The History of Jihad- From Muhammad to ISIS Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR

  THE HISTORY OF

  JIHAD

  “Robert Spencer is one of my heroes. He has once again produced an invaluable and much-needed book. Want to read the truth about Islam? Read this book. It depicts the terrible fate of the hundreds of millions of men, women and children who, from the seventh century until today, were massacred or enslaved by Islam. It is a fate that awaits us all if we are not vigilant.”

  —Geert Wilders, member of Parliament in the Netherlands and

  leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV)

  “From the first Arab-Islamic empire of the mid-seventh century to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the story of Islam has been the story of the rise and fall of universal empires and, no less importantly, of never quiescent imperialist dreams. In this tour de force, Robert Spencer narrates the transformation of the concept of jihad, ‘exertion in the path of Allah,’ from a rallying cry for the prophet Muhammad’s followers into a supreme religious duty and the primary vehicle for the expansion of Islam throughout the ages. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand the roots of the Manichean struggle between East and West and the nature of the threat confronted by the West today.”

  —Efraim Karsh, author of Islamic Imperialism: A History

  “Spencer argues, in brief, ‘There has always been, with virtually no interruption, jihad.’ Painstakingly, he documents in this important study how aggressive war on behalf of Islam has, for fourteen centuries and still now, befouled Muslim life. He hopes his study will awaken potential victims of jihad, but will they—will we—listen to his warning? Much hangs in the balance.”

  —Daniel Pipes, president, Middle East forum and

  author of Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System

  “Robert Spencer, one of our foremost analysts of Islamic jihad, has now written a historical survey of the doctrine and practice of Islamic sanctified violence. With crystal clarity and rigorous argument, he relentlessly marshals the facts that put the lie to the sophistries of apologists and the delusions of Western appeasers. To fight the enemy we must know the enemy, and Robert Spencer’s page-turner is the place to start.”

  —Bruce Thornton, Research Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover

  Institution and Professor of Classics and Humanities at

  the California State University

  “The most important book you will read about the fifteen-hundred-year war that Islamic jihadists have waged on us. Spencer’s brilliant book is also the only book you can read on this history, since appeasers of Islamic bigotry and bloodthirstiness have worked so diligently to suppress it.”

  —David Horowitz, founding president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and

  author of Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey

  “For those who still think—and, alas, there remain many—that Islamic Terrorism has emerged only in the last forty years or so, Robert Spencer’s carefully researched work on jihad from the beginning of Muhammad’s political and prophetical career to the acts of terrorism of September 11, 2001, will be a salutary shock. It will not be at all easy to refute Spencer’s account since he, for the first three Islamic centuries, relies almost entirely on the Arabic sources, that is Muslim historians and scholars, such as Ibn Ishaq, Al-Tabari, Ibn Sa’d, Bukhari, Tirmidhi, and Muslim, who paint a grim picture of the early Islamic conquests. For the later Middle Ages, Spencer has also diligently consulted the primary sources where possible and has relied upon recognized modern scholars such as Ignaz Goldziher, Bernard Lewis, Bat Ye’or, and Steven Runciman, among others. Spanning centuries and continents, from the seventh to the twentieth century, from Spain to India, Spencer takes us on a tour of the global jihad that is Islamic history. Along the way, he shatters many myths, such as the myth of the Golden Age of Spain, a putative period of ecumenical harmony, a kind of perpetual medieval Woodstock Summer of Love. He also puts the Crusades into perspective and reminds us that the Crusades were a belated response to years and years of jihad, and persecution of Christians. Spencer brings the story up to modern times, not forgetting the Armenian genocides perpetuated by the Turks between 1915 and 1923.

  “Robert Spencer’s work is essential reading for all of us, for all those who want to defend our values from the relentless jihad that has not ceased for fourteen centuries. We must heed Spencer’s final words if we are to succeed in saving Western Civilization:

  ‘In the twenty-first century, the leaders of Europe, as well as many in North America, having brought almost certain doom on their countries no less unmistakable than that which befell Constantinople on May 29, 1453. Yet instead of taking responsibility for what they have done, they have stayed their course, and would have denounced the doomed Emperor Constantine XI, like his predecessor Manuel II, as “Islamophobic,” and his exhortation to defend Constantinople to the death as “militaristic” and “xenophobic.” In the twenty-first century, as the 1,400-year Islamic jihad against the free world continued to advance, the best allies the warriors of jihad had were the very people they had in their sights.’”

  —Ibn Warraq, author of The Origins of the Koran and

  The Quest for the Historical Muhammad

  “Jihad is not mere terrorism. Ironic as it may seem, that is Western wishful thinking. From its inception, as Robert Spencer incontestably illustrates, jihad has been the outward, aggressive expression of a conquest ideology. The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS is as relentless in relating unvarnished truth as is the phenomenon it tracks in seeking domination—and never being satisfied with less, however long it takes. Those who care to preserve Western rationalism, civil liberties, and free societies must confront this history, and its implications, with eyes opened.”

  —Andrew C. McCarthy, bestselling author, former federal prosecutor,

  and National Review contributing editor

  “In a time of cowardice and deliberate falsehood, the courageous and scholarly exposure of the greatest challenges and dangers of our time by Robert Spencer is priceless.”

  —Bat Ye’or, author of The Dhimmi and

  The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam

  A BOMBARDIER BOOKS BOOK

  An Imprint of Post Hill Press

  ISBN: 978-1-68261-659-8

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-660-4

  The History of Jihad:

  From Muhammad to ISIS

  © 2018 by Robert Spencer

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design by Cody Corcoran

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  Post Hill Press

  New York • Nashville

  posthillpress.com

  Published in the United States of America

  Printed in Canada

  DEDICATION

  Dedicated to the untold millions of victims of jihad, from the seventh century to today. May you somehow receive justice.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Chapter One: “I Bring You Slaughter”: The Battles of Muhammad

  Chapter Two: The Age of the Great Conquests

  Chapter Three: The Jihad Comes to Spain and India

  Chapter Four: Consolidation and Oppression

  Chapter Five: The Victims of Jihad Strike Back

  Chapter Six: The Jihad Advances into Europe

  Chapter Seven: The Ottomans and Mughals in Ascendance

  Chapter Eight: Dégringol
ade

  Chapter Nine: Resurgence

  Chapter Ten: The West Loses the Will to Live

  Endnotes

  Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  INTRODUCTION

  This book attempts, for the first time in the English language, to provide a general overview of jihad activity from the time when the concept of jihad was invented (and arguably even before that) to the present day—from Arabia to North Africa and Persia, from Spain to India, from Tel Aviv to New York City.

  In amassing this history of jihad from Muhammad to ISIS, I have endeavored wherever possible to quote the words of contemporary witnesses to the various events described, so that the reader may get some impression of how it was to experience the advance of jihad.

  The accounts included in this book are as noteworthy for what they don’t say as for what they do. The attentive reader will note that there is no period since the beginning of Islam that was characterized by large-scale peaceful coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims. There was no time when mainstream and dominant Islamic authorities taught the equality of non-Muslims with Muslims, or the obsolescence of jihad warfare. There was no Era of Good Feeling, no Golden Age of Tolerance, no Paradise of Proto-Multiculturalism. There has always been, with virtually no interruption, jihad.

  Nor is jihad in Islamic theology primarily, or even prominently, anything but warfare against unbelievers. The Qur’an contains numerous exhortations to fight against the infidels, as do all the hadith collections of Muhammad’s words and deeds. It directs Muslims to “fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day and do not forbid what Allah and his messenger have forbidden, nor practice the religion of truth, even if they are of the People of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). Nor does Muhammad mention any other pretext for an attack when he expands upon this passage with more detailed instructions on fighting against unbelievers:

  Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war; do not embezzle the spoils; do not break your pledge; and do not mutilate (the dead) bodies; do not kill the children. When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them…. If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them.1

  This triple imperative of conversion, subjugation, or death is reinforced in Islamic law. One manual of Islamic law that some of Sunni Islam’s foremost authorities have certified as conforming to the “practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community” states flatly that the “lesser jihad” means “war against non-Muslims.”2 The Muslim community is directed to make war “upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians…until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.”3

  Most Muslims are Sunnis. There are four schools of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence: the Shafi’i, Hanafi, Hanbali, and Maliki. These are not brick and mortar schools, but schools of thought, of interpretation of Islamic law. The legal manual quoted above originated with the Shafi’i school; a Hanafi authority, meanwhile, states that the infidels must first be called to embrace Islam, “because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith.” It adds that Muslims must not wage jihad in order to enrich themselves, but only for the cause of Islam. And when the infidels hear the call to Islam, they “will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war.”4

  However, things will go badly for the non-Muslims who choose not to convert or pay the tax. Muslims must “make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do.”5

  Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a Maliki jurist as well as a pioneering historian and philosopher who authored one of the first works of historiography, likewise notes that “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” Islam is “under obligation to gain power over other nations.”6 And the Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) directed that “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.”7

  These are old authorities, but none of these Sunni schools of jurisprudence have ever reformed or rejected these directives. The Shi’ite schools teach much the same things. Jihad as a spiritual struggle is a secondary concept at best for both, even though it bears the designation “greater jihad.”

  Only in our strange age has this quite obvious fact been controverted, with those who point it out being excoriated as bigots. Nonetheless, the historical record speaks for itself, even more loudly and clearly than it usually does. It is my hope that readers with an open mind and a willingness to consider unwelcome facts, as rare as those people may be nowadays, will see this record for what it is, and ponder carefully its implications for the future of free societies around the globe.

  Robert Spencer

  Sherman Oaks, California

  January 2018

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I BRING YOU SLAUGHTER”: THE BATTLES OF MUHAMMAD

  Jihad, 622–632

  VICTORIOUS WITH TERROR

  “I have been made victorious with terror.”1

  Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, died suddenly and unexpectedly, complaining that he felt the way he had several years earlier, when he was poisoned.2 As death approached, the founder of Islam muttered those fateful words that could have been his epitaph: “I have been made victorious with terror.”3

  It was a fitting summation of his entire public career.

  The beginnings of Islam are shrouded in mystery. There are thousands upon thousands of reports (hadith, plural ahadith or hadiths) of the words and deeds of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, but virtually all of them date from the eighth and ninth centuries, over a century and a half after Muhammad’s death, which is traditionally set in 632. There is considerable reason to believe that the origins of Islam and the lives of its founding figures are quite different from how they’re represented in Islamic sacred history.4

  Yet for all that, those words and deeds of Muhammad as recorded in the hadith are indeed Islamic sacred history, and thus are believed and taken as fact by millions of Muslims, many of whom act upon those beliefs daily in various ways. Just as Jesus’ words and deeds in the Gospels can be known and studied aside from the question of their historicity, so also can Muhammad’s. The words and deeds of Islam’s founder, and the various events that formed Islam as a religious and political force, form the foundation of Islamic faith to this day. As Islam is an ever-growing presence in the West, these elements of Islam should be known, regardless of their historical value or lack thereof.

  Many of the key events of the life of Muhammad and the hundred years following his death as recorded by early Muslim historians most likely never happened, but as they are part of Islamic belief and the Islamic worldview to this day, it is important that those whose lives are increasingly affected by these teachings know and understand them.

  NO REJECTION WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES

  Islamic legend has it that Muhammad began as a preacher o
f religious ideas, expounding the simple and uncompromising message that there was only one true god and Muhammad was his prophet.

  These were never claims one could reject without consequences.

  First came warnings of hellfire. Then, when Muhammad’s own people, the Quraysh tribe of Mecca, rejected his claim of being a prophet, his message began to take on a hard edge for the rejecters in this world. The jihad—Arabic for “struggle”—that Muhammad preached often began to refer specifically to warfare against those who denied his prophethood or the oneness of the deity.

  One scorching day, Muhammad approached a group of Quraysh at the Ka’bah, the cube-shaped building in Mecca said to have been built by the patriarch Abraham and his son Ishmael. Muhammad kissed the black stone, the meteorite that the Arabs believed to have been thrown by Allah down to earth at that spot, and walked around the shrine three times. Then he fixed the Quraysh with a furious gaze and said: “Will you listen to me, O Quraysh? By him who holds my life in His hand, I bring you slaughter.”5

  And he did—not just to the Quraysh but to the entire world, as Muslims for fourteen hundred years heard his message of jihad warfare against the infidel and acted upon his words.

  On another occasion, Muhammad sent men out to raid a Quraysh caravan, but they located it at Nakhla in Arabia only during a sacred month, when fighting was forbidden; nonetheless they decided to raid it anyway, whereupon Muhammad was furious and refused to accept his share of the booty.

  During his first twelve years of preaching his message of monotheism and hellfire in Mecca, Muhammad gained only a handful of followers, while his relations with those who did not accept his claims grew ever more antagonistic. Finally, twelve years after Muhammad began to proclaim himself a prophet, Arabs from a neighboring tribe in the city of Yathrib asked him to emigrate there and become their leader. Muhammad accepted the offer, and once ensconced in Yathrib—now renamed Medinat Nabi (City of the Prophet), or Medina for short—as its military, political, and spiritual leader, Muhammad began to make good on his promise to bring slaughter to the Quraysh. His emigration from Mecca to Medina is known as the hijrah, or emigration, which ever after has been marked by Muslims as the beginning of Islam.