Sword and Scimitar

INTRODUCTION

JIHAD: THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT

MUHAMMAD’S RISE TO POWER

BEFORE DELINEATING THE HISTORY OF WARFARE BETWEEN ISLAM and the West, its roots must first be comprehended. These begin and end with the Arabian founder and prophet of Islam, Muhammad bin Abdullah (570–632). In 610 he began telling his polytheistic tribesmen in Mecca that an angel (Gabriel) had called him to become Allah’s messenger. The message was simple and revolved around the concept of submission—Islam in Arabic—to Allah’s commandments (as delivered to and by Muhammad); whoever obeyed became a Muslim (“one who submits”). After twelve years of preaching Muhammad had only won over some one hundred converts, mostly relatives. Although they originally let him preach unmolested, Mecca’s tribal elites, the Quraysh, eventually wearied of his agitating against their gods and traditions and drove him out in 622. The prophet and his followers fled to, and the former eventually became master of, the oasis region of Yathrib, later dubbed Medina, the “Radiant.” Now, with a considerable force of men under his control, Muhammad began to launch raids everywhere.

There was only one way to avoid the scimitar of Muhammad, captured in the following instructions he gave his followers: “Fight them [non-Muslims] until they testify that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger; if they do so, then their blood [lives] and possessions are denied you.”⁴ His followers grew with every spoil-laden victory and were of two kinds: those vanquished by Muhammad, who chose Islam (submission) over slavery or death; and those impressed by Muhammad, who chose Islam (submission) in order to join his bandwagon and reap its rewards. All that both groups had to do was recite the shahada, Islam’s first pillar and proclamation of faith: “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” Whether they sincerely believed the words or not was an academic distinction. In saying them, they made submission (Islam) to Muhammad’s political authority and as such were good Muslims.

As Islamic histories will make clear in the coming pages, desire for what can be gained from or mere fear of Islam—both of which are seen as validating and thus exalting its power—were the primary impetus for conversion. That Muhammad had only won over some one hundred followers after a decade of peaceful preaching in Mecca—but nearly the whole of Arabia after a decade of successful raiding, “an average of no fewer than nine campaigns annually”⁵—speaks for itself. As Edward Gibbon observed, Muhammad “employ[ed] even the vices of mankind as the instruments of their salvation,” and the “use of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice, were often subservient to the propagation of the faith.”⁶

By 630, Muhammad’s following had so grown that he could march ten thousand armed Muslims onto Mecca, whence he had been ignominiously driven out eight years earlier. An ultimatum was sent to the longtime naysayers and scoffers: “Embrace Islam and you shall be safe. You have been surrounded on all sides. You are confronted by a hard case that is beyond your power.” When the Quraysh chieftain of Mecca—who, since Muhammad began preaching some two decades earlier, had only mocked and persecuted him as a false prophet—came to parley, Muhammad trumpeted, “Woe to you, Abu Sufyan; isn’t it time that you recognize that I am Allah’s apostle?” “As to that,” replied the crestfallen pagan, “I still have some doubt.” One of Muhammad’s raiders instantly ordered him to “submit and testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the apostle of Allah before you lose your head!”⁷ Abu Sufyan, followed by the Meccans, proclaimed the shahada to resounding cries of “Allahu Akbar!”

Such is the bare-bones, hagiographic-free summary of Muhammad’s rise from obscurity to power.

TRIBALISM DEIFIED

The appeal of Muhammad’s message lay in its compatibility with the tribal mores of his society, three in particular: loyalty to one’s tribe, enmity for other tribes, and raids on the latter to enrich and empower the former. For seventh-century Arabs—and later tribal peoples, chiefly Turks and Tatars, who also found natural appeal in Islam—the tribe was what humanity is to modern people: to be part of it was to be treated humanely; to be outside of it was to be treated inhumanely. This is no exaggeration: Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) described the Arabs of his time (let alone those from Muhammad’s more primitive era eight centuries earlier) as “the most savage human beings that exist. Compared with sedentary people they are on a level with wild, untamable animals and dumb beasts of prey. Such people are the Arabs.”⁸

Muhammad upheld the dichotomy of tribalism, but by prioritizing fellow Muslims over blood relatives. Thus the umma—the Islamic “Super-Tribe” that transcends racial, national, and linguistic barriers—was born^*; and its natural enemy remained everyone outside it. The Islamic doctrine of al-wala’ wa al-bara’ (“loyalty and enmity”), which Muhammad preached and the Koran commands, captures all this.^* The latter goes so far as to command all Muslims to “renounce” and “disown” their non-Muslim relatives—“even if they be their fathers, their sons, their brothers, or their nearest kindred”—and to feel only “enmity and hate” for them until they “believe in Allah alone” (Koran 58:22 and 60:4).^† As one researcher summarizes, non-Muslims are described in the Koran as “vile animals and beasts, the worst of creatures and demons; perverted transgressors and partners of Satan to be fought until religion is Allah’s alone. They are to be beheaded; terrorized, annihilated, crucified, punished, and expelled, and plotted against by deceit.”⁹

Hence the jihad was born. As only two tribes existed—the Islamic umma in one tent and the dehumanized tribes of the world in another—Muslims were exhorted to attack and subjugate all these “infidels” in order to make their Super-Tribe supreme. This dichotomized worldview remains enshrined in Islamic law’s, or sharia’s, mandate that Dar al-Islam (the “Abode of Islam”) must battle Dar al-Kufr (the “Abode of Infidelity”) in perpetuity until the former subsumes the latter.^‡ From here the argument can be made that Muhammad’s most enduring contribution to world history is that, in repackaging the tribal mores of seventh-century Arabia through a theological paradigm, he also deified tribalism, causing it to outlive its setting and spill into the modern era. Whereas most world civilizations have been able to slough off their historic tribalism and enter into modernity, to break with tribalism for Muslims is to break with Muhammad and his laws—to break with cardinal Islamic teachings.

JIHAD: THE WIN-WIN RAID

Numerous Koran verses and canonical (sahih) hadiths portray jihad as the noblest endeavor. “Lining up for battle in the path of Allah,” Muhammad said, “is worthier than 60 years of worship.”^§ Accordingly, whereas the rewards of the pre-Islamic tribal raid were limited to temporal spoils and came with the risk of death, the deified raid (jihad) offered rewards in the here and hereafter—meaning it was essentially risk-free—and thus led to a newborn fanaticism and sense of determination. As one Meccan scout reported after secretly surveying Muhammad’s nascent Medinan army: “Yes, they are quite fewer than us. But death rides astride their camels. Their only refuge is the sword; dumb as the grave, their tongues they put forth with the serpent’s deadly aim.”¹⁰

Whoever survived the successful raid on the infidel was guaranteed all the usual spoils of war—plunder and slaves, including concubines^¶; whoever died during this jihad was guaranteed similar but greater spoils in the afterlife. Either way, they won: “I guarantee him either admission to Paradise,” said Muhammad, “or return to whence he set out with a reward or booty.”¹¹ As for “the martyr”—the shahid—he “is special to Allah,” said the prophet.^* “He is forgiven from the first drop of blood [he sheds]. He sees his throne in paradise.… Fixed atop his head will be a crown of honor, a ruby that is greater than the world and all it contains. And he will copulate with seventy-two Houris.”¹² The houris are supernatural, celestial women—“wide-eyed” and “big-bosomed,” says the Koran—created by Allah for the express purpose of gratifying his favorites in perpetuity. That Islamic scriptures portray paradise in decidedly carnal terms—food, drink, gold, and “eternally young boys” who “circulate among” the believers also await the martyr—should not be surprising considering the aforementioned primitivism of Muhammad’s society.¹³

Incidentally, Muhammad/Allah took a different approach to Muslims not inspired to fight on promises of temporal or eternal rewards: they “will be tortured like no other sinful human”¹⁴ in hell, threatened Muhammad, with confirmation from Allah (e.g., Koran 8:15). At any rate, that the jihad’s win-win nature motivated the early Muslims is widely attested and independently confirmed by past and present non-Muslim sources.^† “It is almost as if they are driven by the very demons of Hell itself,” a bewildered Byzantine official would proclaim of the soon-to-be invading Arabs. “They are in no wise tempted by comfort or safety. Instead, I dare say, they relish the ardor of battle and welcome the horrors of death.”¹⁵ According to a tenth-century Chinese source, “Every seventh day the king [of the Arabs] sits on high and speaks to those below, saying: ‘Those who are killed by the enemy will be borne in heaven above; those who slay the enemy will receive happiness.’ Therefore they are usually valiant fighters.”¹⁶

Nor—and this is pivotal—were those who undertook jihad obligated to have sincere or pious intentions.^‡ The cold, businesslike language of the Koran makes this clear. Whoever wages jihad makes a “fine loan to Allah,” which the latter guarantees to pay back “many times over,” always commensurate with their efforts (e.g., Koran 2:245, 4:95). Simply put, “Allah has bought from the believers their lives and worldly goods, and in return has promised them Paradise: they shall fight in the way of Allah and shall kill and be killed.… Rejoice then in the bargain you have struck, for that is the supreme triumph” (Koran 9:111, emphasis added).^§

The instant forgiveness of sins granted to believers naturally became a license to sin for less believing Muslims. So long as they proclaim the shahada and pledge allegiance to Muhammad/Allah/umma, they can join and reap the rewards of jihad, no questions asked. Fighting in Islam’s service—with the risk of dying—is all the proof of piety needed. Indeed, sometimes fighting has precedence over piety: many dispensations, including not upholding prayers and fasting, are granted those who participate in jihad. Ottoman sultans were actually forbidden from going on pilgrimage to Mecca—an otherwise individual obligation for Muslims—simply because doing so could jeopardize the annual jihad.¹⁷ Similarly, according to the renowned Sunni jurisprudent Ibn Qudama (d. 1223), “One must fight under every leader, whether it be a respectable [meaning pious] man or a corrupt man.”¹⁸

All this is important to keep in mind because many of the greatest jihadis^* in the coming pages led otherwise un-Islamic lives (for instance by drinking alcohol or engaging in homosexuality). This fact has caused Western historians to disassociate these Muslims—and their often sadistic treatment of infidels—from Islam. Meanwhile Islamic historiography reveres them as good Muslims precisely because they waged successful jihads on the infidel. Others, like Khalid bin al-Walid, who mocked and warred on Muhammad only to proclaim the shahada once the latter took Mecca, were little more than mass-killing psychotics and rapists.

“THE WEST” (OR CHRISTENDOM)

Having gained a basic understanding of jihad, it is now necessary to examine Muhammad’s dealings with and views on “the West.” But as that term is fraught with problems and anachronisms—what other civilization is still named after a direction?—some clarifications are in order.

Like Islam, what is now referred to as the West was for centuries known and demarcated by the territorial extent of its religion (hence the older and more cohesive term, “Christendom”). It included the lands of the old Roman Empire—parts of Europe, all of North Africa, Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor—which had become Christian centuries before Islam arrived and were part of the same overarching civilization.

In other words, the West is what remained of Christendom after Islam conquered some three-fourths of its original territory. As historian Franco Cardini puts it: “If we… ask ourselves how and when the modern notion of Europe and the European identity was born, we realize the extent to which Islam was a factor (albeit a negative one) in its creation. Repeated Muslim aggression against Europe… was a ‘violent midwife’ to Europe.”¹⁹ Resisting Islam defined Europe through the unity of Christianity. Similarly, after summarizing centuries of Islamic invasions, Bernard Lewis writes, “Thus, at both its eastern and southwestern extremities, the limits and in a sense even the identity of Europe were established through first the advance, and then the retreat, of Islam.”²⁰ Accordingly, Europe’s self-identity never revolved around ethnicity or language—hence why such a small corner of the Eurasian landmass (Europe) still houses dozens of both, some widely divergent—but rather religion; it was the last and most redoubtable bastion of Christendom not to be conquered by Islam. Simply put, the West is actually the westernmost remnant of what was a much more extensive civilizational block that Islam permanently severed.