Raymond Ibrahim Interview: Truth About Islam Must Be Acknowledged

Note: Journalist Niram Ferretti interviews Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center, for the Italian publication, L’Informale (original here). Pasted below are excerpts from the English version.

Question: How much is the concept of jihad intended as holy war, central to the way Islam has interpreted itself during the centuries?

The concept of jihad was central from the start—at least according to the earliest Muslim historians who often portray the first warriors of Allah as being zealously motivated by the notion of jihad.

Question: The last time that Islam tried to penetrate Europe through war was on the 12^th of September 1683 at Kalhenberg, near Vienna, where 65.000 thousand Christians fought against 200,000 Ottoman Turks. For how long after that date did jihad against the West stopped and when and why was it resumed?

Raids continued for some time, particularly by sea, and well into the late 1700s, meaning for about a century after the successful defense of Vienna. Even as the Ottoman Empire was beginning its slow retreat from eastern Europe, the Muslim slavers of the so-called Barbary States of North Africa wreaked havoc all along the coasts of Europe—even as far as Iceland. The United States of America’s first war—which it fought before it could even elect its first president—was against these Islamic slavers. When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams asked Barbary’s ambassador why his countrymen were enslaving American sailors, the “ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that … it was their right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners….”

http://prophetofdoom.net/

Craig Winn’s excellent and scholarly site

Summary

Prophet of Doom is the best-documented, most comprehensive, presentation of Islam’s five oldest and most reliable scriptural sources. Ishaq’s Biography of Muhammad, Tabari’s History of Islam, and Bukhari’s and Muslim’s Hadith, were used to reorder the Qur’an chronologically and to set its surahs into the context of Muhammad’s life. When this evidence is evaluated systematically, the only rational conclusion is that Islam’s lone prophet was a ruthless terrorist, a mass-murderer, a thief, slave trader, rapist and pedophile.

The future must not belong to those who deny the true nature of Islam

John Quincy Adams on Islam

“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.

Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. It is, indeed, amongst the mysterious dealings of God, that this delusion should have been suffered for so many ages, and during so many generations of human kind, to prevail over the doctrines of the meek and peaceful and benevolent Jesus” (Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig.).

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.