslim warfare, atrocities and persecutions, for the ravaging of Constantinople and Timur’s massacre of hundreds of thousands of Hindus were both recent and well-attested. As the Enlightenment unfolded, the general myth of the wise Muslim turned into that of the open-minded and tolerant Turk. Alyssa Lappen remarks on the misapprehension of Muslim Turks by Enlightenment philosophers:

Actually, 18th century Turkey was no interfaith utopia. In 1758, a British ambassador noted that Sultan Mustafa III had non-Muslim Christians and Jews executed for wearing banned clothing. In 1770, another ambassador reported that Greeks, Armenians and Jews seen outside their homes after dark were hanged. In 1785, a third noted that Muslim mobs had dismantled churches after Christians had secretly repaired them.

‘The golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam,’ Bernard Lewis wrote in 1968 in the Encyclopedia of Islam. ‘The myth was invented in 19th century Europe as a reproach to Christians—and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews.’[15]

The myth of the noble savage was first invented by Montaigne and was later popularized by Rousseau. Montaigne invented this myth as early as 1580 “based on dubious secondhand information in order to condemn his own civilization. … Later writers substituted Islam for savages to condemn Christendom and materialism.”[16] As Warraq points out, the “uncritical attitude to Islam and the genesis of the myth of Islamic tolerance must be seen against the general intellectual background of Europe’s first encounter with non-European civilizations especially in the sixteenth century … when the notion of the ‘noble savage’ was first fully developed.”[17]

Huguenot pastor Pierre Jurieu was among the first to tout the relative tolerance of Islam. In the late 17th century, in an amazing exaggeration, he “exclaimed that Christians had spilt more blood on St. Bartholemew's Day than had the Saracens in all their persecutions of Christians.”[18] The seventeenth century philosopher Pierre Bayle joined Jurieu in apologizing for Islam as a means of social criticism; in particular comparing the persecutions inflicted by the Catholic Church with the alleged tolerance of Islam.[19]

Jurieu and Bayle were soon followed by Henri de Boulainvilliers who promoted the “myth of Muhammad as a wise and tolerant ruler” in an “apologetic biography of Muhammad” which “appeared posthumously in London in 1730. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this book in shaping Europe’s view of Islam and its founder, Muhammad; it certainly much influenced Voltaire and Gibbon.”[20]

The great historian Gibbon, who was a deist, viewed Islam as both a rational and priest-free faith with Muhammad as the wise and tolerant lawgiver rather like Solon. His view “enormously influenced the way all Europe perceived their sister religion for years to come.”[21] Voltaire joined these philosophers in idealizing Muslim society as a foil for exposing the hypocrisies in their own societies. Thus, at the conclusion of Voltaire’s Candide, the travelers encounter an irritable but wise dervish followed by an old Turkish gentleman imparting further words of wisdom for the benefit of the confused Europeans. Voltaire’s fellow philosophe, Montesquieu, in the Persian Letters utilizes the fictional experiences of two exotic outsiders as a means of critiquing European society. While neither Voltaire nor Montesquieu meant to apologize for the neighboring Islamic culture, the result of these works was to help create the impression of Islam as being a reservoir of wisdom, or at the least a certain innocent and objective outlook which was lacking in Europe.

The Treason of the Historians
Enlightenment philosophers have admiring and willing followers in modern academic circles. The former, however imperfect their knowledge or methods, at least had some dedication to the truth. Willful denial of the truth along with demonizing those heretics who dare depart from the modern historical dogma, characterize the latter. Bostom quotes the philosopher and theologian Jacques Ellul, who in Les Chretientes d’Orient entre Jihad et Dhimmitude. VIIe - XXe siecle, (1991) shows this whitewashing of Islam by contemporary historians:

In a major encyclopedia, one reads phrases such as: ‘Islam expanded in the eighth or ninth centuries…’; ‘This or that country passed into Muslim hands…’ But care is taken not to say how Islam expanded, how countries ‘passed into [Muslim] hands’…Indeed, it would seem as if events happened by themselves, through a miraculous or amicable operation…Regarding this expansion, little is said about jihad. And yet it all happened through war!

…the jihad is an institution, and not an event, that is to say it is a part of the normal functioning of the Muslim world…The conquered populations change status (they become dhimmis), and the shari’a tends to be put into effect integrally, overthrowing the former law of the country. The conquered territories do not simply change ‘owners’.[22]

Objectivity and pursuit of truth have reached new lows among scholars currently active in Islamic history. However, as shown in the following examples, even long established and authoritative historians feel the need to whitewash Islam. The cases cited are, of course, a minuscule sample typical of recent historical scholarship.

The eminent historian Albert Hourani describes Muhammad’s relations with the Jewish tribes of Arabia as follows:

The development of the Prophet’s teaching may have been connected with changes in his relations with the Jews of Madina. Although they had formed part of the original alliance, their position became more difficult as Muhammad’s claim for his mission expanded. They could not accept him as a genuine messenger of God within their own tradition, and he in turn is said to have accused them of perverting the revelation given to them: ‘you have concealed what you were ordered to make plain.’ Finally some of the clans were expelled and others killed.[23]

It is interesting to note the matter of fact way in which Hourani cursorily relates this historical account. There is no detailed description of the events, no note of who or how many were killed and no mention of the rape and enslavement of the surviving women and children. Above all, there is no expression of irony that such an event could occur with the permission or even under the direction of the founder of one of the world’s great religions.

In another example, Hourani, in discussing the intellectual flowering taking place during the Arab ‘golden age’, writes:

The motives of the translators and of their patrons, the caliphs, may have been partly practical; medical skill was in demand, and control over natural forces could bring power and success. There was also, however, a wide intellectual curiosity … These words express not only the excitement which the discovery of the Greek tradition could arouse, but also the self confidence of an imperial culture…[24]

Hourani’s paragraph is typical of the patronizing of most historians as they incessantly point out Islamic civilization’s intellectual advances – almost as if they have no real confidence in the reality of such achievements. As we have seen, the intellectual curiosity regarding such theoretical activity as Greek philosophy was due to its practical use. Abstract Greek philosophical thought was not valued for itself, but only for its use in advancing the Islamic dogma to more intellectually oriented Muslims and to the large non-Muslim subject population.

Bernard Lewis, probably the foremost modern western scholar in the field of Islamic history, gives every indication that he is aware of the shortcomings of Islam. However, he writes of the Prophet as follows:

Much righteous indignation has been expressed … at the spectacle of an Apostle of God leading the faithful in predatory raids … but in the conditions of the time and to the moral ideas of the Arabs raiding was a natural and legitimate occupation, and no discredit attaches to the Prophet for having adopted it.[25]

Thus, even that most authoritative contemporary historian of Islam, feels impelled to whitewash the record of Muhammad, having no thought that a holy man ought to set an example by behavior that is at least slightly above the standards of his time and culture. Lewis follows by using one brief and almost dismissive sentence to describe Muslim behavior following the victory over the Quraish after the battle of the ditch. “This victory was followed by the extermination of the Jewish tribe of Quraiza.”[26]

In another work Bernard Lewis writes regarding the Turks:

Even the much-condemned devshirme levy had its positive aspects. By this means the humblest villager could rise to the highest and most powerful offices in the state. Many did so and also brought their families with them - a form of social mobility impossible in the aristocratic societies of contemporary Christendom.[27]

As he did with the Prophet’s massacre of the Jews, Lewis dismisses the suffering and humiliation attendant on an institution which was of questionable legality even by the less than sterling standards of Muslim law. He makes the devshirme sound so attractive that perhaps we should consider reviving this practice in modern times.

Huston Smith, the eminent scholar of comparative religion also writes of Muhammad’s rise to power and the massacre of the Jews:

Exercising superb statecraft, he welded the five heterogeneous and conflicting tribes of the city, two of which were Jewish, into an orderly confederation. The task was not an easy one and despite the freedom he permitted the Jews considerable blood was spilt in the process. But in the end he succeeded in awakening in the citizens a spirit of union unknown in the city’s history.[28]

Indeed he did! The willful refusal of western scholars to truthfully and fully characterize the behavior of Muhammad and his successors goes back a long way. It can only be compared to the denial exhibited by a codependent in justifying the behavior of a beloved addict.

In discussing the Barbary slave trade in a turn of phrase reminiscent of southern apologists for the ‘peculiar institution’, social historian Reuben Levy writes: “Yet the lot of many, both in private possessions and in the public service, was in many respects tolerable enough, and reports of some travelers and monks seem to be exaggerated, if comparison is made with those of others who visited the corsairs’ headquarters.” In the very next sentence Levy belies what he has just written. “Perhaps the most famous of the pirates’ captives was Cervantes, who spent five years loaded with chains and in circumstances of the greatest wretchedness.”[29] Such artful shifting and dodging, exemplified in the passages by Smith and Levy is a necessity for those scholars who wish to offer excuses for Islam while, at the same time maintaining their credibility.

Lord Kinross, the great historian of the Ottoman Empire writes:

The process of enslavement was applied to prisoners of war and the inhabitants of captured places. A law gave to the Ottoman soldier an absolute right to the possession of captives unless they consented to profess and practice Islam. He might keep them … he might sell them … subject to the government’s right to a fifth of the market value of the total captured.[30]

Note his facile mention of ‘a law’, as if it were some minor statute peculiar to the Ottomans and presumably recently enacted, instead of a principle enshrined within the Sharia itself, the holy law and foundation of Islam.

Finally, typical of the presentation of Islam in many modern popular historical anthologies and reference books is the following in the Life World History series penned by Desmond Stewart. He cavalierly dismisses the Ottoman institution of the devshirme which enslaved uncounted children over a period of centuries. “A cross between the guardians of Plato’s Republic and the Praetorian Guard of the Roman emperors, the members of the Janissary corps were recruited from the strongest and most agile Christian children in the empire.”[31] There is no mention of the pain caused to parents or children during this ‘recruitment’. No historian would dare refer to the institution of Southern slavery in this manner.

Nevertheless, a number of modern historians are willing and eager to pursue the truth about Islamic history wherever it may lead. The specialist in central Asian history, Svat Soucek, is representative of those historians willing to reveal Islam’s blemishes. He writes regarding the advantages the warlike Islamic meme had with respect to the more peaceful and civilized Chinese:

…but the main cause of Muslim success and Chinese failure lay in the fact that the Celestial Empire was not fired by any comparable proselytizing zeal. In contrast, the Arabs were driven by the ideal of the jihad or Holy War, and the fact that the fruits of victory also brought the conquerors great material rewards…[32]

The famous historian Will Durant also had a refreshing sense of reality in contrast to very many contemporary scholars. Writing about the plight of India at the bloody hands of the Muslim conquerors he writes: “The bitter lesson that may be drawn from this tragedy is that eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but keep its powder dry.”[33]

One of the foremost social thinkers and philosophers of the Middle Ages was the great Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun. He was a devout Muslim who, nevertheless, saw no reason to deceive his readers regarding the nature of Islam. Khaldun is brutally honest when compared with many modern western historians. “In the Muslim community, the jihad is a religious duty because of the Islamic mission and the obligation” to convert “everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force … the other religions had no such universal mission and the holy war was [therefore] not a religious duty to them apart from self defense.”[34] Similarly uncompromising in his reporting of the facts is the modern Sudanese Arab historian Yusuf Fadl Hasan, the author of The Arabs and The Sudan, who documents the enslavement and ethnic cleansing practiced by the Arabs in the Sudan since the inception of Islam and which accelerated during the 14th century.

The Demographic Imperative
The rapid growth of the Muslim population provides a vast reservoir of angry young males susceptible to the temptations of the jihad. The simultaneous depopulation of western nations creates a vacuum waiting to be filled by the burgeoning populations of the Islamic world. The following estimates were given in the 2001 World Population Prospects of the UN Population Division:

Of Europe’s forty-seven nations, only one, Muslim Albania, was by 2000, maintaining a birthrate sufficient to keep it alive indefinitely. … In 2000, the total population of Europe, from Iceland to Russia, was 728 million. At present birthrates, however, without new immigration, her population will crash to 600 million by 2050.[35]

Moreover, Islam is on the verge of replacing Christianity as the world’s largest religion.

In 2000, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians comprised 30 percent of the global population and Muslims 19 percent. But one estimate predicts that if present trends continue, by 2025 Muslims will substantially outnumber Christians, comprising 30 percent of the world’s people, with Christians constituting 25 percent.[36]

The West’s downward demographic spiral is accompanied by the ill-conceived lowering of barriers to immigration.

Demographers project the Middle East alone (including Iran) could reach a population of three-hundred to four-hundred million by 2030. … If large numbers of Middle Eastern and African migrants swarm into Europe in the 2000s and beyond, the result will not only be a migration of individuals, it will be a migration of Islam. … Europe won’t be the only place Muslim refugees will flock to. Many will cross the Atlantic Ocean to join the millions of Muslims already in the United States.[37]

Thus, according to Spencer “if demographic trends continue, jihad may not be necessary. The Islamicization of the West will happen, but in a slower, less dramatic way.” By the year 2002 the Muslim population of France stood at 7%, Germany’s Muslim population was approaching 4% and 4.4 percent of the Netherlands population was Muslim. Furthermore there were one million Muslims in Italy and one-half million in Spain.[38] Of course, the Muslim population of Europe has been steadily increasing in the years since.

Ominous Parallels
The tragedies of history may not always repeat themselves as farce. The long march of Islam through the history of three continents has not ended. There are a number of chilling parallels in the contemporary world to those factors that brought about the past triumphs of Islam.

The long mutually debilitating war between Sasanian Persia and Byzantium, which was quickly fatal to Persia and ultimately fatal to the Byzantines, was repeated in the first half of the twentieth century in the destructive intra-European conflicts. This was followed by the Cold War which dismantled the Soviet Union and weakened even the fabulously productive United States. At about the same time as the Arab invasions Byzantium was also weakened by the incessant migration of Slavs and central Asian tribes crossing the Danube frontier. Eerily the United States today is attempting to cope with a massive number of Hispanics illegally crossing the Rio Grande frontier. In addition to Muslims, there are massive numbers of non-Islamic immigrants to both the U.S. and Europe with an inevitable weakening of the sociopolitical order.

Muslims today are the beneficiaries of the windfall of petroleum. The petrodollar accumulation available to Muslim nations in the Persian Gulf is reminiscent of circumstances in ancient Arabia. “Mecca was close to the seaport of Jeddah and about halfway between Yemen and Syria, which enabled it to develop as an important trading center connecting the caravans from India and Persia with those from the West.” In addition since Mecca’s shrines were a major pilgrimage destination, religion made east-central Arabia an important center bringing great prosperity.[39] Once Muhammad gained control of that part of Arabia, its wealth became available for financing the initial Arab campaigns. Today, of course, it is the great wealth from petroleum to Muslim countries, mostly on that same Arabian Peninsula, which is financing the present day expansion of Islam though both violent and peaceful means.

There was throughout Muslim history a long list, in the infidel camp, of political dissidents and ambitious politicians who thought they could make use of and channel the forces of Islam. This phenomenon may be termed the Cantacuzene syndrome, after the Byzantine noble who gave the Turks their European foothold. In most cases, of course, it was Islam that ended up making use of these numerous Cantacuzenes. The West today abounds with politicians, government officials, businessmen, media luminaries and academics who suffer from this same syndrome. Melanie Phillips writes of a British intellectual elite who were “persuaded to sing from the same subversive hymn-sheet so that the moral beliefs of the majority would be replaced by the values of those on the margins of society, the perfect ambience in which the Muslim grievance culture could be fanned into the flames of extremism.” The left “says it can put aside its differences with the Islamists simply because they too are against the state.”[40]

Unfortunately, it is not simply a case of deluded leftist intellectuals in search of a new and highly aggressive revolutionary vanguard that is at work. Conservative pundits have persuaded themselves that Muslims are natural allies in their conflict with a degenerate left. They are joined by pandering politicians scrounging for votes and businessmen in search of lucrative contracts with the holders of petrodollars. There is also a class of politicians and advocates of Arab Christian origin who see themselves as power brokers mediating between recent Muslim immigrants and the Western establishment. Possibly of greatest importance is an army of paid propagandists feeding at the Arab oil trough. These include former politicians and officials, well paid for their lobbying and speaking on behalf of Arab paymasters, and assorted public relations experts.

Revolutionary ardor, political advantage and commercial greed, however, do not explain the full depth of collaboration. “Beyond that is outright cultural self-hatred, as manifested by Karen Armstrong in her tendency to blame Christianity for all the misdeeds of Islam, and by Bill Clinton when he blamed the Crusades and American slavery for the September 11 terrorist attacks.”[41] Thus, there exists a modern cult of the “Other” which sees the Western elites, like the Aztec ruler Montezuma or the aristocrats of declining Rome, welcoming their own dispossession at the hands of invaders.

Religious dissidents, ethnic minorities, exploited lower classes and disestablished political factions have been profitably utilized by Muslim invaders since the Arab armies first stormed out of Arabia. Disaffected groups in the modern West are, similarly, potential allies in the modern Islamic revival.

Converts to Islam are a growing element. …religious nomads; former drug addicts and petty thieves; and blacks, Latinos and persons of mixed race. … Drug addicts and thieves are seeking structure and support. Some young blacks and Latinos find radical Islam a ‘rebuke’ to a European or American society they feel has rejected them.[42]

Historically, the long term consequences of Islamic dominance were often underestimated by those elements of the indigenous population who, because of class, ethnic or religious conflict was disaffected. The same may be happening today. “Such is the moral and intellectual fallout of Londonistan, where, to a dismaying extent, the indigenous British have signed up to the false narrative of those who are laying siege to their society.”[43]

The legacy of the Harem Culture and Islamic slavery is beginning to gain a foothold in the contemporary West. This can be seen, for instance in the sexually charged terrorism resulting from radical Islamic indoctrination into the more lurid scriptural passages describing the Muslim paradise. Film-maker Pierre Rehov describes this quite well in the following excerpt:

The result of all this pathology is that you end up with 16 to 20 year old men, with a strong libido, who have never approached a woman, don't even know what they look like, consider them as evil, and have this high level of energy, literally ready to blow themselves up out of frustration. It then becomes very easy to convince them that they have a duty to destroy impurity, symbolized by the Occidental world, and that they will be rewarded by 72 virgins in the afterlife. Their entire society is built on the absolute belief in this afterlife, so much better than the miserable life they have on earth -- thanks to the teachings of their leaders.[44]

Another modern manifestation of the Harem Culture is the rape epidemic perpetrated by young Muslim men in the West. A Norwegian commentator describes this phenomenon in contemporary Europe:

The number of rapes committed by Muslim immigrants in Western nations are so extremely high that it is difficult to view them only as random acts of individuals. It resembles warfare. Muhammad himself had forced sex (rape) with several of his slave girls/concubines. This is perfectly allowed, both in the sunna and in the Koran. If you postulate that many of the Muslims in Europe view themselves as a conquering army and that European women are simply war booty, it all makes perfect sense and is in full accordance with Islamic law. Western women are not so much regarded by most Muslims as individuals, but as "their women," the women who "belong" to hostile Infidels. They are booty, to be taken, just as the land of the Infidels someday will drop, it is believed, into Muslim hand. This is not mere crime, but ideologically-justified crime or rather, in Muslim eyes, attacks on Infidels scarcely qualify as crime. Western women are cheap and offensive. We Muslims are here, here to stay, and we have a right to take advantage of this situation. It is our view of the matter that should prevail. Western goods, like the land on which we now live, belong to Allah and to the best of men -- his Believers. Western women, too, essentially belong to us -- our future booty. No wonder there is a deep and increasing suspicion against Muslims in the Swedish and European public.[45]

In Australia as well, rapes committed by Muslim youths are on the rise, in some cases leading to retaliation on the part of young Whites. “Lebanese were in the habit of loitering around bikini-clad white girls, calling them prostitutes and exhorting them to ‘cover up,’ as have they been implicated in a string of racially motivated, gang-rapes of young white girls.”[46]Honor killings of Muslim females by their male relatives are still another manifestation of the Islamic sexual system to be imported into the West.

The institution of Muslim sexual slavery, as reported by the Denver Post, has now appeared in America. In 2004, Saudi national Homaidan Al-Turki, 37, a linguistics doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder was charged with kidnapping and sexual assault. A jury convicted Al-Turki on reduced charges of false imprisonment and unlawful sexual contact. Al-Turki kept a 24-year-old woman from Indonesia as a virtual slave forcing her to perform domestic service and take care of his five children at almost no pay. In addition Al-Turki forced the woman to perform sex acts and ultimately raped her.

Another case of slavery was reported in the Los Angeles Times on July 2, 2006:

An Irvine man and his former wife pleaded guilty Thursday to forcing a 12-year-old illegal immigrant from Egypt to work as their domestic slave.

Under terms of a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Abdel Nasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim, 45, and his former wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib, 43, each face up to three years in prison.

The girl, whose name was not released, was brought to the United States in 2000. Every morning she helped the couple's youngest children get ready for school, washed clothes, cleaned the house and prepared food. Following up on an anonymous tip, police in 2002 found the girl living in squalor in a 12-by-8-foot converted area of the family's garage.

Ibrahim and Motelib, who were married at the time and have five children, had both slapped the girl at least once and told her that if police saw her outside their home alone, they would arrest her, prosecutors said.

The girl, now 16, is living with a foster family in Southern California and attending a public high school where "she is doing great," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert J. Keenan. She has received a green card granting her permanent residency.

The case shed light on a common though illegal practice in Egypt in which children from poor families are sent to work for the well-to-do. The servants, known as Khadamah, usually range in age from 9 to 18 and often are forced to sleep in kitchens.

Western cultural self hatred is rapidly approaching a social death wish. Free speech is under siege throughout Europe and even in the United States. In the same ways as the Aztecs were conditioned by prophecy to accept their demise, and as the Byzantines were reconciled to future Muslim rule by means of folklore, so it is that Western populations are being prepared for a new Islamic ascendancy long before the Muslims themselves are strong enough to impose it. While Western institutions are denigrated and traditional cultural practices are forbidden, Islamic indoctrination is not only permitted but even in some instances required. The following excerpt from an interview with Abby Nye, recently graduated from Butler University in Indianapolis illustrates the preference given to Islamic culture at a college in the American heartland. Such exaggerated deference to Islam has become commonplace at all levels of American education.

Nye: I've had professors say Jesus was a homosexual, the god of Islam is the same god of Christianity, and sneer at the Bible calling it a book of myth - "that book with the talking snake and magic fruit." These statements were made in core content classes required by all students.
...
Nye: In terms of the professors who engage in this behavior are, first and foremost, chicken. They know that Christians are a safe target. By and large, we take that "love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you (Matt 5:44)" seriously. On the other hand, they know Muslims offer a quite different response.

In terms of the hypocrisy, it doesn't make sense to me. They don't even try to hide it. For example, all students at Butler were required to take a course on Islam. We were required to purchase the Koran and handle it with respect. If we were carrying a stack of books the Koran had to be on top. One day, my professor even had us act out the five pillars of Islam in class. If you ask me, that's going too far. It'd be equivalent to having a required course on the Bible (which, like you said, would never happen) and partaking in communion or baptism during class.[47]

Regarding such trends geographer Lee Madland sounds a warning. “A question remaining to be resolved in the West is whether a turnaround in its own cultural self esteem will come in time to save intact the essence of Western civilization and American culture.”[48]

As we have seen, throughout the long and triumphal march of Islamic imperialism, Muslim rulers and warriors were dependent on the learning, skills and energy of non-Muslims. The wealth looted and the taxes extracted from vanquished dhimmis financed Muslim armies. Non-Muslim scientists, craftsmen and military engineers provided Islamic generals and admirals with the technology needed for battle. Even Muslim propagandists found the writings of Greek philosophers useful for winning hearts and minds to the cause of Islam. The parasitic dependence on non-Muslim science and technology continues, as Victor Davis Hanson notes, to this day:

They obviously want Western technology--whether the Internet or the plastic munition--but never the decadence of freedom, democracy, and tolerance that creates the very appurtenances they crave. It is like sacking European Constantinople and then moving into it as your new Window-on-the-West capital, with the requisite minarets plopped on Santa Sophia.

Such parasitism proves no lasting palliative, but only the goad for more envy and frustration. The stark truth is that the radical Middle East is religiously observant, but spiritually poor. Naturally wealthy, it is mostly materially impoverished--and as anti-Western in ideology as addicted in fact to Western attention and consumerism.[49]

Unfinished Business
Empowered by an accident of geology, augmented in numbers by western medical science, equipped by means of foreign technology and encouraged by corrupt non-Muslim leaders and self-hating Western intellectuals, the Islamic meme is once again on the march. The immediate target, of course, is the state of Israel. But the expulsion or slaughter of the Jews inhabiting the onetime territory of Palestine will not appease the ravenous meme for more than a brief time. Even before the accomplishment of that goal, war, terrorism or threats are directed at a number of lands that once were within the dar-al-Islam.

The following lands, once ruled by Muslims or with large Muslim minorities are, even now, within the sights of the Jihadists: India, Ethiopia, Thailand, Philippines, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Spain, and the non-Muslim parts of Lebanon, Indonesia, Sudan and Nigeria. The short-run objective is the re-conquest of Palestine; the intermediate goal is to be the restoration of Muslim rule to, and the conversion, expulsion or restoration of dhimmi status for non-Muslims in the above-mentioned territories. The ultimate goal, however, is to bring to the whole world the dubious benefits of Islamic rule.


[1] Jean Raspail, The Camp of the Saints, Petoskey Michigan, The Social Contract Press, 1987, p. xv.
[2] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 351.
[3] Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, pp. 369-70.
[4] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 203.
[5] Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, p. 369.
[6] Fuentes, Buried Mirror, p. 110.
[7] Ibid, pp. 119-20.
[8] Naipaul, Among the Believers, p. 133.
[9] Tom Andres, “The Maya Fall And Our Own?” in The Social Contract, Spring 2005, p. 218.
[10] Alyssa A Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All.
[11] Ronald Mellor, Tacitus, London, Routledge, 1993, pp. 15-16.
[12] Michael Grant, History of Rome, USA, Scribners, 1978, p. 452.
[13] Edward James, The Franks, Oxford, Blackwell, 1988, p. 8.
[14] Ibid, p. 75.
[15] Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All.
[16] Ibid
[17] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 16.
[18] Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All.
[19] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 18.
[20] Ibid, p. 19.
[21] Ibid, p. 21.
[22] Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad in Palestine.
[23] Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, p. 18.
[24] Ibid, p. 77.
[25] Lewis, The Arabs in History, p. 44.
[26] Ibid, p. 45.
[27] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 128.
[28] Smith, The Religions of Man, p. 226.
[29] Levy, The Social Structure of Islam, p. 82.
[30] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 47.
[31] Desmond Stewart, Life World Library Turkey, p. 44.
[32] Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, p. 70.
[33] Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, p. 463.
[34] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 62.
[35] Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West, New York, Thomas Dunne, 2002, p. 12.
[36] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 171.
[37] Morgan Norval, Triumph of Disorder, Bend Oregon, Sligo Press, 1999, p. 42.
[38] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, pp. 170-72.
[39] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 24.
[40] Melanie Phillips, Londonistan, New York, Encounter Books, 2006, pp. 118-9.
[41] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 174.
[42] Tony Blankley, The West’s Last Chance, Washington, DC, Regnery, 2005, p. 50.
[43] Phillips, Londonistan, p. 115.
[44] Pierre Rehov, in Jamie Glazov, Suicide Killers, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 12, 2005.
[45] Fjordman, Muslim Rape Wave in Sweden, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 15, 2005.
[46] Ilana Mercer, What A Riot, Mate!, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 19, 2005.
[47] Dhimmi Watch - www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch October 24, 2006.
[48] Lee G. Madland, “But Is it Right?” The Social Contract, Summer 2006, p. 267.
[49] Victor Davis Hanson, Will the West Stumble? FrontpageMagazine.com, November 21, 2006.