Transcript
Steve Bannon (0:03)
This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people. Reasons I got a free shot. All these networks lying about the people. The people have had a belly full of it. I know you don't like hearing that. I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. It's going to happen.
Ben Harnwell (0:24)
And where do people like that go to share the big lie? MAGA MEDIA I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
Steve Bannon (0:34)
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
Stephen K. Bannon (0:44)
WAR ROOM here's your host, Stephen k. Ban.
Ben Harnwell (0:54)
Wednesday, 11th of June, Anno Domini 2025. Ben Harnwell here at the helm on Steve Bannon's War Room. Welcome, folks. Thanks for tuning in. We're going to carry on something that we launched last week and there are two guests who were here last week, Frank Walker and Jenny Holland. They're sitting by waiting to come in later as we chew over the week's most important developments in the whole arena of Christianity and the fight for the Christian faith in the public square. But my first guest today, Raymond Ibrahim of Raymond, thanks for coming on the show. I first saw your writings in your analysis some 15 or so years ago. I've been following you since then. You had some great contributions to make on Jihad Watch, which is a great website run by Robert Spencer. But in the intervening years, I know you've produced a number of books. We're going to talk about your third one in your trilogy right now. But you've also, you put out stuff with the Gatestone Institute, which I also subscribe to, by the way. You've been involved with the Middle East Forum and I think you've been a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institute. So you've got a whole sack load of experience under your belt. Tell us a bit, though, about your new book, which is the Two Swords of Christ. I know this is the third one in your series, and the first two books have had huge resonance in our sector. In our segment here, tell us before you tell us about what the book's about, tell us what inspired you to write it, because I think in all three of these books there are messages to our contemporary time.
Raymond Ibrahim (2:34)
Yeah. Good to be with you, Ben. Excuse me. Well, it's hard to talk about that book without talking about its predecessors, the other two, and because they all have a sort of synergistic, you know, effect on one another. They complement one another. So just to briefly summarize, the first book, Sword and Scimitar subtitle, 14 Centuries of War between Islam and the west, really traces the history of conflict between Islam and the west, which, of course is its modern term historically was Christendom. And I start really from the beginning with the first couple of years after Muhammad's lifetime with the first battle in 636. And we fast forward all the way until America's first war as a nation, the Barbary wars with Muslims. And I highlight the decisive battles and how they really had a tremendous impact on the shaping of the world so that very few people, you know, no, there's a European, an older European historian, his name is Franco Cardini, and he said very memorably that Islam was a violent midwife to Europe because so much of what Europe really became was a byproduct of continuous aggression from surrounding Islam. And we. And the book also shows Sword and Scimitar that, you know, a lot of the countries or nations or regions that we think or a lot of people think today are, have always been Muslim. The Muslim world, especially the Arab world, all of that was actually the. Was not just Christian. It was actually the greater part of Christendom. And so Islam, I. I show in that book in the first few chapters how Islam just completely, in one century conquered all that region, from Egypt and Greater Syria, the Middle east, all the way to Morocco and then even got into Spain. So a lot of people are not aware of that. So much of what was once Christendom, about 66 or 70%, if you look at a map, was actually permanently swallow it up by Islam and later by the Turks. Asia Minor, what we call Turkey today, was one of the oldest, you know, Christian regions. Epistles are in their Book of Revelation, talks about its cities. So anyway, that's. That's Sword and Scimitar, Defenders of the west was sort of similar, but it was more of biographies. I chose eight biographies of eight men who I identify as defenders of Christendom vis a vis Islamic. And it also moves chronologically. And I know, I know a lot of people find that very inspiring. And that's partially why I also wanted to write it. It's sort of a. It's the same. It's the same theme. But now I'm really, like, zooming in on the lives of specific men, kings and warriors and emperors who, you know, took the cause. And the newest book now, the Two Swords of Christ, is. I originally conceived it as a book about the military orders and. But eventually it just became about the two primary ones really, who spearheaded the defense of Christendom, which would be the Knights of the Temple and the Knights of the Hospital, or the Templars and Hospitallers, respectively. And that, I think, you know, the relevance of that book. Well, what it is is just, it's a history, again, it's a history of those, how they came into being, how the military orders came into being, the, the rationale behind them. And I think that's very important. And in fact, that's the title of the book. Two Swords of Christ is a reference to the passage in Luke where Christ says, you know, sell your garment and buy a sword. And his disciples say, look Lord, here are two swords. And he says, that is enough. Now, even though that verse has been allegorized into absolute meaninglessness today, it actually meant something to pre modern and especially medieval Christians. And what it meant is you had, there's two sorts of evil and you have two kinds of swords to fight against them. You have a secular sword against false physical evil and you have a spiritual sword against spiritual evil. So modern day Christians only believe in the latter one, apparently, and they've completely lost focus on the, on the former, which is a physical sword. So we get into the theology of how they came to be, how they came to rise to power. And you find it amazing again today in our modern Christian Western climate, to be a Christian is, you know, to be passive and to be tolerant and, you know, to be a doormat in many ways. But these guys who were essentially monks and really lived very pious lives were also very violent men. And so, you know, reconciling the twain seems to be odd. And I think it's very fascinating when you understand the sort of theological understanding that they had. You know, another thing that medieval Christians did that modern day, you know, we. Go ahead.
