Islam–No stronger retrograde force exists in the world–Islamophobia vs. History

Raymond Ibrahim, 12/23/24

On December 12, the White House announced its release of “the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate.”

This document asserts that “Islamophobia” in America is a byproduct of “hate” for and “racism” against Muslims. Thus, the first of the document’s four strategies to counter Islamophobia, is to:

Increase awareness of hatred against Muslims and Arabs and broaden recognition of these communities’ heritages. Muslims and Arab Americans have helped build our country since its founding, but they have also routinely experienced hate, discrimination, and bias due to baseless stereotypes, fearmongering, and prejudice.

Let us for now ignore the demonstrably false claim that Muslims “have helped build our country since its founding” (in reality, Muslims were the first to terrorize our country since its founding), and focus on the assertion that they “have also routinely experienced hate, discrimination, and bias due to baseless stereotypes, fearmongering, and prejudice.”

Focus especially on the italicized phrases: Muslims, according to this formulation, are “routinely experiencing” hate — meaning always and for a long time — but this hate has no foundation other than “baseless stereotypes, fearmongering, and prejudice.”

There are only two ways to understand this: either Americans are extremely dumb or evil, buying into and acting on any meaningless stereotype thrown their way to express their hate; or else what Muslims “routinely experience” is not based on “baseless stereotypes” but rather something else — perhaps reality.

The Biden-Harris administration, to say nothing of the so-called “mainstream” media, argue, even if implicitly, for the first interpretation: They suggest that temporal developments, such as the September 11 and October 7 attacks on America and Israel, respectively, prompted Americans to “baselessly stereotype” Muslims as violent terrorists.

On the other hand, history argues for the second interpretation: that Muslims “routinely experience” aversion from non-Muslims, not because of “baseless stereotypes” but because non-Muslims understand, often from firsthand experience, what Islam is all about.

‘Demon-Possessed Prophet’

The fact is that from the very start, Western peoples, including many of their luminaries, portrayed Islam as a hostile and violent force — often in terms that would make today’s “Islamophobe” blush. There’s a reason for that.

In 628 AD, Muhammad summoned the Christian Roman emperor, Heraclius, to submit to Islam. When the emperor refused, a virulent jihad was unleashed against the Western world. Less than 100 years later, Islam had violently conquered more than two-thirds of Christendom, and was raiding deep into France.

While these far-reaching conquests are often allotted a sanitized sentence, if that, in today’s textbooks, the chroniclers of the time made clear that these were cataclysmic events that had a traumatic impact on Europe.

But it wasn’t just what they personally experienced at the hands of Muslims that developed this ancient “phobia” to Islam. As far back as the seventh century, Islam’s scriptures became available to nearby Christians, such as John of Damascus (b. 675), one of history’s earliest “Islamophobes.” Based solely on these primary sources of Islam, Christians concluded that Muhammad was a (possibly demon-possessed) false prophet who had very obviously concocted a creed to justify the worst depravities of man — for dominion, plunder, cruelty and carnality.

This view prevailed for well over a millennium throughout Europe; and it was augmented by the fact that Muslims were still — well over a millennium after Muhammad — invading Christian territories, plundering them, and abducting their women and children. As mentioned, the United States’ first conflict with Islam — indeed, its first war as a nation — came not after Sept. 11, 2001, but in 1801, as a response to jihadist raids on American ships for booty and slaves.

Common Themes

A miniscule sampling of what Europeans thought of Islam throughout the centuries follows:

Theophanes, important Eastern Roman chronicler (d.818):

He [Muhammad] taught those who gave ear to him that the one slaying the enemy — or being slain by the enemy — entered into paradise [see Koran 9:111]. And he said paradise was carnal and sensual — orgies of eating, drinking, and women. Also, there was a river of wine … and the women were of another sort [hooris], and the duration of sex greatly prolonged and its pleasure long-enduring [e.g., Koran 56: 7-40, 78:31, 55:70-77]. And all sorts of other nonsense.

Thomas Aquinas, one of Christendom’s most influential philosophers and scholastics (d.1274):

He [Muhamad] seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh urges us …. and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine…. Muhammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms — which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants [i.e., his “proof” that God was with him is that he was able to conquer and plunder others]…. Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms.

Marco Polo, merchant and world traveler (d.1324):

According to their [Muslims’] doctrine, whatever is stolen or plundered from others of a different faith, is properly taken, and the theft is no crime; whilst those who suffer death or injury by the hands of Christians, are considered as martyrs. If, therefore, they were not prohibited and restrained by the [Mongol] powers who now govern them, they would commit many outrages. These principles are common to all Saracens.

When the Mongol khan later discovered the depraved criminality of Achmath (or Ahmed), one of his Muslim governors, Polo writes that the khan’s

attention [went] to the doctrines of the Sect of the Saracens [i.e., Islam], which excuse every crime, yea, even murder itself, when committed on such as are not of their religion. And seeing that this doctrine had led the accursed Achmath and his sons to act as they did without any sense of guilt, the Khan was led to entertain the greatest disgust and abomination for it. So he summoned the Saracens and prohibited their doing many things which their religion enjoined.

Alexis de Tocqueville, French political thinker and philosopher, best known for Democracy in America (d.1859):

I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.

Theodore (“Teddy”) Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States and an accomplished student of history (d. 1919):

Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought. If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, and on up to and including the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated. Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared.

The Crux of the Matter

At this point, one might argue that these and other historic charges against Islam are mere byproducts of Christian/Western xenophobia and intolerance for the “other.” But if so, how does one explain that many of Islam’s Western critics also praised other non-Western civilizations, as well as what is today called “moderate Muslims”?

Aside from speaking well of the Mongols, Marco Polo also hailed the Brahmins of India as being “most honorable,” possessing a “hatred for cheating or of taking the goods of other persons.” And despite his criticisms of the “sect of the Saracens,” he referred to one Muslim leader as governing “with justice,” and another who “showed himself [to be] a very good lord, and made himself beloved by everybody.”

British statesman Winston Churchill (d. 1965) — who likened religiosity in Muslims to rabies in dogs — well summed up the matter as follows:

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities — but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

In short, “Islamophobia” has been the mainstream position among non-Muslims for nearly 1,400 years — ever since Muhammad started attacking, killing, and enslaving non-Muslims (“infidels”) in the name of his god. And it is because his followers continue attacking, killing, and enslaving “infidels” that “Islamophobia” exists to this day.

That which Muslims “routinely experience” — and which Biden’s document dismisses as a product of irrational behavior — has never been due to “baseless stereotypes, fearmongering, and prejudice” but rather reality and self-preservation on the part of the infidel.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Islamophobia vs. History