(Jerusalem Post) Raymond Ibrahim - From Islam's first contact with Western civilization and for more than a millennium thereafter, Muslims behaved not unlike the Islamic State and on the same conviction: that Islam commands war on - and the enslavement or slaughter of - non-Muslims. During this perennial jihad that began in the seventh century, almost 3/4 of Christendom's original territory was permanently swallowed up by Islam. European nations and territories were attacked and/or came under Muslim occupation (sometimes for centuries). An Islamic army of 200,000 martyrdom-seeking jihadis came as late as 1683 to conquer Vienna, but failed. Between the 15th and 18th centuries alone, approximately five million Europeans were abducted and enslaved in the name of jihad. Muslim slavers of the Barbary States of North Africa wreaked havoc all along the coasts of Europe; America's first war was against these Islamic slavers. In short, for well over a millennium - punctuated by a Crusader rebuttal - Islam posed an existential threat to Western civilization. Yet today, the predominant historic narrative is that Muslims are the historic victims of intolerant Western Christians. But all this is history, it might be argued. Why not let it be and move on, and begin a new chapter of mutual tolerance and respect? This would be a somewhat plausible position if not for the fact that, all around the globe, many Muslims are still exhibiting the same imperial impulse and intolerant supremacism of their forbears. In classrooms all across the Islamic world, Muslim children are taught to glorify the jihadi conquests of yore - while despising infidels. The writer, a former Arabic language specialist at the Library of Congress and editor and translator of The Al Qaeda Reader, is a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
2018-11-28 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive