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- [00:00]
A
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B
It's not Islam. It's Islam and it's not Muslim. It's Muslim and the two words are connected. And what that means is submit or surrender. You know, how did it go? From this guy who was just sitting in a cave, they've conquered most of what was the old Roman world, 66%, let's say, of the original Christian world.
- [01:19]
A
Where are these Islamic chronicles?
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B
Where are they? Yeah, everywhere. The UK's problems, man, they're just kind of mind boggling. Your Islam problem is less about Muslims and it's more about the people who are enabling and empowering them and bringing them in against your will. I mean, I see in the UK radical Muslims screaming, you know, like actual Islamic jihadist stuff and they don't get in trouble, but then when a British person fights back, they get arrested.
- [01:46]
C
Do you think the religion of Islam is compatible with the West?
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A
This episode is sponsored by our friends at Hillsdale College. Right after this episode, go check out the incredible online courses which are absolutely free at Hillsdale. Edu Trigger. Raymond Ibrahim, welcome to Trigonometry.
- [02:07]
B
Happy to be with you guys.
- [02:08]
A
Thanks. It's super cool having you on. We've been looking forward to this for a long time. You are someone who's written a bunch of books, particularly about the Islam and the interaction between Islam and Christianity. And the most interesting thing to start with, I think is to talk about how Islam comes into being. It doesn't exist. Christians and Jews have existed for hundreds of years at this point. Tell us about the start of Islam.
- [02:33]
B
Sure. So as usual, especially nowadays, there's different approaches to history and there's conspiracy theories, etc. So what I'm going to give you is the traditional account of the coming of Islam which Muslims believe and which Christians and non Muslims in general also believe and they have for centuries. And I only tell you this by way of preface because as of late there's a lot of attacks on the early historicity of Islam and Muhammad and did he exist, did he not exist? Much of it I think is kind of polemical. It's the same sorts of things that arose against Jesus, etc. So anyway, the standard theory, or, sorry, the standard idea, the rise of Islam of course is tied up to the person of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, who's born around 570 AD in the Arabian Peninsula. And by the time he's 40, around 6:10, he gets, he starts having revelations, as he calls it by the angel Gabriel, who tells them is the word we get Quran from, which means recite. And so he supposedly starts reciting what becomes the Quran, the verses. And this goes on year after year for decades actually. And these are all. So now you have the Quran is supposedly based on that and you have surahs, which is essentially chapters made of ayaz, which are verses which he supposedly recited because Gabriel told him. And these are supposed to be understood as the words of Allah, the God of Islam, of Arabia, the God. In fact the word Allah is, it's in Arabic it really means God. So it's, you know, when they translate it as God that is not unfair. I prefer using the, you know, the proper name Allah because it's more distinct at any rate. So Muhammad does all this and he starts reciting and telling the people around him, the Arabians, who are by and large polytheists at this time especially he comes from the Kuriish tribe. He starts essentially he tries to, he presents himself in a long line of the prophets that are, everyone knows about all the way from Abraham to Jesus, who of course is a prophet according to the Islamic tradition and according to Muhammad. And anyway, so he preaches basically a sort of staunch monotheism. And that's why if you look at the Quran, there's a lot of things that you know, Christians and Jews would find agreeable. And then the important thing that we have to understand is because I told you it goes on for year after year and it's in stages. And so it actually, the tone of what, what Gabriel's telling him to read kind of changes over time. And it really, if you look at it, it depends if you want to look at it as a cynical non believer or if you want to look at it as a pious believer, as a cynical non believer who's trying to read between the lines, who doesn't believe that Muhammad was necessarily being told to recite from God, whether he made it up or whether, you know, it was an evil spirit talking to him. And these, of course, are the popular non Muslim, especially Christian understandings of what Muhammad was going through. In fact, Muhammad himself, when he was first broached by Gabriel, thought it was a demon because it was sort of, it physically attacked him and squeezed him and he was sweating and he had to go to his wife Khadijah, and she told him, oh no, this is from God. Okay, so even, even in, in the owners, the Islamic tradition itself, it's a little curious, but if you.
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A
Sorry, let me interrupt you very briefly. Who is Muhammad when he begins to receive these revelations?
- [05:52]
B
He's just a, he's a camel driver and he's part of the Kurish tribe, which is kind of noble, but he's a lesser noble who's being, who's. He's an orphan and he's being raised by his uncle. And at this time he's very relatively unknown and insignificant. And he marries Khadija, who's an older woman and who is rich. She's got wealth, she's got property and livestock, and he starts essentially kind of working for her. So that's, that's, so he's relatively an insignificant, obscure person in the larger scheme of things. And that's why in the beginning. So what I was trying to say is there's Muslims understand, two stages. He starts off in Mecca. This is where he's young and where he's born and where he grows up. And this is where he starts getting his early revelations. So from, let's say 610, 622, those 12 years, it's what's called, when you look at the Quran, these are known as the Meccan verses. And at this time, Muhammad is essentially, as I just said, he's insignificant, he's weak, he's preaching, he's an itinerant preacher. And, you know, he has like a handful of followers. And over 10, 12 years, he has maybe 100 followers. Most of them are family and basically. So his message is not violent. It's all about, you have your religion, I have my religion. So when you get moderate Muslims and they quote from the Quran, there are in fact moderate verses that say there's no coercion, which means there's no. Literally, yeah, you can't be coerced. In matters of religion. And like I said, you have your religion, I have mine. So he was preaching that when he was weak and outnumbered because he had to, because he had no military power whatsoever. And then eventually, you know, due to his agitations, apparently the Kurdish, the polytheists drive him out and they mock him. You're not a real prophet, you're making this up, you're a liar, etc. And he ends up going to Medina at the time Yathrib, and there he starts getting a bigger following and he becomes essentially a political leader now. And this is, so this is called the Hijra in the year 622. And he goes to Yathrab. And this becomes, it's so important in Islam because It becomes year one in the Islamic calendar, 622. And he goes there and he becomes essentially a warlord, okay? And now he starts going on raids against everyone who does not submit. Okay? So Islam, you know, I, unfortunately, I always end up pronouncing things like an American. It's not Islam. It's Islam and it's not Muslim. It's Muslim and the two words are connected, right? A Muslim is one who does Islam. So you see the SLM and what that means is submit or surrender, okay? So that was it. So the one who is a Muslim is someone who is submitting and surrendering to Muhammad's call. Because if you didn't, you'd get killed at this point. Now that he's gone to Medina and.
- [08:41]
A
He'S become a warlord to Muhammad's call or to the glory of Allah.
- [08:45]
B
Well, they're the same, aren't they? Muhammad's presenting it as if you do what I say, you're doing God's will. Because I'm the prophet, I'm the last prophet who has come to correct. And the other thing he positioned himself as, as the last prophet, meaning there's been a succession of prophets from, like I said, Abraham, Moses, et cetera, all the way to Jesus. And. But the problem is Christians and Jews, even though they were given scriptures, they're known as the people of the book. They've over the years distorted it. So, for example, when it comes to the person of Jesus, he was just a prophet, but the Christians made him into the son of God. And so, for example, in the Quran, you actually have thundering verses that are attacking Christians and calling them infidels or kuffar, which is a very bad designation because they make Jesus to be the son of God, as one example. And then also attacks on the Trinity and so forth. So he presents himself as I'm coming to basically straighten out the true religion which these Christians and Jews were handed, but they've ruined it by. And that's why they say till today the Bible or what the New Testament, the Old Testament, whichever case has been Muslims claim has been tampered with, it's not the original. Okay? And I gave you the perfect example about Jesus. So they say that that's been added in later and so forth. Anyway, so he, now he goes on the war path and it becomes Jihad. Jihad. And that's just a word which means to strive and to struggle. And I always find it ironic because of the apologists for Islam or let me, let me go back a little bit, Orientalists back in the day Europeans, when they would translate the word jihad and they had to do this, it would just usually translate into holy war, which was fair. I mean it's legitimate when you're translating words, you can't just sit there and break it down and get into the etymology. So that's what they do. But then the apologist lately say no, it doesn't mean that. It means strive and struggle. And it does, but the irony is that actually makes it worse. And it just shows you how multi tentacled the idea of jihad is. Because so yes, it does mean strive and struggle. Jihad, which was introduced again by Muhammad, especially now in this final phase when he's in Medina and he's on the war path. But historically the only way you can struggle and, and, and what is it you're trying to struggle and do? Like you said, it's, you're trying to bring Islamic rule, you're trying to bring the glory of Allah. Okay? And the logic is, and according to Islamic teaching till today, Islam must continue to spread, including by force. Not that you have to convert by force. You're not, you're not supposed to force people to convert, especially if they're people of the book, because they're kind of close enough. But Islamic law has to govern the whole globe. And so if you are a Christian or a Jew, you have to live in tribute, you know, pay tribute and you're like second class citizen. And if you're not, you do have to convert. If you're a pagan, if you're a Buddhist or a Hindu, theoretically you're supposed to convert or die. You can't even pay tribute. So I just tell you that to give you the idea. So when they do jihad and they say it means to strive or struggle, that makes all the much worse because historically the only way you're going to spread Islam was through force and violence. Who's going to accept it? You're not. In Europe, for example, when, when the time came for the jihad to enter there, you know, Europeans fought tooth and nail. I'm sure we'll get into that. But today, of course, you are able to trick people and empower Islam, not through force. So you're. Today you can do. There's all these classifications of different kinds of jihad, which is different forms of struggle. And they actually have, I can give you quickly their names in Arabic, you know, Jihad Alissan, jihad of the tongue, Jihad al Kalam, you know, jihad of the pen, Jihad al mail, jihad of the money, you know, jihad, or basically the baby jihad. All of these in their own way help empower Islam. So with your mouth you can engage in propaganda. With your money, you can support disseminating Islam, you can support terrorist groups. And with your womb, women are encouraged to have as many kids as they can. Muslim women and men also to impregnate women, including non Muslim women with their seed. So you can, you know, inundate the world with Muslims. And these are actually, this is in Mithira. This is actually lots and lots of Islamic clerics. Have modern day clerics articulated what I'm telling you right now. And you know, obviously I jumped from Muhammad to this to give you an idea of what jihad is. But historically, during his time, you can't get away with that stuff. You're not going to through propaganda or lying trick anyone because everyone had their own faith that they were going to fight to the death for.
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A
So he goes on the warpath, he wages jihad. How much is he able to secure in terms of land by the time.
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B
Of his death, almost the whole of Arabia. Wow. We know it.
- [13:27]
C
Yeah.
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B
But I mean there's still. It's funny too because a lot of them just in the hinter regions, not all of it, but a big chunk of it. And his ultimate goal was Mecca, which, you know, he was driven out and then he came back and he conquered it. But a lot of the, a lot of the hinter tribes kind of gave paid lip service and, and then once he died, it was interesting because what happened immediately was the Ridda wars, which is known as the wars of the apostasy. Right. When he died, it was all these tribes especially that were away from the center immediately kind of were like, okay, so the jig is up, he's dead, we're going back to our ways. And the first caliph, Abu Bakr waged another new jihad against the apostates.
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C
What does khalif mean?
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B
Khalifa, which Khalifa in Arabic means successor. So he's the successor of Muhammad. And a caliphate is a form of governance based on the successors of Muhammad.
- [14:19]
A
Just come back to Muhammad for one second because it's quite an extraordinary story. A man, not particularly anybody, really preaches the revelations that he's got, gets chased out of the city he's from, goes to another city and then suddenly he's a warlord who effectively conquers a huge swathe of land. What do we know about Muhammad that meant that he was able to do this?
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B
Well, I mean, keep in mind, by the time he dies, it's not really a huge swath of land. We're talking about the Arabian Peninsula, which looks large but it's mostly desert.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And he has control over various tribes. And I think what you're getting at is ultimately it's not he himself. I mean, one century after Muhammad, Islam now governs all of North Africa, all of the Middle east and is in the middle of France. So that's the historical kind of conundrum that a lot of people have been wondering about. How did it does of course start with Muhammad. Yeah. And you know, how did it go from this guy who was just sitting in a cave talking to Gabriel to a century later? Essentially, you know, they've conquered most of what was the old Roman world and most of it on Christian territory and even further east into outside of the Roman Christian world. So that's always been the great riddle. And earlier historians, including those who are contemporary, believe it would. It had to do with the fusion of jihad, the doctrine of jihad. Because up until then, look, you had war, people engaged in war, non Muslims engaged in war, Christians engaged in war. But it had, especially with Christians, it became a just war type thing. And there were limitations to how you can do it. But with Muhammad, he basically, what I always say is the genius of Muhammad, which goes to your question, is that he basically fused the, the sort of tribal mores of his society and rearticulated them rather than fuse. But he fused them with theology and re articulated them through sort of a theological paradigm. So they became, okay, so what is tribalism? The tribalism of Arabia, which also prevailed in most tribal societies, pastoral societies, was basically, what is tribalism? It's me and my kin, you know, that's it. Everyone outside of the tribe is the enemy. That's how tribalism works. It's not that we're not your friends. You are the enemy. You exist for me to kill and plunder and enslave and do whatever with. And the tribe, of course, you know, the closest is the, you know, the nuclear family. And then it keeps spreading, you know, cousins and whatever. So it keeps growing. What Muhammad did is he maintained that paradigm which was integral to the Arab society that he was born in. But like I said, he re articulated with these Islamic teachings. So now use it. So now you still hate people. The Quran commands Muslims to hate not outside tribal people, but anyone who's not a Muslim. And you can see how that's tribalistic because we are the Ummah, right? The the nation, we are the Muslims. Everyone outside of it, we are commanded to hate. And this is in the Quran. This is Quran 64, where Allah says, you have a good, good example in Abraham or Ibrahim because. And so, and this gives you another really good example of what I'm talking about, how, how Islam appropriates the biblical figures but recasts them in a way that validates itself. So they say. So we know the Abraham from the Old Testament. In the Bible he leaves what God calls him. He leaves, what is it, the land of Ur. And you know, he begins the great migration towards the holy Land which eventually gets conquered, Joshua, etc. But when he leaves Abraham in the Bible, there's nothing about hating anyone. In the Quran, all of a sudden Allah tells Muslims, you have a good example in Abraham because he told his kin, we hate you and enmity will last between us until you believe in Allah alone. And so that became sort of an Islamic. And in the Quran it also says similar things about how a true Muslim can't. He has to have these feelings and disassociate from his father, his mother, his brother, his wife. I have an Islamic cleric recently who I translated a while back who literally says because of this doctrine, you can as a Muslim marry a Christian or a Jewish woman. People of the Book, because that is permitted in Islam. But you have to hate them and you have to show them you hate them. But you can copulate with them and you know, but you always have to make sure they know you, you hate them. Okay, so this is an ironclad teaching. And as you can see how. So this is tribalism, of course, 101, but now it has a theological veneer. And then so what, what do you do in tribes? We hate each other. Well, I go and I plunder you, right? So that became jihad. Jihad is warfare on the outsider who I am already bred to hate, I could say. I mean, in a secular setting, tribalism doesn't necessarily, I wouldn't say teach you to hate the outsider. You just fear him. They're outsiders and you can kill them, but it's much more when you really hate that person. And this is something we can get into because it's really, this is the whole, the heart of the matter to me, this doctrine that I'm belaboring. And in Arabic it's kind of, it's a dichotomized doctrine. It's called al wala, wal bara. Two Arabic words. Wala means loyalty and love for Muslims, which we can put that aside. And what I'm looking at is the bara, which is hatred and enmity for non Muslims. Okay. And so that manifests in jihad. And so anyway, so, so, and then if you die, right, so you're the warrior, you hate the infidel, you do jihad. Now in a secular setting, you. That happens all the time historically, even in the present day. And people go fight to plunder, right? But now if you win, well, you get all these, whatever the booty, you know, animate and inanimate, you can gain. And. But if you die, you get even more. Now you go straight to heaven, straight to paradise where it's again hedonistic and materialistic and you get women and you know, it's very carnal the way it's described in the Quran. Okay. You know, there's beautiful boys circulating around looking like pearls, and these are supernatural women who you will copulate with in perpetuity who are made specifically for sex. Okay. And rivers of wine, etc.
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C
Rivers of wine.
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B
Yeah, yeah. Now you can drink wine once you get to heaven, but not here. I'm sorry, maybe rivers of honey or wine, but I know there is wine.
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C
Yeah, Sorry, I just, that just took me.
- [20:36]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something I'm, I'm being, It's poetic language.
- [20:40]
C
Yeah, okay.
- [20:41]
B
And I, you know, but definitely. But I know, I do know alcohol is permissible then because that's something they talk about. So my point is the genius of Muhammad, if you're asking, is that he just took that tribalism, but re articulated in a way that it became a win win thing. So now when I go and plunder the outsider, the non Muslim, the infidel, I'm the good guy now. I'm pious. And if I win and I subjugate, kill, whatever, rape, take and conquer, well then, you know, I'm even more righteous. And if I die, I get the highest level of paradise. So that was one of the earliest interpretations by non Muslims as to the efficacy of jihad. It's not very popular nowadays. You know, your average secular historian will laugh at this and tell you, no, no, but, but your average secular historian will also tell you no one really knows how to explain the Arab conquests and how rapid they were because, you know, they shouldn't by. By any means. They should not have done what they did. The most popular theory is that the two contending powers that the Arabs eventually in the 7th century conquered Rome or Byzantium and the Sassanian Persians were so weak because they had been fighting each other. So that's kind of the most popular theory. But still, I don't think that's convincing in and of itself.
- [21:54]
A
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- [22:06]
B
It's.
- [22:06]
A
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- [23:12]
C
So, Raymond, so we have Mohammed. By the end of his life, he has conquered the Arabian peninsula. He dies. So what happens next? Who comes after him?
- [23:22]
B
The successor, Abu Bakr, who was also his father in law and whose daughter Aisha, the young child bride of Muhammad, one of his wives that he married. He becomes a successor, but only for two years because he's elderly and he dies. And so his claim to fame is what I was saying. The Ridda wars, the apostasy wars. So he's the one that really consolidates Arabia more than Muhammad. Muhammad. It Begins with. And there's a lot of, you know, like I said, you know, nominal submission to him, but also a lot of real submission. But once he dies, Abu Bakr, those two years, he's known as the guy who brings in and really consolidates Arabia. And then under the second caliph, Omar, Omar the first. This is when the great Arab conquest begin. So from 636, which is when Omar becomes the caliph, this is when the jihad erupts on everyone around. Okay. And of course, so Arabia, the first part they attack is what's called Greater Syria, which really encompasses the entire, you know, eastern Mediterranean Syria. All the modern day countries that you can think of, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, portions of Iraq, people forget were actually very Christian. But they also attack Persia. You know, they go there and even go further. And this is all dirt. So during Omar's caliphate, which I think lasts a decade, that's when you had the massive Arab conquest. So Egypt was conquered around 640, 641. And like I said, all the great greater Syria, there's a pivotal battle, the battle of Yarmouk. I wrote my master's thesis that actually 25, over 25 years ago because it's that pivotal. Historians call it the most consequential battle in history because had the Arabs been defeated at the Battle of Yarmouk, which is a river in, in Syria, it's believed that, you know, history could have been completely different. But because they beat the Romans, that's when it was like a domino effect and they started splurge conquered, you know, Egypt, Jerusalem was conquered a year later, Egypt, like I said, 640, 641. And then further west until by, so by 7 11, all of North Africa has been conquered and now they're in Spain, the Arabs conquering Spain. Now it's important to keep in mind because most people don't get this, but when we talk, and this is by design, I believe, but when we talk about these regions, if I say Egypt or Syria or whatever, Morocco or Mauritania, to give it its historical name, people just had this idea that these areas were kind of always Muslim or something. Those were of course the, the heartlands of Christendom, not Europe. Okay, so if, if you looked at Christianity, the Christian world, and it had, you know, spread very far, especially after Constantine in the early, you know, three hundreds because he was the first Christian emperor. But all of North Africa, right? So from Egypt to Morocco, all of the Middle east, all of Asia Minor, Anatolia, what we call Turkey and then, you know, Europe, of course, you know, southwest of the Danuban Rhine, that. That's Christianity, that's Christendom. Okay. And in that one century that we're talking about, from 632, Muhammad's death, to 732, which is the Battle of Tours, which is in the middle or by Poitiers in the middle of France, they conquered all that, which, if you look at the map is something like, you know, depending on how you look at it, two or three quarters of. Of 66%, let's say, of the original Christian world. And the more important one, because there were five ecclesiastical centers, you know, bishoprics, essentially. Rome is the one that everyone remembers, which was in the West. And that didn't get conquered. The other four did. Right. And that would be Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople itself later got conquered.
- [27:04]
C
So I know we're talking about an ideology, Raymond, that is incredibly powerful. And it's heavily incentivized people to go and be warlike and also to be fearless. Because you know that if you die, you're going to, you know, you're going to get all the ladies. Should we just say so? It's, you know, it's a good deal. And personally, if I was around then I might well have signed up. However, there must have been something else to these, to these warriors, because to take on the Romans, to take on all these ancient civilizations, the Persians, they must have been incredibly well drilled as armies and ferocious fighters. And also highly trained.
- [27:41]
B
Okay? So, yeah, like I said, this is known as one of the big history. Big, big mysteries of history. The Arab conquest. They're not easy to explain. Okay. Some of the theories, there was this massive desiccation of Arabia, they claim, where it was really becoming barren. And so this caused a massive migration that we don't really know about of who knows, the number of Arabs with their women and children and camels, inundating regions. That's one theory. The other theory, which I already mentioned, the most prominent one, which is that the Persians and the Romans were so exhausted from constant warfare. But you can't really say that these guys were well militarily trained. They actually weren't. And when you. And we know their weapons. Their weapons are whatever they could plunder from their slain victims, you know? Okay. I mean, that was it. So. And they didn't really. We don't know of any kind of Arab military, you know, formations. It was just. It was the Bedouin raid where, you know, which continues, in fact, with a lot of. Historically the Islamic nomadic peoples, Turks and Mongols and Arabs, they, they were great horsemen, that's for sure. So I mean they definitely had that lightning speed. The Battle of Yarmouk, for example, we know that one of the reasons that they won is because they were used to desert fighting. And apparently there was a desert storm which the Romans couldn't handle and it blinded them, whereas the Arabs were used to those conditions. But one of the things that I always found interesting is there's a relatively obscure but early chronicle that I, it's from Spain and It's in the 8th century. So it talks about the 700s. It talks, it's very early and it talks about the Arab conquest and it makes this kind of curious remark about how they did not win through manliness, but through stealth and deception. Okay. Which, you know, I mean, I don't know how to interpret that. But basically the idea is they, they weren't, they, they wouldn't fight head on in a kind of, you know, in a sort of chivalry which didn't even exist at that point necessarily kind of way or like a blunt force, it was just hit and run tactics kind of deception, which definitely marks the later, excuse me, way of war of like I said, the Turks and the Ottomans and the Seljuks and these groups. So that's another, you know, thing I'm throwing out there because I, I don't hear people talk about it. But it is in the chronicles. The, the official Christian explanation was God had done this to punish us for our sins. He had raised Amalek to come and punish us because we deserved it. Now that must, for cross dressing purposes. I'm not even kidding. There's an early document that talks and it says, and it says, I have it quoted in my book Sword and Scimitar. I'm forgetting right now, Pseudo Methodius, I think, but it says something like he raised them up to punish us. And it lists all kinds of numbers of immoralities and one of them is because men would dress like women.
- [30:28]
C
There you go. Well, so God is anti trans. Gones are trans fiber anyway. But that must have sent real shockwaves through the Christian world to see this new religion, these new armies fight in this new style, almost guerrilla warfare style and just cut through swathes of Christian heartland.
- [30:48]
B
And that's, see, that's the missing piece of the puzzle. And nobody, you know, invariably when we talk about is Muslim Christian hostilities from a historical point of view. It starts with the Crusades, everyone starts with the Crusades and nobody seems to understand what was building up towards the Crusade, which Included a lot of fear and terror. Because, you know, Bernard Lewis has a great quote which I quote from him and he talks about how, you know, by the time it was, you know, after these Arab conquests and now let's say it's the 8th and 9th century, the Europeans were just traumatized and devastated. And a lot of what we called, or used to call, it's not a very favorable term anymore. But the Dark Ages was in large measure because of these Arab conquests. Okay. And Henry Perrin, for example, he was a historian, 19th century, that was his thesis, which is that the Dark Ages was a byproduct of these Muslim conquests, which took what was once a Roman Christian lake at the time. Right. Egypt had commerce with Spain and with Rome and Syria. You know, it was one all. It was Christendom. And by, by, you know, chopping that in half and essentially appropriating and seizing the older, richer, more sophisticated, more educated region which was the Middle east and the Near East. That's one of the main reasons that Europe entered into this perilous dark age. And Henry Perrin also, you know, he, I think the title of his book or his argument is, or his famous line is that without Muhammad there's no Charlemagne. Okay? So the one necessarily led to the rise of the other and that entire system. And, you know, so most people don't know what built up and what was coming, you know, in the centuries before the First Crusade. They just assume there's these, you know, these powerful land grabbing, hungry, greedy knights want to go and just. I've quoted this quote, I'm going to quote it for you guys so many times. I think I've memorized it. But it just, it shows you the rot of academia and it really underscores what I'm trying to tell you. And it's by John Esposito. This is a professor at Georgetown University. I don't know if he's still there. He's probably very old right now, but he was there when I was there. I went to Georgetown University for a time in Washington D.C. and it's a bastion of kind of Islamic studies and whatnot. But I didn't know this at the time, but it was a very kind of compromised bastion. Anyway, one of his books, which is, it's called Islam the Straight Path. And keep in mind this guy, he was, this is in the early 2000s, let's say he was very, very active and his book came out and he's the editor of the Oxford History of Islam, for example. He was the Guy that, you know, the FBI and the CIA intelligence analysts, they talked to him to understand about Islam and whatever. He has this line in his book, Islam the Straight Path, which verbatim, I might be getting a little off, but he says five centuries of peaceful coexistence elapsed between Christians and Muslims before an imperial papal power play led to a series of so called holy wars that have left an enduring legacy of mistrust from Muslims to Christians. So what he's saying is before the First Crusade, which starts in 1095, everything before that, from moment from Muhammad's life until all the stuff I'm telling you was peaceful coexistence. Okay? That's the official narrative. So that's why I think it's very important to really highlight what you just mentioned, which is this really, this was a traumatizing event, the sundering, you know, the first breakup of Christendom, with most of it being conquered by this hostile faith and the rest of it being bombarded. In the 8th century, all these islands were, the Mediterranean islands were constantly being attacked and conquered. Slave raids were constantly a given thing. The whole idea of so much of what we know as feudalism and had to do with all these, the coasts of the southern coast of Europe, so many people actually abandoned them because they were the site of raids, slave raids coming from the Islamic world now North Africa. And they would habitually go and enslave Europeans and take them back. And the emporium for white flesh was Cordoba in Spain, which was conquered, like I said, starting in 7, 11. And that was where they would sell white flesh, which always fetched a high price amongst the Muslims.
- [34:51]
C
So before we move on to the Crusades, I just wanted to concentrate on the Islamic golden age. Was that around the time that we know as the Islamic Golden Age?
- [35:01]
B
Yeah. So the Islamic golden age. Well, there's kind of two, and the one is the Abbasids in Baghdad. And this is the. The Abbasid empire starts after the Umayyads. And the Umayyads are like, so around 750. Usually the Abbasid golden age would be sometime after 800. Okay. And this is Haroun Al Rashid, who's now allied with or on friendly terms with Charlemagne. But there's also, I suppose, a golden age in Spain, Umayyad Spain in Cordoba. And what, what needs to be understood about the golden age? Is this the. Let me try to start off by giving you an analogy. Right. I forget which country, which Arab country, or you know, in the Gulf, which is the one that has those Skyscrapers that everyone.
- [35:47]
A
Dubai.
- [35:48]
C
Dubai, uae, yeah.
- [35:49]
B
Okay. Imagine, you know, many, many, let's say decades or centuries from now, those buildings are still standing there. And you know, the whole everything's changed and you know, Islam maybe is gone or whatever. And people look at it and go, wow, that was a golden age, that country, that civilization, because look what it led to. Now we would say, well, no, I mean, they had their Islam, sure, but this is actually money. And Westerners built it. Western technology, Western workers. And it just so happened that these Arabs had the money to spend on it. That, I submit to you, is the best way to understand the golden age that happened. Historically, it didn't happen due to anything to do with Islam. Quite the contrary. It happened despite Islam, okay. And it was basically. So let's, if we go to the Abbasid, as I was telling you, which is the primary golden age, this is now, okay? So now the Abbasid empire is more Persianized and it's in Baghdad, okay. And it's heavily Persianized. And at the time, a lot of the people keep in mind when these Arab Muslim conquests happen, most of. So let's say Egypt and Syria, which were highly Christian, let's say in the 8th century, 9th century, 10th century, there's still majority Christian. And there's Jews also as well, especially in Alexandria and various cities. And you have a lot of Zoroastrians in Persia, okay? You have all these different groups who are living underneath now Islamic rule. They're the ones who are doing all the stuff that we call the golden age, okay? It's Christians, it's Jews, and especially it's Persians in the Abbasid era. And it's not because of anything special about Islam. I mean, they are literally not Muslims. And though. And a few of them who are, are literally like they just converted. They're first generation converts, which means they're still primarily whatever their former religion was. So the best that you can say is that the Muslims, you know, sponsored it, maybe paid for it, okay? But there was nothing intrinsic to Islam. And once Islam started to harden, because even at this time, the Abbasid caliphate in the golden age, there's still debates between the various schools of Islamic law and there's some that were actually considered liberal, if we can use that term, but by, I forget the exact time, something like in the 10th century, what's known as the doors of Ijtihed. Ijtihed was a way for the liberals to get around draconian Islam. And the saying is the doors were closed. And basically the hardliners won the Islamic debate. And now, if anything, all that stuff started dwindling away. Okay, so it was never because of Islam, but there was a time where Islam in its early nascent period was, you can say, liberal enough to allow this sort of thing to happen, but the people who were doing the achievements were actually not Muslims. And if they were, they were like literally just converted to join the winning crowd, like a lot of people did over the years, and their mind and the way they thought and their heritage was still non Muslim. So that's why I give you that analogy, you know, of, yeah, Saudi Arabia and these places, if you look at their worldview, their culture, which is based on Islam, well, yeah, it's draconian, Sharia law, living in a desert, polygamy, etc. Etc. But they have wealth and look at what they can have. And they can build skyscrapers, they can have the greatest stuff that Westerners can't have. That doesn't mean it's actually part and parcel of Islam. So that's the best way, I think, to understand it.
- [39:16]
C
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- [40:30]
A
And you mentioned that after the rapid expansion, you might even say explosion of Islam across what was prior to that the Christian world. There were nonetheless lots of Christians and Jews living there and also of course in the Persian side, Zoroastrians which was the religion of Persia until the Islamic conquest. What was life like for non Muslims under Muslim rule?
- [40:58]
B
Well, so we. Okay, let's first start off with what Islam teaches because Islam is very specific about life for non Muslims if you're going to be a. If you're going to be a non Muslim. So again, like I said earlier, theoretically according to Islamic law, you have to be a person of the book to be granted any measure of tolerance.
- [41:18]
A
All right, Monotheistic, you have to believe there's one God.
- [41:20]
B
Yeah, yeah. And.
- [41:22]
A
Well, or do they mean specifically Christians and Jews?
- [41:25]
B
No, well, that's the question. The term is ahlul kitab, which means literally the people of scriptures or the book. And the idea it was more or less the Jews and the Christians, but then later on it sort of became, it was extended to people who weren't Jews and Christians and that was because they got tired of the bloodbath. So for example, for five centuries, I want to say between let's say the year thousand to fifteen hundred Muslims, according to well documented historians, historical sources. And the historian I'm thinking of, I know his name, but he's an Indian historian. And anyway, he says that in that five centuries 80 million Hindus were slaughtered because they weren't granted the option of becoming dhimmis. Which Christians and Jews could, you could keep your religion, you just have to pay extra tribute and you of course have to be a second class citizen which was not in any way, shape or form anything.
- [42:22]
A
Let's dig into that. So you have to pay Jazia. Yeah, don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly.
- [42:27]
B
No, yeah. Jizya.
- [42:28]
A
Jizya. I thought you laughed in my face for the pronunciation.
- [42:32]
B
No, it's just a funny word.
- [42:34]
A
So you have to pay jizya and you are allowed and not allowed certain things. Right, so talk to us about what that looks like.
- [42:43]
B
Okay, so it goes back according to Islamic teaching. Remember the caliph Omar? Yeah, the second caliph. So apparently when he. Historians aren't sure where, but the Islamic tradition believes it's when Jerusalem was conquered in 637. And he came there, there's this big, you know, narrative about how he came there and whatnot, but supposedly he made a pact, it's called in Arabic Ahd Omar or the pact of Omar with the Christians. And it basically told them, here's what you have to do in order for us to not kill you, basically. And according to this pact, things that they could not do, they can't build churches, they can't repair Churches, they can't sing out loud. They can't show a crucifix or a Bible around Muslims. They certainly can't try to proselytize. They can't stand in the way of their own relatives turning Muslim. Okay? And it's a number of lists I actually translated in one of my books, and it's called the Conditions or Stipulations of Omar. Some of them are, if a Muslim wants your seat, get up and give it to them. If a Muslim is traveling and wants to enter your house, you have to let him live there. Okay? So it's not stuff that you necessarily want to enjoy, but what it really coalesced around is, it's still evident till today, okay, Is, you know, you're just, you know, it's. It's. I guess to give you a good analogy, is kind of think of, you know, how blacks were treated in America and, you know, before civil, Civil rights and that. Which is like, kind of like, who do you think you are? Okay. You know, to even think you're my equal. That kind of mentality is what prevailed in these Islamic societies. So if you're a Christian or a Jew, you better know your place and don't complain and don't. If someone, if they abuse you or Muslims rise up and commit an injustice against you, the law is not going to come on your side. That continues till this very day. Even in, you know, the things about like building churches, that's still very evident in places like Egypt, you know, where they. It's so hard for them to get it. You know, it used to be actually you needed a presidential decree to build a church in Egypt, okay? And now it's supposedly become lenient. But a lot of that people say it's just for show, for Western consumption. But in Egypt, constantly, just this weekend, I covered a story which has happened countless times, including going centuries back, which is basically some sort of romantically, is on Guru, between a Christian man in Egypt and a Muslim woman. And so the Muslims, after Friday prayers rose up, completely devastated the Christian village or where the Christians were living. Burned homes, attacked through rocks, rioted, screaming Allahu Akbar. And why? Well, actually, because according to Islamic law, a Muslim man can marry a Christian or a Jew or a person of the book, like I said, but he has to hate her. But a non Muslim cannot marry a Muslim woman. And the obvious reason in the Islamic mentality is the man's in charge. So we cannot have an infidel in charge of a Muslim. Okay? But it's okay if the Man's a Muslim and the infidel, it's already a second class, so it's a woman, you know, that's the mentality. So that's why they got angry. But this story has happened countless times in Egypt where they get up and they engage in collective punishment which the, the conditions of Omar, which I was describing to actually it says if one of you does this, then the pact is broken for all of you. So it actually does promote collective punishment of the dhimmis, as they're known. And this, like I said, it just happened this week, it happened maybe two weeks before that because there was a rumor of a church being built also in Egypt. And it goes way, way back. So my point is that it's actually a written, codified thing and it's become absorbed in Islamic law and Islamic Sharia, but it's also just part of the society because it's a supremacist idea. Okay, I'm better than you. You're the dirty kafir, you're the infidel, you're the Christian, you're the Jew, whatever. So how dare you want equal rights with me. That's the overarching principle and it continues to manifest itself with extreme regularity.
- [46:36]
A
And your thesis essentially is, if I'm understanding you correctly, is you have this rapid expansion of the Islamic world from nothing into taking over most of the Christian world, including its kieras that would be equivalent of like most of Europe and half of the United States being conquered by Hindus. Right, over what, 100 years? Something like that?
- [46:59]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, let's say the, I mean in the first 10 years a huge chunk, you know, Egypt and Syria were taken and which is by Surrey, I mean the Middle east and Egypt and most of what we would call Libya, though there wasn't much there anyway. And then you know, Tunisia. I mean think about Augustine, St. Augustine, who's known as the father of sort of the western theology. Well, he was from North Africa, from Hippo, which I believe is in or in Tunisia, that too was conquered very early, maybe by like 650s.
- [47:29]
A
So continuing my metaphor, let's say for just for the avoidance of any triggering too far, the Hindus have taken over most of Europe and half of the United States and North America. And what you're saying is that plus the way that the pre existing population were being treated by the conquerors is what gives rise to the Crusades.
- [47:54]
B
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean what I, what it depends on the, the time we're talking. I still haven't gotten to what really gave rise, which is similar, it was more of the same. Okay, so in other words, what I'm talking about is, you know, the seventh, eighth, ninth centuries. And that's what's going on. And, you know, Europe knows about it. Europe is also bombarded, especially from Spain, because that's now the, the latest. They're in the continent, right? They're in Europe. But right before the First Crusade, there was a new sort of outburst, Islamic outburst. And now the Turks come onto the scene. They start coming in really in the 9th century as slaves, slave soldiers. And they're very good warriors. So the caliphates start bringing these Turks from Central Asia as slaves, and they Islamize them and they just trained them to be great warriors, jihadists. And before long, they essentially take over. And so this is the Abbasid Caliphate, the Golden Age Caliphate. And before long, you know, you have these, the Turks, especially with the Seljuk Empire. This is now we're coming right before the First Crusade. They essentially, they keep the Abbasid Caliph as a puppet, right? But now they're the real power and they're the sultan. In fact, the word sultan means power holder. So now, so let's say, okay, the first crusade is 1095. The Turks really start spreading and causing havoc around 1037. And it's especially against the Armenians. You know, you talk about the Armenian genocide. It actually goes back a millennium before what we think. You know, it's not in the year just 1900, early 1900s or late 1800s. It actually goes back to the year 1000. And if you read the sources, and I have in mind, especially Matthew Vadessa, who's a near contemporary, what the Turks were doing to the Armenians and of course, other Christians as they went further west into Asia Minor is just mind boggling. I mean, it talks about tens of thousands of Armenians just being massacred, thousands of churches being set on fire. The capital at the time, Ani, was known as the, as the city of 1001 churches, all of which were just completely devastated and torched. And, you know, it's also interesting to note, and a lot of historians don't do this. They make you think, okay, these Seljuks were nominal Muslims, you know, yeah, they're called Muslims, but they were just, you know, fighters who were conquering whoever. But in the sources, you see the religious hostility, okay, where they like to go and desecrate, break crosses and decapitate statues and gouge the eyes of icons and, you know, of course, and desecrate tabernacle or the Art, the altars. So that also comes out. And this is now going on until the year 1071. Now, in 1071, you have the pivotal Battle of Manziker, which is in that area. It's actually, it's again in Asia Minors, sort of near Lake Vaughan, I think, again by the Armenian areas. And the Eastern Roman Emperor, the Byzantine Emperor, marches one of their largest armies to stop these Turks, and they lose. And it's one of the worst. And the emperor gets captured, the first one in like a thousand years, I think. And so now after that, they start just spreading further west and cover all of Asia Minor, Turkey, till they're not far from Constantinople. Now, at the same time, these same Turks are. From the moment the Holy Land was conquered, it was very early on, a lot of these caliphs, including the Abbasid, like I told you, who was. Who was sort of diplomatic relations with Charlemagne, they allowed Christian pilgrimage was very important to Christians, okay? Especially after Constantine, you know, really rebuilt Jerusalem, built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher around where Christ was buried and crucified and resurrected. Was a huge complex. So pilgrimages were a major thing. And a lot of Muslims allowed Christians to come, especially during the Abbasid period. You have to pay, of course, and, you know, put up with all sorts of things, but they would come. But now these Turks, they really went. They ran havoc and they started attacking pilgrims. They started charging them even more money and then not letting them go. And one of the worst, one of the worst anecdotes that was pretty famous that happened in 1064 was a large German pilgrimage went to the Holy Land. And among them is described, it's an early source, they describe a very beautiful abbess, head nun, who was told, don't do it, because everyone knew it was dangerous to go on pilgrimage. But she wouldn't relent and she went and they say all of them were killed by the Turks and she was gang raped until she died. And then it says in the end. And the Turks did this very frequently to pilgrims. And of course, they were desecrating the Christian holy sites, including the Holy Sepulcher. And actually before that, before the Turks, Just, just. So you don't think it's just the Turks, but a fatimid caliph from Egypt, Hakimb Amrullah, in the year 1009, actually destroyed the Holy Sepulcher, raised it to the ground, and according to Muslim sources, and I'm thinking of El Maqrizi, who's an Egyptian historian, he wrote that this guy, this fatima Khalif, destroyed 30,000 churches and synagogues in Egypt and Greater Syria, which makes sense because like I told you, that was a very Christian, heavily Christianized region, one of the oldest. Okay, so. And at that time, in 1009, the Pope of the time wanted to call a kind of, of a proto Crusade. They didn't have it at the time and nothing happened. But then as like I said, so now it's building up and you're getting these Turks doing what they're doing, and they're killing European pilgrims. And now the Emperor of Constantinople, they're right there at his doorstep. You know, they're in Asia Minor, right across the straits from Constantinople. So he calls for aid. And that was the origin of the First Crusade.
- [53:37]
A
And what was the stated objective of the First Crusade? What did they actually want? For the pilgrims to be able to go unmolested or to recapture the land or what was the plan?
- [53:47]
B
Well, the ultimate goal, of course, was to have pilgrims to be able to go to the Holy Land unmolested. That was the number one. But it was obvious that's not going to happen. It hadn't really happened even before the Turks. Like I told you, there was a lot of exploitation and abuse, but now they were just running amok and killing anyone and everyone and abusing them. So it was basically time to retake the Holy Land, which used to be Christian before the Muslims took it, because you couldn't rely on the Muslims anymore. So it was time to retake and rededicate and, you know, cleanse the Holy Land from these people. That was number one. But also the number one, the second one, which is not really remembered much or talked about is, was to help fellow Christians, the Eastern Church. The, the call from, you know, according to some historians, that was the chief catalyst. One historian recently wrote a book, Francopan, I think is his name. That's the whole thesis, which is this was really orchestrated and ultimately because of Alexius, the emperor, who needed. Because. Because of what was happening to him. And so one of the verses, even that biblical verses, a lot of Christians and you see, it was basically, you know, where Jesus says, love God with all your heart and love your fellow man. So loving God was going. Because holy places mattered then and it was going to liberate his holy, the Holy Land. And loving your fellow man was helping these Eastern Christians and pilgrims who wanted, you know, to go and not be molested. So that, and it, you know, it's just sad because a lot of people and historians will argue, you know, give you these cynical motives, you know, oh, this is Second Sons. This was an old thesis that I think goes to, you know, Runciman, Stephen Runciman, where basically, oh, a lot of these were just second sons who just had no inheritance. So they just wanted to go. And it was. It was a colonizing mission that had no rhyme or reason. Well, if you look at the sources, that's all they talk about is what's happening to Christians, how they're being slaughtered, how the Holy Land is being defiled and polluted and how we have to do something about it. So, I mean, that is unequivocally clear from an objective reading of the sources.
- [55:47]
A
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- [56:58]
B
Yeah, really. The only one that was successful was the first one. It did achieve its mission. It liberated, you know, Jerusalem and you. And not just Jerusalem, but various. They had various counties and the first one being Odessa and principalities. So they, you know, they carved a whole niche that became part of Christendom and pilgrims were allowed to come and whatnot. But then after that, yeah, I mean, every other crusade, the second was a complete disaster. The third had made minimal gains with King Richard, but it didn't. It didn't re win Jerusalem, but it made good gains because right before it, right before the Third Crusade, it looked like Saladin was going to completely eject the Crusaders once and for all. That was his goal. But with, with the third, that's the second most successful, King Richard actually gave kind of a breathing space back to the Christians and re won various regions. And then, you know, the Fourth Crusade, it's neither here nor there. I just went spun off course completely.
- [57:57]
A
Well, they sacked Content.
- [57:58]
B
That's the one where they sacked Constantinople. And I mean, that's the big aha moment that everyone loves to, like, harp on, you know, the Fourth Crusade. And it's just. I don't find it as remarkable as most people think. If you really look at started off as a normal crusade and you had all these various crusaders, I think, from France wanted, you know, commissioned Venice to build a lot of ships for them. But when the time came, only one third of the Crusaders actually showed up. The rest came to the Holy Land. I think they were going to Egypt again. That was the target. But they went through different routes and they couldn't pay. And, you know, the Venetians just insisted. So the Venetians kind of said, all right, you know, we'll forgive the dead, but come help us conquer these guys, fellow Christians who are creating problems for Venice. The long story short, though, is the Pope was completely against all this, you know, and if you're. If you're going to judge an institution, you have to look at its head, not the individuals who go off, you know, go off on their own thing. And a lot of the Christians, even when they made this pact, left. So it was a small core that went and sacked this. I think it's Zora, you know, on behalf of Venice. And then long story short, you know, they still were trying to go, and they ended up, you know, making an alliance with some ousted Byzantine prince. And, you know, and they helped him. And this goes on for two years, but then they don't get what he said. They should get the reward or whatever. And finally they just ran amok and conquered it. And they all got excommunicated. Pope Innocent III was just completely disgusted with the whole affair. So my point is, you know, of course, things go off the rail, but officially, the representatives of the crusading venture were completely against it, you know, so these individuals did what they did. But anyway. And then the Fifth Crusade comes, and that goes again to Egypt. And that almost won. They almost were victorious because before long they realized you can't. You can't hold Jerusalem without conquering Egypt. And so a lot of them, that's. It became the focal point, but that also failed. And the Sixth Crusade isn't really a crusade. It's, you know, the Emperor Frederick, I forget which number, but he actually reclaims Jerusalem and without war. And he's hated because the way he did it is seen very cynical. And he, in fact, is kind of a cynical guy. He's a very interesting character. I talk about him in that book, actually, but he kind of, you know, he just mocks Christians and Jews and Muslims and things are all, you know. But he'll give lip service to whoever. Anyway, it was seen as a cynical deal that was not good or advantageous. And before long, it all does unravel again. And one of the worst attacks comes soon after, which prompts the seventh crusade in 1244. The attack by this kind of Muslim, Egyptian, Tatar, or they're both Muslims or some savage group, the Quarrezians, who come from the east and they engage in some of the most obscene atrocities against the Christians of the Holy Land who are already quickly dwindling. And then you get the seventh crusade, King Louis St. Louis, another abysmal failure, you know, but the guy meant very well. That's why he became sainted. And then the Eighth Crusade is him again. And then he finally dies and that fails. And then you have the Ninth Crusade, which is very, very small scale. And it's Prince Edward who becomes King Edward Longshanks and not the bad guy in. Right. In Braveheart. In Braveheart, who's actually kind of. He seems like a good guy, though, when you read the actual sources. But. And the Longshanks apparently was very tall. So anyway, yeah, ultimately, the Crusades were a failed venture. But when you really look at, you know, the wise, if anything, they're actually more impressive because of how long they. They managed to last against the odds that they were in. Remember, this is a small group of European Christians traveling to the heart of the lion's den and trying to hold on to it. You know, the differences between the Crusades and the Islamic conquests is the Islamic conquests were basically, we're going to conquer anyone who's an infidel. And so that what that meant is my immediate neighbor. Which also meant I got all this. I got all the resources. I'm not deep into enemy territory. Behind me are all my. My whole world. Right, Right. I have an endless supply. So I'm here and I conquer here, and then I consolidate, then I go here and I conquer. And that's exactly what they did. But the Crusaders, for ideological Christian purposes, went all the way into the heart of it and became a tiny group that was continuously dwindling. Okay. This is what gave rise to the military orders who really became the heart of it. These guys who were just so utterly committed. But. And especially as Europe became More and more secularized, the numbers became ridiculous. So habitually in these battles, you would get a guy like Saladin or Bay Bars, they would show up with just ridiculous amounts of numbers, which makes sense because this is their homeland. They can raise any number of armies. And the Crusaders are always limited to a few hundred thousand guys. So if anything, it's actually remarkable that they were able to hold out that long.
- [63:04]
C
So we've been focusing a lot on the Christian and Muslims. So where were the Jews in this? Because obviously they were in the Holy Land. And I mean, we can see what happened to Jewish people, particularly with Israel and so on and so forth. But what role did they play in all of this? Were they seen as part of it or were they just marginalized then very much a second secondary player?
- [63:30]
B
Well, I mean, it depends on which era and which country and which region. So, you know, the Jews are especially prominent in Spain. That's often where you hear about them, because you had, of course, Muslim control in the south, and then you had the small Christians in the north who began the Reconquista from the north and spread downwards. And then you had the Jews mostly in the south, where also other Christians as dhimmis lived. And it really depends. Oftentimes they were actually seen as working and siding with the Muslims. And in fact. So, for example, when it came to, you know, the famous expelling of Muslims, it was. It was Muslims and Jews who were expelled in 1492 out of Spain. And it was kind of for the same reason, because they were. And this is another very complex topic. But, you know, when. When. So we'll have to. I guess we should talk about Spain because it's really a microcosm of everything we're talking about.
- [64:21]
C
Absolutely.
- [64:22]
B
And it, you know, and a lot of things are very clear when you look there. But so, as I said, Spain gets conquered in the year 7 11, and before that it's Christian. Okay. It was a rule by the Visigoths. And anyway, a small remnant survives of these with this God, and they get holed up in the north and some in the mountains of Asturia in the northwest. And even the Muslim sources kind of say, what are they going to do? Who cares? Let them live in, like, live up in that crag, you know, like a bunch of bums. They're like. It literally calls them like 12 people living on honey. Anyway, before long, they persevere, the Christians, and they start what's called the Reconquista, slowly kind of coming southwards and fighting. But before that, The Muslims in El Andalus, as it's known, okay, Spain. And that name, by the way, is, you know, the Vandals, like the Visigoths. The Vandals were another kind of Germanic tribe, but they entered into North Africa, so they were familiar to Muslims. And so when they came to Spain, Visigoth, Vandal, same thing, but they just knew the word Vandal. So Vandal L? N Duluz became the name. That's why it's called that. So Muslim controlled Spain, you had what we were discussing, which is this dhimmi system. If you're a Christian or a Jew, you live second class, right? And they lived in their own communities at this time. They didn't really consort with each other to a large extent. And then up in the north, you got the free Christians who are making a comeback. Okay? And so that's the context. And this goes on literally for centuries until, you know, Spain, it was known as the Spains because it was really just various kingdoms. Aragon, Castile, Leon, Portugal became its own. But when it gets unified with Ferdinand and Isabella, right, in the 1400s, they finally managed to get the last Islamic stronghold, which is Granada. And it's had like half a million Muslims. And what happened is they let them live. They said, okay, fine, you guys can stay here. You can even have your own Islamic culture and your own law and whatever. And what. And. But what happened is the Muslims were always seeking to subvert. So on the one hand, they acted like they were friends or, or being docile. On the other hand, they were conniving with the Ottomans and the Barbary Muslims to help try to bring Spain back to Islamic rule. And so in this context, this is when. This is why. So, for example, you know, you hear these crazy things and it. The medieval Christians just look so intolerant and just evil. But here's the backdrop. So you hear how the Christians said, oh, you have to become Christian or get out. Well, that was because before that, they gave them the right to do their thing. So the idea of Christianizing someone was not because I'm a fanatic and I don't believe in you having your own faith. It was that you're never going to stop trying to kill me until you become like me. As long as you maintain that tribalistic Islam, which they understood, you're going to be. You're going to obviously work against me. So they came up with a decree which is basically, become Christian or leave. Go back to North Africa. And then a fatwa appeared. Fatwa is a decree by a Learned Islamic sheikh, which promoted the concept of Takeyah. And Takeya in Islam is basically, you can. If you're under duress or being threatened by the infidel, you can lie, you can say cheat, you can say anything. You can even engage. You can get baptized, you can engage in communion, you can do all these things. As long as in your heart, you're still working, you're still striving for Islam. And then also overnight, like, half a million Muslims from Granada became Christian. And the Crown thought, okay, you know, but then what happened is generation after generation, and you have the Christians saying, these guys were acting like they were better Christians than us. They literally just. Everything about them was more Christian. They went every Sunday, but then they found out they were still Muslim at heart and still actually clandestinely working to somehow subvert Spain to Islamic rule. And so that's when it finally came to, okay, even if you convert, it doesn't work, so you have to leave. Okay? Now the Jews are also. And so the Inquisition, that's. That was the. The initial Inquisition start in this context. Because they're. You're saying I'm a Christian, but you're really a Muslim, right? And they had their. They have words for them both for the Jews that were doing this and the Muslims who were doing the morisco is the Muslim. And I. I forget the Jewish word or the word for the Jews that were doing Moreno. Anyway, and so the Jews, you know, despite. Despite how things are today, the Jews were often actually conflated with Muslims. Okay. And. And oftentimes they did work and help them. Not always. And sometimes the Muslims turned and attacked on the Jews as well. I mean, so it's. It's kind of complicated. You can't say, you know, it was always this way or always that way. But for example, when, you know, another famous instance where people attack the Crusaders is during the First Crusade, the People's Crusades or the Peasant Crusade went off track again and attacked Jews. Okay. And again, the church and the nobles were against that, because that's not. But the logic was, why are we traveling and suffering and going all the way there to fight these Christ enemies when they're right here amongst us? So, yeah, the Jews during this time, sort of. I think maybe they had a survival instinct and whoever. Whoever, whether there was a Christian or the Muslim, was doing better. They probably would ally with or try to be on that, be on their good side, which kind of makes sense from a survivalist point of view.
- [69:56]
A
So, Raymond, we get. We. We've got to the Point where we've got peak Islam. Islam is at its strongest. It is dominant across southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East.
- [70:07]
B
We actually haven't though, just so you know, because I didn't even get into the Ottomans who conquer southeastern Europe. Yeah, we can talk about or not, but I mean that still isn't even the peak yet, but. Okay.
- [70:15]
A
Right. Well, I guess what, where I want to take this bit of the conversation now is Islam is dominant and remains dominant for many, many centuries. And as you say, all the way through to the Ottoman Empire. It gets as far as India, the Mongols at some point. Right. You know, I was just in Uzbekistan a few. The. The. The great warlord Timor.
- [70:39]
B
Length.
- [70:39]
A
Yeah, well they don't like it when you call them that. Timo the Great, not the lame. Yeah, they don't like you calling him lame. Timor the Great as far as the north of Russia, this guy conquered one as far as Byzantium in the west, as far as China and the east on and the Mongols are sent. Right. And then we arrive today. If you're born today, your instinctive understanding of the Muslim world is it's in the Middle east, objectively speaking, technologically quite backward, militarily quite weak, not dominant around the world and is at least on the surface. This is just how you would think if you were born today, engaged in some sort of guerrilla warfare against a much more powerful Western force. That that would be not putting my own perspective on it, but that would be the impression you'd get. And you mentioned Bernard Lewis. He's obviously, you wrote a whole book about this. What went wrong? How do you get from bam, massive Islamic expansion, conquering all the bits of the world that really matter at that point, at least from a, you know, Western perspective, to the complete collapse of that dominance and where we are today. Chances are if you're a trigonometry fan, you understand the importance of free speech and privacy. And you'll also probably know the founder of Unplugged, Erik Prince, because he's been a guest on our show. Eric created the upphone by Unplugged to solve a huge problem. Our smartphones have become the most powerful surveillance devices ever built. Governments want back doors. Corporations harvest your data and sell it. Both sides chip away at your freedom. The upphone is different. It's built from the ground up for privacy, with its own operating system, no big tech backdoors, and a built in firewall that blocks thousands of trackers every day. I have one of these because I want the peace of mind that my personal Data isn't being sold or spied on. Go to unplugged.com trigonometry and use our code trigonometry for $20 off a protective case with the ARB phone.
- [72:53]
B
All right, so let's go back a little to the colonial era, because this is really where what, what this, what you're describing, Islam stays dominant. And you're right, people forget that Islam, especially the Ottoman Empire, was the powerhouse. You know, it's. It's ingrained in people's mind as if Europe was always super powerful and everyone else, all these brown people, were just being abused and scared of Europe. It was the opposite, okay, as we discussed, but especially with the rise of the Ottomans and these guys last from 1300s to the 1900s. And in 1683, they're in Vienna, okay, with two to 300,000 fighters surrounding it. So, I mean, so keep that in mind. We started off in the 600s with Muhammad and the first attack on Christian territory in 636, 1683. Now we're talking a thousand years later, they're around Vienna and they're using the same logic and rationale, and they're talking about Islam and jihad and you have three choices, etc. Etc. Okay? And it's not even just that. 1683, to bring it to this country, the United States, its very first war as a nation in. In the. As a nation meaning after independence from Britain.
- [74:01]
A
No need to rub it in.
- [74:02]
B
Yeah, I was trying to word it correctly. But after that, and now it's its own country. Its first war is with Muslims, the Barbary wars. And again, they're acting exactly on the same logic. And Thomas Jefferson, this great paragon of enlightened thinking, didn't know Islam as well as he should have because when he met with what the Barbary parties are doing is actually attacked. So this is very interesting because it goes back to the idea of Jizya. So a lot of these European powers, and I'll get to. I'll get to your point, but I'm just trying to build it up, show you what happened. But a lot of these European powers, instead of fighting with the Barbary Muslim pirates of North Africa, whose entire economy consisted of slave raids on Europeans as far as Iceland, they would go and enslave them, started just paying them off, which the Muslims took as Jizya tribute, okay? Now, when the U.S. the United States, America broke away from Britain, it was no longer covered by Britain's Jizya payments. And once the Muslims found that out they started attacking American vessels in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean and enslaving them and engaging all sorts of horrific, you know, abuses against them. I talk a lot about that in one of my books, Sword and Scimitar, actually, I have a whole chapter about it. Because if you really read about what was happening to European slaves, including these American ones, it was really sick stuff. Anyway, so that's what provoked the first war of America with the Barbary. But when Jefferson and John Adams met, they tried to, you know, find a diplomatic solution. So they met with one of the ambassadors from Barbary, Abdul something, and they say to him, hey, why can't we just have peaceful trade and work together, etc. Typical Americans. And he basically, he. He sounds like an ISIS guy. He goes, our prophet and our holy book says, you are the infidel. You're the enemy, and it's our right to plunder, kill and enslave you until you acknowledge Allah alone. Okay, so my point is just to give you a sort of totality. We started in the 600s. This is now 1800, first war of America. Same mentality, same logic. Now, what's interesting also about the 1800s is that same year around the first Barbary War is around, I think 18 or 1801, it start. And. But in 1800, Napoleon enters Egypt or, I'm sorry, 1798, and he easily conquers Egypt, okay? And this is known also as kind of the beginning of the colonial era. So the colonial era, you see Islam go from this super powerful thing and it starts now. It becomes now Europe is super powerful technologically, militarily, economically, and it starts spreading out and conquering its former foe. People don't realize this, but to the colonial powers, a lot of them saw themselves as crusaders. They were continuing the war. I forget his name. Is it Allenby. But some guy came and, you know, when they entered and conquered Syria, went up to Saladin's tomb supposedly and kicked it and said, we're back. Meaning, you know, the Franks or the Crusaders are back. So a lot of these Europeans, they still understood it that way. But why it happened? I think because is the Islamic world, as I was kind of telling you, its entire economy was based on war and plunder and slave. And the slave system, okay? They never produced anything the way Europe eventually went to, especially technologically and militarily. So I think on once, once any Muslim region, power is unable to conquer and plunder. It has no economy, and it starts falling apart. And this happened before. So the Ottoman Empire still Persists. And why does it persist? Because it westernizes. Whereas the rest of the Middle east, you know, Egypt, and which was by then sort of run by the Mamluks and all these other areas are completely now just spent. You know, there's nothing to plunder, there's no economy. Everything's falling apart. It's very easily taken over. But, but the Ottomans, they westernize, which is ironic because the Ottomans were the chief, you know, standard bearers of jihad. They actually took to jihad and articulated it more than the Arabs, their forebears did. That was their thing. Okay. And you know, under Autoturk, they actually got rid of the Arabic script, took the Roman Alphabet, dressed in Roman, I'm sorry, not Roman, Western attire, shaved the beards, et cetera, et cetera. So everyone became westward looking, including, you know, the Muslims who could. Because that was the way to, you know, win. And the Islamic way, now that it's. It kind of spent, it became a spent force at this point. And it was kind of an anachronism, really didn't have much kind of the way it did things was no longer going to work in this new world with Europe the way it was. And so that's. So the colonial era is a very important thing to keep in mind because, you know, these, it's, it's funny too again. Here we go. The, the colonial, colonial era. And what happened nowadays is presented so horrible. You know, these evil European white guys going into, you know, these countries, not just Muslim countries, India and colonizing. But what's funny is if you read the written, the writings of natives from the colonial era, they talk about it as the greatest time. This is the time when we had learning, when we had medicine, when we had science and technology. Because the Europeans also brought this stuff with them. They did, right? Whereas, you know, if you look at places that Islam conquered, there's places in Spain where they had that constant war in the middle. You know, you had the Christians in the north and the. That are just until now like infertile and just totally devastated because so at least, you know, the Europeans brought all this stuff. And a lot of this is the time when. So here's an irony. You know, when I think of, when I think of religion or whatever, someone becoming conservative and clinging to the old ways, I just can't help but think that through time things become more liberal. What's happening is actually the opposite in the Islamic world. If you go to the Middle east in the 1930s, way, way more liberal and Western looking than anything today. The People weren't resentful. They were actually trying to Westernize. They dressed like Westerners. They, the women didn't have the hijab. They dress. They were decent. I don't mean in a promiscuous way, but they dressed in dresses and they looked good. Men were in suits and ties and they shaved. So Islam was sort of. Islam's appeal was it's the strong horse. And if you join us, you get all these benefits that we were talking about. And once Muslims start seeing that that wasn't the case, it's really fell by the wayside. And so that's why I find it ironic. If you look at, you would think that, you know, in 2025, Muslims are going to be more liberal than in 1925. It's the exact opposite. And I find that very interesting. And I think it starts going to where we're headed, talking the bigger talk about, you know, the modern era. And I believe a lot of that actually has to do with this, that in as much as the west exuded power and confidence, Muslims followed it and which is human nature. Whoever, you know, whoever's strong or smarter than you or whatever you can learn from, you're going to try to emulate and. But once the west sort of started hating itself and promoting everyone else. So let's say in the, whatever, 1960s, just to give a rough date, where all of a sudden now, you know, it was all how we' the narrative became. Europeans are the horrible people, everyone is great. And in fact, Islam is even better. And Islam is what a wonderful religion. I think that actually pushed Muslims back. So on the one hand, it actually made them disrespect the west, naturally. So it's very easy to have contempt and disdain for someone who just disrespects themselves and fawns over you. That's just human nature. And it also sort of made. So it made them go back. Said who? They basically said, yeah, you're right, you're just a bunch of dirty infidels. So the theory became, and it was very well articulated by an Egyptian theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Al Qut, who came to America and he was kind of a moderate Muslim. Then he came to America, I think, in the 50s and he was just scandalized by how liberal Americans were and, you know, men and women were consorting together, etc. Etc. So he developed this idea which became very prominent, which is, you know, these infidels in the west, you can appropriate and learn from them technology or science, things of this nature. But when it comes to more, to the greater metaphysical issues, religion, certainly we have to stick to Islam. And that was really, this is one of the chief return to Islam. So the idea is, yeah, we can learn from them secular, materialistic things, but as far as how a society is governed or structured or how individuals should live their lives or even as collectives, this is of course Islam. And all the while, the west further promotes that and sponsors that kind of thinking and stifles its own heritage. And this is what my point is. You see how that's very different than their forebears, the colonial, the colonizers. The colonizers were unabashedly proud. There's this famous story, I forget his name, but some general in India during the colonial era where they, you know, he just saw some ruckus and a bunch of Indians, Indians who were going to burn a woman alive, Sati, I think it's called, where if you're, if a man dies and his woman is still alive, they burn her on his pyre. And he found out what's going on and he tried to ban it. And they said, well, this is our custom and etc. And he said, okay, you do your custom, we'll do ours. And our custom is when men burn women alive, we hang them all. Okay? So that kind of perspective the west had, which was respectable from, even from the adversary, whereas now it's completely gone. Now it's, oh yeah, you do whatever you want, you're right, your culture is superior, etc. Etc. And this of course continues till this day. And I believe that's what exacerbates and brings out the worst of Muslims. This is why it's ironic when you look in the west and in Europe, oftentimes the Muslims who are the most radical are the second third generation Muslims. And I think a lot of it has to do with this sort of symbiotic relationship with sort of Western self degradation, which only provokes them to fall back more on their own Islamic heritage and have even more contempt for Westerners. Even, even as Westerners fall over themselves thinking, oh, I need to, you know, appease him some more. That's how he'll like me. When it's, of course doing the exact opposite.
- [84:13]
A
Well, it's just on that. Sorry, France, just to finish on this. Just on that. Actually, we were talking, France and I were talking the other day and we talked about one of the reasons that there does seem to be a difference in integration in America versus Europe. And one of the reasons is the first thing an American, new first generation American does is teaches kids to love America, at least historically speaking. That was, that was the trend in Europe, that sort of cohesive idea of like, well, you're one of us now, but like, you better be one of us now. Doesn't really exist in the same way. And I guess that's what you're saying.
- [84:48]
B
Yeah, and it doesn't exist because, no, you're. Instead of being proud, a European or an American and saying, hey, join us, be one of us. I would never do that. Please stay your way. I mean, here in America, for example, this is the same logic behind where ever. Wherever I go, I don't just see English, I see Spanish and I see Arabic and I see, you know, Hindi. It's kind of like, well, most countries, it's, it's, it's actually perceived as a sort of weakness. And it's not something that makes these immigrant people respect you, because that's not how they would be ever. If you come to their country, you will, you will. You're the one who's gonna assimilate. That's the logic. And that makes sense, of course. So a lot of that is why these. And it's even worse, I think, in Europe than in America. One of the, the key, the issues, it's not just what you were saying. Another thing is that especially if it comes to Muslims, the numbers are so much smaller. And what's happening in Europe is they're just, they're, they're ghettoized. There's so many, and they just literally they live amongst each other. They, they don't even speak English or whatever the language, let's say it's in, in the uk, English, they may go whole days and weeks without needing to speak because everyone around them just speaks their language. So they never assimilate. And then they become sort of like a little enclave or a little ghetto. And it's funny because there's actually a historical precedent to this, and it's an Arabic word which is called rabat. It's a military term. And a rabat is basically. Remember how I was telling you? Muslim conquests, they go as far as they can until they're stopped. Now, wherever they're stopped, they would form fortresses and barriers known as rabat. Rabat is actually like a word connected to the idea of a rope or a tight chain. So they would form these fortresses and from there they would continue harassing the infidel whenever they can and just engaging in terror attacks or raiding them, etc. Etc and their goal was to eventually conquer more land. What I find interesting is a lot of these Muslims in the European cities, they, they see themselves actually as, and I've seen them talk of themselves as, we are robotists, okay? We are the jihadists who are forming a chain. And now it's not, it's not just on the border with infidel countries, it's right smack in the middle of their cities because they've been allowed to come in. So they see themselves as actually jihadists. And we're here where you see it all the time, where they just throw it in the face of the natives of Europe. You know, your country is going to be Muslim in a few years. You know, you guys, it's. And it, I, it probably will due to demographic changes and birth rates and whatnot. It makes sense.
- [87:16]
C
And on that uplifting note, let's talk about the west as it is, because you've identified the key points. You know, the confidence is in decline, birth rates are in decline, demographics are going to change. So looking forward and looking at the immigration that's coming, but also Muslim birth rates in the UK and the west more generally, what can we see through this trajectory? And where do you think is going to be the final destination, as it were?
- [87:49]
B
Again, that's gonna, I guess, depend on the nation and the region we're talking about. Because, and here's the thing, I guess the first thing I'd like to say is what's happening? Here's the difference between Islam historically and Islam today. The continuity is that Muslims are creating problems, okay? They did it historically. The violence and the intolerance and the supremacism, okay? And it's happening now in the present. The difference is historically, like I said, it was the jihada force, right? They had, they had no choice. No one was going to let them in. So Europeans fought tooth and nail, you know, fighting to the death. Now the problem is, I think you mentioned it earlier, or I don't know if it was you, Francis, but you talked about Muslims, how they're very weak right now and you know, they're not, they're a weak force. Why are they a problem? And the answer is because the west makes them a problem. Or the specific country in the west, let's say the uk, okay? All the problems that the UK is going through, for an example, due to, or not just uk, much of Western Europe, it's all self made, okay? And you know that because I can look at an eastern country like Hungary and it has none of these problems. Is that because Muslims tried to invade Hungary by force and somehow the Hungarians resurrected John Hunyadi and they. And they beat them back? No, they just said, no immigration, we don't want it. And guess what? No problem. So this is, I think, and this is why a lot of people get upset. I remember I once wrote an article because a lot of people in the UK were complaining about, you know, there's an Islamic invasion, Muslims are invasion. And I basically said, no, get your terms right. This is not an invasion. An invasion is when people come by force and they're trying to take it. This is an invitation, okay? This is an enablement from your leaders. So I think it's very important. My point is to. I like to, when I look at a problem, you know, not. Not veer off kind of in tangents, but get to the heart of it. And the heart of the problem today with Europe and Islam, it's really not the Muslims. I often give this analogy where, like, I say, imagine a enclosure of zebras, and I all of a sudden decide to put a lion. And. And lo and behold, the lion starts killing the zebras. Who's really at fault, me or the lion? I think it's me. The lion's a lion. Okay, Lion's gonna do what a lion's gonna do. Muslim's a Muslim. He's gonna have the anti infidel thing going on. The tribalism that I mentioned. Okay, but why are they being brought in with all these massive numbers? Why are the native Brits, let's say, or Europeans in general, being their heritage and their religion and their cultures being suppressed to make room for these people in the name of some sort of amorphous tolerance or, you know, multiculturalism, which is obviously not working. So my point is the ultimate. If you want to talk about trajectories, it depends really on the countries, and it's actually, in a way easily fixed if the actual supposedly elected representatives of these various nations do the will of the people. But they're not, and that's really the issue. So I would tell people, you know, your Islam problem is less about Muslims and it's more about the people who are enabling and empowering them and bringing them in against your will. These are the people who have the same names like you, and they look like you, and they are apparently, you know, ruling in your name, but they're obviously not. And it's, you know, it's. It's become very obvious right now. So I think people should look at the ultimate source of the problem. Islam is A problem intrinsically, you can say that. But now there's an instrumental. There's an instrumental force empowering it, which is, like I said, why in other countries, Poland and Hungary, it's not an issue. And, you know, they. It can be fixed or, I mean, it's not going to be easy now, obviously, but something can be done if the actual elected officials care to do it, but they don't.
- [91:26]
C
So. But, so you've used the example of Poland or Hungary, and they're relevant. But don't you think part of it as well, Raymond, is, for want of a better term, white guilt. You know, we went. The British went out, we colonized. We colonized a lot of these countries. And a lot of the Islamic immigration into the UK is from Pakistan and Bangladesh, both former colonies. So that must play its own role as well.
- [91:49]
B
Oh, yeah, the white guilt. But, I mean, that is, to me, the most contemptible of all factors that really needs to go away. This is white guilt. I never understand it. You know, I did a recent, like, study about. Because we had Columbus Day here and all these people get up and, oh, you know, hemming and hawing all horrible. Columbus and what he did to the natives, et cetera, in fact, and Muslims are doing this too. And my point is, like, talking about living in glass houses, all their heroes did far worse than Christopher Columbus. So my point is, whatever the white man's guilt, the same thing's been done to him and to everyone else. Okay? Whites were enslaved by blacks. Whites were, you know, conquered. And I told you Muslims, Moors, as they were known from North Africa because of their dark skin, went all the way to Iceland, very fair people, and enslaved them in the 1500s. And in there by England, there was a little island, maybe, you know, called Lundy, which actually was a haven of Barbary pirates who would actually raid and enslave British people. So my point is this white guilt is really manufactured and it needs to be, you know, seen for what it is, if anything. I mean, being objective. I was just telling you that the colonial era, which is the white man, they actually, okay, you can say they conquered whatever, the Muslim world, India, deep into Africa, but they actually brought good stuff with them. Okay, this. Which is why the native population speaks well about that time. Like, they brought science and technology and, you know, literacy, medicine, etc, okay, what did. Now the other people we're talking about that conquered, including the conquered Europeans, brought nothing but death, destruction and slavery. Okay? So when it's all said and done, I don't think there's Much for the white man to really feel guilty about. And I say this as a guy. As a guy who doesn't think of himself as white, by the way, okay? So I'm just trying to be as objective as possible. And, and. But see, the fact that this exists, and I'm glad you brought it up, just shows you how far gone so many white people are that they're so caught up in something so silly that all these other peoples who are not white would never even think and shouldn't think of something like that to actually govern how they see the world. That, oh, my forefathers did something. So England is bringing Pakistanis in because they feel bad because they colonized Pakistan. I mean, that is just such silly and stupid thinking, Raymond.
- [94:03]
C
And you use the example. And I mean, it was a provocative example of zebras and a lion. And then there'll be people who are listening to this or watching this going, yeah, but I've got a Muslim mate. He's a nice guy. He's like. He's not like that. You know, Isn't that just a bit reductive and unfair?
- [94:22]
B
Yeah, yeah. No, I'm not saying that every Muslim is a lion who's trying to kill you. What I'm saying is, though, let's go with, okay, the most conservative estimate I've ever heard. I often hear, like 10% of Muslims are radical. I mean, I think, and I've heard a lot of people say it's more than that. Okay, but let's say 10. I think that's fair.
- [94:38]
C
And I think it's important to delineate what is actually radical mean.
- [94:42]
B
Okay, well, now we're going to go down another rabbit hole. But so radical, what it means, what people mean by that is this is the weird, crazy Muslim who's not. Not practicing true Islam. He's doing this crazy, violent Islam. To me, radical Muslim is just a fundamentalist Muslim who's following his religion to a T. Okay? And the moderate Muslim, in this parlance, which is not accurate, is supposedly the Muslim who's practicing good, true Islam. To me, the moderate Muslim who exists is actually the nonchalant Muslim who's not taking his religion all that seriously. So they exist. I do believe that these two distinctions exist. I just think the words are inaccurate, okay? It shouldn't be a moderate and a radical. It should be a purist and an observance Muslim, which is the radical and the nonchalant, secular, cultural Muslim, okay? Which is the moderate, and they exist. So now let's say these. Let's let's say 10% are the observance radicals, right? And I give you that number because that's the smallest number I've heard from people who are serious. Okay? So my point is. Yeah, but when you bring in millions of Muslims, okay, what's 10% of that? I don't know what the population, let's say England is, but I know 4 million Muslims. Okay, so you have 400,000 radicals, right? So you have 400,000 who might act like a lion. And so does. What does that mean? I agree. The other ones don't. Right, but you're taking a chance. It's kind of like saying. It's kind of like saying, you know, I'm going to give you a jar of candy and only 10, 10 out of the hundred 10 are poisonous. Big deal. Take a chance. They taste good, right? Now, again, all this, these are, like you said, reductive analogies. And I understand, and I do believe a lot of Muslims who come, especially a lot of them, like I said, come from. They come from an Islamic background, but they're not observant. Okay. Yeah, I do believe a lot of these people come to Europe looking just for a good life and whatnot and are not necessarily dedicated to conquering. And what I've been discussing, I get all that, but it's, it's the numbers and it's the fact that they don't assimilate and the fact that if it's 10%, 10% is still a humongous number. If you've said it's 4 million, we're talking 400,000. And I. And again, I'm giving you the 10. I'm, I'm trying to be kind of lenient here, but I think it's more, you know, maybe it's 20, 25%. And you know this because if you listen to what comes out of these mosques, including in the uk, it's, it's the radical variety, that is to say, the accurate variety. So, yeah, I under. So this is what makes this kind of a quagmire and not an easy thing, especially from the Western liberal mentality, which wants to help the underdog. And in fact, there is some. A lot of them are underdogs, but it comes with a risk. And the risk is what you see happening in the uk, which is once in a while, a Muslim man gets up and stabs children and people and just drives his truck into some people.
- [97:28]
A
Why does he do that?
- [97:30]
B
Well, one of the reasons that most people don't realize is that the Islamic State, in fact, always issues these kind of calls telling them to do precisely that. It tells Muslims that if you're living in the west, terrorize them. Don't forget you're a member of the Islamic State. And drive your trucks into them, drive your cars into them, go stab them. Attack civilians, don't attack military. In other words, attack whatever is easy and soft targets. So one of the reasons they're instructed to by these Islamic radicals and the.
- [98:00]
A
Other is, where are these Islamic radicals?
- [98:02]
B
Where are they? Yeah, everywhere. You mean isis? Where are they? Well, I don't know. I mean, the one. There's a. They issue a magazine that comes out every couple weeks and, you know, comes online in the darknet. And. But. And that's another term, you know, when you. A lot of people get caught up, okay, I understand there's bad guys, it's isis, it's Al Qaeda, et cetera, et cetera. I don't get caught up in these. These kind of terms, because the issue we're talking about is ideological, and it transcends these finite organizations that come and go.
- [98:35]
A
What about the Muslim Brotherhood?
- [98:36]
B
Well, they're. They're known as the sort of granddaddy of all these organizations. Al Qaeda was, you know, Ayman Zawahiri. I was telling you about Sayyid Kut of Muslim Brotherhood. He's one of the earliest. Ayman Zawahiri was also who became the leader of Al Qaeda, was formerly the Muslim Brotherhood, and the difference that the Muslim Brotherhood and these groups have. So, for example, in the writings of Ayman al Zawahiri, which I translated from Arabic way, way back almost two decades ago, he complained about the Muslim Brotherhood because they're too patient, and they take a sort of incremental approach, and they don't want to do jihad, which is, in fact, what makes them more dangerous. So he was more representative of the sort of ISIS thing, which is, I want to do jihad now. I want to go kill the infidel. Whereas the Muslim Brotherhood is sort of. It's just a subversive kind of power. And I don't know if, you know, but the FBI actually caught some documents back in 2009 that actually are from the Muslim Brotherhood talking about how they're waging a civilizational jihad in America, trying to subvert, et cetera, et cetera, and all these organizations that are branches from it, like care, the Council on American Islamic Relations. So these are the groups that are engaged in what I told you, the jihad of the tongue, the jihad of the pen, the jihad of, you know, the money. They're all working for the same purpose that ISIS is, but through legal measures, you know, through propaganda and whatnot.
- [99:53]
A
And I know that to someone who is as in depth with all this stuff as you, these questions may sound kind of naive, but what do they want exactly? Like if, if they keep stab. We just had a terror. Several terrorist attacks actually in the uk Just a guy goes up to somebody in the street, stabs them. No provocation, nothing. What is that designed to achieve? What's the point of that?
- [100:17]
B
That's actually a good question. So on the one hand, and this is actually really interesting because there's a school of thought. So I told you about ISIS issuing these, these directives. A lot of Muslims in the Muslim world tell you ISIS isn't an Islamic organization. It's actually working for Western elements to make people hate Muslims. And honestly, when I see. Because you asked a good question, what is the point in telling Muslims, go and stab people? What does that do? Does that somehow have a strategic purpose? All it does is make people hate Muslims. Right? I mean, that's, that's the logic. And I'm only. I'm not telling you this is what I believe, but I've never. I've. The civilizational jihad via the Muslim Brotherhood. That makes more sense to me than these organizations who just say, hey, all they literally. The. The Islamic State once said they issued a kind of one of their declarations at the peak of, you know, the. I think it was the beginning of the. When the Israeli Palestinian stuff a couple years ago. And they told Muslim, don't attack Israel because if you do, you're going to only empower Hamas and they're not true Muslims and the plo, okay, and instead we want you. And then they attacked Iran. It was in the context of they killed like 100 people in Kermont. And so they said, this is. We're attacking Iran because Iran's evil, stupid Shias, you know, Sunnah Shia. And why would you want to fight Israel and help these other guys like the PLO who are not true Muslims, instead go to Europe and do that, Crash into them, decapitate them, and throw terror in their hearts. And everyone in the Arab world said, see, this is not real isis. But on the other hand, what they are teaching is in the Quran. So when they. So Quran 9, 5. Famously, it's known as a sword verse and it tells Muslims. It's actually. Remember I was telling about Jefferson talking with an ambassador, he basically paraphrased it. That verse says, when you know, the forbidden months are past. Wait. Slay the idolaters wherever you find them. The pagans lay in wait for them. Ambush them, terrorize them.
- [102:18]
A
Okay, so what you're saying is. And correct me if I'm misunderstanding, this is not strategic. This is doctrinal.
- [102:24]
B
Yeah, from. From the Islamic State. That's what I would argue. And this is why a lot of other Muslim groups who have the same goal, they'd like to see Islamic hegemony around the world. Don't take that route, because to them, you're even Al Qaeda, for example, which is isis. When I translated the writing. So what they said to the west was, we're doing this because you attacked us. We're doing this because you support Israel. We're doing this because you didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol. It was always a grievance. Seriously. It was a grievance after grievance, and it was. Had nothing to do with doctrine. Then the writings I came across. This is my first book, the Al Qaeda Reader, which came out in 2007. And the reason it was a kind of a big deal at the time, I was working the Library of Congress, and I came all across these Arabic writings by Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri. And they said, now they sounded like isis. And it was where we hate them. Not because of what they do. It's because they're infidels, and we have to hate the infidels, and we have to fight them, and we have to do jihad. Okay. So even Al Qaeda was smart enough to, you know, play the double game and say, hey, we're only doing this to you because you. You hit us first. But ISIS is. Is so to me, I always say the refreshingly honest, but in a way that doesn't really help the cause, as a lot of Muslims point up, because what you're doing is you're sort of exposing us. And. Yeah, when you go and you stab toddlers in the UK or whatever, what is that? How's that helping from a strategic point? So it's a good question.
- [103:48]
A
I suppose the interesting question for me is how do we move forward with. Given the realities that we have? And one thing that I have some hope for, but I want to run a bayou and get your perspective, is we do see that in some Middle Eastern countries, like the uae, like Saudi Arabia, also in Central Asia, like I mentioned, I was in Uzbekistan. They don't tolerate the. You might not agree about the terminology, but they do not tolerate violent jihadis. They themselves know that they are the first target of these jihadis and they actually deal with the Muslim Brotherhood. They deal with all of these terrorist adjacent or actual terrorist organizations. They don't allow preaching extremist versions of Islam in mosques. In Uzbekistan, if you want to work for the government, you can't have a beard. You can't wear not just a hijab. You can't even wear a headscarf of any kind if you're a woman. So do you think that there is some hope that because of this kind of thing, the Muslim world, the. The center of gravity in the Muslim world will move towards a more. A less extreme and more moderate version of the. Of the faith?
- [105:04]
B
You mean if more Muslim nations act more like Central Asian Asians?
- [105:07]
A
Yeah. Or like the UAE or like Saudi Arabia increasingly.
- [105:11]
B
Right.
- [105:12]
A
Do you think that that will move the center of gravity towards a different kind of Islam and therefore different kind of relationship between Islam and Christianity?
- [105:21]
B
Yeah, if Islam can be changed. Okay. And immediately I'm struck with a quote from the Encyclopedia of Islam, which was written by a jurist and he said Islam needs to be completely made over for the doctrine of jihad, which it defined as what I defined, which is unprovoked warf to conquer the world. Okay. He said it had to be remade over. Can that be done? I suppose, but it would not. It would no longer really be Islam. And I think, I mean, if you look around at certain versions of Christianity, I mean, that's the case there. That's not historic Christianity. So I suppose that can be done. You know, the examples you gave of these Central Asian countries, it's very interesting because, you know, they are nominal Muslims, but like you said, they're the first ones who killed Clamp down on that stuff because they will be the first victims. It's even the Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in Egypt where it was born.
- [106:10]
A
Right.
- [106:10]
B
But at the same time, Sisi and his government pays a lot of lip service and is engaged in Islamizing Egypt. And he will ally with the Salafis, who are actually more ideologically draconian than Muslim Brotherhood. So there's a lot of kind of like shifting back and forth with how this works. But, you know, the bottom line is Islam is what Islam is, okay? And unlike other religions, it's very black and white. You know, the whole concept, the problem with Western people is they project their own religion kind of, and then they're convinced that, for example, Christianity is, you know, separation of secular and spiritual, you know, Caesar the coin and whatnot. But that's not Islam. Islam is not it's not about the condition of your heart and relationship you have with God. It's actually all about the law. It's legalistic. And in fact, everything in Islam is. There's five, you know, either it's forbidden, you can't do, it's disliked, you shouldn't do, but you can. Technically it's neutral, you can or don't have to do, it's recommended, you should do, but you don't have to. Or it's obligatory. Everything in life. So Islam really permeates. So can it change? Can they re articulate it? I suppose, but you're always going to have the hardliners who say, hey, that's not what our book says. That's not what the Quran says. It's not what Muhammad said in the hadith. So I think it would actually be easier to just snuff it out altogether from Muslims themselves. In other words, I always find the apostate more honest with himself or herself than the moderate Muslim. And because the apostate is kind of like, look, I'm not going to kid myself, it is what it is and I don't want to be like that. Whereas the moderate, they engage in all these sort of intellectual gymnastics in their head to get by. I mean, if Muhammad himself in a canonical Hadith says, whoever the apostate, kill him, okay? Or, you know, or in the Quran itself, you are allowed to. It's permissible for a man to have sex slaves, infidel female sex slaves, as many as your right hand possess, okay? These sorts of things. If, if I'm a Muslim and I don't want to accept that. For example, you know, what do you do with those verses? And I often watch in Arabic, these clerics, and that's what they say. Remember I was telling you about the one guy who was basically saying, yeah, if you're married to a Christian, you can, but you have to hate her. And lo and behold, a lot of the people sitting there were kind of questioning like, are you serious? And he finally gets frustrated and goes, well, it's written, you know, what do you do with the verses that I just quoted, including, you know, you gotta hate and Abraham and whatnot. So the crux of the matter is the religion itself, which is so easily identified and clear cut, teaches what we call radical things. Okay, they're only radical from our perspective, subjective perspective. They're not radical from a Muslim point of view.
- [108:50]
A
Well, but that's where. That's exactly the point I'm putting to you, which is it clearly is Radical from the perspective of the rulers of the uae, from the rulers of Saudi Arabia.
- [108:57]
B
Right, right, right. It's radical because it's radical to them, because they can suffer from it because they're not seen as legitimate Muslim rulers.
- [109:05]
A
Right.
- [109:05]
B
And at the same time, they have to pay lip service to Islam. So they're not. In other words, a lot of these rulers are just not Muslim at heart, obviously. And they're. But they govern Muslims, so they want to create the most. You know, on the one hand, they want to be legitimate and show their legitimacy as, hey, I can be your ruler. And which means they have to kind of let, you know, let the pot kind of steam come out a little bit so the Muslims can feel this is actual Islam. And on the other hand, they've got to kind of clamp down on certain teachings. So that's why a lot of these rulers are often just, you know, denounced as, you know, puppets of the west and not true Muslims, including the ones in Saudi Arabia, who are actually nominal Wahhabis, which is as radical you can get. And in fact, they do disseminate and, and play a huge role in sort of disseminating jihadist literature. And they're still hated and seen as pawns of the West.
- [109:57]
C
Raymond, I'm going to ask a provocative question, but I think it's an important one. Do you think the religion of Islam is compatible with the West?
- [110:06]
B
No, it's not. And if you mean by the west, the sort of secular liberal west, it's certainly not. If the west believes in freedom of religion and gender equality and everything that the west, you know, prizes. Well, in Islam, it's not, it's not that there's a radical interpretation. Honestly, it's not. Like I told you, that's the observant interpretation, which is that. So, for example, you have to, okay, you have to hate the non Muslim. Is that something that, you know, if you're living a liberal Western secular society, you really want a group of people who are bound to feel that way towards you. How's that going to work out? Oh, I know how it works out. Just look at the uk, right? So there's, there are built in teachings in Islam inherently. Not a lot. I'm not saying the whole religion, there's a lot of it that's actually neutral, maybe some of it that's admirable. But there are just enough that bring it at odds with the things that the west actually prizes. Okay, the, okay, killing blasphemers or, you know, attacking them. So in the west, freedom of expression and art and whatnot. And then, what was his name? Van Gogh? That guy gets killed, right? Because. Well, in the Muslim world, everyone would agree with that, and they would pat him on the back, because that's what you do. So the religion itself has built in sort of mechanisms that does make it antithetical to a lot of the things that the west prizes.
- [111:32]
C
And so I guess the next question is, if it's. If it's completely antithetical, is it therefore an existential threat to the West?
- [111:42]
B
Yeah, again. But again, it gets murky when you realize, so what are we talking about? Islam? You know, I'm almost. It's kind of like I'm anthropomorphizing it as if Islam's a man. Islam is made up of Muslims. And I already readily agree. A lot of Muslims are not real Muslims or not observant Muslims or cultural Muslims or secular Muslims. You have a lot of that. I get that. And they, you know, presumably can assimilate. I'm sure a lot of them do. But the problem is you have the. The teachings exist. And though the teachings themselves are the existential threat, because there will be people who do adhere to those teachings, and once they do, they become the bad guys. Okay, which. Which. And nobody wants to see. It's funny, every time I read, I look at Muslims attacking someone randomly in Europe, for example, and all of a sudden it's dismissed as, oh, he had mental problems. Oh, he had psychological issues. No, he was actually. I mean, that's how we see it. But no, he was actually following a directive and something that breeds a certain contempt and hatred for precisely the kind of person he attacked. Okay, so again, I'm not trying to say. That would be scaremongering if I was sitting here to tell you every single Muslim wants to kill you and be. No, they don't. I get that. You know, how many times. You know, how many Muslims that you can look at today, and you might be like, oh, is this guy dangerous? And then tomorrow that guy converts to Christianity. But for 10 years, and I've known them, this guy has been conflicted. And. And for those 10 years, he was not even a Muslim. But. And he was almost a Christian. So my point is, you don't know. There's a lot of these people. There's so much gray, and a lot of them are not a threat. A lot of them are great people. Okay. But again, you know, it's. How do you differentiate and how do you know? And. And this is why, you know, it's it's nice and it's good for the west to not discriminate, okay? But on the other hand, by not discriminating or just being intelligent, we're going back to the analogy of, you know, a hundred, you know, candies and one even is poisonous and you know it is. And you. So, okay, the 99 didn't cause the problem, but the 1 will. And that's why you continuously have the attacks that you continue having. Because in as much as you keep taking these numbers, there's a percentage that's going to come with the violence and those things are antithetical to Western culture.
- [113:50]
C
So that being the case, the UK is in the situation it's in. If you were advising the UK on this particular issue, what policies would you put in place? What advice would you give the government?
- [114:01]
B
Yeah, well, that's not that easy because, you know, the, the UK has really dug itself deep already. It's one thing to say, hey, we don't want to bring in too many Muslims, okay, like these other countries we were mentioning. But when you already have, what is it you said 4 million, you know, it's. Well, first of all, anyone who's illegal, I would say has to go immediately. I mean, if you're there illegally, by no more coming in, I would, I don't know how if they do this, but I would really be monitoring mosques and the Islamic kind of programming and what Muslims are being exposed to, including on the Internet, which I'm sure is not so easy. So, and this is, you know, and it's, and you, at one point you start wondering, is it worth all this? Like, what does a Western nation get from having to live constantly on its toes just to be able to live side by side with Muslims? But I guess again, in this case I get it because they're already there, right? But I would have no, I would have no compunction or sympathy for any sort of radical preaching. I mean, I see in the UK radical Muslims screaming, you know, like actual Islamic jihadist stuff and they don't get in trouble, but then when a British person fights back, they get arrested. Okay, so this is what I'm telling you. This is the real problem right now. And you know, so when you tell me what advice I could give, how about start off by just being objective and without this two tier system where you're actually oppressing the natives and empowering those who are actually, you know, pushing for this sort of thing, the jihadist.
- [115:28]
C
Mentality, would you, would you do more hardline approaches? For instance, something like banning halal, banning facial coverings, banning burkas.
- [115:38]
B
Okay. The, the facial covering is, there's, that's a security reason. In fact, in some, in Muslim countries, it's sometimes the case women can't wear the hijab because it's. Sometimes you get a terrorist.
- [115:48]
A
Like I said in Uzbekistan, you can't wear, you can't wear a full face cover.
- [115:51]
B
Yeah. So that, yeah, for sure. There's no problem with that. And, and you know, if there's a way to stop the sort of de. Ghettoize them so they, they do possibly assimilate instead of always kind of living closely knit and is, like I said, a small rabat or Islamic fortification. It's not very easy, I mean, I think. And especially for K. You know, especially for the mentality that prevails right now in the UK and its leadership. Like I said, they. You're asking me, let's say this is neutral. You're asking me the measures they can take. They're still here, you know, where they're attacking their own and you can't. What country tells its citizens you can't, you know, wave your flag? I mean, you know, this is one of the things that I often point out. If you want to know how insane it is in Europe, always look at by analogy other non western regions and guess what? You know, like I made this argument recently. You know, I don't know if you use the same terminology, but in America, the ultra right is like the bad guy. This is like the racist xenophobe, you know, crazy patriot. To me, the ultra right is actually how everyone outside the west thinks and acts. Okay? They're all, if you go to any country, non western, sub Saharan Asian, Latin American, what we call ultra right, traditional, you like your country, you like your flag. That's what they're, that's normative there. And the ones who support it most are their own governments. That's what they want you to be like. It's very weird to go to a nation like the UK where, oh, you're the bad guy because you're waving your nation's flag. But then these people are coming in waving their flags, including ISIS, and that's okay. I mean, so the UK's problems, man, they're just kind of mind boggling. I don't even know where to begin. It's just, it's really warped.
- [117:35]
A
Raymond, on that happy note, we're gonna ask you our final question. Before that, tell us about your latest book.
- [117:41]
B
Yeah, the Two Swords of Christ. Thanks. The subtitle is the Five Centuries of War between Islam and the Warrior Monks of Christendom which comes out, it can be pre ordered now, comes out later in November. So this book is basically a third of. It's my trilogy. I've been writing books that deal with the history of Christendom and Islam. And the first one was Sword and Scimitar, which looked at the general kind of what we talked about. The second one was Defenders of the west, which looked at men. So the first one looks at decisive battles between Islam and the west, like Yarmouk and Manziker, which I mentioned. The other one looks at decisive Christian men. And a lot of people like that second book because they're just shocked that western Christians can act this way. But this book is even more so because this, this book deals with the warrior monks, the Templars and the Hospitallers and what their rationale was. And I think what people will find interesting is on the one hand these guys were very militant. On the other hand, they were very Christian, more Christian than your average guy. And to your average Christian today, of course, the two don't mix. There's what I call doormat Christianity, which is what kind of is very prominent in the West. To be a good Christian is essentially to be a doormat. And it's easy to be a doormat too, you know, non confrontational. So a lot of people make a virtual advice, you know, and they're non confrontational and they're cowardice, coward, cowardly. And they pat themselves in the back, say I'm just being a good Christian, not. So these guys, okay, so these guys were immensely militant and they really took the war to Islam. And talk about. I was, I kind of alluded to it earlier when we were talking why the Crusades failed because of numbers. It really came down in the end. It was just these guys. And these were monks and warrior, you know, holy warrior monks, essentially types. And so I think people will be fascinated at their theological underpinnings. And one of them, which I get into because, and that's the title of the books, the Two Swords of Christ is. Are you familiar with the verse? There's a biblical verse where Jesus tells his disciples, you know, sell your cloak and buy a, buy a sword. And they say, look Lord, here are two swords. And you say, that's enough. So to your average modern day Christian, that has absolutely no meaning to, it has nothing to do with real swords. Okay? To medieval Christians especially, and a lot of pre modern Christians in general, what that verse meant is you have two. You were Facing two battles as Christians, one against spiritual forces, and you need a spiritual sword, and one against physical secular forces, and you need a physical secular sword. So that was understood by a lot of theologians, and that's what gave rise to these sorts of military orders. And it was, of course, also fused in the concept of just war. But anyway, yeah, I think it's going to be an interesting book to a lot of people and it's going to be eye opening at how Christians used to behave in the face of these sorts of existential threats.
- [120:23]
A
Well, with that, we're about to go to triggerpod.co.uk, where our audience get to ask you their questions. But before we do, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?
- [120:32]
C
Before Raymond answers a final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our substack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. Is there a sect of Islam that is nonviolent, does not believe in jihad and does not want violence and to topple Western powers?
- [120:48]
A
What I don't see very much of is Christians in the west being concerned about the mass slaughter of Christians in Africa and the Middle East. Do you have an explanation of why that's happening and not happening? What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?
- [121:05]
B
Oh, boy. You know, I think I've. We've talked about a lot of things, but it's. It's something I brought up, which I think is the most important thing never to forget, which is, again, you know, don't lose sight of the real source of the problem. And in the, the Islam problem in the west, it's not the Muslims, okay? It's the policies. It's the policies that actually enable. Empower Muslims and bring them in by the millions. Okay? And that's actually supposedly something you can do about assuming, you know, you live under some sort of democratic rule or you have representatives that, that you supposedly elected. Okay? And if, if it doesn't work, then there's something else going on and the problem needs to really be. Be looked at a little closer. But the point is, a lot of, you know, this isn't about hating Muslims. That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say historically there was always a clash. You know, the people that I'm talking about in this book or just historically, if they, if they thought, thought their descendants are bringing Islam in, they just, I mean, I'm sure they're spinning in their grave right now because it just wouldn't make any sense to them. Okay, so a lot of it, a lot of the problems are just self made by the West. Okay? Islam is weak. As you pointed out earlier, Islam is inherently weak right now, physically, economically, militarily, it can't do what it does. But why is it doing it? It's because Western elements are making it is, are empowering and allowing it. So. So like I said, I like to get to the heart of matters. And in this current case, it's not Islam itself, it's the West.
- [122:35]
A
Head on over to Substack where Raymond's going to answer your questions. There seems to be a belief, particularly in left wing circles, that Islam spread to billions of people with flowers and chocolate. My question is in Islamic schools and universities, is this how Muslims understand their own history?
- [123:04]
B
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