"On my travels for the past few days, I have been reading a book which tells the story of a quite astonishing part of British history of which I was previously unaware. In 'White Gold', Giles Milton records the appalling details -- gleaned,it appears, from a wealth of historical documents including diaries and letters -- of a seaborne Islamic jihad against Britain which lasted for no less than two centuries.
From the early seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, thousands of British men women and children were kidnapped by Arab corsairs and sold into slavery in Morocco where they were kept in conditions of unspeakable barbarism. The astounding thing is that these British victims were not merely seized at sea where they ran the gauntlet of such pirates in places such as the Straits of Gibraltar. They were actually abducted from Britain itself."
Here are some important links showing new data on the subject of dhimmitude that roll back the PC notion that Jews and Christians were treated decently under Islamic rule during that religion's "Golden Age." The more one reads, the harder it is to envision Islam separate from the Prophet's warrior-mentality:
Here's a review of a newly published book examining the history of Islam's pillar of jihd and its continuity with the Quran and jurist rulings since the Prophet:
"It has become harder then ever for such spokesmen to maintain this fa�ade, however, with the appearance of The Legacy of Jihad (Prometheus Books), a new compendium of documents relating to the doctrine and history of jihad. Edited by Dr. Andrew Bostom, this massive volume contains a wealth of material from Islamic texts and Muslim jurists, much of which has never before appeared in English, as well as accounts of brutal jihad conquests from all over the globe. The case is now made, irrefutably: unlike all other religions, Islam contains, in its core elements and as part of its constant and unbroken tradition, mandates to make war against unbelievers in order to establish the hegemony of Islamic law. The conquerors ofrom the great Islamic empires of the past were motivated by the same ideology that motivates jihad terrorists today. There is no way that the Islamic apologists and befuddled multiculturalists who populate the mainstream media (both liberal and conservative) can refute the mountain of evidence Bostom presents here. So they will most likely do what they always do with inconvenient material: Ignore it."
Here's what I thought was a decent review of a book on my reading list, with suggestions toward the end of other texts on this subject. I mentioned this book in the opening post to this thread.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
What does Jihad mean?, May 20, 2005 Reviewer: C�sar Gonz�lez Rouco (Madrid, Madrid Spain) - See all my reviews
It is difficult nowadays to get an objective, nuanced opinion on Islam, neither flattering nor biased against it. If I were to recommend a way to try and achieve that, I would suggest to read several good books on the matter, including this among them, for in my opinion it is quite complete and fairly assessed.
This work aims to answer the following question: Which is the meaning of jihad? Holy war or spiritual striving to improve oneself?
Pursuant to the author, during the first several centuries of Islam the interpretation of jihad was unabashedly aggressive and expansive, and the conquest achieved by Islam in the VII and VIII centuries C.A. have been seen by Muslims as one of the incontrovertible proofs of Islam, so that nowadays they are unwilling to confront the fact that such conquest were basically as unjustified as European colonial conquests. The so-called "greater jihad" (i.e., the one with an ascetic and pacific meaning) seems a patently apologetic device not well attested in the hadith literature, which was adduced in order to overcome a resistance to the acceptance and legitimacy of jihad.
Cook also points out a reasonable outsider must conclude that radical Islam is indeed a legitimate expression of Islam, yet the fact that the majority of contemporary Muslims do not actively participate in militant jihad demonstrates a decisive rejection of which the radical Muslims are keenly aware. The reality is that jihad during the past two centuries has been a dismal failure, with the possible exception of the expulsion of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. Besides, it also represents a danger to Muslims, for it is all too easy to turn it against them.
All that (and much more that I do not mention in this summary) is developed in 235 pages (footnotes included), the book being divided in the following chapters: 1. Qur'an and Conquest; 2. The "Greater Jihad" and the "Lesser Jihad"; 3 The Crystallization of Jihad Theory: Crusade and Counter-crusade, 4 Jihad during the Nineteenth Century: Renewal and Resistance; 5. Radical Islam and Contemporary Jihad Theory; 6. Globalist Radical Islam and Martyrdom Operations; Afterword; Appendix: Some Translated Documents (e.g. A Communiqu� from Qa'Idat Al-Jihad concerning the Testaments of the Heroes and the Legality of the Washington and New York Operations, April 24, 2002).
Nevertheless, although the content is very interesting, the book often happens to be a tough reading; therefore I have rated the book as a 4 start book (content: 5 starts; pleasure of reading: 3 to 1).
Other books that I would recommend to read would be the following: "The Venture of Islam", by Marshall G. S. Hodgson (nowadays a classic included in any bibliography on Islam); "God's Rule : Government and Islam" by Patricia Crone; "The Turks in World History" by Carter Vaughn Findley; and "Muslims in the West: Redefining the Separation of Church & State" by Sami Awad Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh.
