The Essentials Concerning Islam and the West
Fireside Chat Essay Series Volume One
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“Kill them idolaters [non-Muslims] wherever you find them—capture them, besiege them, and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush.” – The Quran 9:5
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For almost a thousand years, from the sixth to the seventeenth century, Christendom was under constant attack. Two-thirds of its original geographic footprint was permanently conquered and absorbed by Islam–Christendom is now called the West because only its Western chunk remained uncolonized. Subsequently, relentless Islamic assaults on Europe and other parts of the world continued unabated. In this late period of modernity violent Islamic global jihad is going strong again after it took a short nap in the aftermath of the fall and dissolution of the Ottoman empire. Today Islamic Jihad threatens existentially the West (including North America, Australia, and Israel) as well as the rest of the non-Muslim world.
One only needs to consider where the stories in the Bible took place, and then ask why so few Christians and Jews remain in the areas most holy to them. The Middle East, Anatolia (modern day Turkey), and North Africa were all invaded and captured by Islam. After which Islamic jihad continued its assault on the remaining Western portion of Christendom. The Crusades were launched as a response to the violent conquest and subjugation of Christians and Christian lands by one Islamic group after another. As well, the Jews were persecuted by Muslims who ultimately removed them from Israel and stole their land. None of this is what Westerners are likely to be taught in school about the Crusades, Islam, or the holy land.
The purpose of Fireside Chat Volume One, is to argue that a vast historiographical crime has taken place in Western nations. Since the rise of post-colonial theory–one of those unfortunate quasi-academic social justice disciplines with an agenda to foment anti-Westernism, anti-Christianism, anti-white bigotry and anti-Semitism–Westerners have been led to believe that the crimes of European descendent white Christians have been the scourge of humanity. We are told that colonialism and slavery provide proof that white Christian men were the worst examples of humanity ever seen throughout the annals of history.
However, the truth is far different than what has been taught and absorbed by the average otherwise fair-minded Westerner. The facts reveal that the absolute world champions of brutally violent religious politics, history’s most depraved conquerors, oppressors, enslavers, genocidaires, and colonizers, continue to be adherents of jihadist Islam. Islam, and Islam alone, stands conspicuously out front, way out front, as it takes the ribbon for greatest and most infamous source of plunder, violence, and depravity humanity has ever encountered.
One of the authors profiled below, Raymond Ibrahim, wrote the following:
“In between the millennium separating Islam’s invasions of Spain and Vienna, from 711 to 1683, virtually every corner of Europe—as far as distant Iceland— was pummeled and savaged in the name of jihad with untold millions of Europeans slaughtered or, often worse, enslaved. Few now can comprehend the traumatic impact this had on Europe’s development. As historian Franco Cardini puts it, ‘If we…ask ourselves how and when the modern notion of Europe and the European identity was born, we realize the extent to which Islam was a factor (albeit a negative one) in its creation. Repeated Muslim aggression against Europe [over the centuries]…was a ‘violent midwife’ to Europe.” (Ibrahim, 2022. Pg. 19).
What the astute observer of history comes to discover, is that the brutal behaviour of Islamic jihadists in the early years of Islam, is echoed today in the brutal behaviour of modern day Islamic terrorists. Islamic Jihad has been a constant presence since the beginning of Islam. The subtitle of one of the books by Ibrahim makes this clear: “Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.”
One period where Islamic persecution of Christians and destruction of Christian churches was particularly brutal occurred in 1009 when, after destroying the the Holy Sepulchre, “Christendom’s most sacred church,” the Islamic Caliph Hakim bi-Amr Allah, ordered the destruction of, “according to Muslim accounts, some thirty thousand churches throughout Egypt and Greater Syria.” (Ibrahim, 2022. Pg. 37).`
After World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, a decades-long lull in widespread Jihadist violence and aggression tentatively set in (not so much in British Mandate Palestine, or the Jewish state that followed it though). Some historians and Islamic critics warned even then that in their ignorance Westerners have underestimated Islam. Ibrahim provides a relevant quote from European historian Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953):
“Millions of modern people of the white civilization—that is, the civilization of Europe and America—have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past….In Islam there has been no dissolution of ancestral doctrine—or, at any rate, nothing corresponding to the universal break-up of religion in Europe. The whole spiritual strength of Islam is still present in the masses of Syria and Anatolia, of the East Asian mountains, of Arabia, Egypt and North Africa. The final fruit of this tenacity, the second period of Islamic power, may be delayed—but I doubt whether it can be permanently postponed.” (Ibrahim, 2022. Pg. 19).
Sadly, Belloc, who was “dismissed as hyperbolic—well into the 1970s” (Ibrahim, 2022. Pg. 21), could not have been more correct. The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) does not include an accurate compilation of data before the 1970s. However, between 1979 and the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States, there were approximately 48,035 Islamist terrorist attacks that occurred worldwide, causing approximately 210,138 deaths.1 Since September 11, 2001 that number has grown to approximately 66,872 attacks perpetrated by Islamic terrorists resulting in 249,941 deaths.2
I have taken a somewhat unique approach to this topic in Fireside Chat Volume One (found beyond the paywall). It involves profiling a number of important books and stringing together a series of mini essays about them. I have selected a small handful of works that tackle the topic of political Islam from a variety of angles. The majority of them share a common attribute. Whereas purely academic books can be daunting in their technicality and/or length, books of a pure story-telling narrative form can lack rigour. Further, there is the additional problem of the vastness of the topic itself (especially concerning the expansive history involved) and the need for efficient summary. The works I have selected I feel address these issues. Most of them fall somewhere in that space between academic and narrative. They are accessible enough, and academic enough (although not strictly academic in the technical sense) and are quite good at summarizing large expansive histories into palatable chunks while still transmitting the most important aspects (in this case, the important bits are everything that corrects that aforementioned historiographical crime).
Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription so you can access this 8000 plus word Fireside Chat essay (and future Fireside Chat essays). All proceeds help finance the research effort required to write and publish these and other Woke Watch Canada and Western Polemic essays. This work is meant to help readers contend with the enormity of Western thought, culture and history, as well as assist them in defending Western heritage through rational argument.
The topics covered in this longform essay, Fireside Chat Volume One are: Islam, Islamic Conquest, Slavery, Terrorism, the Crusades, the Fall of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire.
An objective fact-based understanding of history, and a rational conception of current events is the mission and the goal–upgrade to the paid tier to help me on facilitate this mission, AND to access Fireside Chat Volume One: The Essentials Concerning Islam and the West.
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