(Editor’s note: All quotes and facts of history appearing in the following article are documented in the author’s new book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.)
What accounts for the stark difference between how Western and Eastern European nations respond to Muslim migrants? The former—including Great Britain, Germany, and Scandinavia—have been welcoming, whereas the latter—including Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia—have not, often vociferously so.
Part of the answer, which may surprise some, revolves around history: Eastern European nations have a long and intimate history with, and thus understand Islam better than Western nations.
Consider Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán’s logic for rejecting Muslim migrants:
Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims. This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity…. We don’t want to criticize France, Belgium, any other country, but we think all countries have a right to decide whether they want to have a large number of Muslims in their countries. If they want to live together with them, they can. We don’t want to and I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country. We do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see….
The prime minister went on to invoke history: “I have to say that when it comes to living together with Muslim communities, we are the only ones who have experience because we had the possibility to go through that experience for 150 years.”
Orbán was referring to Islam’s conquest and occupation of Hungary from 1541 to 1699. Then, persecution and terrorism were rampant.
Nor was Hungary alone. Muslims conquered, occupied, and terrorized most of southeastern Europe—often in ways that make Islamic State atrocities seem tame.
In 1354, the Ottomans—who were more committed to the principles of jihad than any of their Muslim predecessors—first crossed the Dardanelles and established a foothold in Eastern Europe. Immediately, “[w]here there were churches he [Suleiman, son of Sultan Orhan] destroyed them or converted them to mosques,” writes an Ottoman chronicler: “Where there were bells, Suleiman broke them up and cast them into fires. Thus, in place of bells there were now muezzins.”
Before long the Balkans were conquered in the name of jihad. The atrocities committed before, during, and after these conquests are well documented. For example, writing around 1438, Bartolomeo de Giano highlighted the “calamitous and lamentable slaughter that we see in these days.” Everywhere they conquered, the jihadis erected “great mountains of [Christian] heads,” and “so great a quantity of bodies lay consumed, partially rotted, partially devoured by dogs, that it would seem unbelievable to anyone who had not seen it with their own eyes.”
Survivors were either enslaved to “serve their [masters’] wicked and filthy pleasures” and/or forced into becoming “Saracens [Muslims] who will later be enemies of the Christians.” From Hungary, three hundred thousand were enslaved and “carried off in just a few days”; from Serbia and Transylvania one hundred thousand were hauled off. “The massive enslavement of slavic populations during this period gave rise, in fact, to our word ‘slave,’” comments one historian; “in Bartolomeo’s time, to be a slave was to be a Slav.”
Young and old everywhere were seen being “led away in iron fetters tied to the backs of horses,” continues Bartolomeo, and “women and children were herded by dogs without any mercy or piety. If one of them slowed down, unable to walk further because of thirst or pain, O Good Jesus! she immediately ended her life there in torment, cut in half.”
The slave markets of Adrianople, then-capital of the Ottoman sultanate, were so inundated with human flesh that children sold for pennies, “a very beautiful slave woman was exchanged for a pair of boots, and four Serbian slaves were traded for a horse.”
Similarly, the Ottomans’ chief Muslim allies, the Tatar khanate of Crimea—described by Christians as the “heathen giant who feeds on our blood”—enslaved and sold “like sheep” some three million Slavs (Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, and Ukrainians) between 1450 and 1783. In 1630, a Lithuanian described how Muslim masters “castrated” the men and “cut off their ears and nostrils, burned cheeks and foreheads with the burning iron and forced them to work with their chains and shackles during the daylight, and sit in the prisons during the night; they are sustained by the meager food consisting of the dead animals’ meat, rotten, full of worms, which even a dog would not eat. The youngest women are kept for wanton pleasures.”
Muslim aggression and atrocities against Eastern Europeans culminated with the slaughter if not genocide of any Christian the sultan’s scimitar could reach (Serbians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians), and ended only with the demise of the Ottoman sultanate soon after World War I.
It is this long history of living with and under Islam—that is, personal and direct experience, as amply documented in Sword and Scimitar—that has caused several Eastern European nations to reject Muslim migrants.
Of course, some will argue that the aforementioned history does not pertain to current realities. This would be a plausible position if not for the fact that every Western city that contains a large Muslim population has experienced a dramatic rise in terrorism and crimes in general—most of which are fueled by that old Islamic hostility for infidels.
In Germany and the United Kingdom, crime and rape have soared in direct proportion to the number of Muslim “refugees” accepted. Sweden alone—where rape has increased by 1,472% since that country embraced “multiculturalism”—is reportedly on the verge of collapse.
When it comes to considering its relationship with Islam, the West would do well to revisit and learn from history—over a millennium of it. Otherwise it will have to keep learning the hard way.
Yet what do you call it but a high level of mental retardation among the liberals and left in Europe and North America who want to experience the romantic high of multiculturalism with Islam?
If at all they wanted to experience multiculturalism, why choose people whose culture promotes depravity, destruction and death?
Was there no dearth of other cultures or other religions in the world to choose from? Cultures from India, tribal cultures from Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Americas – both north and south, and so many others!!
But then they say, before the gods seek to destroy, they first make mad. I suppose this must be as good example as any other.
A good deal of cowardice plays into the picture. The most assertive and aggressive come out on top. Many things are governed by a very few. The herd follows the opinion polls.
Putting one’s finger up to the political winds to test the favored way determines the course of those without any anchor. Jesus Christ and His living Word provide that anchor but folks lost that standard when their focus turned from their Creator and to entertainment as their god.
Those who pretend compassion are in truth gaining monies from the
refugee industry foisted upon the nations of the West; by ruthless
islamist, the United Nations of islam, the would-be gods as lords of
Progressive politicians and billionaires to trillionaires who worship
Lucifer as Satan, and seek by these foot-soldiers to destroy the nation
states of the West, Christianity, rural communities, and the wondrous
exceptionalism of the Western Traditions! Whilst Africa suffered enslavement,
in the largest measures by the hand of islam;(and still suffers
enslavement as does peoples of the Western Nations secretively captured
and sold as slaves among islamist and pedophile domesticity of
internationalist elites); the Slavic nations by which the term slave has
strong origination, has also suffered even more massive enslavement’s!
It is a purposed use for illicit reasons and gains by evil people who
pretend to be good people! Our leaders who foist all this islam upon us
live and work in protected gated communities, having private protected
means of personal travels around the world, send their children to very
exclusive and protected schools, own citizen-ships in multiple countries
and do not care if the costs of goods and services are prohibitively
priced and extremely scarce; they do not abide by, nor live under the
patronages and laws which they enact upon the rest of us- in short they
are as gods and lords of a hellish world they seek to rule absolutely
over! Wake up for sooner than you think, the Man of Lawlessness will be
coronated by the Devil Lucifer, and empowered by the evil and wicked
forces of the Beast! He will come for you, and yours, and he will use
these means already given by these people who call good evil and evil
good- who pretend compassion but want your soul! They are here! They are
enacting and empowered and we voted them into office! Revelations is
being revealed before your very eyes! Let those who have eyes to see,
see; and those who have ears to hear, hear….
Good solid piece of writing. Well put and frighteningly accurate. Thank you.
They think by hiding in protected spaces to avoid the inevitable, but it will bite them, too eventually.
None of those clueless to the validity of Christian beliefs and the living Word of God will be safe.
If East European countries can learn from the past, so can the West, even if they have not had the same historical experience.
IMO the problem for the West is mainly a spiritual one, where most have been blinded by their unbelief and rejected God and His moral law. They have chosen instead to dance with the devil.
When considering Old Testament history, there were consequences for Israel because of her disobedience. God does not change.
Absolutely agree, and I would go further. Look at Israel in the book of Judges, time and again rebellion to God, then deliverance via a Spiritual Judge sent by God. Every time, after about 40 yeas they would again backslide into rebellion, needing a fresh deliverance. In the interim they suffered for their rebelliousness, slaughtered by their enemies.
In America the ground was thoroughly plowed to prepare for the overthrow of the Republic. Family formation was attacked from every side. Materialism, comfort, prosperity, competitive sports became objects of worship — while Christianity was mocked and the education system became secularized….all this rotting out the pilings upon which our country was constructed. It’s a long list of failings, woven in fabric spanning generations…and now America commits suicide via some misplaced idea alturisiam. Easier to be considered altruistic and lawless than to be understood as moral and upright, protecting hearth and home. True justice is a foreign concept in America now, not being considered Politically Correct. The wicked are not punished (since who can define ‘wicked’), the innocent are not protected (pedo and abortions), the elderly are not respected (as they eat their dog food dinners), and the wealthy laugh (not giving freely to the truly needy). Beauty no longer kisses righteousness and the courageous are weak.
I have spent so many years battling in forums to establish the truths you speak of and try to make Americans aware of what they are delivering themselves into of their own free will. I have railed against the boob tube and the mentality of on-thinkers and ignorance it has laid the table for. I have despised the sports worship.
And, now that we are paying the consequences, they are wondering where the leftist/Progressives came from and why the lunacy of their stupefying ignorance. Careful reading of the OT sheds a lot of light but it’s considered archaic Today’s populist ideologies will deliver us to the end we deserve.
It is so refreshing to run across informed people who think and see clearly, quote the Bible scriptures and the validity of its lessons for today. To bad so few bother looking for the answers and solutions where our Creator put them right square in front of their faces. To bad.
Amen, and well said!
If these accounts don’t pertain to current realities, then why do Muslims continually bring up the Crusades as something Christians must pay for? (This is a rhetorical question)
Good question especially considering the reality that Christians were no more responsible for the way the Crusades were fought – necessary as they were – than they were for the Inquisition. Speaking of all around ignorance, I’m going to point out that which even most scholarly Christians are unaware of. Catholicism right from the moment of its birth was never Christian but gutted every semblance of substance within it. One of the first steps was making personal and public witnessing unnecessary. Jesus made it very clear that all of us are required to witness.
But the worst desecration was that of making Christian doctrine palatable by assigning the attributes of the Roman Empire gods and goddesses to the dead apostles and even Mary herself. The pagans then found it more acceptable being forced into what they were told was “Christianity” when in reality it was anything but. Catholics have been dutifully praying to pagan gods ever since in direct violation of:
John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
“NO ONE COMES TO THE FATHER EXCEPT TROUGH ME.”
Todays’ Pope desecrates things even further (though he needed no help as much else is wrong with Catholicism) by declaring a couple years ago that Islam and Christianity and their attendant holy books were essentially the same. All Muslims, he said, who believed in their scriptures and Allah are equally as saved as the “Christians” or that is, Catholics in his vernacular.
I tried pointing out this sacrilege to a local Catholic I know and here response was, “Oh, well.”
People find it terribly difficult to break with their culture and the lifetime of friends and family that go with it. To them, doctrine and theology are irrelevant.
Thank you for that. I knew some about how far from true Christianity Catholicism was, but I had no idea that they ascribed pagan attributes to the Apostles. Could you tell me more about that? I do know they’ve essentially deified the saints and Mary. I put a lot of the blame for that on Constantine.
Didn’t Benedict also say that the ‘islam and Christianity are essentially the same’?
I don’t know about Benedict, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all as he kissed up to them for sure. Specifically, I just don’t know.
Yes, Constantine was to blame for much of this problem that Catholicism brought to fruition. He never was a Christian and did it any favor by among other things giving position, power, wealth, and so on to the leaders of Christianity of his time. That started the ball rolling and of course at that time of horrendous persecution, it must have been so easy for the Christian leaders to step in to.
The eventual problem of course was what always comes with lives of comfort, power, wealth, etc. and that was what was experienced in Revelation 2:1-7 where Jesus commended the Ephesian church for many things, but, “Oops.” They had drifted from their “first love” and as He warned, their candlestick (power and hedge of protection via Holy Spirit) would be withdrawn if they didn’t get their act together. This leads to the next in succession of the letters of Revelation chapters two and three. The door is now open with the candlestick gone and the pagan influences drift in (Pergamus) and establish themselves in the Thyatira church through the woman Jezebel.
The Roman emperors were much more than just this latter position as the empire was entrenched with the worship of pagan gods and goddesses. The emperors were also and always the head priest (“Supreme Pontiff”). Not to long after Constantine, an emperor named Grecian who was the real deal – bona-fide Christian, abdicated this “Supreme Pontiff” position stating that as a Christian, he could not justify holding it. That was 376 AD. For two years, the slot stayed open as the “Christian” (real affiliation long gone) leaders fought for supremacy. In 378 AD, Damascus took the helm.
The specific timing of aligning the apostles up with pagan gods and goddesses I don’t have right now. If you take note of the Catholics’ prayer rituals, you will see that they address quite a few of their prayers specifically to specific “saints” – saint so and so for “safe travels”, another for health, etc. Each venue of assignment is aligned with a specific Roman Empire god or goddess.
History puts up Leo I as the first actual Pope (440-461), but Gregory I (590-604) was considered another contender for first.
I highly recommend two sources both summarized, concentrated, and valuable to fully understanding the whole thing. My own leaves out a lot of critical details, but a Scotsman named Mark Fairley put together a priceless summary in his four DVD series entitled “Know Your Enemy”. It is divided up into 77 segments that includes three on Catholicism, also including their alliances with Islam. At the end of every segment, there is a menu in each DVD with labels. It is easy to select out the ones on Catholicism, but all of it is good. The whole thing is also free on YouTube under what he calls his “Fuel Project”.
Second is a Christian commentary (“Halley’s Bible Handbook”) put together by Henry H. Halley at the back of which there is dated and summarized accounts of – Catholicism, but also many other things such as Islam. Try to find it on Amazon and get an edition before the 25th. The latter ones from there took out this valuable little resource.
I’ll throw in another little thing for you. When the Babylonian Empire that took out Judah and ruled most of the known world of its time was eventually taken out by the Medo-Persians, the priests of the pagan gods and goddesses of the Babylonians fled to the region of today’s Turkey and eventually on into Rome of today’s Italy. These priests formed the foundation of the Roman Empire’s religion whose head position as I said earlier was given to each succeeding emperor.
Herein lies the roots of the eventual Vatican’s Catholic theology mixed in with a heavily corrupted “Christian” theology now devoid of much substance. Cleverly, the Vatican inserted the law making it illegal for their faithful to read the Bible for themselves – on pain of death. That served them quite well and kept their twisted and self-serving system safe from discovery. This law was officially lifted sometime in the early 1950’s, but most of the faithful continue blithely on in their dependence on the leadership to deliver them the contents of God’s living Word. That of course is a fatal mistake though many today do manage to ferret out at least the essentials of the Gospel salvation message. What a shame that they still give allegiance to the Vatican and continue wasting countless hours of prayer to dead people – aka pagan gods and goddesses.
Jesus Christ increasingly plays second fiddle to an increasingly “divine” and immaculately conceived “Mary Mother of God” whose origins are drifting slowly towards a woman named Semmiramus – wife of the Biblical Nimrod and self proclaimed goddess and god of the first Babylonian Empire (Tower of Babel fame). Nimrod eventually died in a very contentious marriage and was proclaimed by S, to now be the risen sun god. Later, she conceived, claimed “immaculate” conception – of course, and birthed a male infant which picture lived on in ensuing centuries as a pre-corruption (Satanic) of God’s design of the coming Messiah to produce a pagan goddess that the Vatican took advantage of. Very simplified, but Mark Fairley does a much better job of it.
Thank you. That is really helpful, as I didn’t know too much about the Catholic church.
As a retired cook who managed an inner-city drug and alcohol rehabilitation kitchen, I have talked to Muslim, guys and gals, about Jesus, for many years. Always kept a large open Bible on my center-kitchen cutting board. I have told thousands of Muslims about Jesus. No interest. Yes, they are a friendly and talkative group, love to talk and visit, but upon the declaration that Jesus Christ is God, it’s unanimous
no western nation can EVER LIVE IS PEACE WITH MUSLIM SCUM.
and ISLAM is not a religion, it’s A POLITICAL IDEOLOGY WRAPPED IN A RELIGIOUS SUIT, NO DIFFERENT THAN COMMUNISM, MARXISM, AND SOCIALISM.
that means to RULE NOT GOVERN.
and ALL MUSLIMS NEEDS ERADICATED OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH AS THE PARASITES AND PLAGUE THEY ARE.
the country’s bringing in muslims are committing suicide….we have a right and a duty to warn people as well as to prepare to defend our homelands
Another of so many very informative and valuable articles in a worldwide landscape where there is so little.
I have so much respect for the Hungarian government taking the stand they have and eloquently to boot.
Thank you again, Raymond Ibrahim for the wealth all around in your many productions here in Daniel Pipes MEF.