'The Sword of the Prophet: Islam History, Theology, Impact on the World' (with the cover teaser: "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam") by historian-journalist Serge Trifkovic (assisted by the Canadian diplomat and foreign affairs analyst, James Bissett, who is listed on the inside). Has written what I consider the most valuable, readable and important of books I have seen post-9-11 on the subject of Islam. As a former soldier, intelligence officer and foreign affairs analyst myself, I can tell you after nearly 30 years of my own research on Middle Eastern history and comparative religions that very few books cover this material as well as this book ( I also HIGHLY recommend 'The Arabs' by Anthony Nutting, 'Anatomy of the Qur'an' [Koran] by GJO Moshay, and 'The Lost History of Christianity' by Philip Jenkins for further research). Ignore the one star reviews here written by irate Muslims, soft-headed liberal apologists (a little knowledge is a dangerous thing), the snowflake dupes of political correctness and/or their fellow travelers among the self-hating secular-Western elites. This is a great read. Well-written and researched, Trifkovic not only covers the important history and ideological development of Islam, he also deals with the consistent theme of Islam in all its various manifestations: That the global caliphate and its sharia law is the penultimate goal of Islam and that in the House of "Peace" there is little room for infidels except in their ordained roles as tax-payers, slaves, victims and perpetual scapegoats of an enforced dhimmitude. Trifkovic's narrative covers all of the developments of Islamic terror, emigration and propaganda during the late twentieth and early twenty-first century that have led to the current crisis in Europe and North America where Islam is on the brink of overturning constitutional freedoms and western cultural norms under the guise of minority rights and their self-perceived victimhood. He also points out the flaws in secular-humanist philosophical thinking and governmental policy that tries to appease the most radical Islamists in the vain hope that Western secular-hedonistic cultural values will somehow seduce Islam into being good neighbors. Trifkovic's book is an entirely objective, "Just the facts, ma'am," approach to the analysis of a faith that is not really a religion but a system of governance, laws, lifestyle and rituals that cannot help but overwhelm and conquer it's less-disciplined competitors and hosts. He examines the flaws in current Western immigration policy and rightly identifies the only thing that has ever effectively contained Islam: strong force of arms backed up by a strong faith in Christian cultural and religious values... the very thing that liberal secular-humanists and hedonists in the West seek to undermine... to the great joy of this current generation of Islamic-fascist aggressors. This book should be read by all thinking citizens of the US, Canada, Australia and the UK in particular. But alas, it's too politically incorrect for the snowflake crowd of placating weinies that dominate the western news media and academic institutions... sadly. Because the truth does indeed hurt. And truth doesn't change because one believes in unicorns and fairies. I recommend that serious-minded historians, teachers, college student, churchmen, parents, law-enforcement officers, military service-members and government policy-makers read this book. I don't care how "nice" the Muslim family living next door acts. They are members of an ideological system that hates Jews more than the NAZIs did, hates Christianity more than the Roman emperors of the 2nd Century, and which would, if given the chance, eliminate our Western-democratic values faster than the commissars of the twentieth century's communist regimes ever could. Read 'The Sword of the Prophet.' This book is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

In the West we know far too little about the real history of Islam: its past, present, and plans for the future. Instead we are lectured to by Tony Blair or George Bush about how Islam is a "religion of peace" when it is risible that either of those men know the first thing about the "peace" that Islam purports to provide.

Dr. Trifkovic's book was written in the early 2000s, just after the 9/11 attacks, when there was a lot of demand for the "why do they hate us?" book. But while parts of the later part of the book deal with what was "recent history" then, most of the book is timeless, recounting Islam's founding, conquests, and current attitude to the world. It is a religion founded in violence, with Scriptures that reward the attitude of "conversion by the sword," and it is because we in the West are not even slightly acquainted with these realities that we can abide our leaders telling us after each single attack committed by young Muslim men that these attacks have "nothing to do with Islam." As with Bush and Blair, it is unlikely in the extreme that anyone who ever says "this has nothing to do with Islam" knows the first thing about Islam.

If you're up to correcting your own ignorance about this anti-intellectual religion which was, is, and will be a scourge on the human race (particularly to women, who are an afterthought, good for only one thing, as far as Allah is concerned) as long as it exists, take a read.

"The key to understanding is not sympathy and respect for any belief; it is curiosity, intellectual engagement, and a respect for truth." (p. 8)

"Muhammad was born into a society of men ruthlessly active in pursuit of their simple needs, patient of the hardships inherent in their abode, and reconciled to their fate without futile grumbles." (p. 15)

"Muhammad then refrained from cursing the Meccan idols but called them all by the same name, 'Allah,' thus merging 300-odd deities at the Kaaba into one, and calling all of them by the same name. He subsequently abrogated this section of the original Kuran, claiming that this was an interpolation of Satan - hence the 'Satanic verses.'" (p. 31)

"[T]heir readiness to sever the links of birthplace and clan association is a testimony to the prophet's personal charisma and leadership ability." (p. 34)

"That Islam sees the world as an open-ended conflict between the Land of Peace (Dar al-Islam) and the Land of War (Dar al-Harb) is the most important legacy of Muhammad." (p. 51)

"It is the religion's claim that the words and acts of its prophet provide the universally valid standard of morality as such, for all time and all men." (p. 53)

"One consequence of Allah's absolute transcendence and lordship is the impossibility of human free will. Islam not only postulates the absolute predestination of all that we think, say and do, it would regard as heretical any suggestion that man has any choice in the proceedings; all has been divinely preordained and willed by Allah and all is known to him in advance: nothing will ever befall us save what Allah has written for us. This is implacable fatalism: Allah's divine will predetermines whatever has been or shall be in the world, whether good or bad." (p. 62)

"A Muslim prostrates himself before Allah like a slave before his master, who does not know whether he will be apportioned life or death, grace or damnation." (p. 63)

"The 'real' Jesus was a righteous prophet and a good Muslim who paved the way for the final prophet, Muhammed himself." (p. 73)

"The one crucial difference between the Bible as a whole and the Kuran is God's love and His desire to redeem sinners by way of sacrifice. Without sacrifice there is no forgiveness, no atonement and no reconciliation that gives meaning to life and creation." (p. 74)

"If a non-Muslim cannot understand the holy book by divine decree, he can convert to Islam only 'by the mouth,' that is, by force." (p. 82)

"The notion that Islam has a wonderfully clear simplicity compared to the cluttered complexity of Christianity is not new." (p. 85)

(quoting C.S. Lewis) "If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about." (p. 85)

"Only after the Islamic Empire had been established the notion of an 'inner' jihad - that of one's personal fight against his ego and sinful desires - also came into being, but it was predicated on the assumption that the external, real jihad was nearing its completion." (p. 89)

(on Muslims during the time of the first four caliphs) "They did not engage in economically productive activity and lived in isolation from the local people, in fortified garrisons spread across North Africa and the Middle East." (p. 89)

"The vanquished were 'culturally disembowled,' condemned to the enforced psychosis of renouncing their old and highly developed identities for a crude and violent desert blueprint that regulated the minutest details of their lives." (p. 90)

"Unleashed as the militant faith of a nomadic war band, Islam turned its boundary with the outside world into a perpetual war zone." (p. 96)

"Far from being wars of aggression, the Crusades were a belated military response of Christian Europe to over three centuries of Muslim aggression against Christian lands, the systemic mistreatment of the indigenous Christian population of those lands, and harassment of Christian pilgrims." (p. 97)

"The attack began July 14, 1099 - the date destined to live in anti-Christian infamy centuries later - and the next day the Crusaders entered Jerusalem from all sides and slew its inhabitants, regardless of age or sex." (p. 99)

(from a "peace treaty" with the Christians of Syria) "We shall not build in our cities or in their vicinity any new monasteries, churches, hermitages, or monks' cells. We shall not restore, by night or by day, any of them that have fallen into ruin or which are located in the Muslims' quarters. We shall keep our gates wide open for the passerby and travelers. We shall provide three days' food and lodging to any Muslims who pass our way. We shall not shelter any spy in our churches or in our homes, nor shall we hide him from the Muslims...We shall not hold public religious ceremonies. We shall not seek to proselytize anyone. We shall not prevent any of our kin from embracing Islam if they so desire. We shall show deference to the Muslims and shall rise from our seats when they wish to sit down...We shall not ride on saddles. We shall not wear swords or bear weapons of any kind, or ever carry them with us. We shall not sell wines. We shall clip the forelocks of our head. We shall not display our crosses or our books anywhere in the Muslims' thoroughfares or in their marketplaces. We shall only beat our clappers in our churches very quietly. We shall not raise our voices when reciting the service in our churches, nor when in the presence of Muslims. Neither shall we raise our voices in our funeral processions. We shall not build our homes higher than theirs...Anyone who violates such terms will be unprotected. And it will be permissible for the Muslims to treat them as rebels or dissenters; namely, it is permissible to kill them." (p. 105)

"Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch." (p. 109)

"Militant Islam sees India as 'unfinished business,' and it remains high on the agenda of oil-rich Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, which are spending millions every year trying to convert Hindus to Islam." (p. 113)

(Gladstone on the Turks) "Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as far as their dominion reached, civilization disappeared from view." (p. 123)

"At the destruction of Smyrna there was one feature for which Carthage presents no parallel. There was no fleet of Christian battleships at Carthage looking on at a situation for which their governments were responsible. English, American, Italian, and French ships were indeed anchored in Smyrna's harbor. Ordered to maintain neutrality, they would or could do nothing for the 200,000 desperate Christians on the quay:

The pitiful throng - huddled together, sometimes screaming for help but mostly waiting in a silent panic beyond hope - didn't budge for days. Typhoid reduced their numbers, and there was no way to dispose of the dead. Occasionally, a person would swim from the dock to one of the anchored ships and tried to climb the ropes and chains, only to be driven off. On the American battleships, the musicians on board were ordered to play as loudly as they could to drown out the screams of the pleading swimmers. The English poured boiling water down on the unfortunates who reached their vessel. The harbor was so clogged with corpses that the officers of the foreign battleships were often late to their dinner appointments because bodies would get tangled in the propellers of their launches...A cluster of women's heads bound together like coconuts by their long hair floated down a river toward the harbor." (p. 125)

"It is incorrect to say that the Wahhabi movement is to Islam what Puritanism is to Christianity, however. While Puritans could be regarded as Christianity's Islamicists sui generis with their desire to turn Christianity into a scriptural, literalist theocracy that it had never intended to become, Wahhabism is unmistakably 'mainstream' in its demand for the return to the original glory of the early Islamic Ummah. Their iconoclastic zeal notwithstanding, the Wahhabis were no more extreme or violent than the models for Islam in all ages, the Prophet and his companions." (p. 138)

"The difference between Allah and Muhammad becomes blurred once a mortal and sinful man is recognized as the absolute authority on the will of the creator and sustainer of the universe." (p. 146)

"Shari'a is not at all a 'moral law' that guides one's personal map of moral distinctions, but a blend of political theory and penal law, requiring the punishment of violators through the sword of the state." (p. 146)

"The notion that reluctance to embrace Islam is insanity is not new, and corresponds to the Soviet notion of treating political dissidents as psychiatric cases." (p. 149)

"[A] judge in Pakistan sentenced a young woman to death for 'adultery' by stoning. She had been raped by her husband's brother." (p. 154)

"Muhammad has stated that most of those who enter hell are women, not men...because 'they are not thankful to their husbands.'" (p. 155)

"The fire-worshipper, the Jew, and the pig are listed alongside the woman as things that corrupt prayer." (p. 160)

"[S]chizophrenia of the contemporary Muslim society, with signs of modernization in externals, with women doctors and lawyers, and, at the same time, deep-rooted structures that seek to apply Islamic law to civil rights in Muslim countries." (p. 165)

"Sex in Islamic societies has never been about mutuality between partners, but about the adult male's achievement of pleasure through domination." (p. 170)

(King Ibn Saud to a British guest) "Verily, the word of God teaches us, and we implicitly believe it, that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for. him to be killed by a Jew, ensures him immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty." (p. 180)

"But even the stone behind which a Jew hides will say, 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.'" (p. 181)

(quoting the Mufti of Jerusalem in 1943 and 1944) "(the Germans) know how to get rid of the Jews, and that brings us close to the Germans and sets us in their camp." & "Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor." (p. 186)

(quoting Al-Akhbar, an Egyptian newspaper, in 2001) "Our thanks go to the late Hitler, who wrought, in advance, the vengeance of the Palestinians upon the most despicable villains on the face of the earth. However, we rebuke Hitler for the fact that the vengeance was insufficient." (p. 188)

"The periods of civilization under Islam, however brief, were predicated on the readiness of the conquerors to borrow from earlier cultures, to compile, translate, learn, and absorb. Islam per se never encouraged science, meaning 'disinterested inquiry,' because the only knowledge it accepts is religious knowledge." (p. 196)

"[I]n 1993...Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, issued an edict, declaring that the world is flat: anyone of the round persuasion does not believe in God and should be punished." (p. 196)

"[D]ecimal positional numbering from India. The decimal numbers were thus transmitted to the West, where they are still mistakenly known as 'Arabic' numbers, honoring not their Hindu inventors but their Muslim transmitters." (p. 198)

(quoting the president of Bosnia) "[T]here can be no peace between Islam and other forms of social and political organization." (p. 198)

"In the name of Allah and Islam, more people were killed in one year of Khomeini than during the preceding quarter-century of the Shah." (p. 206)

"Islam and Communism differ from Nazism only in their inability to create a viable economy." (p. 206)

"Islam is revolutionary in outlook, extremist in behavior, totalitarian in ambition." (p. 207)

"Islam, Communism, and National Socialism have all sought an eschatological shortcut that would enable the initiated to bypass the predicament of a seemingly aimless existence." (p. 207)

(quoting Alexis de Tocqueville) "I studied the Kuran a great deal...I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world, and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion infinitely more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself." (p. 208)

"The West cannot wage 'war on terror' while maintaining its dependence on Arab oil, appeasing Islamist aggression around the world, turning a blind eye to the Islamic destruction of peoples who are animists, Hindus, and Christians, and allowing mass immigration of Muslims into its own lands." (p. 260)

(quoting the Catholic Encyclopedia) "In matters political, Islam is a system of despotism at home and aggression abroad...The rights of non-Moslem subjects are of the vaguest and most limited kind, and a religious war is a sacred duty whenever there is a chance of success against the 'Infidel.' Medieval and modern Mohammedan, especially Turkish, persecutions of both Jews and Christians are perhaps the best illustration of this fanatical religious and political spirit." (p. 290)

A lot of good information here. The book goes through the founding of Islam, the theology, and it's history up to just recently. The book is written from an Eastern orthodox view, from an Orthodox publish house. Very detailed and the kinda of in-your-face thing I've come to expect from Regina Orthodox Press. I wish the book was written by the guy who wrote the forward, it would have been more readable for me. World class information, just didn't care for the style. Non-Fiction is my preferred style but this was not an easy read for me. I did learn a lot, and but had to fight to get it, and because of style not difficulty. As far as the rest of it goes the author is right on.

Despite being admittedly biased, very interesting & illuminating. And scary, although most religions are scary when you take a hard look at their doctrine & history. The author remarks that Islam is not so much a religion but a political system and because they strive for Sharia, it can't live side by side with democracy (or women's rights).

There is a lot of fear in this book however, and I think America needs to be careful not to fight hate with hate. Our country is different because of freedom of religion and speech, and we shouldn't waver from those standards out of fear.

I better go read a pro-Islam book now to compare.

Extremly subjectively based.

Another eye opener on the violent history of Islam. It was very upsetting to read how the U.S govt has been appeasing and even supporting oppressive muslim regimes..

Dr Trifkovic gives us a comprehensive analysis of Islam. In terms of narrating and critiquing Islam, there isn’t much new material here. However, Trifkovic’s world-class expertise into the Balkans and post-Communist history shed much uncomfortable light in the role the United States has played in funding and supporting the worst of militant Islam around the world.



tIn terms of analyzing Mohammed, both morally and theologically, Trifkovic relies on the critiques previously given by Belloc, Lewis, and Geisler, along with standard works from The Catholic Encyclopedia. Against those who justify Mohammed’s actions (e.g., raiding caravans, consummating marriage with a 9 year old, seducing his daughter-in-law, etc) by saying that was standard culture for the time, Trifkovic masterfully points out that if that were true, Mohammed would not have invented a subsequent revelation justifying his actions!



tTrifkovic then recounts the nightmare of Islam overrunning the Byzantine Empire, Palestine, and India. The slaughter—justified by Sura 9:5—is simply too much for words. According to Will Durant, whom Trifkovic quotes, the Muslim conquest of India was one of the worst catastrophes for all of human civilization. Moving to Europe, even as late as 1922, the Muslim Turks were slaughtering Greek Christians by the hundreds of thousands. (At this point in the narrative Trifkovic recounts how in the Straits of the Bosporus, American and British naval ships, seeing Armenian Christians drowned in the sea, not only refused to help them, but also aided the Turks in the slaughter. Neutrality, you see, must be maintained. This would also be standard Anglo-American policy in dealing with Orthodox Christians for the next 85 years.)



tIt gets worse, sadly. After WW2 the United States’ actions ranged from arming Turkish militants to invade Christian Cyprus; creating al-Qaeda in Central Asia (Trifkovic masterfully refutes Brzeznski’s claim that the US did this to destabilize the Soviet Union); ignoring the slaughter of half a million Christians in Southeast Asia; arming and transporting thousands of Afghan and Pakistani militants into Bosnia, and a host of other situations. It cannot be seriously maintained that the United States is really against “terror.”



tWhat can be done? The situation is grim. The crisis is not because of the strength of Islam. The crisis is rather a crisis of the heart. Europeans (and to a lesser degree Americans) simply lack the will to resist. They lack the vision of a comprehensive faith. It is not so much that the Elites love Islam, but rather they hate Christians.



tTherefore, Europe should return to the ancient faith. They should seek alliances with countries that have such a heritage and have fought the battle against Islam—countries like Russia, Serbia, Greece, and Armenia. The victory will come from the East. And we are actually at a point in history where we can do this. The economic catastrophes have crippled the NWO banking cartels. NATO has officially run out of gas, and people from France to Serbia are seeing it as nothing more than legal terrorism. People are growing disenchanted with the Elite-imposed self-hatred (and no doubt tired of welfare Muslims car-bombing their cities). The next ten years will be grim and a close-call, but now more than ever is the victory within reach.



A FEW WORDS OF CRITICISM

This book could have used an editor. Trifkovic is a world-class mind. This makes the numerous editorial problems even more strange.

I just stumbled upon this book in my bookshelf and just have to write a review.

The book takes the point of view that Islam, as a religion, is inherently violent. Trifkovic spends the entire book quoting passages from the Koran and doing historic analysis on Mohammed's time to prove that the religion was born in blood, and that, in its essence, it contains violence, and, in his point of view, that is why there are Islamic terrorists in such abundance. He also throws in some defense of Christianity with similar historic references to make the "this is different than other major religions" point.

The book is pure hate-mongering. It is pseudo-intellectual hyped up garbage that makes its point by selectively choosing evidence and ignoring a thousand years of tradition to the contrary. It's a modern-day "Elders of Zion," except anti-Muslim instead of anti-Jew.

The only people who could conceivably like this book are those who already have the preconceived notion that Islam == violence.

Absolutely a must read for anyone interested in preserving Western Civilization. PC types will be seriously offended, but who cares. Read it anyhow.

A must for today's world.

A very nice book if you like politically incorrect books. A great overview of what the West is up against from a religious perspective.

Intense and very informative. I'm glad there is such a scholarly book about this.