First book I read about Islam. Chilling.

This is history writing at its best.The authors do an outstanding job
of telling the true story of Islam from the beginning.There's no sugar-
coating here folks. The telling of the Crusades was on point.The Europeans were fighting a counterattack against the Muslims.
We Americans need to read this book and stop placating to these people.

A CRITIQUE OF ISLAM AND JIHAD FROM A POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE

Srđa [Serge] Trifković is a Serbian-American publicist, politician and historian, who is foreign affairs editor for ‘Chronicles.’ He was formerly director of the Center for International Affairs at the Rockford Institute.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 2002 book, “Islam is not only a religious doctrine; it is 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 of beliefs. There is ‘Christianity,’ and there used to be ‘Christendom,’ but in Islam such a distinction is impossible. To whatever political entity a Muslim believer may belong… 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…”

“It is necessary to correct [the] trend of public commentary that tends, systematically, not to UNDERSTAND Islam but to construct a propagandistic version of it. That the worst culprits are the titled ‘experts’ in the field is unsurprising. 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 a priori admiration to be no greater obstacle to understanding Islam and expounding its meaning than it would be to discussing … 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.”

In the first chapter, he explains, “the claim of contemporary Muslim scholars, that the surviving early literature accurately conveys the story of Muhammad’s life, has been accepted by many of their Western colleagues, more or less at face value, lest the believers’ susceptibilities be disturbed… Without passing judgment on … to what extent the Tradition is telling the truth, we shall limit our account of Muhammad’s works and the tenets of his faith to what most Muslims through thirteen centuries have regarded… as factually accurate and dogmatically correct sources: the Koran, the Traditions, and the Consensus.” (Pg. 12)

He states, “there was no such thing as an ‘Arab nation’ before Muhammad, either in the sense of a centralized political structure or of the shared ideals, collective memories, and cultural traits. Only after the rise of Islam, and the emergency of the Arabian Muslims as the founders of a mighty empire, the name ‘Arab’ came to be used by those Muslims themselves, and by the nations encountering them, to describe all people of Arab origin. ‘Arabia’ itself … also did not come to denote the entire Arabian Peninsula until much later. There was no ‘nation,’ but a complex mosaic of warring or cooperating tribes, of shifting allegiances and broken coalitions.” (Pg. 15)

He observes, “The widespread belief in the non-Muslim world that Islam accords respect to the Old Testament and the Gospels as steps in progression to Muhammed’s revelation is mistaken. Modern Muslim commentators try to stress the supposed underlying similarities and compatibility of the three faiths, but this is not the view of ‘true’ (i.e., orthodox) Islam. Muhammad’s insistence that there is a heavenly proto-Scripture and that previous ‘books’ are merely distorted and tainted copies sent to previous nations or communities---Jews of Christians---meant that their scriptures were… opposed to the true, Arabic one. The Tradition also regards the non-canonical Gospel of Barnabas, and not the New Testament, as the one that Jesus taught.” (Pg. 69)

He asserts, “In the subsequent history of Islam, the victims of massacres by Muslim rulers have frequently been Muslims, including members of their own families of families claiming descent from Muhammad himself. Nevertheless, most Muslims look upon the early period of the four caliphs as the ideal model of umma that has never been attained in subsequent centuries, but should be striven to.” (Pg. 93-94)

He argues, “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 systematic mistreatment of the indigenous Christian population of those lands, and harassment of Christian pilgrims. The postmodern myth, promoted by Islamic propagandists and supported by some self-hating Westerners---notably in the academy---claims that the peaceful Muslims, native to the Holy Land, were forced to take up arms in defense European-Christian aggression. This myth… ignores the preceding centuries, starting with the early caliphs, when Muslim armies swept through the Byzantine Empire, conquering about two-thirds of the Christian world of that time.” (Pg. 97)

He notes, “an Islamic state is by its very nature bound to distinguish between Muslims and non-Muslims… Accordingly, non-Muslims cannot vote or be elected, and no Muslim can be sentenced to die for murdering a non-Muslim… a non-Muslim’s testimony is not acceptable or even allowed in court against Muslims or even against other non-Muslims… Discrimination was universal, not only legal. Non-Muslims could not be employed in the upper echelons of the civil service and in educating or in any way exercising authority over Muslims… The position of Christians, preferable to that of the Jews in Muhammad’s lifetime, eventually became more difficult than that of the Jews.” (Pg. 106-107)

He asserts, “It is remarkable that … the persecution of Christians by Muslims had become a taboo subject in the Western academy… Thirteen centuries of religious discrimination, causing discrimination suffering and death of countless millions, have been covered by the myth of Islamic ‘tolerance’ … We are, nevertheless, often told ty contemporary apologists for Islam that the usual modus operandi of the early Muslims---attacking other people’s lands pillaging, raping, robbing, and extorting---should be judged in its ‘context,’ that this was normal behavior at the time. The same understanding, however, is not extended towards those Europeans … that joined the Crusades�� We don’t hear about them because the upholders of the myth of Islamic tolerance are secular Western freethinkers who hate persecution and discrimination… with one exception: when Christians are the victims.” (Pg. 128)

He summarizes, “Islam, a religion born of the desert, has created jihad and remains defined by jihad, its most important concept for the rest of the world. Through jihad, Islam has emerged as a quasi-religious ideology of cultural and political imperialism that knows no natural limits to itself…. jihad is inherently religious as well as political: Islamic normative thinking does not separate the two. It has emerged from the desert, and it perpetually creates new mental, psychic, spiritual, and literal deserts of whatever it touches.” (Pg. 141)

He explains, “The slave trade inside the Islamic empire and along its edges was vast. It began to flourish at the time of the Muslim expansion into Africa, in the middle of the seventh century, and it still survives today in Mauritania and Sudan. The Spanish and Portuguese originally purchased black African slaves for their American colonies from Arab dealers… Black slaves were brought into the Islamic world by a number of routes... Most slaves imported into the Americas were males, while in the Muslim world they were predominantly female.” (Pg. 172-173)

He contends, “The unpleasant truth is that mosques throughout America and around the Western world are being used to teach hate. In the firsts instance, they promote the most outwardly visible form of Islamic piety, the one that focuses on Islamic ritual and practice in the immigrants’ daily lives… For younger members of the second or third generation of Muslim immigrants to the West, Islamic appearance and lifestyle provides the much-needed means of enhancing group identity, loyalty, and self-respect. The next step is to use the pool of outwardly pious to recruit the soldiers of radical Islam… They join the considerable ranks of the former Middle Eastern secularists who have been disappointed both in the Marxist failed God and the futile dead-end of Third World nationalism… They see political parties as mere ‘traps for hunting votes, which ensure the wielding of power for a few people’s benefit---in other words, democracy is really a form of dictatorship.” (Pg. 269-270)

He suggests, “Appeasing the Islamic militants living in America is only making it harder for more tolerant Muslims to emerge, the people who have absorbed enough of American values and way of life to realize that the only way they can be accepted in the long run is to give up the psychotic desire to turn everyone and everything into a mirror-image of themselves…. The old liberal antipathy to Christianity has converged with the new PC movement and the therapeutic society to produce a climate wherein it is easy for the Muslims to lie about the true nature of Islam and get away with it. Defense against such lies is difficult, when it is deemed ‘insensitive’ to respond with facts and in plain language.” (Pg. 275)

He points out, “the Muslim population of the world has been exploding, not only in Asia and Africa but also in Europe and the United States… most Muslim countries regard demography as a political weapon. They will gladly export their surplus population to Europe and America, aware that the bigger the diaspora, the greater the political influence it will exert, and the more concessions the Islamic world will be able to extort from the West. Maintaining the loyalty of the dispersed Muslim diaspora has been a top priority…” (Pg. 283)

He concludes, “Islam should not be blamed for being what it is, nor should its adherents be condemned for maintaining their traditions. We should not hate it, nor ban it. We should, however, blame ourselves for refusing to acknowledge the facts… We have every right to protect our ideas and way of life by openly proclaiming the superiority of our principles. Our second task after defending ourselves is to help our fellow humans trapped in Islam to become free… The passport of anyone preaching jihad should be revoked… Secularists and believers of all other faiths must act together before it is too late.” (Pg. 298-301)

This book will appeal to those seeking ‘political’ critiques of Islam from a conservative Western perspective.