The following Q&A was conducted by
Born and raised in the U.S. to Egyptian parents who lived in the Middle East, Raymond Ibrahim is an author and a highly regarded lecturer specializing in the Middle East and Islam. Currently a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum. Along with Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer and Bruce Bawer, he is one of the freest voices on Islamic history.
Italian publishers are disinclined to translate and publish books critical of Islam. You recently published Defenders of the West. Can you expose to our readers the content of the text?
Yes, it’s a follow-up to my previous book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. Whereas that book focused on eight decisive battles between Islam and Europe that shaped the course of history, Defenders of the West focuses on eight decisive men. It looks at that same long war between Islam and Europe, but through the lens and lives of these eight warriors, whose lives and exploits are more dramatic than most fiction movies can capture. Ironically, whereas all eight of these men were once heralded as great exemplars and heroes, most of them are today either completely unknown, or else vilified, and their defensive wars against Islam presented as intolerant or unprovoked attacks by “Islamophobes” and xenophobes who were incapable of “celebrating diversity.” I should add that I managed to delve into several arcane and little known sources, in different languages, to offer the most accurate and riveting account of their struggles against the jihad.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made Europe more dependent on Turkey, Azerbaijan, Algeria and the Muslim countries of the Caspian Sea. In the future, how will these Muslim nations exploit our dependence on their energy resources?
Well, if history is any indicator, these Muslim nations will exploit our dependence on their energy resources in a manner that bolsters Islam, including on the world community. For example, Saudi petrodollars are well-known to fund and disseminate the most radical form of Islamic teaching in mosques and madrasas all throughout the world, including if not especially in the West—so-called “Wahhabism” (which is really another way of saying literal and purist Islam). Furthermore, trying to strengthen Islam and weaken Infidels is a Muslim imperative, one which can be achieved in many ways, jihad only being the most famous. In this scenario, Muslims will use the infidels’ own money and dependence on Muslim resources to radicalize fellow Muslims against the West.
Muslims have conquered and subjugated vast territories all over the world, from Europe to Asia to Africa. How is it possible that a warrior and slave-holding civilization is, now, considered a “victim” of supposed Western oppression?
Yes, it’s quite the amazing turn of events, no? The reason such a topsy-turvy history has managed to prevail is twofold: First, the bulk of the real historical interaction between Islam in the West—centuries’ worth of war, conquest, bloodshed, and mass slavery—has been suppressed; here I am discussing the ongoing, violent, jihadist onslaught perpetrated by Muslim caliphates, sultanate, emirates, from a variety of nations, including Arabs, Berbers, Turks, and Tatars. As discussed in both books, Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, for well over a thousand years, these diverse peoples, operating under a distinctly Islamic logic—the sort championed by ISIS, the sort we were told has “nothing to do with Islam”—waged a relentless jihad on every corner of Europe, going as far as Iceland in their slave raids. Moreover, in the early centuries of Islam, three-quarters of the original Christian world—including all of North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia Minor (now known as Turkey)—were violently annexed from the Christian world, even though these regions represented the older and more developed regions of Christianity. Unfortunately, few people in the West know this; they seem to think that the Middle East and North Africa was always Islamic. But not only has this history been completely suppressed; in its place, whatever anecdotes can be found to demonize Europeans and present Muslims as victims have been stripped out of context, exaggerated, and widely disseminated.
Is this what occurred with the Crusades?
The Crusades are a perfect example. If you speak to any Western person and ask them when did conflicts begin between Muslims and Europeans, they will invariably say the Crusades. In so doing, they expose their ignorance that, in fact, the Crusades were really a drop in the bucket of the totality of warfare between Islam and the West over the course of more than one millennium; and during all of those wars—including the United States of America’s first war as a nation, with “Barbary”—it was the Muslims who were the aggressors. Why else was Islam in Spain, or the Balkans, or Russia, for centuries? Finally, when the “mainstream” talks about the historical interaction between the West and Islam, they invariably begin with the colonial era, that is to say, they begin during that brief time span when the West finally became militarily superior to Islam, and therefore can be positioned as the aggressor. Ironically, and in reality, even the early European colonizers were operating within the context of the nonstop, long war between Islam and themselves; in other words, they were trying to reform or at the very least defang the Muslim world.
The recent stabbing of Salman Rushdie shows that Islam has a “long memory” regarding the “offenses” of which it considers itself a victim; in contrast, Westerners quickly forget terrorist attacks and Islamic violence. To what do we owe this difference in memory?
Good question. I think much of it revolves around how Muslims and Westerners have been conditioned. Muslims, I would say, have a natural or normal kind of memory, one that places and interprets events in the context of their history. Western people, on the other hand, are habituated by the so-called “news,” to think and care only about what is “new”—even though, of course, nothing is really ever new—before passing onto the next thing that the “news” is abuzz with and forgetting the former.
No one is better than Raymond Ibrahim at telling the about Islam. He has a wealth of knowledge and a pleasing style.
It remains a critical aspect of Western and Mid Eastern thought; the striking forever memory of Islam and the lack of the same in all others. 25 years or so ago I was listening to a debate re Bosnia/Herzegovina the ferocity of the back and forth led me to believe that blows would be thrown, Turns out the debate was regarding some atrocity that had occurred more than 1000 years prior. These folks will not forget, ever, nor forgive, and will consider those innocents alive today as culprits.
Some hope here in the States.
https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2022/10/29/exclusive-iraqi-made-shrine-for-persecuted-christians-opens-in-massachusetts-all-christians-in-the-u-s-can-get-involved-with-prayer/
No one is better than Raymond Ibrahim at telling the about Islam. He has a wealth of knowledge and a pleasing style.
Absolutely. I learned about the Muslim religion back in the 60s from many books published and available in our library. Now you cannot find any books listing the historical truth because that doesn’t fit the agenda
It remains a critical aspect of Western and Mid Eastern thought; the striking forever memory of Islam and the lack of the same in all others. 25 years or so ago I was listening to a debate re Bosnia/Herzegovina the ferocity of the back and forth led me to believe that blows would be thrown, Turns out the debate was regarding some atrocity that had occurred more than 1000 years prior. These folks will not forget, ever, nor forgive, and will consider those innocents alive today as culprits.
Some hope here in the States.
https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2022/10/29/exclusive-iraqi-made-shrine-for-persecuted-christians-opens-in-massachusetts-all-christians-in-the-u-s-can-get-involved-with-prayer/
To be sincere, if the West takes lives in levity course what Middle Eastern and we from Africans are facing presently will be a tide among Western countries. The sad truth has that Muslims are migrating to western countries seeking to convert western people and somehow brainwash them against the society they were raised, by the so doing they will be patiently waiting till they have nearly all 50/50 or 50/30 population against any Western countries they thrives and the next in lines will be Jihad against the same people they onced lived peacefully with…i m from Nigeria, currently we are facing the hard time in the history of Nigeria from the hands KFC Jihadist, the people we once called peaceful Muslim but now because they have matched up with overall populations of non Muslims they turn sectioned of them wanted us all to become,convert to Islam or we die. This is the root of Boko Haram, Ansaru islamiya, Islamic State of West Africans provinces. I fear that the same will come to the West in the few years to come, except tthose that are sleeping wake up and do the needful when Muslims are already growing in Western countries.
To be sincere, if the West takes lives in levity course what Middle Eastern and we from Africans are facing presently will be a tide among Western countries. The sad truth has that Muslims are migrating to western countries seeking to convert western people and somehow brainwash them against the society they were raised, by the so doing they will be patiently waiting till they have nearly all 50/50 or 50/30 population against any Western countries they thrives and the next in lines will be Jihad against the same people they onced lived peacefully with…i m from Nigeria, currently we are facing the hard time in the history of Nigeria from the hands KFC Jihadist, the people we once called peaceful Muslim but now because they have matched up with overall populations of non Muslims they turn sectioned of them wanted us all to become,convert to Islam or we die. This is the root of Boko Haram, Ansaru islamiya, Islamic State of West Africans provinces. I fear that the same will come to the West in the few years to come, except tthose that are sleeping wake up and do the needful when Muslims are already growing in Western countries.
Thanks Amos – I’ve been following Nigeria and know that our Pres Obama and his administration helped Buhari to get in office.
Also, the US under Obama forced the S African military contractor out of Nigeria.
A great and terrible tragedy is ensuing as you know – a genocide – rapes – kidnapping – murders – and all the horrors that continue as we write.
I hope you can escape.
To all people who are concerned about Islamic atrocities in Nigeria – I reported these atrocities and the part played by US ‘dignitaries’ such as the fool called Obama in an article that was written several years ago and which still appears on my website: https://www.thechristianexpositor.org/page191.html Can anyone who cares about these matters please write to their local MP in the UK! I know a Nigerian who escaped to the UK to study here for a degree and he and his family are now safe in Europe: what shocked me was when he spoke to Christians in a local ‘church’ and never mentioned the situation in Nigeria – but he was very proud of the work his family was doing there to ‘fight global warming’! When I mentioned the atrocities in Nigeria he went very quiet and never turned up in our ‘church’ again….perhaps they don’t belong to the same Christian group that he supports? I am being sarcastic should you wonder! I was recovering from surgery for cancer at the time and I also wrote to every ‘church’ (that appears online and is situated within reach of the Houses of Parliament) at the time I wrote the article mentioned above. My tracking software showed that all of the e-mails were opened by someone at the ‘church’ …. but I’ve never heard of any protests for Nigerian Christians anywhere in London. Does anyone know of any kind of protest for my brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ who are being murdered by the evil believers in the demon possessed Muhammad and his Satanic cult of Islâm?
David, we share a common burden and realize the gravity of the situation with similar angst.
I will contact you through your website.
I’m using a pseudonym in my commenting.
Thanks for all you’ve tried to do so far.