The History of Jihad from the Christian Expositor

A brief overview of jihad from a Christian perspective.

To claim that the crusades were the origin of the conflict between Islam and Christianity is historically inaccurate, for the first crusade was in 1096 AD whereas jihad had already been the major force for Islamic expansion for 500 years before this date.
The Crusades were undertaken between 1096 AD until 1270 AD and were an attempt to retake the former Christian area of Palestine. In contrast, the jihad has been underway for 1,300 years and was a clear attempt to occupy Europe, Asia and Africa, and convert these peoples to Islam by the threat of conversion or death! Why do we not hear of the Muslim capture of Jerusalem from the Christians in 638 AD, or of the capture of Spain about 70 years later, or of the subsequent 800 year occupation? It was the inroads caused by jihad against Europe that triggered Pope Urban II to call for the first Crusade in 1095 AD.
Those who bleat about past 'Colonialism' - and still throw the same charge at the USA - forget that this was never exclusively Western. Muslims colonized much of Europe in the 7th -19th centuries, and the two colonized each other in the 19th century.
In fact, Europe colonized Muslim lands mainly in the period between 1830-1960 - a period of only 130 years. [Is a colony the same as ruling a conquered land, such as Spain? You could argue it's different.]
Terror was an effective weapon used by Muhammad and caused many people to become loyal - the alternative was death. There are many examples of Muhammad's cruelty. Those whose cities and lands he invaded were tortured to reveal their hidden treasures, and tribesmen to whom he feigned hospitality were robbed and then vilely killed (by cutting off their hands and feet so they bled to death slowly). Kihouna, the Jewish chief at Khaybar, was tortured by Muhammad in order to reveal the whereabouts of his gold and, when he was dead, Muhammad married his 17 year old widow, Safiya, on the same day. The Jewish Beni Quraiza tribe were decimated, all the men being slain (~800) and their wives and children sold as slaves. The Muslim soldiers responsible received large amounts of booty but Muhammad took a fifth for himself! The Koran (Sura 33:25) praises God for the killings because they caused Muhammad to be feared. This kind of murder and intrigue, feigning peace treaties which they renége on, is typical of today's Muslim ruler.
630 AD marked the first battle outside of Arabia - against the Byzantines - in Jordan. Muhammad had set the example of aggression and ordered two campaigns just before his death in which Usama led troops to the north while Khalid captured Baghdad and, later, proved to be a very effective general of the Umayyads. Jerusalem, Damascus (635 AD) and Antioch (636 AD) fell in turn as this satanic army began to march against the world to conquer for their Moon god, Allah.
Muawiyya was active in the campaign against Syria and was declared the governor of Syria by Umar in 640 AD. By 641 AD much of Egypt and Persia had also fallen. There followed campaigns to capture the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Crete (649-668 AD) under the leadership of Muawiyya who launched a sea invasion during Uthman's rule, attacking Cyprus in 649, first from Saida (Lebanon) and then from Alexandria. The first major Arab naval enterprise brought great booty and the Muslims only left when the island promised to pay tribute.
Crete was raided in 653 AD and Rhodes in 653. The 'Saracens' remained there for 5 years, stripping the island bare, and melting down the giant bronze colossus (one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world). You may have thought the Taliban's desecration of the giant Buddhist monuments in Afghanistan was a novel event! Sicily was likewise raided in 668 AD.
The dream of conquering Constantinople, the greatest city of the east, began in 668 with an amphibious assault.
Legend has it that King Rodrigo of Spain seduced the daughter of Count Julian of Morocco and, in retaliation, Julian sided with the Emir Musa, Muslim ruler of North Africa, who was based in Tunisia. Musa's dream was to invade further through Spain and France and meet Muslims invading from the east, so that Islam would surround the Mediterranean. The Caliph al-Walid authorized the invasion of Spain (710-711 AD), so Musa and his commander, Tarik, with the Count Julian as advisor, crossed from Tangier to Gibralter (then called Jabil Tarik). Spain was an oppressed land in which the peasants were heavily oppressed by the aristocracy. Internal dissension was rife with many pogroms against the Jews. Under the rule of the Visigoths, who were complacent and corrupt, the lack of moral fibre showed. The first battle, on the banks of the Guadelete river, was a decisive victory for Islam. King Rodrigo was killed and his head sent back to Damascus. The Muslims renamed Iberia 'al-Andalus' and immediately began the campaign to take it all and head on for France.
The inhabitants fled and the cities and booty were taken without a fight. Musa arrived with reinforcements in 712 AD, en route to Toledo. He captured several other cities: Carmona, Medina, Sidonia, and Seville. Not surprisingly, some Jews helped the Muslims thinking they were liberators. They soon learned the folly of this belief. By 715 AD nearly all of Spain was under Muslim occupation. [I disagree. Things probably were much better in Al-Andalus for the Jews, although Muslims had the right under Sharia to oppress them and the Jews would have had no legal recourse. As the author later proves:] In 11th century Seville, Jews were not to be met with the greeting, 'Peace be unto you,' because they were not supposed to have any peace! On December 30, 1066, Joseph HaNagid, the Jewish vizier of Granada, Spain, was crucified by an Arab mob that proceeded to raze the Jewish quarter of the city and slaughter its 5,000 inhabitants. [This from that fabled land of tolerance, Andalusia.]
Muslim rulers were not anxious to convert Dhimmis (Jews and Christians living under Islamic rule) as they paid tribute and were the slave labour. They were also easy to conquer as they could not carry weapons, ride horses, wear shoes, ring church bells, wear anything green, or fight back against a Muslim assault! The word dhimmi (Arabic for 'protected person') became historically significant in 628 A.D., when Muhammad's forces defeated a Jewish tribe that lived at the oasis of Khaybar and made with them a treaty known as the dhimma. The treaty allowed Jews to continue cultivating their oasis, as long as they gave Muhammad half of their produce. [Think of the grasshoppers in A Bug's Life.] Crucially, Muhammad reserved the right to break the deal and expel the Jews whenever he wished, a ploy that Islam has worked ever since!
For orthodox Muslims, the world is divided into the dar al-Harb, land controlled by non-Muslims that forms the 'territory of war,' and the dar al-Islam, the land where Islamic law prevails. Historically, a peace is not a peace and a time of peace longer than a decade is occasion not for relaxation but for feeling inadequate and fidgety. Infidels should never be allowed to rest on their laurels, famed 14th century Muslim jurist Ibn Taymiyya asserted, for any land they possess is held illegitimately.
Faced with the knowledge of the fate that awaits those who fall under Islamic rule, Spain began the attempt to reclaim their land (the 'Reconquista') in 718 AD, but it took until 1492 AD to finally overthrow the invader! As with most resistance the fight began in a small way with Pelayo, who ruled a tiny territory and ran guerrilla raids against the Muslims. But the Islamic invasion also had other irons in the fire and began moving north towards France (718-732 AD). Al-Semak led the first invasion across the Pyrenees in 721, establishing a base at Norbonne. He was succeeded by Abderaman, who moved up the Rhône as far as Lyon and Dijon, following Muhammad's creed of especially targeting churches and monasteries, before moving on to Bordeaux. Between Poitiers and Tours, there was a clash between Abduraman and the army of Charles Martel.
In the battle of Poitiers (or Tours) Martel turned back Abderaman's advance, but heavy fighting continued in the south of France, to the west in Langredoc under ibd-al-Malik, and up the Rhône river again, then east to Piedmont in Italy. The Muslims, helped by some apostate 'Christian' allies, began quarrelling with each other and, in 737 AD, Martel recaptured Avignon and continued to recapture Muslim strongholds until he reached Marseilles (739 AD). Martel died in 741 A.D., after succeeding in driving Islam from France.
The conquest of Sicily began in 827 AD, though there had been earlier raids. The conquest took place when Admiral Euphemius of the Byzantine navy rebelled against disciplinary action taken after he married a nun! He joined up with the emir of Tunisia and a slow and bloody campaign began, replete with many massacres. From Sicily the aided Islamic army took other islands (Corsica, Malta, Sardinia, Pantellerva), and then marched on to Italy, reaching Rome and pillaging the churches of St. Peter's and St. Paul's in 846 AD. In Sicily the Arab occupation lasted 264 years, but France continued to repel the Islamic hordes until, in 1091 AD, the Normans defeated the Saracens. Muslim sailors landed at St. Tropez and began a disjointed pattern of conquest throughout the French Riviera (in the periods 898-973 AD), and in the Alps, cutting off France from Italy. There was some inter-marriage which helped turn the tide and weaken the Muslim resolve, but the influence of Rome and the spineless behaviour of other 'Christian groups' also weakened and divided Christendom.
In 961 the Byzantines had retaken Crete from the Muslims. In 1035 the Byzantine general, Giorgios Maniakes, assisted by the Viking, Harold Hadrada, invaded Sicily.
The Reconquista took hundreds of years of bitter struggle to finally rid Spain of the colonial invaders in stages:
Stage I: 710-1080 - retake about a third of Iberia;
Stage II: 1080-1210 - retake another third of Iberia, including Portugal;
Stage III: 1210-1250 - retake final third (except Grenada).
The most important battles were at Simancas, Zalaca, Alarcos, and Las Navos de Tolosa and key 'Christian' leaders were Fernando III of Castile, and Jaime I of Aragon. Most of the 'Christian' soldiers were knights of military orders (un-Scriptural sects) while the Muslims helped to destroy themselves through in-fighting.
The Mongols had been sweeping across central Asia and, in 1258, Hulagu (grandson of Ghengis Khan) took Baghdad. After the adoption of Islam the Turkish advanced their holy war on Europe and, in a short time, they became the most feared threat to Eastern Europe, twice nearly reaching Vienna.
During their over-running of central Asia the Mongols [a.k.a. Tatars] had no formal religion, practising a vague form of shamanism but, after conquering Muslim lands, they adopted Islam (mid-13th century).
1491 brought the final battle of the Mongols in Europe at Zasalvi in Poldavia, where a Polish army defeated a mixed Tatar-Turkish force. At about this time, Orkhan I, the son of Muslim ruler Othman, created the Janissary force which was originally drawn from Christian slaves removed from their families as children. They were raised to be an elite fighting corps, loyal to the sultan alone, and for the next 300 years they were the best fighting force in Europe. These Janissaries were generally 'converted' to Islam, sometimes by force, sometimes 'willingly'.
1371 saw the first major Eastern European response to jihad although the 'Christian' forces were stopped by Muslims at Cenomen. This was the first conflict between Janissaries and their 'Christian' relations, also between Turks and the Serbs. Murad cleverly intervened in the Byzantine civil war between the rival 'Johns', supporting now one, then the other. The sons of John V and Murad began having an affair and also planned to overthrow their fathers, but the coup was halted and Murad enthusiastically launched a new invasion of Europe causing Sofia to fall in 1385 and Salonika in 1387.
In 1453 Constantinople fell, unaided by any European ally except a few hundred troops from Genoa. Beset by internal quarrels, the European states did not take action until it was too late and, before they woke up, Turkey was the most powerful state in Europe. At this time Suleiman the Magnificent was far more powerful than his contemporaries, Elizabeth of England, Charles V of Austria, or Francois I of France. Europe feared the Turks for centuries and the main concern of all the European nations, and every European man and woman, was the terror of the Turks. If you wonder why so many Turks hate Europeans so much it is because they were top dogs for so many centuries and knew that Europe feared the Muslim Turks much more than they ever feared the Nazi Germans or the Communist Russians, and for a greater period of history. While the Nazi peril lasted only 10 years and Soviet imperialism lasted 70 years, the Turkish threat lasted 500 years!
On the night of 28 October the remaining citizens crowded into St. Sophia's Cathedral for a final service. The next day the city was overwhelmed, the soldiers slaughtered, the civilians enslaved, and the women raped (beginning with the convent). St. Sophia was transformed into a mosque, as it has remained to this day.
After the fall of Constantinople, Mahomet II set his sights on Rome and turned his army north toward the Balkans. In the next few years he conquered 12 kingdoms and 200 cities, first Peloponnese, the remaining part of Greece, then Bosnia. At its surrender the king and heir were promised their lives, but shortly afterwards they were executed as the Grand Mufti, in behaviour originated by the 'prophet' Muhammad, argued that agreements with unbelievers were invalid. The population generally converted to Islam so as to avoid the same fate, a crime for which the Serbs, who remained Orthodox, have never forgiven them. Serbia fell next but, for a time, Albania held out under the leadership of John Castriot (a.k.a. Skanderbeg) until 1468. Hungary, still with Janos Hunyadi at the head of the army, stood firm and called for a crusade to protect Belgrade resulting in Hunyadi's victory which proved a major setback to the Ottomans. [Janos Hunyadi had the father of Vlad the Impaler assassinated for disloyalty for sending boys into the Janissary corps of the Sultan. Vlad the Impaler and a brother were hostages to the Turks as boys and Vlad was supported by the Sultan in regaining his throne. I tell you this because as a teen I was fascinated by Dracula and so knew all about Janos Hunyadi already. It's interesting seeing him from a different perspective now.]
The Muslim fishermen of Grenada established a thriving piracy business from bases in North Africa where the chief commodity was Christian slaves from Spain and Italy. The pirates considered their actions to be jihad, citing Sura IX: 5-6: 'kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them, and lay wait for them with every type of ambush.'
The pirate Barbarossa, based in Algiers, brought the territory he controlled into the Ottoman Empire and then became head of Suleiman's navy.
In 1571 A.D., Pope Pius V founded 'the Holy League' in an attempt to unite Europe against the Muslim invaders. Commander-in-Chief was 25-year- old Don John of Austria (who was actually a Spaniard) and, in 1572, the league sent out a navy of 316 ships which met the Ottoman navy at Lepanto where a mammoth battle took place. The result was a 'Christian' victory that annihilated the Muslim fleet, but bad weather prevented a follow up attack on Istanbul.
In 1683 the Ottoman army, led by Kara Mustafa, besieged Vienna. Anxious not to damage the city he intended to rule, Kara Mustafa decided to starve out the inhabitants and Leopold I of Austria fled, issuing appeals for help from all over Europe. The Pope, who had sent murdering 'Crusaders' when his cult was threatened, sent prayers. The French promised not to attack Austria, but King John III of Poland (the same John Sobieski who defeated the Turks in four battles in four days a decade earlier) brought an army and, eventually, 3,000 Polish cavalry and 18,000 Polish and German infantry set out to meet 500,000 Turks. Incredibly, the Ottoman encampment was lazy and ill-planned, and the Polish force routed them in a single charge.
1699 brought the treaty of Karlowitz as the Turks sued for peace - the first time in the history of the Ottoman Empire that it had been forced to send envoys abroad to make treatise with its foes. This was the turning point and, from now on, the Turks were on the defensive.
The French occupation of Egypt commenced under Napoleon, who was unable to ally the Egyptians and this resulted, instead, in its Muslim inhabitants fiercely opposing him and calling for jihad.
Napoleon's attack on Egypt was an attempt to strike against the British in India so, when the British threatened Istanbul, the French joined the Turks, bringing weapons and modern training to the fray. The Americans also clashed with the Muslims, first over the Barbary pirates who attacked US merchants, and then after they were embarrassed by pirates capturing a frigate and holding the sailors hostage. A variety of skirmishes took place, ending with a treaty between the US and Algeria in 1815. In 1816 the British navy bombarded Algiers over its refusal to stop the practice of enslaving Christians and, in 1830, an exchange of insults between the French and Algerians deteriorated into warfare resulting in a French victory and the beginning of the French occupation of Algeria for the next 132 years. Then, in the 1880s, the French took Tunisia. All this was a disorienting change for the Muslims, for whom the natural order of things for centuries had been Muslim rulers and Christian slaves. So the shock of suddenly finding themselves underdog, as the European fighting technology outstripped that of Muslim countries, has remained with Muslims despite the situation remaining essentially unchanged for nearly 200 years.
Following the revolt of Greece the Ottoman empire plunged into a series of wars to try and regain its position of dominance:
Russo-Turkish War (1828-29)
Crimean War (1853-56)
Russo-Turkish War (1877-78)
Balkan Wars (1912-13)
World War I (1914-18)
Russia was Turkey's greatest enemy, and the Balkan states generally gained their independence because of their relationship with Russia. This growing power intimidated Britain and France enough to join the Ottomans against Russia in the Crimea. The wars were conceived almost exclusively as political struggles by the 'Christian' nations, but the rhetoric of jihad still dominated Ottoman propaganda until the mid-19th century and, in the face of revolts in Egypt, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria, and the Russian advance to Edirne (~50 miles from Istanbul), belated military reforms and savage reprisals against rebels could not keep the empire together. In India, in 1877, a gathering of Muslim clerics decided that, for their part, jihad against Britain was unnecessary, as long as she permitted the practice of Islam to her subjects. This was very 'kind' of them but, of course, they had no intention of reciprocating throughout the Muslim world.
The new Balkan states created in the first few decades of the 20th century had no experience at self-government. Their only model of government for the last few centuries had been Ottoman corruption and ruthlessness. The new borders were not drawn with intelligible divisions of ethnicity or language.
Turkey entered WW1 on the side of Germany when the sultan/caliph declared universal jihad against the enemy nations. But in general the call failed and few Muslims in these countries rebelled. The British persuaded the Arabs in turn to declare a jihad against the Ottomans and various rival factions declared jihad on one another which further weakened the empire. The remnants of Muslim power still had one last chance to reveal the legacy of Muhammad's Satanic 'gospel' in 1915, which saw one of the world's great atrocities which is still unrecognised by many so-called civilised nations. The effective massacre of one million Christian Armenians, while being deported from Turkey to Syria, was caused mainly by deprivation of food, water and clothing along the way - e.g. in one group of 18,000 Armenians, only 150 survived to reach Aleppo.
Elsewhere in Europe, 100,000 Christian Greeks were massacred by Turks at Smyrna in 1922. With the destruction of the Ottoman empire, after the last orgy of violence in Smyrna, the caliphate and the rhetoric of jihad temporarily disappeared. In fact, the new leader of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal (Attaturk) detested Islam but, during World War II, the first hints of the return of jihad appeared in Bosnia, unrecognised by most of the world as such until the Serbian-Bosnian atrocities of the 1990's led the media to re-visit the historical records to find the reason for the resumption of atrocities. In the midst of inter-ethnic violence in this region, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, everybody appeared to be killing everyone else and Muslims began banding together, forming religiously defined defence groups.
As an example of the far-reaching influences of Islamic anti-Semitism, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini (who was the uncle of another infamous anti-Semite, Yasser Arafat) travelled to Yugoslavia to preach jihad against the Jews and other enemies of Islam, taking the side of Nazi Germany because they promised a 'final solution to the Jewish problem.' The Nazi S.S. leader, Heinrich Himmler, explained that 'solution': 'The Jewish race is in the process of being exterminated ... that is our program.. .a splendid page in our history.' Himmler cabled Haj Amin the welcome news: 'The National Socialist Party has inscribed on its flag 'the extermination of world Jewry.'' Our party sympathizes with the fight of the Arabs.. .against the foreign Jew.' On Radio Berlin, March 1, 1944, the Mufti, Arafat's uncle, issued the following call: 'Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them.
Islam itself is the major obstacle to peace in the Middle East. The reason is simple: hatred of Israel is central to Islam and is preached in every mosque. The Koran falsely claims that God promised the land of Palestine not to the Jews but to the Arabs. Thus Israel's very existence contradicts Islam and must be dealt with in the manner which the Koran decrees for all non-Muslims ('infidels'): death!

Outside the scope of this author's history is the long Hindu struggle against Islamic conquest. The author also mentions no details of the Muslim Brotherhood and the rise of Hamas and Al Quaeda. Both these are subjects for other posts.
Does it help to see that jihad began with Muhammad and never ceased in all of history? Does it open your eyes to the seriousness of the threat we face now?
I think we're an ahistorical people. Basically it doesn't matter much to us what happened in the past. Ok, I'm not condemning that.
But we should be concerned about what happens in the future because that's what's going to happen to us. And the past can give us an indicatin of what might happen in the future. So if Muslims have been in a neverending struggle to subdue the world for Islam, suppose we take them at their word when they say that is still their goal?
I don't know about you but I just don't want that. They destroyed the Colossus of Rhodes and the Buddhas in Afghanistan. What will happen in 20 to 40 years to the *naked* Venus de Milo, when the population of France is majority Muslim? Does the Louvre ship her for safekeeping to the United States or just surrender her to Muslim fundamentalists for destruction? Can French farmers afford to pay the dhimmi tax?
Change is good if there is a hope of something better but a Muslim takeover is not for the better. Muslim countries are shitty little countries full of corruption and unhappiness, nothing like the great democratic experiment we are conducting here in the west. We may not be perfect but what we have is better than what they have. We just need enough unity to see that and fight for it.