We hear it said: “September 11 changed America forever.” Less often do we hear a coherent explanation of what, exactly, changed. What changed, in fact, was that for the first time in American history we have been forced to confront Islamic militancy as it has assaulted the rest of the world for almost 14 centuries. In THE SWORD OF THE PROPHET, the reader receives the unvarnished truth about the rise of Islam and the patterns set by its founder, Muhammad; the historical meaning of jihad against the (non-Muslim) “infidel” that we see today in the al-Qaeda terror network; the broad sweep of the global military, political, moral, and spiritual struggle that faces us; and what we must do if we wish to survive. The sober, factual, and contextual presentation found in this book is essential. Every person owes it to himself or herself to know the real score of the post-9/11 world – and this invaluable volume is the place to start.
BOOKLIST Published by American Library Association ISSN 0006-7385 October 1, 2002, (Vol. 99, No. 3), p. 292:
Trifkovic, Serge. THE SWORD OF THE PROPHET:
This exceptionally fluid argument against militant Islam ... reports more Islamic savagery than Robert Spencer's "Islam Unveiled" and critiques Muslim theology more thoroughly than Timothy George's "Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad?" Its most important distinction is Trifkovic's insistence that "the problem [for the West] is not prejudice about Islam, but folly in the face of its violence and cruelty manifested today in such horrors as the ongoing slaughter of Sudanese Christians and the appalling anti-Semitism of the Islamic press and such Islamic legal authorities as the mufti of Jerusalem. Like Roger Scruton in "The West and the Rest" Trifkovic doesn't endorse war against Islam. Instead, the West must defend itself against Islamic aggression (e.g., by restricting immigration and reducing dependence on Islamic-controlled oil) and help non-Muslims oppressed in Islamic societies. Powerful stuff powerfully presented. By Ray Olson SERGE TRIFKOVIC is a graduate of the University of Sussex in England. He received his PhD at the University of Southampton and pursued his postdoctoral research on a State Department grant at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. He started his working life as a broadcaster and producer with the BBC World Service in London and with the Voice of America in Washington. He also covered southeast Europe for U.S. News & World Report and The Washington Times. In addition to authoring several books Serge Trifkovic has written scores of commentaries for – among others – the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Times of London, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He has appeared many times on the BBC World Service, CNN International, MSNBC, and other leading media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic as a commentator on world affairs. He is also a regular contributor and, since 1998, foreign affairs editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
“The arbiters of official Islam will not tell us what Islam is, only what they want it to be. For the truth, we must turn Dr. Serge Trifkovic, a European historian of broad learning, sound philosophy and keen political insight.” Brian Mitchell (Washington Bureau chief Investor’s Business Daily.) “This book pulls no punches in identifying the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as the greatest danger to Western values since the end of the Cold War.” Ambassador James Bissett (Head of Canadian Immigration & Foreign Service, Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania) “There is a culpable blindness of such an intensity that it can survive exposure even to the survey of aggressive Islamism given in this book. However as [Dr. Trifkovic] demonstrates, where Islam and other religions have come together the track record of peaceful co-existence is outweighed by the record of human catastrophe.” Michael M. Stenton (Received his doctorate from Cambridge and is the author of Radio London and Resistance in Occupied Europe, 1939-43 -- Oxford University Press, 2000).
INTRODUCTION TO THE SWORD OF THE PROPHET Bissett has served as the Head of Candaian Immigration Foreign Service, Canadian Assistant Under-Secretary for Social Affairs, High Commissioner, Trinidad and Tobago, and Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania. Our political leaders tell us that Muslims are a peace-loving and hospitable people. We are admonished not to condemn Islam because of the acts of a tiny and fanatical minority. As a people, we are conditioned to be fair-minded and tolerant. We pride ourselves in our acceptance of diversity and the reality of a multicultural society. Many of us have children or grandchildren that go to school with Muslim children. This does not intimidate us; on the contrary, many of us look upon it as the way of the future. Yet, at the same time, we are uneasy. We are uneasy because of an intuitive sense that many of the adherents of this religion seem out of step with the modern world. The beheading of apostates, the chopping-off of the hands and feet of convicted criminals, the stoning to death of women accused of “adultery,” including those who have been raped – such barbaric practices disturb us. When a Muslim cleric broadcasts a television message to Palestinians, exhorting them to martyr themselves for Allah’s sake and urges them to annihilate Jews, we are rightly concerned. These acts seem more indicative of a seriously dysfunctional society than the characteristics of a benevolent and merciful religion. We are also uneasy because we cannot ignore the dreadful events of September 11 in New York and Washington. We cannot understand the murder, in the name of God, of Israeli innocents by self-destructing Islamic fanatics – some of whom are teen-age girls. We are disturbed and angry by the images on our television screens of screaming mobs in Cairo, Islamabad, and Tehran celebrating the death of thousands of Americans blasted away by young Muslim men – martyrs in the name of Allah. We ask ourselves why is this happening and why is it being done in the name of religion? What can be done about it? Other facts suggest something is wrong in the Muslim world. With all of their oil wealth, why are there no Muslim countries among the top 30 of the world’s richest nations? Why is it that two-thirds of the world’s poorest people live in Muslim countries? Why, in the last 20 years, have over 2 million people died in conflicts involving Muslim communities? Why are democracy and the rule of law nonexistent in most Muslim states? Why do Muslims carry out so many of the worst acts of terrorism? The Sword of the Prophet provides answers to these questions. It does not do so by giving us yet another academic and objective treatise about Islam. It does so by asking us to look at the historical record of Islam and to examine closely some of the major tenets of a faith that on the record has been – and continues today to contain within it – strong elements of intolerance and aggression. The book is a hard-hitting frontal assault on militant Islam. It pulls no punches in identifying the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as the greatest danger to “Western” values since the end of the Cold War. The core of the problem is that under Islam there can be no separation of church and state. Islam is a way of life, and the faithful must accept and affirm their surrender to Allah and live as members of the total Islamic community. This calls into question if a true Muslim can give political loyalty to a non-Muslim state. With over 20 million Muslims now living in the countries of Western Europe, and from 3 to 5 million in the United States, the question of loyalty to the country of one’s citizenship becomes important. Amir Taheri, the Iranian author, has pointed out, “The current consensus among Muslim jurists is that Muslims can live in lands ruled by non-Muslims, provided they use their presence to further the cause of Islam.” Mr. Taheri quotes the Egyptian theologian Muhammed Ghazzali, who said that Muslims could live under non-Muslim rule as long as they do not forget that they are Allah’s missionaries and, if needed, His soldiers. Mr. Taheri reminds us that Bin Laden is more specific and believes that Muslims should only live in non-Muslim countries to further the cause of Islam and speed up the end of the infidel’s rule. Does our tolerant and democratic way of life contain within itself the seeds of its own destruction? Should organized intolerance be tolerated? Our society is inclined to see both sides of every question, and the current trend of political correctness reinforces this tendency. But how far should tolerance extend? Tolerance of those who wish to eradicate your way of life can be self-destructive. If through migration and current demographic trends Muslims become a majority in a Western country, how quickly will Islamic law be proclaimed? Can we expect then to be treated as equals? This book leaves no doubt about the answer to this question. It is not optimistic about the possibility of a reformation that might lead to the ascendancy of a more liberal and moderate Islam that accepts the need to separate church and state. Islamist militancy will not only continue, but will intensify. This book chastises the “opinion-forming elite” for its role in pretending that Islam does not present a serious problem. The author points out that the most virulent form of Muslim extremism owes its growth to shortsighted United States foreign policy. United States military support to the Mujahideen in the struggle to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was only the beginning. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, American oil interests were courting the Taliban to secure a pipeline across Afghanistan to exploit the vast oil and gas reserves in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea. By allowing Pakistan and Saudi Arabia a free hand in Afghanistan, the United States guaranteed the military success of the Taliban forces. It is common knowledge that Saudi Arabia is the most extremist of the Muslim States. It finances the infamous Madrassas that preach a litany of hate and turn out thousands of fanatical Islamic zealots. It indirectly provides the funding and its citizens provide most of the fighters for Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization. It supports, financially and by other means, the Palestinian terrorists and other Muslim anti-Western groups throughout the world. Yet the United States does not identify Saudi Arabia as an enemy. It was not even asked, as were other Muslim states, by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to freeze the assets of people linked to Bin Laden. It is this double standard and hypocrisy that this book so deplores in pointing out the shortcomings of the United States’ war against terror as conceived at present. This is a book that deals with what many consider to be the major issue of our time – the question of whether the Western and Muslim civilizations can live together in peace. It outlines in carefully measured terms what must be done to ensure that this can happen. It does so in a fearless and straightforward fashion that is not inhibited by trying to strike a balance between the two civilizations. The reader is left in no doubt on whose side the author is on. Unfortunately, the reader is also left with the uneasy feeling that, just as the Western democracies refused to acknowledge the danger inherent in the rise of Nazi and Communist ideologies, our refusal to confront militant Islam may cost us dearly.
FOREWORD To The Sword of the Prophet The tragedy of September 11, 2001, and its aftermath have shown, yet again, that beliefs have consequences; the centrality of Islam to the attacks is impossible to deny. Our opinion formers, inflexible in their secular-liberal ideological assumptions, deny it nevertheless. They do not take religion seriously. Instead of pondering the complex problem of the relationship between Islam, the West and the rest, they assure us that no “religious” problem exists. Some of them at least seem to believe their own assurances, so that the most outspoken character witnesses for the hastily nicknamed “Religion of Peace and Tolerance” were non-Muslims: Sunday-morning popular entertainers, academicians steeped in political correctitude, and politicians. Their claims about the supposed distinction between “real Islam” and its violent aberrations were crudely ideological, based on their simple conviction that all faiths – having equal legal privileges – must in some sense be equally good, “true,” and, hence, capable of celebrating all others in the spirit of tolerance. Such assertions cannot change reality. A problem does exist. Islam is not only a religious doctrine; it is also a self-contained world outlook, and a way of life that claims the primary allegiance of all those calling themselves “Muslim.” Islam is also a detailed legal and political set of teachings and beliefs. There is “Christianity,” and there used to be “Christendom,” but in Islam such distinction is impossible. To whatever political entity a Muslim believer may belong – to the Arab world of North Africa and the Middle East, to the nation-states of Iran or Central Asia, to the hybrid entities of Pakistan and Indonesia, to the international protectorates of Bosnia and Kosovo, or to the liberal democracies of the West – he is first and foremost the citizen of Islam, and belongs morally, spiritually, and intellectually, and in principle totally, to the world of belief of which Muhammad is the Prophet, and Mecca is the capital. This is not, of course, true for every Muslim but it is true of every true Muslim: it is the central worldly demand of Islam. The purpose of this book is to outline its origins, its basic tenets, its historical record, and to explore its implications for the rest of us... What secularism has done, since replacing Christianity as the guiding light of “the West,” is to cast aside any idea of a distinctly “Western” social, geographic, and cultural space that should be protected. This was obvious in Europe by the early 1960s, and for the past quarter-century at least it has become obvious in the United States. Patriotism rekindled after September 11 is a reminder that at the grass-roots level the capacity for instinctive self-definition is still alive, but it cannot be sustained if the dominant outlook is that of cultural relativism and anti-historicism. The only way we can meaningfully judge the present and plan the future is by the example of the past. The problem of collective historical ignorance – or even deliberately induced amnesia – is the main difficulty in addressing the history of Islam in today’s English-speaking world, where claims about far-away lands and cultures are made on the basis of domestic multiculturalist assumptions rather than evidence. The absence of historical memory has taken too many well-meaning Westerners interested in Islam right through the looking glass into the virtual-reality world of superficial reportage, ideological treatises, and agenda-driven academic research that ignores the reality of what Islam actually is and what it does to its adherents... This author is not an Islamicist, but to be a non-specialist is almost a prerequisite for setting out an account of Islam that is free from wriggling apologetics, self-censoring fears, and self-denigrating deference to “the Other.” He regards Islam with a mixture of feelings, but conceives his lack of a priori admiration to be no greater obstacle to understanding Islam and expounding its meaning than it would be to discussing yesterday’s Marxism or seventeenth century New England Puritanism. The key to understanding is not sympathy and respect for any belief; it is curiosity, intellectual engagement, and a respect for truth. Even if all history – as a philosopher argued – is in some measure contemporary history, it need not be dominated by the obsessions of the day. This work is presented, not in order to praise, condemn, or justify an important monotheistic faith, but in the conviction that the cause of peace and tolerance, in the West and elsewhere, cannot be advanced by misrepresentation or by the sentimental lapse of seriousness.
The Sword of the Prophet Contents:
CHAPTER 1 MUHAMMAD
CHAPTER 2 THE TEACHING
CHAPTER 3 JIHAD WITHOUT END
CHAPTER 4 THE FRUITS
CHAPTER 5 WESTERN APPEASEMENT
CHAPTER 6 JIHAD’S FIFTH COLUMN
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