The Real History of Islam with Raymond Ibrahim

It's not Islam, it's Islam, and it's not Muslim, it's Muslim, and the two words are connected, and what that means is Submit or surrender. You know, how did it go from this guy who was just sitting in a cave? They've conquered most of what was the old Roman world. 66% let's say of the original Christian world. Where are these Islam radicals? Where are they? Everywhere. The UK's problems, man, they're just kind of mind-boggling. Your Islam problem is less about Muslims, and it's more about the people who are enabling and empowering them and bringing them in against your will. I mean, I see in the UK radical Muslims screaming, you know, like actual Islamic jihadist stuff, and they don't get in trouble, but then when a British person fights back, they get arrested. Do you think the religion of Islam is compatible with the West? This episode is sponsored by our friends at Hillsdale College. Right after this episode, go check out the incredible online courses, which are absolutely free at Hillsdale.edu/trigger. Raymond Ibrahim, welcome to Chicken Omchee. Happy to be with you guys. It's super cool having you on. We've been looking forward to this for a long time. You are someone who's written a bunch of books, particularly about the Islam and the interaction between Islam and Christianity. And the most interesting thing to start with, I think, is to talk about how Islam comes into being. It doesn't exist. Christians and Jews have existed for hundreds of years at this point. Tell us about the start of Islam. Sure. So as usual, especially nowadays, there's different approaches to history and there's conspiracy theories, etc. What I'm going to give you is the traditional account of the coming of Islam, which Muslims believe and which Christians and non-Muslims in general also believe in the half for centuries. And I only tell you this by way of preface because as of late, there's a lot of attacks on the early historicity of Islam and Muhammad and did he exist, did he not exist? Much of it, I think, is kind of polemical. It's the same sort of things that arose against Jesus, etc. The standard idea, the rise of Islam, of course, is tied up to the person of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, who's born around 570 AD in the Arabian Peninsula. And by the time he's 40, around 610, he starts having revelations, as he calls it, by the angel Gabriel, who tells them, "Akra" is the word we get "Kurran" from, which means recite. And so he supposedly starts reciting what becomes the Quran, the verses. And this goes on year after year for decades, actually. And these are all, so now you have the Quran is supposedly based on that and you have surahs, which is essentially chapters made of aeas, which are verses, which he supposedly recited, because Gabriel told him. And these are supposed to be understood as the words of Allah, the God of Islam, of Arabia, the God. In fact, the word Allah is el ilaah. It's in Arabic, it really means God. So when they translate it as God, that is not unfair. I prefer using the proper name Allah, because it's more distinct. At any rate, so Muhammad does all this and he starts reciting and telling the people around him, the Arabians, who are by and large polytheists at this time. Especially, he comes from the Kuriist tribe. He starts essentially, he presents himself in a long line of the prophets that everyone knows about, all the way from Abraham to Jesus, who of course is a prophet, according to the Islamic tradition, and according to Muhammad. And anyway, so he preaches basically a sort of staunch monotheism. And that's why if you look at the Quran, there's a lot of things that Christians and Jews would find agreeable. And then the important thing that we have to understand is that because I told you it goes on for a year after a year, and it's in stages. And so it actually, the tone of what Gabriel's telling him to read kind of changes over time. And if you look at it, if you want to look at it as a cynical non-believer, if you want to look at as a pious believer, as a cynical non-believer who's trying to read between the lines, who doesn't believe that Muhammad was necessarily being told to recite from God, whether he made it up or whether it was an evil spirit talking to him. And these, of course, are the popular non-Muslim, especially Christian understandings of what Muhammad was going through. In fact, Muhammad himself, when he was first broached by Gabriel, thought it was a demon because it sort of physically attacked him and squeezed him, and he was sweating. And he had to go to his wife, Khadija, and she told him, "Oh, no, this is from God." Okay, so even in the Islamic tradition itself, it's a little curious. Let me interrupt you very briefly. Who is Muhammad when he begins to receive these revelations? He's just a camel driver, and he's part of the Kurish tribe, which is kind of noble, but he's a lesser noble who's being an orphan, and he's being raised by his uncle. And at this time, he's very relatively unknown and insignificant, and he marries Khadija, who's an older woman, and who is rich. She's got wealth, she's got property, and livestock, and he starts essentially kind of working for her. So he's relatively an insignificant obscure person in the larger scheme of things. And that's why in the beginning, so what I was trying to say is, there's Muslims understanding two stages. He starts off in Mecca, this is where he's young, and where he's born, and where he grows up, and this is where he starts getting his early revelations. So from, let's say, 610, 622, those 12 years, it's what's called, when you look at the Quran, these are known as the Meccan verses. And at this time, Muhammad is essentially, as I just said, he's insignificant, he's weak, he's preaching, he's an itinerant preacher, and he has like a handful of followers, and over 10, 12 years, he has maybe 100 followers, most of them are family. And basically, so his message is not violent, it's all about, it's all about, you have your religion, I have my religion. So when you get moderate Muslims, and they quote from the Quran, there are, in fact, moderate verses that say, there's no coercion. And like I said, you have your religion, I have my, so he was preaching that when he was weak and outnumbered because he had to, because he had no military power whatsoever. And then eventually, you know, due to his agitations, apparently, the courierish, the polytheists drive him out, and they mock him, you're not a real prophet, you're making this up, you're a liar, et cetera. And he ends up going to Medina, at the time, Yathrib, and there, he starts getting a bigger followers, and he becomes essentially a political leader now. And this is so, this is called the Hijra, in the year 622, and he goes to Yathrib, and this becomes, it's so important in Islam, because it becomes a year one in the Islamic calendar, 622. And he goes there, and he becomes essentially a warlord. And now he starts going on raids against everyone who does not submit. Okay, so Islam, unfortunately, I always end up announcing things like an American, it's not Islam, it's Islam, and it's not Muslim, it's Muslim, and the two words are connected, right? A Muslim is one who does Islam, so you see the SLM, and what that means is submit or surrender. Okay, so that was it. So the one who's a Muslim is someone who is submitting and surrendering to Muhammad's call, because if you didn't, you'd get killed, at this point, now that he's gone to Medina, and he's become a warlord. To Muhammad's call, or to the glory of Allah? Well, they're the same, aren't they? Muhammad's presenting it as, if you do what I say, you're doing God's will, because I'm the prophet. I'm the last prophet, who has come to correct, and the other thing he positioned himself as, as the last prophet, meaning there's been a succession of prophets, from like I said, Abraham, Moses, et cetera, all the way to Jesus. And, but the problem is Christians and Jews, even though they were given scriptures, they were known as the people of the book, they've over the years distorted it. So, for example, when it comes to the person of Jesus, he was just a prophet, but the Christians made him into the son of God. And so, for example, in the Quran, you actually have fundering verses that are attacking Christians and calling them infidels, or Kufad, which is a very bad designation, because they make Jesus to be the son of God. As one example, and then also attacks on the Trinity, and so forth. So, he presents himself as I'm coming to basically straighten out the true religion, which these Christians and Jews were handed, but they've ruined it. And that's why they say till today, the Bible, or the New Testament, the Old Testament, whichever case has been Muslims claim, has been tampered with. It's not the original. Okay, and I gave you the perfect example about Jesus, so they say that that's been added in later, and so forth. Anyway, so he now he goes on the war path, and it becomes jihad, jihad. And that's just a word which means to strive and to struggle. And I always find it ironic because of the apologists for Islam, or let me go back a little bit, orientalists, back in the day, Europeans, when they would translate the word jihad, and they had to do this. They would just usually translate into holy war. Which was fair. I mean, it's legitimate. You can't, when you're translating words, you can't just sit there and break it down and get into the etymology. So that's what they do. But then the apologists lately say, no, it doesn't mean that it means strive and struggle. And it does. But the irony is that actually makes it worse, and it just shows you how multitentical the idea of jihad is. Because so yes, it does mean strive and struggle, jihad, which was introduced again by Muhammad, especially now in this final phase, when he's in Medina and he's on the war path. But historically, the only way you can struggle, and, and, and what is it you're trying to struggle and do, like you said, it's you're trying to bring Islamic rule. You're trying to bring the glory of Allah, okay. And the logic is, and according to Islamic teaching till today, Islam must continue to spread, including by force. Not that you have to convert by force. You're not, you're not supposed to force people to convert, especially if they're people of the book, because they're kind of close enough. But Islamic law has to govern the whole globe. And so if you are a Christian or a Jew, you have to live in a tribute, you know, pay tribute and you're like second class citizen. And if you're not, you do have to convert, if you're a pagan, if you're a Buddhist or a Hindu, theoretically, you're supposed to convert or die. You can't even pay tribute. So I just tell you that to give you the idea. So when they do jihad, and they say it means to strive or struggle, that makes it all the much worse because historically, the only way you're going to spread Islam was through force and violence. Who's going to accept it? You're not in Europe, for example, when the time came for the jihad to enter there, you know, Europeans fought tooth and nail, I'm sure we'll get into that. But today, of course, you are able to trick people and empower Islam, not through force. So today, you can do, there's all these classifications of different kinds of jihad, which is different forms of struggle. And they actually have, I can give you quickly their names in Arabic, you know, jihad al-Assan, jihad al-Tang, jihad al-Kalam, you know, jihad al-Pen, jihad al-Mal, jihad al-Mani, you know, will add it to jihad or basically the baby jihad. All of these, in their own way, help empower Islam. So with your mouth, you can engage in propaganda, with your money, you can support disseminating Islam, you can support terrorist groups. And with your womb, women are encouraged to have as many kids as they can, Muslim women, and men also to impregnate women, including non-Muslim women, with their seed, so you can, you know, in, in, in, in the world with Muslims. And these are actually, I mean, this isn't me theorizing, this is actually a lot, so lots of Islamic clerics have modern-aid clerics articulated what I'm telling you right now. And, you know, obviously I jumped from Muhammad to this to give you an idea of what jihad is, but historically during his time, you can't get away with that stuff. You're not going to, through propaganda or lying, trick anyone, because everyone had their own faith that they were going to fight to the death for. So he goes on the war path, he wages G had, how much is he able to secure in terms of land by the time of his death? Almost the whole of Arabia, as we know it, yeah, but I mean, there's still, it's funny too, because a lot of them just in the Hintar regions, not all of it, but a big chunk of it, and his ultimate goal was Mecca, which, you know, he was driven out, and then he came back, and he conquered it. But a lot of the Hintar tribes kind of gave paid lip service, and then once he died, it was interesting because what happened immediately was the rid of the wars, which is known as the wars of the apostasy. Right when he died, it was all these tribes, especially that were away from the center, immediately kind of were like, okay, so the jigsaw piece that we're going back to our ways. And the first caliph Abu Bakr wage another new jihad against the apostates. What does caliph mean? Caliph which caliph an Arabic means successor, so he's the successor of Muhammad. And a caliphate is a form of governance based on the successors of Muhammad. Just come back to Muhammad for one second, because it's quite an extraordinary story. A man, not particularly anybody really, breaches the revelations that he's got, gets chased out of the city he's from, goes to another city, and then suddenly he's a warlord who effectively conquers a huge sweat of land. What do we know about Muhammad that he was able to do this? Well, I mean, keep in mind, by the time he dies, it's not really a huge swath of land. We're talking about the Arabian Peninsula, which looks large, but it's mostly desert. And he has control over various tribes, and I think what you're getting at is, it's not he himself, I mean, one century after Muhammad, Islam now governs all of North Africa, all of the Middle East and is in the Middle France. So that's the historical kind of conundrum that a lot of people have been wondering about. It does, of course, start from Muhammad. And, you know, how did it go from this guy who was just sitting in a cave, talking to Gabriel, to a century later, essentially, you know, they've conquered most of what was the old Roman world, and most of it on Christian territory, and even further east and to outside of the Roman Christian world. So that's always been the great riddle, and earlier historians, including those who were contemporary believe it, it had to do the fusion of jihad, the doctrine of jihad. Because up until then, look, you had war, people engaged in war, non-Muslims engaged in war, Christians engaged in war, but it had, especially with Christians, it became a just war type thing, and there were limitations to how you can do it. But with Muhammad, he basically, what I always say is the genius of Muhammad, which goes to your question, is that he basically fused the sort of tribal morays of his society, and re-articulated them rather than fused, but he fused them with theology and re-articulated them through sort of a theological paradigm. So they became, okay, so what is tribalism? The tribalism of Arabia, which also prevailed in most tribal societies, pastoral societies, was basically what is tribalism, it's me and my kin, you know, that's it. Everyone outside of the tribe is the enemy, that's how tribalism works. It's not that we're not your friends, you are the enemy, you exist for me to kill and plunder and enslave and do whatever with. And the tribe, of course, the closest is the nuclear family, and then it keeps spreading cousins and whatever, so it keeps growing. What Muhammad did is he maintained that paradigm, which was integral to the Arab society that he was born in, but like I said, he re-articulated with these Islamic teachings. So now you still hate people, the Quran commands, the Muslims to hate, not outside tribal people, but anyone who's not a Muslim. And you can see how that's tribalistic, because we are the ummah, right, the nation, we are the Muslims. Everyone outside of it, we are commanded to hate. And this is in the Quran, this is Quran 64, where Allah says you have a good example in Abraham, or Abraham, because, and this gives you another really good example of what I'm talking about, how Islam appropriates the biblical figures, but recasts them in a way that validates itself. So we know the Abraham from the Old Testament and the Bible, he leaves what God calls him, he leaves what is it the land of earth, and he begins the great migration towards the holy land, which eventually gets conquered, Joshua, etc. But when he leaves Abraham in the Bible, there's nothing about hating anyone. In the Quran, all of a sudden Allah tells Muslims you have a good example in Abraham, because he told his kin, we hate you and enmity will last between us until you believe in Allah. And so that became sort of an Islamic, and in the Quran it also says similar things about how a true Muslim can't, he has to have these feelings and disassociate from his father, his mother, his brother, his wife. I have an Islamic cleric recently who I translated a while back, who literally says because of this doctrine you can, as a Muslim, marry a Christian or a Jewish woman, people of the book, because that is permitted in Islam, but you have to hate them, and you have to show them you hate them. But you can copulate with them, but you always have to make sure they know you hate them. So this is an ironclad teaching, and as you can see how, so this is tribalism, of course, 101, but now it has a theological veneer. And then, so what do you do in tribes, we hate each other? Well, I go and I plunder you, right? So that became Jihad. Jihad is warfare on the outsider, who I am already bred to hate. I could say, I mean, in a secular setting, tribalism doesn't necessarily, I wouldn't say teach you to hate the outsider, you just fear him, they're outsiders, and you can kill them. But it's much more when you really hate that person, and this is something we get into, because it's really, this is the whole, the heart of the matter. To me, this doctrine that I'm, I'm belaboring, and in Arabic, it's kind of, it's, it's a dichotomized doctrine. It's called Al-Walat-Wal Barat, to Arabic words, well, that means loyalty and love for Muslims, which we can put that aside, and what I'm looking at is the Barat, which is hatred and enmity for non-Muslims. Okay, and so that manifests in Jihad, and so anyway, so, and then if you die, right? So you're the warrior, you hate the infidel, you do Jihad. Now, in a secular setting, that happens all the time, historically, even in the present day, and people go fight to plunder, right? But now, if you win, well, you get all these, whatever, the booty, you know, animate and inanimate, you can gain, but if you die, you get even more. Now, you go straight to heaven, straight to paradise, where it's, again, hedonistic and materialistic, and you get women, and you know, it's very carnal, the way it's described in the Quran, okay? You know, there's beautiful boys circulating around looking like pearls, and these supernatural women who you will copulate with in perpetuity, who are made specifically, first ex, okay, and rivers of wine, etc. Rivers of wine? Yeah, yeah. Now, you can drink wine once you get to heaven, but not here. I'm sorry, maybe rivers of honey or wine, but I know there is wine. Yeah, sorry, I just, that just took me, yeah, yeah. It's something, I'm being, it's poetic language, it's been used, and I, you know, but definitely, but I know I do know alcohol is permissible then, because that's something they talk about. So my point is, the genius of Muhammad, if you're asking, is that he just took that tribalism, but re-articulated in a way that it became a win-win thing. So now, when I go and plunder the outsider, the non-Muslim, the infidel, I'm the good guy now, I'm pious, and if I win, and I subjugate, kill whatever, rape, take, and conquer, well, then, you know, I'm even more righteous, and if I die, I get the highest level of paradise. So that was one of the earliest interpretations by non-Muslims as to, as to the efficacy of jihad. It's not very popular nowadays, you know, your average secular historian will laugh at this until I know, no. But, but your average secular historian will also tell you, no one really knows how to explain the Arab conquests and how rapid they were, because, you know, they shouldn't buy, by any means, they should not have done what they did. And the most popular theory is that the two contending powers that the Arabs eventually, in the seventh century conquered, Rome, or Byzantium, and the Sasanian Persians were so weak, because they had been fighting each other. So that's kind of the most popular theory, but still, I don't think that's convincing in and of itself. The news doesn't just tell you what's happening. It often tells you what to think is happening, and these days, the biggest red flag isn't what said, it's what gets left out. I use ground news. It's the only site and app that compares coverage from across the political spectrum, and highlights which stories are being ignored entirely. See for yourself at ground.news/trigonometry. Their blind spot feed is one of my favorite features. It surfaces around 20 stories a day that are being overlooked by either the left or the right. It's a simple but powerful way to track media bias in real time. Like this, NIH scientists recently published a declaration criticizing Trump's cuts to public health research. That's a major move, and yet, only 2% of the coverage came from right-leaning outlets. A new study found that 2024 saw the most armed conflicts globalist in 1946, a staggering statistics, where you would have missed it if you'd only read left-wing news sources. Ground news gives you the full picture, headlines, ownership, bias ratings, and context, so you can actually understand what's going on, not just react to what you're told. Head to ground.news/trigonometry for 40% off their unlimited vantage plan, the same one we use, and start thinking for yourself. So Raymond. So we have Muhammad. By the end of his life, he is conquered the Arabian Peninsula. He dies. So what happens next? Who comes after him? The successor, Abu Bakr, who was also his father-in-law, and whose daughter Aisha, the young child bride of Muhammad, one of his wives that he married. He becomes a successor, but only for two years because he's elderly and he dies. So his claim to fame is what I was saying, the rid the wars, the apostasy wars. So he's the one that really consolidates Arabia more than Muhammad. Muhammad, it begins with, and there's a lot of, like I said, nominal submission to him, but also a lot of real submission. But once he dies, Abu Bakr, those two years, he's known as the guy who brings in and really consolidates Arabia, and then under the second caliph, Omar, Omar the first. This is when the great Arab conquest began. So from 636, which is when Omar becomes the caliph, this is when the jihad erupts on everyone around. And of course, so Arabia, the first part of the attack is what's called greater Syria, which really encompasses the entire Eastern Mediterranean. Syria, all the modern-day countries that you can think of Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, portions of Iraq. People forget we're actually very Christian. But they also attack Persia. They go there and even go further. So during Omar's caliphate, which I think lasts a decade, that's when you have the massive Arab conquest. So Egypt has conquered around 640 to 641. And like I said, all the greater Syria, there's a pivotal battle, the Battle of Yarmuk. I wrote my master's thesis on that actually 25 over 25 years ago, because it's that pivotal. Historians call it the most consequential battle in history, because had the Arabs been defeated at the Battle of Yarmuk, which is a riverance in Syria, it's believed that history could have been completely different. But because they beat the Romans, that's when it was like a domino effect and they started to conquer Egypt, Jerusalem was conquered a year later. Egypt, like I said, 64641 and then further west until by so by 711, all of North Africa has been conquered and now they're in Spain, the Arabs conquering Spain. What's important to keep in mind, because most people don't get this, but when we talk, and this is by design, I believe, but when we talk about these regions, if I say Egypt or Syria or whatever, Morocco or Mauritania to give it its historical name, people just have this idea that these areas were kind of always Muslim or something. Those were, of course, the heartlands of Christendom, not Europe. If you looked at Christianity, the Christian world, and it had spread very far, especially after Constantine in the early 300s, because he was the first Christian emperor, but all of North Africa, from Egypt to Morocco, all of the Middle East, all of Asia Minor and Atolio, what we call Turkey. And then Europe, of course, southwest of the Danube and Rhine, that's Christianity, that's Christendom. And in that one century that we're talking about from 632, Muhammad's death, the 732, which is the Battle of Tours, which is in Middle or by Poitier, when Middle of France, they conquered all that, which if you look at the map, it's something like, depending on how you look at a two or three quarters of 66% of the original Christian world. And the more important one, because there were five ecclesiastical centers, the Choprax essentially, Rome is the one that everyone remembers, which was in the West, and that didn't get conquered. The other four did, and that would be Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople itself, later got conquered. So I know we're talking about an ideology, Raymond, that is incredibly powerful, and it's heavily incentivized people to go and be more like, and also to be fearless, because you know that if you die, you're going to, you know, you're going to get all the ladies, shall we just say. So it's a good deal, and personally, if I was around then, I might well have signed up. However, there must have been something else to these warriors, because to take on the Romans, to take on all these ancient civilizations, the Persians. They must have been incredibly well-drilled as armies, and ferocious fighters, and also highly trained. Okay, so yeah, like I said, this is known as one of the big mysteries of history, the Arab conquest. So they're not easy to explain. Okay, some of the theories, there was this massive desiccation of Arabia, they claim, where it was really becoming barren, and so this caused a massive migration that we don't really know about, who knows, the number of Arabs with their women and children and camels is inundating regions. That's one theory, the other theory, which I already mentioned, the most prominent one, which is that the Persians and the Romans were so exhausted from constant warfare. But you can't really say that these guys were well-militarially trained. They actually weren't, and when you, and we know their weapons, their weapons are whatever they could plunder from their slain victims. Okay, that was it. So, and they didn't really, we don't know of any kind of Arab military formations. It was just, it was the Bedouin raid, which continues in fact with a lot of historically the Islamic nomadic peoples, Turks and Mongols and Arabs. They, they were great horsemen, that's for sure. So, I mean, they definitely had that lightning speed. The Battle of Yarmuk, for example, we know that one of the reasons that they won is because they were used to desert fighting, and apparently there was a desert storm, which the Romans couldn't handle and blinded them, whereas the Arabs were used to those conditions. But one of the things that I always found interesting is there's a relatively obscure, but early chronicle, it's from Spain and it's in the eighth century, so it talks about the 700s. It talks, it's very early, and it talks about the Arab conquest, and it makes this kind of curious to remark about how they did not win through manliness, but through stealth and deception. Okay. Which, you know, I mean, I don't know how to interpret that, but basically the idea is that they weren't, they, they wouldn't fight head on in a kind of, you know, in a sort of chivalry, which didn't even exist at that point necessarily, kind of way, or like blunt force. It was just hit and run tactics, kind of deception, which definitely marks the later, excuse me, way of war of like I said, Turks and the Ottomans and the Seljiks and these groups. So that's another, you know, thing I'm throwing out there because I, I don't hear people talk about it, but it is in the chronicles. The, the official Christian explanation was God had done this to punish us for our sins. He had raised Amalek to come and punish us, because we deserved it. No, that must. For cross-dressing purposes. I'm not even getting, there's an early document that talks and it says, and it says, I have it quoted in my book, Sword and Symitar, I'm forgetting right now. Sudo and Mathodias, I think, but it says something like he, he raised them up to punish us, and because, and it lists all kinds of numbers of immoralities, and one of them is because men would dress like women. There you go. Well, so God is anti-trans, God is anti-trans. Anyway, but that must have sent real shock waves through the Christian world to see this new religion, these new armies fight in this new style, almost guerrilla warfare style, and just cut through swaves of Christian heartland. And that's see, that's the missing piece of the puzzle and nobody, you know, invariably when we talk about Muslim Christian hostilities from historical point of view. It starts with the crusades. Everyone starts with the crusades, and nobody seems to understand what was building up towards the crusade, which included a lot of fear and terror, because Bernard Lewis has a great quote, which I quote from him, and he talks about how, you know, by the time it was, you know, after these Arab conquests, and now let's say it's the eighth and ninth century, the Europeans were just traumatized and devastated. And a lot of what we called or used to call, it's not a very favorable term anymore, but the dark ages was in large measure because of these Arab conquests. Okay, and Henry Perrin, for example, he was a historian, 19th century, that was his thesis, which is that the dark ages was a byproduct of these Muslim conquests, which took what was once a Roman Christian lake at the time, right? Egypt had commerce with Spain and with Rome and Syria, you know, it was one wall. It was Christendom, and by, you know, chopping that in half, and essentially appropriating and seizing the older, richer, more sophisticated, more educated, regent, which was the Middle East and the Near East. That's one of the main reasons that Europe entered into this perilous dark age. And Henry Perrin also, you know, I think the title was a book, or his argument is, or his famous line is that without Muhammad, there's no Charlemagne. Okay, so the one necessarily led to the rise of the other and that entire system. And, you know, so most people don't know what built up and what was coming, you know, in the centuries before the first crusade. They just assume there's these, you know, these powerful land grabbing hungry greedy nights want to go and just, I've quoted this quote, and I'm going to quote it for you guys so many times, I think I've memorized it, but it just, it shows you the rot of academia. And really underscores what I'm trying to tell you and it's by John Esposito. This is a professor at Georgetown University. I don't know if he's still there. He's probably very old right now. But he was there when I was there. I went to Georgetown University for a time in Washington, DC. And, and it's a bastion of kind of Islamic studies and whatnot, but I didn't know this at the time, but it was a very kind of compromise the bastion. Anyway, one of his books, which is called Islam the Straight Path. And keep in mind this guy, he was, this isn't an early 2000's, let's say, he was very, very active and his book came out. And he's the editor of the Oxford history of Islam, for example, he was the guy that, you know, the FBI and the CIA intelligence analyst, they talked to him to understand about Islam and whatever. He has this line in his book Islam the Straight Path, which verbatim, I might be getting a little off, but he says five centuries of peaceful coexistence elapsed between Christians and Muslims before an Imperial people power play led to a series of so-called holy wars that have left an enduring legacy of mistrust from Muslims to Christians. So what he's saying is before the first crusade, which starts in 1095, everything before that from moment of Muhammad's life until all the stuff I'm telling you was peaceful coexistence. Okay, that's the official narrative. So that's why I think it's very important to really highlight what you just mentioned, which is this really, this was a traumatizing event, the sundering, you know, the first breakup of Christendom with most of it being conquered by this hostile faith. And the rest of it being bombarded in the eighth century, all these islands were the Mediterranean islands were constantly being attacked and conquered slave raids were constantly a given thing. The whole idea was so much of what we know as feudalism and had to do with all these the coasts of the southern coast of Europe, so many people actually abandoned them because they were the site of rage, slave raids coming from the Islamic world now, North Africa. And they would capitually go and enslave Europeans and take them back and and the implorium for white flesh was Cordoba in Spain, which was conquered, like I said, starting in 711, and that's where they would, that was where they would sell white flesh, which always, you know, fetch the high price amongst the Muslims. So before we move on to the crusades, I just wanted to concentrate on the Islamic golden age. Was that around the time that we know as the Islamic golden age? Yeah, so the Islamic golden age, well, there's kind of two and the one is the Abbasids in Baghdad. And this is the the Abbasid Empire starts after the Umayyids and the Umayyids are like, so around 750, usually the Abbasid golden age would be sometime after 800. And this is Haron El Rashid, who's now allied with or on friendly terms with Charlemagne, but there's also suppose a golden age in Spain, Umayyid Spain, in Cordoba. And what what needs to be understood about the golden age is this, let me try to start off by giving an analogy, right? I forget which country, which Arab country or, you know, in the Gulf, which is the one that has those skyscrapers that everyone can divide. Yeah, okay. Imagine, you know, many, many, let's say decades or centuries from now, those buildings are still standing there. And, you know, the whole, everything's changed and, you know, Islam, maybe he's gone or whatever. And, um, people look at him go, wow, that was a golden age, that country, that civilization, because look what it led to. Now, we would say, well, no, I mean, they had their Islam, sure, but this is actually money and Westerners built it, Western technology, Western workers. And it just so happened that these Arabs had the money to spend on it. That I submit to you is the best way to understand the golden age that happened historically. It didn't happen due to anything to do with Islam, quite the contrary, it happened despite Islam, okay? And it was basically, so let's, if we go to the Abbasid, as I was telling you, which is the primary golden age, this is now, okay. So now the Abbasid Empire is more Persianized and it's in Baghdad, okay? And it's, it's heavily Persianized. And, um, at the time, a lot of the people, keep in mind, when these Arab Muslim conquests happen, most of, so let's say Egypt and Syria, which were highly Christian. And let's say in the eighth century, ninth century, tenth century, there's still majority, Christian. And there's Jews also as well, especially in Alexandria and various cities. And you have a lot of Zorastrians and Persia, okay? You have all these different groups who are living underneath now Islamic rule. They're the ones who are doing all the stuff that we call the golden age, okay? It's Christians, it's Jews, and especially it's Persians in the Abbasid era. And it's not because of anything special about Islam. I mean, they are literally not Muslims. And the, and a few of them who are are literally, like, they just converted their first generation converts, which means they're still primarily whatever their former religion was. So the best that you can say is that the Muslims, you know, sponsored it, maybe paid for it, okay? But there was nothing intrinsic to Islam. And once Islam started to harden, because even at this time, the Abbasid caliphate, in the golden age, there's still debates between the various schools of Islamic law. And there's some that were actually considered liberal, you know, if we can use that term. But by, I forget the exact time, something like in the tenth century, what's known as the doors of Ishtahed, Ishtahed was a way for the liberals to get around draconian Islam. The saying is the doors were closed. And basically the hardliners won the Islamic debate. And now if anything, all that stuff started dwindling away, okay? So it was never because of Islam, but there was a time where Islam in its early nascent period was, you can say, liberal enough to allow this sort of thing to happen. But the people who were doing the achievements were actually not Muslims. And if they were, they were like, literally just converted to join the winning crowd, like a lot of people did over the years. And their mind and the way they thought and their heritage was still non-Muslim. So that's why I give you that analogy, you know, of, yeah, Saudi Arabia and these places, if you look at their worldview, their culture, which is based on Islam. Well, yeah, it's draconian Sharia law, living in a desert, polygamy, et cetera, et cetera. But they have wealth and look at what they can have and they can build skyscrapers. They can have the greatest stuff that Westerners can't have. That doesn't mean it's actually a hard parcel of Islam. So that's the best way I think to understand it. The holidays are supposed to be relaxing, but between travel, gifts and family gatherings, it's chaos. You lose track of what's going out, what's coming in, and before long your money's doing its own thing. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using monarch. Rated Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. 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And you mentioned that after the rapid expansion you might even say explosion of Islam across what was prior to that the Christian world. There were nonetheless lots of Christians and Jews living there and also of course in the Persian sides or Astrians, which was the religion of Persia until the Islamic conquest. What was life like for non-Muslims and the Muslim rule? Well, so we, okay, let's first start off with what Islam teaches because Islam is very specific about life for non-Muslims. If you're going to be a non-Muslim, so again, like I said earlier, theoretically according to Islamic law, you have to be a person of the book to be granted any measure of tolerance. Monotheistic, you have to believe there's one God. Yeah, and well, but what do they mean specifically Christians and Jews? No, well, that's the question. The term is Ehlul Qatab, which means literally the people of scriptures or the book. And the idea it was more or less the Jews and the Christians, but then later on it sort of became, it was extended to people who weren't Jews and Christians. And that was because they got tired of the blood bath. So for example, when for five centuries, I want to say between, let's say, the year 1,000 to 1,500 Muslims, according to well-documented historians, historical sources, and I'm thinking of, I know his name, but he's an Indian historian. And anyway, he says that in that five centuries, 80 million Hindus were slaughtered because they weren't granted the option of becoming thems, which Christians and Jews could. You could keep your religion, you just have to pay extra tribute, and you of course have to be a second-class citizen, which was not in any way, shape or form. Just dig into that. So you have to pay Jizia. Don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. No, yeah, Jizia. Jizia, you're locked in my face for the pronunciation. No, it's just a funny word. So you have to pay Jizia, and you are allowed and not allowed certain things, right? So you talked to us about what that is like. Okay, so it goes back according to Islamic teaching, remember the caliph Omar, the second caliph. So apparently, historians aren't sure where, but the Islamic tradition believes it's when Jerusalem was conquered in 637, and he came there. There's this big narrative about how he came there and whatnot, but supposedly he made a pact. It's called an Arabic Ah, the Omar, or the pact of Omar with the Christians. And they basically told them, "Here's what you have to do in order for us to not kill you, basically." And according to this pact, things that they could not do, they can't build churches. They can't repair churches. They can't sing out loud. They can't show a crucifix or a Bible around Muslims. They certainly can't try to proselytize. They can't stand in the way of their own relatives being turning Muslim. And it's a number of lists. I actually translated one of my books. It's called The Conditions or Stipulations of Omar. Some of them are if a Muslim wants your seat, get up and give it to them. If a Muslim is traveling and wants to enter your house, you have to let them live there. So it's not stuff that you necessarily want to enjoy, but what I really coalesce around is it's still evidence till today. I guess to give you a good analogy is kind of think of how blacks were treated in America before civil rights and that, which is kind of like, "Who do you think you are?" To even think you are my equal, that kind of mentality is what prevailed in these Islamic societies. If you're a Christian or a Jew, you better know your place. And don't complain. If they abuse you or a Muslim's rise up and commit an injustice against you, the law is not going to come on your side. That continues till this very day. Even the things about building churches, that's still very evident in places like Egypt, where it's so hard for them to get it. It used to be actually you need a presidential decree to build a church in Egypt. Now it's supposedly become lenient, but a lot of that people say it's just for show, for Western consumption. And Egypt constantly, just this weekend, I covered a story which has happened countless times, including going centuries back, which is basically some sort of romantically is on grew between a Christian man in Egypt and a Muslim woman. And so the Muslims, after Friday prayers, rose up, completely devastated the Christian village, or where the Christians were living, burned homes, attacked through rocks, rioting, screaming, "Allah, Akbar." And why? Well, actually, because according to Islamic law, a Muslim man can marry a Christian or a Jew or a person of the book, like I said, but he has to hate her. But a non-Muslim cannot marry a Muslim woman. And the obvious reason in Islamic mentality is the man's in charge, so we cannot have an infidel in charge of a Muslim. But it's okay if the man's a Muslim in the infidel, it's already a second class, so it's a woman, you know, that's the mentality. So that's why they got angry, but this story has happened countless times in Egypt, where they get up and they engage in collective punishment, which the conditions of Omar, which I was describing to you, actually, it says, "If one of you does this, then the pact is broken for all of you." So it actually does promote collective punishment of the Dimmis, as they're known. And this, like I said, it just happened this week, it happened maybe two weeks before that, because there was a rumor of a church being built also in Egypt. And it goes way, way back. So my point is that it's actually a written, codified thing, and it's become absorbed in Islamic law and Islamic Sharia. But it's also just part of the society, because it's a supremacist idea. Okay, I'm better than you. You're the dirty calfer, you're the infidel, you're the Christian, you're the Jew, whatever. So how dare you want equal rights with me? That's the overarching principle, and it continues to manifest itself with extreme regularity. And your thesis, essentially, is if I'm understanding you correctly, is you have this rapid expansion of the Islamic world from nothing into taking over most of the Christian world, including its care. Is that the equivalent of, like, most of Europe and half of the United States being conquered by Hindus, right? Over what, 100 years, someone like that? Yeah, yeah, I mean, let's say the, I mean, in the first 10 years, a huge chunk, you know, Egypt and Syria were taken and which is by Syria, I mean the Middle East. And Egypt, and most of what we would call Libya, though there wasn't much there anyway. And then Tunisia, I mean, you think about Augustine, St. Augustine, who's known as the father of sort of Western theology. Well, he was from North Africa, from hippo, which I believe is in Tunisia. That too was conquered very early, maybe by like 650s. So continuing my metaphor, let's say for just for the avoidance of any triggering too far. The Hindus have taken over most of Europe and half of the United States and North America. And what you're saying is that plus the way that the preexisting population were being treated by the conquerors is what gives rise to the Crusades. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, what depends on the time we're talking, I still haven't gotten to what really gave rise, which is similar. It was more of the same. Okay, so in other words, what I'm talking about is, you know, the 7th, 8th, 9th centuries. And that's what's going on. And, you know, Europe knows about Europe is also bombarded, especially from Spain. Because that's now the latest, they're in the continent, right? They're in Europe. But right before the first crusade, there was a new sort of outburst, Islamic outburst. And now the Turks come onto the scene. They start coming in really in the 9th century as slaves, slave soldiers. And they're very good warriors. So the caliphates start bringing these Turks from Central Asia as slaves. And they Islamize them and they just train them to be great warriors, geodists. And before long, they essentially take over. And so this is the Abbasid caliphate, the golden age caliphate. And before long, you know, you have these the Turks, especially with the Seljuk empire. This is now we're coming right before the first crusade. They essentially, they keep the Abbasid caliph as a puppet, right? But now they're the real power. And they're the sultan. In fact, the word sultan means power holder. So now, so let's say, okay, the first crusade is 1095, the Turks really start spreading and causing havoc around 1037. And it's especially against the Armenians. You know, you talk about the Armenian genocide. It actually goes back a millennium before what we think. You know, it's not, it's not in the year, just 1900 early 1900s or late 1800s. It actually goes back to the year 1000. And if you read the sources and I have in mind, especially Matthew of Odessa, who's a near contemporary. But what the Turks were doing to the Armenians and of course other Christians as they went further west into Asia Minor is just mind boggling. I mean, it talks about tens of thousands of Armenians as being massacred. Thousands of churches being set on fire. The capital at the time, Annie was known as the city of a thousand one churches, all of which were just completely devastated and torched. And you know, it's also interesting to note and a lot of historians don't do this. They make you think, okay, these Seljiks were nominal Muslims, you know, they're called Muslims, but they are just, you know, fighters who were conquering whoever. But in the sources, you see the religious hostility, okay, where they like to go and desecrate break crosses and decapitate statues and gouge the eyes of icons and, you know, of course, and desecrate tabernet or the altars. So that also comes out and this is now going on until the year 1071. Now in 1071, you have the pivotal battle of man's occurred, which is in that area. It's actually it's again in Asia Minor, sort of near Lake Vaughan, I think, again, by the Armenian areas. And the Eastern Roman Emperor, the Byzantine Emperor, marches one of their largest armies to stop these Turks, and they lose, and is one of the worst, and the Emperor gets captured with the first one in like a thousand years, I think. And so now after that, they start just spreading further west and cover all of Asia Minor, Turkey, till they're not far from Constantinople. Now at the same time, these same Turks are from the moment the Holy Land was conquered. It was very early on, a lot of these caliphs, including the Abbasid, like I told you, who was sort of diplomatic relations with Charlemagne. They allowed Christian pilgrimage, it was very important to Christians, okay, especially after Constantine, you know, really rebuilt Jerusalem, built the church of the Holy Sepulchre around where Christ was buried and crucified and resurrected was a huge complex. So pilgrimages were a major thing, and a lot of Muslims allowed Christians to come, especially during the Abbasid period, for you have to pay, of course, and, you know, put up with all sorts of things. But they would come, but now these Turks, they really went, they ran havoc, and they started attacking pilgrims, they started charging them even more money, and then not letting them go. And one of the worst anecdotes I was pretty famous that happened in 1064, was a large German pilgrimage, went to the Holy Land, and among them it's described, it's an early source, they describe a very beautiful Abbasid had none, who was told, don't do it, because everyone knew it was dangerous to go on pilgrimage. But she wouldn't relent, and she went, and they say, you know, all of them were killed by the Turks, and she was gang raped until she died, and then it says in the end, and the Turks did this very frequently to pilgrims. And of course, they were desecrating the Christian holy sites, including the Holy Sepulchre, and actually before that, and before the Turks, just so you don't think it's just the Turks, but a Fatimid Caliph from Egypt, Hakim Umrah-la, in the year 1009, actually destroyed the Holy Sepulchre, raised it to the ground, and according to Muslim sources, and I'm thinking of Al-Makrizi, who was an Egyptian historian, he wrote that this guy, this Fatimid Caliph, destroyed 30,000 churches, and synagogues, in Egypt and greater Syria, which makes sense, because like I told you, that was a very Christian, heavily Christianized region, one of the oldest. And at that time, in 1009, the Pope of the time wanted to call a kind of a proto- Crusade, they didn't have it at the time, and nothing happened, but then, like I said, so now it's building up, and you're getting these Turks doing what they're doing, and they're killing European pilgrims, and now the emperor of a, you know, a Constantinople, they're right there at his doorstep, you know, in Asia Minor, right across the straits from Constantinople, so he calls for aid, and that was the origin of the first Crusade. And what was the state-to-objective of the first Crusade? What did they actually want for the pilgrims to be able to go unmalested, or to recapture the land, or what was the plan? Well, the ultimate goal, of course, was to have pilgrims to be able to go to the Holy Land unmalested. That was, you know, number one, but it was obvious, that's not going to happen. It hadn't really happened even before the Turks, like I told you, there was a lot of exploitation and abuse, but now they were just running, you know, amok, and killing anyone, and everyone are abusing them. So it was basically time to retake the Holy Land, which used to be Christian before the Muslims took it, and because you couldn't rely on the Muslims anymore, so it was time to retake and rededicate and, you know, cleanse the Holy Land from these people. That was number one, but also the second one, which is not really remembered much or talked about is, was to help fellow Christians, the Eastern Church, the call from, you know, according to some historians, that was the chief catalyst. One historian recently wrote a book, Franco Pan, I think is his name, and that's a whole thesis, which is this was really orchestrated, and ultimately because of Alexius, the emperor, who needed, because the wall was happening to him. And so one of the verses, even that biblical verses, a lot of Christians, and you see, it was basically, you know, where Jesus says, love God with all your heart and love your fellow man. So loving God was going because holy places mattered then, and it was going to liberate his holy, the Holy Land, and loving your fellow man was helping these Eastern Christians and pilgrims who wanted, you know, to go and not be molested. And, you know, it's just sad because a lot of people and historians will argue, you know, give you these cynical motives, you know, oh, this is second sons, this was an old thesis that I think goes to, you know, Brunzeman, Stephen Runzeman, where basically, oh, a lot of these were just second sons who just had no inheritance. So they just wanted to go and it was a colonizing mission that had no rhyme or reason. Well, if you look at the sources, that's all they talk about is what's happening to Christians, how they're being slaughtered, how the holy lanes being defiled and polluted, and how we have to do something about it. So I mean, that is unequivocal clear from a objective reading of the sources. There's something powerful about going back to first principles, especially when he comes to thinking about politics and liberty. The Federalist papers do just that. They lay out the original arguments behind the U.S. Constitution, written by people who had just won a revolution and were trying to build something better. Hillsdale College's new online course, the Federalist, takes you inside these essays, you learn how Hamilton, Madison and Jay thought about government, human nature, and freedom, and why their ideas still matter today. Watch it all now for free at hillstale.edu/trigger. It's not a dry history lesson, it's a window into the foundations of real democracy, how to design a system that guards liberty without collapsing into chaos. It's thoughtful, clear, and entirely free. If you care about political philosophy, good government, or just want to understand how power is supposed to work, go to hillstale.edu/trigger. That's hillstale.edu/trigger and enrol for free. And we had another historian, Dan Johnson, show to talk about the crusades. It didn't sound like the way he told it, at least like a particularly successful or happy story, really. Yeah, really the only successful was the first one. It did achieve its mission, it liberated Jerusalem, and not just Jerusalem, but various counties, and the first one being a desa and principalities. So they carved a whole niche that became part of Christendom, and pilgrims were allowed to come and whatnot. But then after that, every other crusade, the second was a complete disaster. The third had made minimal gains with King Richard, but it didn't re-wain Jerusalem, but it made good gains, because right before the third crusade, it looked like Saladin was going to completely eject the crusaders once and for all. Not with his goal, but with the third, that's the second most successful, King Richard actually gave kind of a breathing space back to the Christians and re-warned various regions, and then the fourth crusade. It was neither here nor there, and I just went spun off course completely. Well they sacked Continental. That's the one where they sacked Constantinople, and I mean, that's the big aha moment that everyone loves to like harp on, you know, the fourth crusade. It's just, I don't find it as remarkable as most people think. If you really look at it, it started off as a normal crusade, and you had all these various crusaders, I think from France, wanted, you know, commissioned Venice to build a lot of ships for them. But when the time came, only one-third of the crusaders actually showed up. The rest came to the Holy Land, I think they were going to Egypt again. That was the target, but they went through different routes, and they couldn't pay, and the, you know, the Venetians just insisted, so the Venetians kind of said, all right, you know, we'll forgive the dead, but come help us conquer these guys. Fellow Christians, who were creating problems for Venice. The long story short, though, is the Pope was completely against all this, you know, if you're going to judge an institution, you have to look at its head, not the individuals who go off, you know, go off on their own thing. And a lot of the Christians, even when they made this pact left, so it was a small core that went and sacked this, I think it's Zora, you know, on behalf of Venice. And the long story short, you know, they still were trying to go, and they ended up, you know, making an alliance with some ousted Byzantine prince. And, you know, and they helped him, and this goes on for two years, but then they don't get what he said they should get the reward or whatever, and finally they just ran a mock and conquered it. And they all got excommunicated, hope innocent, the third was just completely disgusted with the whole affair. So my point is, you know, of course things go off the rail, but officially the representatives of the crusading venture were completely against it. No, so these individuals did what they did, but anyway, and then the fifth crusade comes and that goes again to Egypt and that almost one, they almost were victorious because before long they realize you can't, you can't hold Jerusalem without conquering Egypt. And so a lot of them, that's, it became the focal point, but that also failed. And the sixth crusade isn't really a crusade. It's a, you know, the emperor Frederick, I forget which number, but he actually reclaims Jerusalem. And without war, and he's hated, because the way he did it is seen very cynical and he in fact is kind of a cynical guy. He's a very interesting character. I talk about him in that book actually, but he kind of, you know, he just mocks Christians and Jews and Muslims and things are all, you know, but he'll give lift service to whoever, anyway, it was seen as a cynical deal that was not good or advantageous. And before long it all does unravel again and, and one of the worst attacks come soon after which prompts the seventh crusade in 1244, the attack by this kind of Muslim Egyptian tahtar or, or they're both Muslims with some savage group. The quarrysians who come from the east and they engage in some of the most obscene atrocities against the Christians of the Holy Land or already quickly dwindling and then you get the seventh crusade king Louis St. Louis, another a business failure, you know, but the guy meant very well. That's why he became sainted and then the eighth crusade is again, and then he finally dies and that fails. And then you have the ninth crusade, which is very, very small scale and it's Prince Edward who becomes King Edward long shanks. The bad guy in, right in Braveheart. In Braveheart, right, right, right, right. It was actually kind of, he seems like a good guy though when you read the actual sources, but and the long shanks apparently was very tall. So anyway, yeah, ultimately the crusades were a failed venture, but when you really look at, you know, the wise, if anything, they're actually more impressive because of how long they managed to last against the odds that they were in. Remember, this is a small group of European Christians traveling to the heart of the lines, then and trying to hold on to it. You know, the differences between the crusades and the Islamic conquests is the Islamic conquests were basically we're going to conquer anyone who's an inferno. And so that what that meant is my immediate neighbor, which also meant I got all the, I got all the resources I'm not deep into enemy territory behind me are all my whole world, right. I have an endless supply. So I'm here and I conquer here and then I consolidate and I go here and I conquer and that's exactly what they did. But the crusaders for ideological Christian purposes went all the way into the heart of it and became a tiny group that was continuously dwindling. Okay, this is what gave rise to the military orders who really became the heart of it. These guys who were just so utterly committed, but and especially as you became more and more secularized, the numbers became ridiculous. So habitually in these battles, you would get a guy like Saladin or Baybars, they would show up with just ridiculous amounts of numbers, which makes sense because this is their homeland. They can raise any number of armies and the crusaders are always limited to a few hundred thousand guys. So if anything, it's actually remarkable that they were able to hold out that long. So we've been focusing a lot on the Christian and Muslims. So where were the Jews in this? Because obviously they were in the Holy Land and I think we can see what happened to Jewish people, particularly with Israel and so on and so forth. But what role did they play in all of this? Were they seen as part of it or were they just marginalized in very much a secondary player? Well, it depends on which era and which country and which region. So, you know, the Jews are especially prominent in Spain. That's often where you hear about them because you had a large, you know, of course, Muslim control in the south. And then you had the small Christians in the north who began the reconquista from the north and spread downwards. And then you had the Jews mostly in the south. We're also other Christians as them. He's lived. And it really depends. Oftentimes they were actually seen as working and sighting with the Muslims. And in fact, so for example, when it came to, you know, the famous expelling of Muslims, it was Muslims and Jews who were expelled in 1492 out of Spain. And it was kind of for the same reason because they were, and this is another very complex topic, but you know, when, when, so we'll have to, I guess we should talk about Spain because it's really a microcosm of everything we're talking about. Absolutely. And you know, and a lot of things are very clear when you look there. But so, as I said, Spain gets conquered in the year 7-11. And before that, it's Christian. It was ruled by the Visigoths. And anyway, a small remnant survives of these vithas and they get hold up in the north and some in the mountains of Asturia in the northwest. And even the Muslim sources kind of say, what are they going to do? Who cares? Let them live in, like, live up in that crag. You know, like a bunch of bombs. They're like, they literally just calls them like 12 people living on honey. Anyway, before long, they persevere the Christians and they start what's called the reconquista slowly kind of coming southwards and fighting. But before that, the Muslims in El Andalus as a snow, okay, Spain. And that name, by the way, is, you know, the vandals, like the Visigoths, the vandals were another kind of Germanic tribe, but they entered into North Africa. So they were familiar to Muslims. And so when they came to Spain, you know, Visigoth vandals, same thing, but they just knew the word vandal. So vandal, El Andalus became the name. That's why it's called that. So Muslim controlled Spain. You had what we were discussing, which is this the me system. If you're a Christian or a Jew, you live a second class, right? And they lived in their own communities at this time. They didn't really consort with each other to a large extent. And then up in the North, you got the free Christians who are making a comeback. Okay. And so that's the context. And this goes on literally for centuries until, you know, Spain. It was known as the Spain's because it was really just various kingdoms. Eragon, Castile, Leon, Portugal, became its own. But when it gets unified with Ferdinand and Isabella, right in the 1400s, they finally managed to get the last Islamic stronghold, which is Granada. And it's had like half a million Muslims. And what happened is they let them live. They said, okay, fine. You guys can stay here. You can even have your own Islamic culture and your own law and whatever. And but what happened is the Muslims were always seeking to subvert. So on the one hand, they acted like there were friends or being docile. On the other hand, they were conniving with the Ottomans and the Barbary Muslims to help try to bring Spain back to Islamic rule. So in this context, this is when this is why, so for example, you know, you hear these crazy things and the medieval Christian just looks so intolerant and just evil. But here's the backdrop. So you hear how the Christians said, oh, you have to become Christian or get out. Well, that was because before that, they gave them the right to do their thing. The idea of Christianizing someone was not because I am a fanatic and I don't believe in you having your own faith. It was that you're never going to stop trying to kill me until you become like me. As long as you maintain that tribalistic Islam, which they understood, you're going to be, you're going to obviously work against me. They came up with a decree, which is basically become Christian or leave, go back to North Africa. And then a fatwa appeared, fatwa is a decree by a learned Islamic chick, which promoted the concept of takea. And takea in Islam is basically you can, if you're under arrest or being threatened by the infidel, you can lie, you can say, you can say anything, you can even engage, you can get baptized, you can engage in communion, you can do all these things, as long as in your heart, you're still working, you're still striving for Islam. And then all, so overnight, half a million Muslims from Granada became Christian and the crown thought, okay, you know, but then what happened is generation after generation, and you have the Christians saying these guys were acting like they were better Christians than us. They literally just everything about them was more Christian than they went every Sunday, but then they found out they were still Muslim at heart and still actually clandestinely working to somehow subvert Spain to Islamic rule. And so that's when it finally came to, okay, even if you convert, it doesn't work, so you have to leave. Okay, now the Jews are also, and so the inquisition, that's that the initial inquisition start in this context, because you're saying I'm a Christian, but you're really a Muslim. Right, and they had their, they have words for them both for the Jews that were doing this and the Muslims who were doing the Murasco is the Muslim, and I forget the Jewish word or the word for the Jews that were doing Moreno's. Anyway, and so the Jews, you know, despite, despite how things are today, the Jews were often actually conflated with Muslims, okay, and oftentimes they did work and help them, not always. And sometimes the Muslims turned and attacked on the Jews as well. I mean, so it's, it's kind of complicated. You can't say, you know, it was always this way or always that way. But for example, when, you know, another famous instance where people attack, the crusaders is during the first crusade, the people's crusades or the peasant crusade went off track again and attacked Jews. Okay, and again, the church and the nobles were against that because that's not, but the logic was, why are we traveling and suffering and going all the way there to fight these Christ enemies when they're right here amongst us. So, yeah, the Jews during this time sort of, I think maybe they had a survival instinct, whoever, whoever, whether there was a Christian or the Muslim was doing better, they probably would ally with or try to be on that, be on their good side, which kind of makes sense from the survival point of view. So, I mean, we've got, we've got to the point where we've got peak Islam. Islam is at its strongest. It is dominant across southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East. We actually haven't though, just so you know, because I didn't even get into the Ottomans who conquer self-Eastern Europe. Yes. We can talk about or not, but I mean, well, that still isn't even the peak yet, but okay. Right. Well, I guess what, what I want to take this bit of the conversation now is Islam is dominant and remains dominant. It remains dominant for many, many centuries, and as you say all the way through to the Ottoman Empire, it gets as far as India, the Mongols at some point, right? You know, I was just, I was in Uzbekistan a few, the Great Warlord. Timur Lane. Yeah, well, they don't like it when you call them that. Timur the Great. Not the lame. Yeah, they don't like you calling them Lane. Timur the Great. Yes. As far as the North of Russia, this guy conquered, when as far as Byzantium and the West, as far as China and the East, on him, the Mongols are the same. Right. And then we arrive today, if you're born today, your instinctive understanding of the Muslim world is it's in the Middle East, objectively speaking technologically quite backward. Militarily quite weak, not dominant around the world, and is at least on the surface, this is just how you would think if you were born today. Engage in some sort of guerrilla warfare against a much more powerful Western force. That would be, not put in my own perspective on it, but that would be the impression you'd get. And you mentioned Bernad-Lewis. He's obviously, you wrote a whole book about this, what went wrong. How do you get from bomb, massive Islamic expansion, conquering all the bits of the world that really matter at that point, at least from a, you know, Western perspective, to the complete collapse of that dominance and where we are today? Chances are, if you're a trigonometry fan, you understand the importance of free speech and privacy. And you'll also probably know the founder of Unplugged, Eric Prince, because he's been a guest on our show. Eric created the upphone by Unplugged to solve a huge problem. Our smartphones have become the most powerful surveillance devices ever built. Governments want back doors, corporations harvest your data and sell it, both sides chip away at your freedom. The upphone is different. It's built from the ground up for privacy with its own operating system, no big tech back doors, and a built in fire will block thousands of trackers every day. I have one of these, because I want the peace of mind that my personal data isn't being sold or spied on. Go to Unplugged.com/Trigonometry and use our code "Trigonometry" for $20 off a protective case with the upphone. All right, so let's go back a little to the colonial era, because this is really what you're describing. Islam stays dominant and you're right. People forget that Islam, especially the Ottoman Empire, was the powerhouse. It's ingrained in people's mind as if Europe was always super powerful and everyone else, all these brown people were just being abused and scared of Europe. It was the opposite, as we discussed, but especially with the rise of the Ottomans, and these guys last from 1300s to the 1900s, and in 1683 they're in Vienna, with two to 300,000 fighters surrounding it. So keep that in mind. We started off in the 600s with Muhammad and the first attack on Christian territory in 636. 1683, now we're talking a thousand years later, they're around Vienna, and they're using the same logic and rationale, and they're talking about Islam and jihad and you have three choices, et cetera, et cetera. And it's not even just at 1683 to bring it to this country, the United States. It's very first war as a nation, as a nation, meaning after independence from Britain. No need to rub it. Yeah, I was trying to word it correctly, but after that, and now it's its own country, it's first wars with Muslims, the Barbary Wars. And again, they're acting exactly on the same logic, and Thomas Jefferson, this great paragon of enlightened thinking, didn't know Islam as well as he should have, because when he met with what the Barbary parties are doing is actually attack. So this is very interesting because it goes back to the idea of Jizia. So a lot of these European powers, and I'll get to, I'll get to your point, but I'm just trying to build it up to show you what happened, but a lot of these European powers, instead of fighting with the Barbary Muslim pirates of North Africa, whose entire economy consisted of slave raids on Europeans. And as far as Iceland, they would go and enslave them, started just paying them off, which the Muslims took as a Jizia tribute. Now, when the US, the United States America broke away from Britain, it was no longer covered by it, it brings Jizia payments. And once the Muslims found that out, they started attacking American vessels in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean, and enslaving them and engaging all sorts of horrific abuses against them. I talked a lot about that in one of my bookstores in Cimitar, actually, I have a whole chapter about it, because if you really read about what was happening to European slaves, including these American ones, it was really six stuff. Anyway, so that's what provoked the first war of America with a Barbary, but when Jefferson and John Adams met, they tried to, you know, find a diplomatic solution. So they met with one of the ambassadors from Barbary, Abdul, something, and they say to him, hey, why can't we just have peaceful trade and work together, it's other typical Americans. And he basically, he, he sounds like an ISIS guy, he goes, our profit and our holy book says, you are the infidel, you're the enemy, and it's all right to plunder kill and enslave you until you acknowledge all along. So my point is, just to give you a sort of totality, we started in the 600s, this is now 1800, first war of America, same mentality, same logic. Now, what's interesting also about the 1800s is that same year around the first Barbary war is around, I think 18 or 1801, it starts. And, but in 1800 Napoleon enters Egypt, or I'm sorry 1798, and he easily conquers Egypt, okay, and this is known also as kind of the beginning of the colonial era. So the colonial era, you see Islam go from the super powerful thing and it starts now it becomes, now Europe is super powerful, technologically, militarily, economically. And it starts spreading out and conquering its former foe. People don't realize this, but to the colonial powers, a lot of them saw themselves as crusaders. They were continuing the war. I forget his name, is it Allen B, but some guy came and, you know, when they entered in conquered Syria, went up to Saladin's tomb supposedly and kicked it and said, we're back, meaning, you know, the Franks or the crusaders are back. So it's a lot of these Europeans, they still understood it that way, but why it happened, I think because is the Islamic world, as I was kind of telling you, its entire economy was based on war and plunder and slave and the slave system. Okay, they never produced anything the way Europe eventually went to, especially technologically and militarily. So I think once, once any Muslim region power is unable to conquer and plunder, it hasn't always come and it starts falling apart. And this happened before, so the Ottoman Empire still persists. And why does it persists because it westernizes, whereas the rest of the Middle East, you know, Egypt, which was by then sort of run by the Mamluks and all these other areas are completely now just spent, you know, there's nothing to plunder, there's no economy, everything's falling apart, it's very easily taken over. But the Ottomans, they westernize, which is ironic because the Ottomans were the chief, you know, standard bears of jihad. They actually took to jihad and articulated more than the Arabs, there were four bears did. That was their thing, okay. And, you know, under Auditor, they actually got rid of the Arabic script, took the Roman alphabet, dressed in Roman, I'm sorry, not Roman, western attire, shave the beards, et cetera, et cetera. So everyone became westward looking, including, you know, the Muslims who could, because that was the way to win. And the Islamic way, now that it kind of spent, it became a spent force at this point, and it was kind of an anachronism really didn't have much kind of the way did things was no longer going to work in this new world with Europe the way it was. And so that's so the colonial era is a very important thing to keep in mind, because, you know, these, it's funny to, again, here we go, the colonial colonial era and what happened nowadays is presented so horrible, you know, these evil European white guys going into, you know, these countries, not just Muslim countries, India, and colonizing. But what's funny is, if you read the writings of natives from the colonial era, they talk about it as the greatest time, this is the time when we had learning, when we had medicine, when we had science and technology, because the Europeans also brought this stuff with them, they did, right. Whereas, you know, if you look at places that Islam conquered, there's places in Spain where they had that constant war in the middle, you know, you had the Christians in the North and that are just until now, like in fertile and totally devastated, because, so at least, you know, the Europeans brought all this stuff and a lot of, this is the time when, so here's an irony, you know, when I think of, when I think of religion or whatever, someone becoming conservative and clinging to the old ways. I just can't help but think that through time things become more liberal. What's happening is actually the opposite in the Islamic world. If you go to the Middle East in the 1930s, way, way more liberal and Western looking than anything today, the people weren't resentful, they were actually trying to Westernize. They dressed like Westerners, the women didn't have the hijab, they were decent, not, I don't mean in a promiscuous way, but they dressed in dresses and they looked good, men were in suits and ties in the shave. So Islam was sort of, Islam's appeal was it's the strong horse, and if you join us, you get all these benefits that we were talking about. And once Muslims start seeing that that was in the case, it's really fell by the wayside. And so that's why I find that ironic, if you look at, you would think that, you know, in 2025, Muslims are going to be more liberal than in 1925. It's the exact opposite. And I find that very interesting and I think it starts going to where we're headed, talking the bigger talk about, you know, the modern era. And I believe a lot of that actually has to do with this, that in as much as the West exuded power and confidence, Muslims followed it. And which is human nature, whoever, you know, whoever's strong or smarter than you or whatever, you can learn from, you're going to try to emulate. But once the West sort of started hating itself and promoting everyone else. So let's say in the whatever 1960s, just to give a rough date, where all of a sudden now, you know, it was all how we're. It's the narrative became European sort of horrible people. Everyone is great. And in fact, Islam is even better and Islam is what a wonderful religion. And I think that actually pushed Muslims back. So on the one hand, it actually made them disrespect the West naturally. So it's, it's very easy to have content and disdain for someone who just disrespects themselves and, and fawns over you. That's a human nature. And it also sort of made, so it made them go back to set, they basically said, yeah, you're right. You're just a bunch of dirty infidels. So the theory became, and it was very well articulated by an Egyptian theoretician of the Muslim brotherhood, say, who came to America. And he was kind of a moderate Muslim. Then he came to America, I think in the 50s. And he was just scandalized by how liberal Americans were and, you know, men and women were consorting together, et cetera, et cetera. So he developed this idea, which became very prominent, which is, you know, these infidels in the West, you can appropriate and learn from them technology or science, things of this nature. But when it comes to more right to the greater metaphysical issues, religion, certainly, we have to stick to Islam. And that was really, this is one of the chief return to Islam. So the idea is, yeah, we can learn from them secular materialistic things, but as far as how a society is governed or structured or how individuals should live their lives or even as collectives, this is, of course, Islam. And all the while, the West further promotes that and sponsors that kind of thinking and stifles its own heritage. And this is what my point is, you see how that's very different than their forebears, the colonial, the colonizers, the colonizers were unabashedly proud. There's this famous story, I forget his name, but some general in India during a colonial era where they, you know, he just saw some ruckus and much of Indians, Indians who were going to burn a woman alive. Sati, I think it's called where if a man dies and his woman is still alive, they burn her on his pyre. And he found out what's going on and he tried to ban it. And they said, well, this is our custom and et cetera. And he said, okay, you do your custom will do ours. And our custom is when men burn women alive, we hang them all. Okay, so that kind of perspective, the West had, which was respectable from even from the adversary, whereas now it's completely gone. Now it's, oh, yeah, you do whatever you want, your right, your culture is superior, et cetera, et cetera. And this, of course, continues to this day. And I believe that's what exacerbates and brings out the worst of Muslims. This is why it's ironic when you look in the West and in Europe, oftentimes the Muslims who are the most radical are the second, third generation Muslims. And I think a lot of it has to do with this sort of symbiotic relationship with sort of Western self degradation, which only provokes them to fall back more on their own Islamic heritage and have even more contempt for Westerners. Even as Westerners fall over themselves thinking, oh, I need to, you know, appease him some more. That's how he'll like me when it's, of course, doing the exact opposite. Well, just on that sort of front, just to finish on this, just on that, actually, we were talking France, and I were talking about the Dan, we talked about one of the reasons that does seem to be a difference in integration in America versus Europe. And one of the reasons is the first thing an American, a first generation American does is teaches kids to love America. At least historically speaking, that was the trend. In Europe, that sort of cohesive idea of like, well, you're one of us now, but like you better be one of us now doesn't really exist in the same way. And I guess that's what you're saying. And it doesn't exist because no, you're instead of being proud of your opinion or an American and saying, hey, join us be one of us. I would never do that. Please stay your way. I mean, here in America, for example, this is the same logic behind wherever I go. I don't just see English. I see Spanish and I see Arabic and I see, you know, Hindi is kind of like, well, most countries, it's, it's, it's actually perceived as a sort of weakness. And it's not something that makes these immigrant people respect you because that's not how they would be ever. If you come to their country, you will, you will, you're the one who's going to assimilate. That's the logic and that makes sense, of course. So a lot of that is why the, and he's even worse, I think, in Europe and in America, one of the issues, it's not just what you were saying. Another thing is that, especially if it comes to Muslims, the numbers are so much smaller. And what's happening in Europe is they're just, they're ghettoized. There's so many and they just literally they live amongst each other. They don't even speak English or whatever the language looks like. It's in the UK English. They may go a whole days and weeks without needing to speak it because everyone around them just speaks their language. So they never assimilate and then they become sort of like a little enclave or a little ghetto. And it's funny because there's actually a historical precedent to this. And it's, it's an Arabic word, which is called the robot. It's a military term. And a robot is basically, remember how it's telling you Muslim conquest, they go as far as they can until they're stopped. Now wherever they're stopped, they would form fortresses and barriers known as robots. Robots is actually a word connected to the idea of a rope or a tight chain. So they would form these fortresses and from there they would continue harassing the infidel whenever they can and just engaging entire tactics or raiding them, et cetera, et cetera. And their goal was to eventually conquer more land. What I find interesting is a lot of these Muslims in the European cities, they see themselves actually as, and I've seen them talk of themselves as we are robotsists. Okay, we are the jihadists who are forming a chain. And now it's not, it's not just on the border with infidel countries is right smack in the middle of their cities because they've been allowed to come in. So they see themselves as actually jihadists. And we're here where you see it all the time where they just throw it in the face of the natives of Europe. You know, your country is going to be Muslim in a few years. You know, you guys, it's any probably well due to demographic changes and birth rates and whatnot. It makes sense. And on that uplifting note, let's talk about the West as it is because you've identified the key points, you know, the conferences in decline. Birth rates are in decline. Demographics are going to change. So looking forward and looking at the immigration that's coming, but also Muslim birth rates in the UK and the West more generally, what can we see through this trajectory? And where do you think is going to be the final destination as it were? Um, again, that's, you know, I guess depend on the nation and the region we're talking about because and here's the thing. I guess the first thing I'd like to say is what's happening. Here's the difference between Islam historically and Islam today. The continuity is that Muslims are creating problems. Okay. They did it historically. The violence and the intolerance and the supremacism. Okay. And it's happening now in the present. The difference is historically, like I said, it was the jihad of force. Right. They had no choice. No one was going to let them in. So Europeans fought tooth and nail, you know, fighting fighting to the death. Now the problem is, I think you mentioned it earlier or I don't know if it was you Francis, but you're talking about Muslims, how they're very weak right now. And, you know, they're not a, they're a weak force. Why are they a problem? And the answer is because the West makes them a problem or the specific country in the West, let's say the UK. Okay. All the problems that the UK is going through for an example, due to the, or not just UK, much of Western Europe. It's all self made. Okay. And you know that because I can look at an Eastern country like hungry and it has none of these problems. Is that because Muslims tried to invade hungry by force and somehow the Hungarians resurrected John Hunyadi and they beat them back. No, they just said no immigration. We don't want it. And guess what? No problem. So this is, I think that, and this is why a lot of people get upset. I remember that once we're an article, because a lot of people in the UK were complaining about, you know, there's an Islamic invasion. Muslims are invasion. And I basically said, no, get your terms right. This is not an invasion. An invasion is when people come by force and they're trying to take it. This is an invitation. Okay. This is an enablement from your leaders. So I think it's very important. My point is to, I like to, and I look at a problem, you know, not, not veer off kind of intelligence, but get to the heart of it. And the heart of the problem today with Europe and Islam, it's really not the Muslims. I often give this analogy where like, I say, if you imagine an enclosure of zebras, and I always start and decides to put a line and, and lo and behold, the lion starts killing the zebras. Who's really at fault? To me or the lion? I think it's me. The lion's a lion. Okay. Line's going to do what a lion's going to do. Muslims are Muslim. He's going to have the anti-infidel thing going on. The tribalism that I mentioned. Okay. But why are they being brought in with all these massive numbers? Why are the native Brits, let's say, or Europeans in general, being their heritage and their religion and their culture is being suppressed to make room for these people in the name of some sort of amorphous tolerance or, you know, multiculturalism, which is obviously not working. The point is the ultimate, if you want to talk about trajectories, it depends really on the countries. And it's actually in a way easily fixed if the actual supposedly elected representatives of these various nations do the will of the people, but they're not. And that's really the issue. So I would tell people, you know, your Islam problem is less about Muslims. And it's more about the people who are enabling and empowering them and bringing them in against your will. These are the people who have the same names like you and they look like you and they are apparently, you know, ruling in your name, but they're obviously not. And it's, you know, it's become very obvious right now. So I think people should look at the ultimate source of the problem. Islam is a problem intrinsically. You can say that, but now there's an instrumental, there's an instrumental force empowering it, which is like I said, why in other countries, Poland and Hungary, it's not an issue. And, you know, they can be fixed or I mean it's not going to be easy now obviously, but something can be done if the actual elected officials care to do it, but they don't. So, but so you've used the example of Poland and Hungary and they're relevant. But don't you think part of it as well Raymond is for one of a better term white guilt. You know, we went, the British went out, we colonized, we colonized a lot of these countries and a lot of these Islamic immigration into the UK is some Pakistan and Bangladesh, both former colonies. So that must play its own role as well. Oh yeah, the white guilt. But I mean, that is to me the most contemptible of all factors that really needs to go away. This white guilt I never understand it. You know, I did a recent like study about because we have Columbus day here and all these people get up and all you know himming and hawing all horrible Columbus and what he did to the natives, etc. In fact, and Muslims are doing this too. And my point is like talking about living in glass houses, all their heroes did far worse than Christopher Columbus. So my point is whatever the white man's guilt, it's the same things been done to him and to everyone else. Okay, whites were enslaved by blacks. You know, conquered and I told you Muslims moors as they were known from North Africa because of their dark skin went all the way to Iceland, very fair people and enslave them in the 1500s. And in and they're in by England, there was a little island, maybe you know, called Lundy, which actually was a haven of Barbary pirates who would actually raid and enslave British people. So my point is this white guilt is really manufactured and it needs to be seen for what it is. If anything, I mean being objective, I was just telling you that the colonial era, which is the white man, they actually, okay, you can say they conquered whatever the Muslim world India deep into Africa, but they actually brought good stuff with them. Okay, this is why the native population speaks well about that time, like they brought science and technology and literacy, medicine, etc. Okay, what did now the other people were talking about that conquered, including conquered Europeans brought nothing but death, destruction and slavery. Okay, so when it's all said and done, I don't think there's much for the white man to really feel guilty about. And I say this as a guy who doesn't think of himself as white by the way, okay, so I'm just trying to be as objective as possible. And but see the fact that this exists, and I'm glad you brought it up, just shows you how far gone so many white people are that they're so caught up in something so silly that all these other peoples who are not white would never even think and shouldn't think of something like that to actually govern how they see the world that, oh, my forefathers is something. So England is bringing Pakistanis in because they feel bad because they call nice Pakistan mean that is just such silly and stupid thinking. Raymond, and you use the example and I mean it was a provocative example of zebras and a lion. And then there'll be people who are listening to this or watching this going, yeah, but I've got a Muslim mate, he's a nice guy, he's not like that, but you know, isn't that just a bit reductive and unfair. Yeah, no, I'm not saying that every Muslim is a lion who's trying to kill you. What I'm saying is though, let's go with, okay, the most conservative estimate I've ever heard often hear like 10% of Muslims are radical. I mean, I think and I've heard a lot of people say it's more than that, okay, but let's say 10, I think that's fair. And I think it's important to delineate what does actually radical mean? Okay, well, now we're going to go down another rabbit hole, but so radical, what it means, what people mean by that is this is the weird crazy Muslim who's not not practicing true Islam. He's doing this crazy violent Islam. To me, radical Muslim is just a fundamentalist Muslim who's following his religion to a T, okay. And the moderate Muslim in this parlance, which is not accurate is supposedly the Muslim who's practicing good true Islam. To me, the moderate Muslim who exists is actually the nonchalant Muslim who's not taking his religion all that seriously, so they exist. I do believe that these two distinctions exist. I just think the words are inaccurate, okay, it shouldn't be a moderate and a radical. It should be a purest and a observance Muslim, which is the radical and the nonchalant secular cultural Muslim, okay, which is the moderate and they exist. So now let's say these, let's say 10% are the observant radicals, right? And I give you that number because that's the smallest number I've heard from people who are serious, okay? So my point is, yeah, but when you bring in millions of Muslims, okay, what's 10% of that? I don't know what the population let's say England is, but I know it's a four million Muslims. Okay, so you have 400,000 radicals, right? So you have 400,000 who might act like a lion. And so what does that mean? I agree, the other ones don't, right? But you're taking a chance. It's kind of like saying, it's kind of like saying, you know, I'm going to give you a jar of candy, only out of 110 are poisonous. Big deal. Take a chance. They taste good, right? Now, again, all of us, these are, like you said, reductive analogies. And I understand that I do believe a lot of Muslims who come, especially a lot of them, like I said, come from, they come from an Islamic background, but they're not observant, okay? I do believe a lot of these people come to Europe looking for just for a good life and what not and are not necessarily dedicated to conquering and what I've been discussing. I get all that, but it's the numbers and it's the fact that they don't assimilate and the fact that if it's 10%, 10% is still a humongous number. If you've said it's 4 million, we're talking 400,000. And again, I'm giving you the 10%, I'm trying to be kind of lenient here, but I think it's more, you know, maybe it's 20%, 25%. And you know this because if you listen to what comes out of these mosques, including in the UK, it's the radical variety that is to say the accurate variety. So, yeah, I understand. So this is what makes this kind of a quagmire and not an easy thing, especially from the Western liberal mentality, which wants to help the underdog. And in fact, there is some, a lot of them are underdogs, but it comes with a risk. And the risk is what you see happening in the UK, which is once in a while, a Muslim man gets up and stabs children and people and just drives us trucking to some people. What does he do that? Well, one of the reasons that most people don't realize is that the Islamic state, in fact, always issues these kind of calls, telling them to do precisely that. It tells Muslims that if you're living in the West, terrorize them. Don't forget, you're a member of the Islamic state and drive your trucks into them, drive your cars into them, go stab them, attack civilians, don't attack military, in other words, attack whatever is easy and soft targets. So one of the reasons that they're instructed to by these Islamic radicals, and the other is where are these Islamic radicals? Where are they? Everywhere. You mean ISIS? Where are they? Well, I don't know. I mean, the one, there's a, the issue of magazine that comes out every couple weeks and, you know, comes online in the dark net. But, and that's another term, you know, when you, a lot of people get caught up, okay, I understand there's bad guys, it's ISIS, it's al-Qaeda, it's et cetera, et cetera. I don't get caught up in these, these kind of terms because the issue we're talking about is ideological and transcends these finite organizations that come and go. What about the Muslim brotherhood? They're known as the sort of granddaddy of all these organizations. Al-Qaeda was, you know, Amin Zawahri, I was telling you about say it, cooked of Muslim Brotherhood, he's one of the earliest Amin Zawahri who was also who became the leader of Al-Qaeda, was formerly the Muslim Brotherhood. And the difference that the Muslim Brotherhood and these groups have, so for example, in the writings of Amin Zawahri, which I translated from Arabic way, way back almost two decades ago, he complained about the Muslim Brotherhood because they're too patient. And they take a sort of incremental approach and they don't want to do jihad, which is in fact what makes them more dangerous. So he was more representative of the sort of ISIS thing, which is I want to do jihad now, you know, I want to go kill the infidel, whereas the Muslim Brotherhood is sort of, it's just a subversive kind of power. And I don't know if you know, but the FBI actually caught some documents back in 2009 that actually are from the Muslim Brotherhood talking about how they're waging a civilizational jihad in America, trying to subvert, etc, etc, and all these organizations that are branches from it like care, the council on American Islamic relations. So these are the groups that are engaged in what I told you, the jihad of the tongue, the jihad of the pen, the jihad of, you know, the money. They're all working for the same purpose that ISIS is, but through legal measures, you know, through propaganda and whatnot. And I know that to someone who is as in depth with all this stuff as you, these questions may sound kind of naive, but what do they want exactly like if they keep that we just had a terrible several terrorist attacks actually in the UK. Just a guy goes up to somebody in the street, stabs on no provocation, nothing. What is that designed to achieve? What's the point of that? That's actually a good question. So on the one hand, and this is actually really interesting because there is a school of thought. So I told you about ISIS issuing these, these directives. A lot of Muslims in the Muslim world tell you ISIS isn't an Islamic organization. It's actually working for Western elements to make people hate Muslims. And honestly, when I see because you ask a good question, what is the point in telling Muslims go and stab people? What does that do? Does that somehow have a strategic purpose? All it does is make people hate Muslims, right? I mean, that's the logic. And I'm only, I'm not telling you this is what I believe, but I've never, the civilizational jihad via the Muslim brotherhood, that makes more sense to me than these organizations who just say, hey, they literally, the Islamic state once said they issued a kind of one of their declarations at the peak of, you know, I think it was the beginning of the, when the Israeli Palestinian stuff a couple of years ago. And they told Muslims don't attack Israel because if you do, you're going to only empower Hamas and they're not true Muslims and the PLO, okay? And instead, we want you, and then they attacked Iran, it was in the context of, of, they killed like 100 people in Kerman. And so they said this is what we're attacking Iran because Iran's evil stupid shias, you know, Sunni Shia. And why would you want to fight Israel and help these other guys like the PLO who are not true Muslims? Instead, go to Europe and do that, crash into them, decapitate them and throw tires in their arms. And everyone in the Arab world said, see, this is not a real ISIS. But on the other hand, what they are teaching is in the Quran. So when they, so Quran 9.5 famously it's known as a sword verse. And it tells Muslims, it's actually you remember something about Jefferson talking with an ambassador. He basically paraphrased it. That verse says when, you know, the forbidden months passed, wait, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, the pagans. We'll lay in wait for them, ambush them, terrorize them, okay? So what you're saying is correct me if I'm misunderstanding. This is not strategic. This is doctrinal. Yeah. From, from the Islamic state, that's what I would argue. And this is why a lot of other Muslim groups who have the same goal they'd like to see Islamic hegemony around the world. Don't take that route because to them, you're even al-Qaeda, for example, which is ISIS. When I translated the writing, so what they said to the West was, we're doing this because you attacked us. We're doing this because you support Israel. We're doing this because you didn't send the Kyoto Protocol. It was always agreement. Seriously, it was a grievance after grievance. And it was had nothing to do with doctrine. Then the writings that came across, this is my first book, the al-Qaeda reader, which came on 2007. And the reason it was a kind of a big deal of time. I was working in the Library of Congress. And I came across these Arabic writings by Osama bin Laden and Amin Zawari. And they said, now they sound like ISIS. And it was where we hate them not because of what they do. It's because they're infidels and we have to hate the infidels and we have to fight them and we have to do jihad. So even al-Qaeda was smart enough to play the double game and say, hey, we're only doing this to you because you hit us first. But ISIS is so, to me, I always say, the refreshingly honest. But in a way that doesn't really help the cause has a lot of Muslims point out because what you're doing is you're sort of exposing us. And yeah, when you go and you stab toddlers in the UK or whatever, what is that? How is that helping from a strategic point? So it's a good question. I suppose the interesting question for me is how do we move forward with given the realities that we have. And one thing that I have some hopeful but I want to run it by you and get your perspective is we do see in some Middle Eastern countries like the UAE, like Saudi Arabia, also in Central Asia, like I mentioned I was in Uzbekistan. They don't tolerate the, you might not agree about the terminology, but they do not tolerate violent jihadists. They themselves know that they are the first target of these jihadists and they actually deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, they deal with all of these terrorists, the Jason or actual terrorist organizations, they don't allow preaching extremist versions of Islam and mosques. In Uzbekistan, if you want to work for the government, you can't have a beard, you can't wear not just a hijab, you can't even wear a head scarf of any kind if you're a woman. So do you think that there is some hope that because of this kind of thing, the Muslim world, the center of gravity in the Muslim world will move towards a more less extreme and more moderate version of the faith? You mean if more Muslim nations act more like Central Asian Asians? Yeah, or like the UAE or like Saudi Arabia increasingly, right? Do you think that that will move the center of gravity towards a different kind of Islam and therefore different kind of relationship between Islam and Christianity? Yeah, if Islam can be changed, immediately I'm struck with a quote from the encyclopedia of Islam which is written by a jurist and he said Islam needs to be completely made over for the doctrine of jihad which it defined as what I defined which is unprovoked warfare to conquer the world. He said it had to be remade over. Can that be done? I suppose, but it would no longer really be Islam. And I think if you look around that certain versions of Christianity, that's the case, that's not historic Christianity. So I suppose that can be done. The examples you gave of the Central Asian countries, it's very interesting because they are nominal Muslims but like you said, they're the first ones who clamped down on that stuff because they will be the first victims. It's even the Muslim Brotherhoods outlawed in Egypt where it was born. But at the same time, CC and his government pays a lot of lip service and is engaged in Islamizing Egypt and he will ally with the celifies who are actually more ideologically draconian than Muslim Brotherhood. So there's a lot of kind of like shifting back and forth with how this works. But you know, the bottom line is Islam is what Islam is. And unlike other religions, it's very black and white. You know, the whole concept, the problem with Western people is they project their own religion kind of and then they're convinced that, for example, Christianity is the separation of secular and spiritual Caesar and the coin and whatnot. But that's not Islam. Islam is not, it's not about the condition of your heart and relationship you have with God. It's actually all about the law. It's legalistic. And in fact, and everything in Islam is, there's five, you know, either it's forbidden. You can't do, it's disliked. You shouldn't do, but you can technically it's neutral. You can or don't have to do. It's recommended. You should do, but you don't have to or it's obligatory. Everything in life. So Islam really permeates. So can it change? Can they rearticulate it? I suppose, but you're always going to have the hardliners who say, hey, that's not what our book says. That's not what the Quran says. That's not what Muhammad said in the Hadith. So I think it would actually be easier to just snuff it out altogether from Muslims themselves. In other words, I always find the apostate more honest with himself or herself than the moderate Muslim. And because the apostate is kind of like, look, I'm not going to kid myself. It is what it is. And I don't want to be like that. Whereas the moderate, you know, they engage in all these sort of intellectual gymnastics in their head to get by. I mean, if Muhammad himself in a canonical Hadith says whoever the apostate killed him, or in the Quran itself, you are allowed to, it's permissible for a man to have sex slaves, infidel female sex slaves as many as your right hand possess. Okay. These sorts of things. If I'm a Muslim and I don't want to accept that, for example, you know, what do you do with those verses? And I often watch an Arabic these in clerics. And that's what they say. Remember, I was telling you about the one guy who was basically saying, yeah, if you're married to a Christian, you can, but you have to hate her. And you know, you know, lo and behold, a lot of the people sitting there were kind of questioning like, are you serious? And he finally gets frustrated and goes, well, it's written, you know, what do you do with the verses that I just quoted, including, you know, you've got to hate and Abraham and whatnot. So the crux of the matter is the religion itself, which is so easily identified and clear cut teaches what we call radical things. Okay. They're only radical from our perspective, subjective perspective. They're not radical from a Muslim point of view. Well, but that's where that's exactly the point I'm putting to, which is it's clearly is radical from the perspective of the rulers of the UAE, from the rulers of Saudi Arabia. It's radical because it's radical to them because they can suffer from it because they're not seen as legitimate Muslim rulers. Right. And at the same time, they have to pay lip service to Islam. So they're not, in other words, a lot of these rulers are just not Muslim at heart, obviously, but they govern Muslims. So they want to create the most, you know, on the one hand, they want to be legitimate and show their legitimacy as, hey, I can be your ruler. And which means they have to kind of let, you know, let the pot kind of steam come out a little bit so the Muslims can feel this is actual Islam. And in the other hand, they've got to kind of clamp down on certain teachings. So that's why a lot of these rulers are often just, you know, denounced as, you know, puppets of the West and not true Muslims, including the ones inside of Arabia who are actually nominal Wahhabis, which is as radical as you can get. And in fact, they do disseminate and play a huge role in sort of disseminating jihadist literature. And they're still hated and seen as pawns of the West. Raymond, I'm going to ask a provocative question, but I think it's an important one. No, it's not. And if you mean by the West, the sort of secular liberal West, it's certainly not. If the West believes in freedom of religion and gender equality and everything that the West, you know, prizes, well, in Islam, it's not, it's not that there's a radical interpretation. Honestly, it's not like I told you, that's the observant interpretation, which is that. So for example, you have to, okay, you have to hate the non-Muslim. Is that something that, you know, if you're living in a liberal Western secular society, you really want a group of people who are bound to feel that way towards you. How's that going to work out? Oh, I know how it works out. Just look at the UK, right? So there's, there are built in teachings in Islam inherently not a lot. I'm not saying the whole religion. There's a lot of it that's actually neutral. Maybe some of it that's admirable. But there are just enough that bring it at odds with the things that the West actually prizes, okay? Okay, killing blasphemers or, you know, attacking them. So in the West, the freedom of expression and art and whatnot. And then what was his name, Van Gogh, that guy gets killed, right? Because, well, in the Muslim world, everyone would agree without any, they would pat him on the back because that's what you do. So the religion itself has built in sort of mechanisms that does make it antithetical to a lot of the things that the West prizes. And so I guess the next question is, if it's, if it's completely antithetical, is it therefore an existential threat to the West? Yeah. Again, but again, it gets murky when you realize, so what are we talking about? Islam, you know, I'm almost, it's kind of like I'm, you know, anthropomorphizing it as if Islam is a man. Islam is made up of Muslims and I already readily agree a lot of Muslims are not real Muslims are not observant Muslims are cultural Muslims are secular Muslims, you have a lot of that. I get that and they, you know, presumably can assimilate and I'm sure a lot of them do. But the problem is you have the teachings exists and though the teachings themselves are the existential threat because there will be people who do adhere to those teachings. And once they do, they become the bad guys, okay, which and nobody wants to see it's funny every time I read I look at Muslims attacking someone randomly in Europe, for example, and all of a sudden it's dismissed as, oh, he had mental problems. Oh, he had psychological issues. No, he was actually, I mean, that's how we see it, but no, he was actually following a directive and something that breeds a certain contempt and hatred for precisely the kind of person he attacked. Okay, so again, I'm not trying to say that would be scaremongering if I was sitting here to tell you every single Muslim wants to kill you and be, no, they don't, I get that. You know how many, you know how many Muslims that you can look at today and you might be like, oh, this guy dangerous and then tomorrow that guy converts the Christianity. But for 10 years, and I've known them, this guy has been conflicted and for those 10 years, it was not even a Muslim, but and he was almost a Christian. So my point is, you don't know, there's a lot of these people, there's so much gray and a lot of them are not a threat. A lot of them are great people. Okay, but again, you know, it's how do you differentiate and how do you know and this is why, you know, it's, it's nice and it's good for the West to not discriminate. Okay, but on the other hand, by not discriminating or just being intelligent, we're going back to the analogy of, you know, 100, you know, candies and one even is poisonous and you know it is. So okay, the 99 didn't cause the problem, but the one will and that's why you continuously have the attacks that you continue having because in as much as you keep taking these numbers, there's a percentage that's going to come with the violence and those things are antithetical to Western culture. So that being the case, the UK is in the situation it's in. If you were advising the UK on this particular issue, what policies would you put in place? What advice would you give the government? Yeah, well, that's not that easy because you know, the UK is really dug itself deep already. It's one thing to say, hey, we don't want to bring in too many Muslims. Okay, like these other countries we're mentioning. But when you already have what is it, you said four million. You know, it's well, first of all, anyone who's legal, I would say has to go immediately. I mean, if you're there illegally by no more coming in, I would, I don't know how they do this, but I would really be monitoring mosques and the Islamic kind of. Programming and what Muslims are being exposed to, including on the internet, which I'm sure is not so easy. And this is, you know, and it's at one point you start wondering, is there worth all this? What does a Western nation get from having to live constantly on its toes just to be able to live side by side with Muslims? But I guess again, in this case, I get it because they're already there, right? But I would have no, I would have no compunction or sympathy for any sort of radical preaching. I see in the UK radical Muslims screaming, you know, like actual Islamic jihadist stuff. And they don't get in trouble, but then when a British person fights back to get arrested. Okay, so this is what I'm telling you. This is the real problem right now. And, you know, so when you tell me what advice I could give, how about start off by just being objective and without this two-tier system where you're actually oppressing the natives and empowering those who are actually, you know, pushing for this sort of thing, the jihadist mentality. Would you do more hard-line approaches for instance, something like banning halal, banning facial coverings, banning burk? Okay, the facial covering is, that's a security reason. In fact, in Muslim countries, it's sometimes the case women can't wear the hijab because it's sometimes you get a terrorist. Like I said, in Uzbekistan, you can't wear the full face cover. Yeah, so that, yeah, for sure. There's no problem with that. And, you know, if there's a way to stop the sort of de-getta wise them, so they do possibly assimilate. Instead of always kind of living closely in it, and it's like I said a small robot or a Islamic fortification, it's not very easy. I mean, I think, and especially for the mentality that prevails right now in the UK and its leadership. Like I said, they, you're asking me, let's say this is neutral, you're asking me the measures they can take. They're still here, you know, where they're attacking their own, and you can't, what country tells it citizens, you can't, you know, wave your flag. I mean, you know, this is one of the things that I often point out, if you want to know how insane it is in Europe, always look at it by analogy other non-Western regions. And guess what, you know, like I made this argument recently, you know, I don't know if you use the same terminology, but in America, the ultra-right is like the bad guy. This is like the racist, xenophobic, you know, crazy patriot. And to me, the ultra-right is actually how everyone outside the West thinks and acts. They're all, if you go to any country, non-Western, it's sub-Saharan, Asian, Latin American, what we call ultra-right, traditional, you like your country, you like your flag. That's what they're, that's normative there. And the ones who support it most are their own governments. That's what they want you to be like. It's very weird to go to a nation like the UK where, oh, you're the bad guy because you're waving your nation's flag. But then these people are coming in, waving their flags, including ISIS, and that's okay. I mean, so the UK's problems, man, they're just kind of mind-boggling. I don't even know where to begin. It's just, it's really warped. Raymond, on that happy note, we're going to ask you a final question before that. Tell us about your latest book. Yeah, the two swords of Christ, thanks. The subtitle of the five centuries of war between Islam and the warrior monks of Christendom, which comes out, it can be pre-ordered now, comes out later in November. So this book is basically a third of, it's my trilogy. I've been writing books that deal with the history of Christendom and Islam. And the first one was sword and cimitar, which looked at the general kind of what we talked about. The second one was defenders of the West, which looked at men. So the first one looks at decisive battles between Islam and the West, like Yarmuk and Manzacr, which I mentioned. The other one looks at decisive Christian men. And a lot of people like that second book, because they're just shocked that Western Christians can act this way. But this book is even more so, because this book deals with the warrior monks, the Templars and the hospitalers, and what their rationale was. And I think what people will find interesting is, on the one hand, these guys were very militants. On the other hand, they were very Christian. More Christian than your average guy. And to your average Christian today, of course, the two don't mix. There's what I call doormat Christianity, which is what kind of is very prominent in the West to be a good Christian is essential to be a doormat. And it's easy to be a doormat too, non-confrontational. So a lot of people make a virtual device. And they're non-confrontational in their cowardly and they pat themselves in the back. So I'm just being a good Christian. Not so these guys. So these guys were immensely militants, and they really took the war to Islam. And talk about, I kind of alluded to it earlier when we were talking why the Crusades failed because of numbers. It really came down in the end. It was just these guys. And these were monks and holy warrior monks, essentially types. And so I think people will be fascinated at their theological underpinnings. And one of them, which I get into, because, and that's the title of the books, the Two Swords of Christ, are you familiar with the verse? There's a biblical verse where Jesus tells his disciples, you know, "Sell your cloak and buy a sword." And they say, "Look, Lord, here are two swords." And he say, "That's enough." So to your average modern day Christian, that has absolutely no meaning today. It has nothing to do with real swords, okay? To medieval Christians, especially in a lot of pre-modern Christians in general, what that verse meant is you have two, we're facing two battles as Christians. One against spiritual forces. And you need a spiritual sword. And one against physical secular forces. And you need a physical secular sword. So that was understood by a lot of theologians. And that's what gave rise to these sorts of military orders. And it was, of course, also fused in the concept of just war. But anyway, yeah, I think it's going to be an interesting book to a lot of people. And it's going to be eye opening at how Christians used to behave in the face of these sorts of existential threats. Well, with that, we're about to go to Trigapod.co.uk, where our audience get to ask you their questions. But before we do, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Before I'm going to answer the final question, at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our sub-stack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. Is there a sect of Islam that is non-violent does not believe in G-Head and does not want violence and to topple Western powers? What I don't see very much of is Christians in the West being concerned about the mass slaughter of Christians in Africa and the Middle East. Do you have an explanation of what that's happening and not happening? What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Oh, boy. I think we've talked about a lot of things, but it's something I brought up, which I think is the most important thing never to forget. Which is, again, don't lose sight of the real source of the problem and the Islam problem in the West, it's not the Muslims. It's the policies. It's the policies that actually enable, empower Muslims and bring them in by the millions. That's supposedly something you can do about assuming you live under some sort of democratic rule or you have representatives that you supposedly elected. If it doesn't work, then there's something else going on and the problem needs to really be looked at a little closer. But the point is, this isn't about hating Muslims. That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say historically there was always a clash. The people that I'm talking about in this book are just historically if they thought their descendants are bringing Islam in. I'm sure they're spinning in their grave right now because it just wouldn't make any sense to them. So a lot of it, a lot of the problems are just self-made by the West. Islam is weak as you pointed out earlier. Islam is inherently weak right now, physically, economically, militarily. It can't do what it does, but why is it doing it? It's because Western elements are making it, are empowering and allowing it. So like I said, I like to get to the heart of matters. And in this current case, it's not Islam itself. It's the West. I don't know if it's a sub-stack where Raymond's going to answer your questions. There seems to be belief, particularly in left-wing circles, that Islam spread to billions of people with flowers and chocolate. My question is, in Islamic schools and universities, is this how Muslims understand their own history?