European Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans recently chaired a roundtable with ten Muslim imams from six EU Member States (Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands). Afterwards Timmermans announced that “the Commission is strongly committed to promoting diversity in Europe. Islam is part of our history, Islam is part of our present and Islam will be part of our future.”
Such assertions are as true as the assumptions they are based on—and whether such assumptions are grounded in historical facts or fictions. In prefacing his claims about Islam’s historic role in Europe by saying “the Commission is strongly committed to promoting diversity in Europe,” it is clear which perception Timmermans is invoking.
The true, historically documented role that Islam played has a much different story to tell: in the early seventh century, sword-waving Arabs burst out of the Arabian Peninsula and in a few decades conquered some two-thirds of what then constituted the Christian world—from Syria and Egypt in the east to Carthage and Spain in the west and everything in between. One hundred years after the death of their prophet (traditionally dated to 632), they were in the heart of France where, thanks to their defeat at Tours in 732, and other Frankish victories, the whole of Europe was also not conquered.
But where lands could not be subjugated, bodies still could, and for the next few centuries the jihad turned into a giant slave trade of European flesh, as slave raids left virtually no part of Europe untouched (even the Viking raids in northern Europe were in large measure fueled by Arab gold).
In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Turks—who embraced the jihad ethos even more than the Arabs—converted to Islam and became its new standard bearers. Although they had notable victories and conquests—particularly after the Seljuk victory against the Eastern Roman Empire in 1071—it was only with the coming of the Ottomans that the jihad on Europe was renewed in earnest: in the late 1300s and early 1400s, much of the Balkans was brutally subjugated, and Constantinople—Islam’s original archenemy—finally (and horrifically) sacked in 1453.
The Ottoman advance continued unabated—the European victory at Lepanto in 1571 was more symbolic than anything—and in 1683 Vienna was encircled by hundreds of thousands of Muslims. As happened nearly a millennium earlier when the Islamic advance into Europe was stayed in 732, a Christian victory at Vienna only caused Muslims to collapse back to their more modest role as slave traders of white flesh: between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, Muslims slavers from the Crimean khanate in the east and the Barbary coast enslaved more than five million Europeans—including in the late 1700s, American sailors, precipitating the Barbary Wars.
Perhaps the most telling aspect of this aforementioned history is the evident continuity of hostility in distinctly Islamic terms: the Muslim notion that all infidels have three choices—conversion, willing capitulation via jizya/dhimmi status, or death; the willful and mass destruction of churches, crosses, and anything Christian; the sadistic atrocities that beggar description; the shouts of “Allahu Akbar” and other jihadi slogans; the invocations of Koranic promises of a carnal paradise for those who fall in jihad—all these are present in virtually every encounter between Muslim and European, beginning at the fateful battle of Yarmuk in 636, to America’s experiences with Barbary circa. 1800, as copiously documented in my forthcoming book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.
Such is the true role Islam played in Europe’s past.
As for its role in the present, this is built on Europeans being entirely ignorant of—when not willfully twisting—this unwavering history of hostility; welcoming Muslims into their lands en masse—and in the name of “diversity”; suffering accordingly, and then wondering what they, European host nations, did wrong.
Considering the unwavering part Islam played in the past and continues to play in the present, it remains to be seen if the West will build its future atop facts or fictions—getting its just deserts in either case.
Islam today is fundamentally unchanged.
That is a classic example of an useful idiot! Timmermans?? does he have as a surname Chamberlain another infamous historical useful idiot?
Self-appointed spokesman who is an IGNORAMUS of the highest order!
Part of our history? You have no blinking insight of the history you are quoting, Timmermans. The genocides and mass-murders in their litany beggars belief.
Guess you can never hope to teach brain-dead beings like these.
Islum is a blight on the history of the world. And should be given NO place in future history.. Period.
Very true
Very Well Said, SARAH.
To the point.
Some good news is that truth will win.
Whose Truth? Islams’ Truth?
Islam’s truth is deceit.
Sorry it wasn’t clearer. Truth excludes islam. Are we to believe that a Samaritan led Israel to the golden calf at Sinai? No! (Samaritans didn’t exist then.) Did Jesus prophecy an Ahmad? No. (Or else God lost the prophecy? No way!) etc. etc. etc. Does God threaten islamic apostates with death? No! Muslims are مُظلِمون ! Truth will win.
Would it be insensitive of me to suggest a valid comparison to Timmerman’s statement would be Jews stating Nazis are part of their history, part of their present and will be part of their future ?
Well Said, Mate!
Good observation precisely why Israel needs her own nation to live in peace.
Timmerman is repeating the same lies idiot Obama told throughout his disastrous Presidency. Obama purported to oppose colonialism but he had no issue with the most unenlightened and savage of all imperialists.
Actually I did get that, thanks. I was commenting on the absurdity of his statement. It all stems from liberal revisionist history, the belief in fairies, and Islam as the religion of peace.
Since the fall of Afghanistan the assassination of Mrs. Butto of Pakistan, the rise of the Ayatollahs, the power of the Muslim Brotherhood, just rearing its ugly head in Egypt back in 1987, the madness of Wahhabi Islam and now the reinstatement of the Ottoman Empire by Erdogan we are on a collision course with ISLAM. Until is is beaten into secular submission it will for ever be at war with the rest of us.
Do not ignore the Nazi connection with Islam. I see it as relevant in Germany’s (et al) continued promotion of Muslims into Europe.
Excellent article Raymond Ibrahim. I have a copy of your upcoming book on pre order.
Islam is the Nazism of this century. More dangerous even than Nazism, because of the vastly greater numbers and territory. The Muslim world is completely open about its goals of domination of the non-Muslim world. They are completely unapologetic about proclaiming their demands that everyone else respect Islam, respect Muslims, and completely unapologetic about their disdain for non-Muslims. In their view, this is not hypocrisy; this is entirely proper: anything and everything “Islamic” is right and correct, and therefore the domination of Muslims over non-believers is proper and natural. Linked to this is the deeply held conviction that Muslims and Islam must always be protected from unbelievers and insults from unbelievers, while Muslims have no obligation at all to respect any aspect of the unbelievers’ world. To Muslims this is not blatant hypocrisy, this is absolutely proper.
But Western leaders are worse than Neville Chamberlain in their rush to appease Muslims. They refuse to recognize the realities of Islam, of Dar al Islam. They are desperate to avoid any criticism of Islam, to deny that there might be any issues with Islamic belief, to castigate anyone who criticizes any aspect about Islam as an “Islamophobe” — a term as idiotic, to me, as “Naziphobe.” And in their willful blindness and desperation to be “tolerant” they are prepared to turn a blind eye to honor killings, rape, child marriage, and a host of other behaviors which in another age would have evoked outrage, but now must be accepted lest one be accused of “Islamophobia.”
Pat Condell said it perfectly: Islam “is far more than just a religion. It’s an invasive political supremacist ideology that exploits religious freedom and cultural guilt to impose itself with constant demands for special treatment, always backed by the implicit threat of conflict and violence.”
And “I have no respect for Islam, because Islam has no respect for me.”
“Islam is part of our history, Islam is part of our present and Islam will be part of our future.” He forgot to add “most unfortunately”.