Three Ways a Young Conservative Can Survive In the Age of Obama

A timely post about from www.yaf.org about the age of Obama. This follows this post about CPAC.
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Three Ways a Young Conservative Can Survive In the Age of Obama

 Posted by Patrick Coyle

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The Obama administration hasn't been kind to young people. Despite grand promises, young people have only faced increased hardships. The infamous stimulus, which was meant to improve job prospects, wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on grants asking students to keep track of their consumption of alcohol and marijuana, among other bizarre projects.
Sadly, students looking to enter today's work force are facing record-high youth unemployment. The Youth Misery Index has also risen 50% while Obama has been in office. In addition, young people are inundated daily with politically-correct messages from their professors, administrators, and other liberal groups. Our so-called institutions of higher learning are always eager to work with the Obama administration to allow him to visit campus. Since taking office, Obama has appeared on a college or high school campus one out of every 9 days.
Given these facts and others, its not surprising that today's students are turning away from the ideals that made America Great. In an op-ed by Charles M. Blow writing on Who Loves America in the New York Times, only 15% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 believe the United States stands above all other countries.
However, while leftist professors and liberal or apathetic students seem to dominate your school there are steps you can and should take to stand strong for your values and beliefs.
1. Strengthen Your Faith - Obama attacked the Christian faith by equating the evils of radical Islam with the Christian Crusades. Yet, the Crusades were a reaction to protect innocent Christians from being slaughtered by Jihad. You must learn how to be adequately defend your faith. Increasing your knowledge of the history of Christianity as a peaceful religion that protects the innocent decreases the effectiveness of the ignorant Left's attacks.1.
2. Read the Constitution - Obama and the Left would love for you to remain ignorant about your God-given rights under the United States Constitution, including your right to bare arms, right to free speech in your classroom and on your campus, right to express your faith in the public square, and many more. The Obama administration has already been caught spying on Americans, something you and your peers will not tolerate. By reading and knowing your rights backwards and forwards, you'll know when those rights are violated.
3. Get Involved - Ronald Reagan once said to a group of Young Americans for Freedom activists: "You are most important in this particular moment of history because so many of your peers have listened to false prophets and demagogues. "If you want to change your campus, now is the time to get involved and Young America's Foundation will provide you with the guidance, resources, and strategies to change the atmosphere on even the most liberal college campus.
You can begin by attending an upcoming YAF Freedom Conference in either Nashua, New Hampshire, on March 27 and 28 or in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on April 10 and 11. At these program you will come face-to-face with the Conservative Movement's best tacticians and activists as well as other young conservatives from across the country who will energize you.
Don't wait. If you don't take action, your peers will become liberal by osmosis.

A very interesting post from www.jihadwatch.org about a response to the U.S. president's prayer breakfast remarks. This follows this post about a Jordanian pilot burned to death by ISIS. This follows this article about American energy independence and preventing money from going to hostile countries. For more, you can read two very interesting books HERE.
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Jindal: “The Medieval Christian threat is under control, Mr. President”

 By Robert Spencer 103 Comments

Jindal has an important point. Even if Obama is correct (he isn’t) that the Crusades were some equivalent of the depredations of the Islamic State today, this does not excuse him or his Administration from their responsibility to face the current threat honestly and deal with it realistically. 900-year-old Christian atrocities, real and imagined, do not excuse his refusal to recognize the reality of the jihad threat.
“Jindal Mocks Obama on Crusades: We’ve Got ‘Medieval Christian Threat’ Under Control,” by Josh Feldman, Mediaite, February 6, 2015 (thanks to Anne Crockett):

President Obama yesterday obliquely addressed the controversy over his administration not referring to terrorist groups like ISIS as being “radical Muslims.” The president said that plenty of horrible things have been done in the name of Christianity, like the Inquisition and the Crusades.
Obama’s gotten some mockery from the right for referencing events from hundreds of years ago, and today Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal joined the fray. In a statement today, he says the president really isn’t addressing the pressing issue of terrorism and instead giving people a history lesson.
And then came the mocking:

“We will be happy to keep an eye out for runaway Christians, but it would be nice if he would face the reality of the situation today. The Medieval Christian threat is under control Mr. President. Please deal with the Radical Islamic threat today.”

White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said today Obama was talking about being “honest with ourselves” when we fall short of our values.

Christian Religion

An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about Christianity's reputation. This follows this post about Obamacare undermining religious freedom and liberty. This follows this post about handling a divorce.   For a free magazine subscription or to get this book for free click HERE! or call 1-888-886-8632.

Christian Religion


The Christian religion is no longer accorded the level of trust and credibility it once held in Western civilization. The unpersuaded see it as having few positive distinctions from all other religions.







How much confidence can we have in the validity of the Christianity religion in light of its troubled history?Whether Christian, Buddhist, Shinto, Islamic, Hindu, etc. (a choice of hundreds of major religious groups and thousands of minor ones are available) most religions seem to have one thing in common: a core of people dedicated to doing good things for others. In this regard, the Christian religion is not unique.



But there is also the negative side of Christianity. Corruption, disagreements and scandals undermine its credibility just as they do other religions.



How much confidence can we have in the validity of the Christianity religion in light of its troubled history? Consider these relevant facts.



True Christianity Undergoes Major Renovation

Shortly after all of the apostles' writings were completed and added to the Bible (near the end of the first century) Christianity began experiencing internal controversies. The debates and doctrinal modifications that followed led to significant diversity in its teachings.



By the fourth century, after it had transformed its teachings sufficiently to be accepted in the Roman Empire's social and political structure, it became the state religion. But this is a key to understanding how Christianity as it is marketed is not necessarily the true Christian religion: the Christian religion had been reshaped to fit the Roman Empire's leanings.



This expanded the power of the church in Rome dramatically. In a short while the church was dominating the state. It justified its newly found status with the doctrine of two swords—the church (the spiritual sword) claimed superiority over the state (the secular sword).



By the early part of the 16th century a considerable number of people in Europe began to challenge the moral laxity and other abuses approved or allowed by the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Rome. These "protesters" were labeled as heretics. The root of this word means a choice—signifying that these people had made an open choice to no longer trust or accept the beliefs of the church hierarchy. State sponsored Christianity was thrown into a crisis.



Why So Many Christian Religion Denominations?

The "Protestors"—later called Protestants—were attempting to reform Christianity through the movement now known as the Protestant Reformation. But instead of those reforms uniting the Christian religion, scores of splits occurred in the years that followed, giving rise to hundreds of "Christian" denominations. Amid this diversity each denomination has experienced enormous difficulty in living up to its own tenets and teachings.



Within the greater body of Christianity its shortcomings and divisions are played down for seemingly two reasons. Denominations quickly recognized that their membership would probably drop drastically if they insisted that everyone associated with them had to pledge full compliance with all of their tenets. Their second choice, the one most settled for, was that a few good deeds are better than none at all.



They accepted the reality that only a minority—often a small minority—of their members would actually practice sincerely all they teach.



Many Examples of Christian Religion Lack Credibility

Current surveys of the practices of those who claim to be Christians indicate that they often vary greatly from the tenets of the denomination to which they belong. And they differ even more with the teachings of the Bible. These surveys indicate that most of today's professing Christians believe that truth is relative and that they can trust their own feelings and opinions more than the teaching they hear preached.



Christianity is a religion at odds with itself. Within it are many sincere, well meaning people who do the best they know how to do in living a decent life that includes loving and serving others. But when the history of Christianity is examined honestly, much is to be desired of the example and commitment of the vast majority of its members—and often of its leaders. It is little wonder that so many doubt its credibility.



Back to Basics: Practicing True Christianity

This brings us to a crucial question. What were Jesus Christ's expectations for those who would make up that body of people—that Church—that He promised to build? His promise was, "... I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.



See All...). He also promised, "Therefore by their fruits you will know them" (Matthew 7:20Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.



See All...). Are the fruits of the Christian religion today all that Jesus had in mind?



Why not find out for yourself what Jesus really predicted concerning the Church He founded? Download or read online your free copy of our informative booklet: The Church Jesus Built.

July 15, 1099: Crusaders capture Jerusalem

An interesting book that you can get here http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1573922471/ref=s9_k2a_gw_tr01?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-5&pf_rd_r=0M3C3FPS1QM4A074DGPW&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470939291&pf_rd_i=507846

and from your library here http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/39379994&referer=brief_results

that describes the surrounding events of the Jihad from the time before the Crusades as well as after. You can also read the article below from http://www.jihadwatch.org/ which covers some of the events expounded on in the book!!

Jihad Through History

http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam101/
In 622 AD (year one in the Islamic calendar, AH 1), Muhammad abandoned Mecca for the city of Medina (Yathrib) some 200 farther north in the Arabian peninsula. In Medina, Muhammad established a paramilitary organization that would spread his influence and that of his religion throughout Arabia. Because there has never been a separation of the political-military and the religious in Islam, this development was entirely natural by Islamic principles. By the time of his death in 632 AD, Muhammad had extended his control in a series of raids and battles over most of southern Arabia. The conquered populations of these areas either had to submit to Muslim rule and pay a protection tax or convert to Islam.
The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 AD

Near the end of his life, Muhammad sent letters to the great empires of the Middle East demanding their submission to his authority. This dispels any notion that the Prophet intended Islam's expansion to stop with Arabia. Indeed, it is only logical that the one true religion, revealed by the final and fullest prophet, should have universal sway. Thus, as Muhammad had fought and subdued the peoples of the Arabian peninsula, his successors Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali (known as "the four rightly-guided Caliphs") and other Caliphs fought and subdued the people of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe in the name of Allah.Volume 4, Book 53, Number 386; Narrated Jubair bin Haiya: Umar {the second Caliph} sent the Muslims to the great countries to fight the pagans. ? When we reached the land of the enemy, the representative of Khosrau {Persia} came out with forty-thousand warriors, and an interpreter got up saying, "Let one of you talk to me!" Al-Mughira replied, ? "Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says: "Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master."Unleashing upon the world the blitzkrieg of its day, Islam rapidly spread into the territories of Byzantium, Persia, and Western Europe in the decades after Muhammad's death. The creaking Byzantine and Persian powers, having battled each other into mutual decline, offered little resistance to this unanticipated onslaught. The Arab Muslim armies charged into the Holy Land, conquered what is now Iraq and Iran, then swept west across North Africa, into Spain, and finally into France. The Muslim offensive was finally halted in the West at the Battle of Poitiers/Tours, not far from Paris, in 732 AD. In the east, the jihad penetrated deep into Central Asia.As Muhammad had plundered his foes, so his successors also stripped the conquered areas -- incomparably richer both materially and culturally than the desolate sands of Arabia -- of their wealth and manpower. Almost overnight, the more advanced civilizations of the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and Iberia saw their agriculture, native religions, and populations destroyed or plundered. Save for a handful of walled cities that managed to negotiate conditional surrenders, the catastrophes those lands suffered were very nearly complete.Bat Ye'or, the leading scholar of Islam's expansion and its treatment of non-Muslims, has provided an inestimable service through the compilation and translation of numerous primary source documents describing centuries of Islamic conquest. She includes these documents in her works on Islamic history and the plight of non-Muslims under Islamic rule. In the history of jihad, the slaughter of civilians, the desecration of churches, and the plundering of the countryside are commonplace. Here is Michael the Syrian's account of the Muslim invasion of Cappodocia (southern Turkey) in 650 AD under Caliph Umar:… when Muawiya {the Muslim commander} arrived {in Euchaita in Armenia} he ordered all the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no one escaped. After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures] that had been hidden. The Taiyaye {Muslim Arabs} led everyone into slavery -- men and women, boys and girls -- and they committed much debauchery in that unfortunate town: they wickedly committed immoralities inside churches. They returned to their country rejoicing. (Michael the Syrian, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 276-7.)The following description by the Muslim historian, Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233 AD), of razzias (raiding expeditions) in Northern Spain and France in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, conveys nothing but satisfaction at the extent of the destruction wrought upon the infidels, including noncombatants.In 177 <17>, Hisham, prince of Spain, sent a large army commanded by Abd al-Malik b. Abd al-Wahid b. Mugith into enemy territory, and which made forays as far as Narbonne and Jaranda . This general first attacked Jaranda where there was an elite Frank garrison; he killed the bravest, destroyed the walls and towers of the town and almost managed to seize it. He then marched on to Narbonne, where he repeated the same actions, then, pushing forward, he trampled underfoot the land of the Cerdagne {near Andorra in the Pyrenees}. For several months he traversed this land in every direction, raping women, killing warriors, destroying fortresses, burning and pillaging everything, driving back the enemy who fled in disorder. He returned safe and sound, dragging behind him God alone knows how much booty. This is one of the most famous expeditions of the Muslims in Spain. In 223 <2>, Abd ar-Rahman b. al Hakam, sovereign of Spain, sent an army against Alava; it encamped near Hisn al-Gharat, which it besieged; it seized the booty that was found there, killed the inhabitants and withdrew, carrying off women and children as captives. In 231 <6>, a Muslim army advanced into Galicia on the territory of the infidels, where it pillaged and massacred everyone. In 246 <27>, Muhammad b. Abd ar-Rahman advanced with many troops and a large military apparatus against the region of Pamplona. He reduced, ruined and ravaged this territory, where he pillaged and sowed death. (Ibn al-Athir, Annals, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 281-2.)This first wave of jihad engulfed much of the Byzantine, Visigothic, Frankish, and Persian Empires and left the newborn Islamic Empire controlling territory from Southern France, south through Spain, east across North Africa to India, and north to Russia. Early in the second millennium AD, the Mongol invasion from the east greatly weakened the Islamic Empire and ended Arab predominance therein.
The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 AD

Some twenty-five years before the first Crusading army set out from central Europe for the Holy Land, the Turkish (Ottoman) armies began an assault on the Christian Byzantine Empire, which had ruled what is now Turkey since the Roman Empire's capital was moved to Constantinople in 325 AD. At the battle of Manzikert, in 1071, the Christian forces suffered a disastrous defeat, which left much of Anatolia (Turkey) open to invasion. This second wave of jihad was temporarily held up by the invading Latin Armies during the Crusades (see Islam 101 FAQs), but, by the beginning of the 14th century, the Turks were threatening Constantinople and Europe itself.In the West, Roman Catholic armies were bit by bit forcing Muslim forces down the Iberian peninsula, until, in 1492, they were definitively expelled (the Reconquista). In Eastern Europe, however, Islam continued in the ascendant. One of the most significant engagements between the invading Muslims and the indigenous peoples of the region was the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where the Turks annihilated a multinational army under the Serbian King, St. Lazar, though their progress into Europe was significantly slowed. After numerous attempts dating back to the seventh century, Constantinople, the jewel of Eastern Christendom, finally fell in 1453 to the armies of Sultan Mahomet II. Lest one ascribe the atrocities of the first wave of jihad to the "Arabness" of its perpetrators, the Turks showed they were fully capable of living up to the principles of the Quran and the Sunnah. Paul Fregosi in his book Jihad describes the scene following the final assault on Constantinople:Several thousand of the survivors had taken refuge in the cathedral: nobles, servants, ordinary citizens, their wives and children, priests and nuns. They locked the huge doors, prayed, and waited. {Caliph} Mahomet {II} had given the troops free quarter. They raped, of course, the nuns being the first victims, and slaughtered. At least four thousand were killed before Mahomet stopped the massacre at noon. He ordered a muezzin {one who issues the call to prayer} to climb into the pulpit of St. Sophia and dedicate the building to Allah. It has remained a mosque ever since. Fifty thousand of the inhabitants, more than half the population, were rounded up and taken away as slaves. For months afterward, slaves were the cheapest commodity in the markets of Turkey. Mahomet asked that the body of the dead emperor be brought to him. Some Turkish soldiers found it in a pile of corpses and recognized Constantine {XI} by the golden eagles embroidered on his boots. The sultan ordered his head to be cut off and placed between the horse's legs under the equestrian bronze statue of the emperor Justinian. The head was later embalmed and sent around the chief cities of the Ottoman empire for the delectation of the citizens. Next, Mahomet ordered the Grand Duke Notaras, who had survived, be brought before him, asked him for the names and addresses of all the leading nobles, officials, and citizens, which Notaras gave him. He had them all arrested and decapitated. He sadistically bought from their owners {i.e., Muslim commanders} high-ranking prisoners who had been enslaved, for the pleasure of having them beheaded in front of him. (Fregosi, Jihad, 256-7.)This second, Turkish wave of jihad reached its farthest extent at the failed sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, where in the latter instance the Muslim army under Kara Mustapha was thrown back by the Roman Catholics under the command of the Polish King, John Sobieski. In the decades that followed, the Ottomans were driven back down through the Balkans, though they were never ejected from the European continent entirely. Still, even while the imperial jihad faltered, Muslim land- and sea-borne razzias into Christian territory continued, and Christians were being abducted into slavery from as far away as Ireland into the 19th century.
continues here http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam101/

July 15, 1099: Crusaders capture Jerusalem

An interesting book that you can get here http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1573922471/ref=s9_k2a_gw_tr01?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-5&pf_rd_r=0M3C3FPS1QM4A074DGPW&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470939291&pf_rd_i=507846

and here http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/39379994&referer=brief_results

that describes the surrounding events of the Jihad from the time before the Crusades as well as after. You can also read the article below from http://www.jihadwatch.org/ which covers some of the events expounded on in the book!!

Jihad Through History
http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam101/

In 622 AD (year one in the Islamic calendar, AH 1), Muhammad abandoned Mecca for the city of Medina (Yathrib) some 200 farther north in the Arabian peninsula. In Medina, Muhammad established a paramilitary organization that would spread his influence and that of his religion throughout Arabia. Because there has never been a separation of the political-military and the religious in Islam, this development was entirely natural by Islamic principles. By the time of his death in 632 AD, Muhammad had extended his control in a series of raids and battles over most of southern Arabia. The conquered populations of these areas either had to submit to Muslim rule and pay a protection tax or convert to Islam.

The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 AD
Near the end of his life, Muhammad sent letters to the great empires of the Middle East demanding their submission to his authority. This dispels any notion that the Prophet intended Islam's expansion to stop with Arabia. Indeed, it is only logical that the one true religion, revealed by the final and fullest prophet, should have universal sway. Thus, as Muhammad had fought and subdued the peoples of the Arabian peninsula, his successors Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali (known as "the four rightly-guided Caliphs") and other Caliphs fought and subdued the people of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe in the name of Allah.
Volume 4, Book 53, Number 386; Narrated Jubair bin Haiya: Umar {the second Caliph} sent the Muslims to the great countries to fight the pagans. ? When we reached the land of the enemy, the representative of Khosrau {Persia} came out with forty-thousand warriors, and an interpreter got up saying, "Let one of you talk to me!" Al-Mughira replied, ? "Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says: "Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master."
Unleashing upon the world the blitzkrieg of its day, Islam rapidly spread into the territories of Byzantium, Persia, and Western Europe in the decades after Muhammad's death. The creaking Byzantine and Persian powers, having battled each other into mutual decline, offered little resistance to this unanticipated onslaught. The Arab Muslim armies charged into the Holy Land, conquered what is now Iraq and Iran, then swept west across North Africa, into Spain, and finally into France. The Muslim offensive was finally halted in the West at the Battle of Poitiers/Tours, not far from Paris, in 732 AD. In the east, the jihad penetrated deep into Central Asia.
As Muhammad had plundered his foes, so his successors also stripped the conquered areas -- incomparably richer both materially and culturally than the desolate sands of Arabia -- of their wealth and manpower. Almost overnight, the more advanced civilizations of the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and Iberia saw their agriculture, native religions, and populations destroyed or plundered. Save for a handful of walled cities that managed to negotiate conditional surrenders, the catastrophes those lands suffered were very nearly complete.
Bat Ye'or, the leading scholar of Islam's expansion and its treatment of non-Muslims, has provided an inestimable service through the compilation and translation of numerous primary source documents describing centuries of Islamic conquest. She includes these documents in her works on Islamic history and the plight of non-Muslims under Islamic rule. In the history of jihad, the slaughter of civilians, the desecration of churches, and the plundering of the countryside are commonplace. Here is Michael the Syrian's account of the Muslim invasion of Cappodocia (southern Turkey) in 650 AD under Caliph Umar:
… when Muawiya {the Muslim commander} arrived {in Euchaita in Armenia} he ordered all the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no one escaped. After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures] that had been hidden. The Taiyaye {Muslim Arabs} led everyone into slavery -- men and women, boys and girls -- and they committed much debauchery in that unfortunate town: they wickedly committed immoralities inside churches. They returned to their country rejoicing. (Michael the Syrian, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 276-7.)
The following description by the Muslim historian, Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233 AD), of razzias (raiding expeditions) in Northern Spain and France in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, conveys nothing but satisfaction at the extent of the destruction wrought upon the infidels, including noncombatants.
In 177 <17>, Hisham, prince of Spain, sent a large army commanded by Abd al-Malik b. Abd al-Wahid b. Mugith into enemy territory, and which made forays as far as Narbonne and Jaranda . This general first attacked Jaranda where there was an elite Frank garrison; he killed the bravest, destroyed the walls and towers of the town and almost managed to seize it. He then marched on to Narbonne, where he repeated the same actions, then, pushing forward, he trampled underfoot the land of the Cerdagne {near Andorra in the Pyrenees}. For several months he traversed this land in every direction, raping women, killing warriors, destroying fortresses, burning and pillaging everything, driving back the enemy who fled in disorder. He returned safe and sound, dragging behind him God alone knows how much booty. This is one of the most famous expeditions of the Muslims in Spain. In 223 <2>, Abd ar-Rahman b. al Hakam, sovereign of Spain, sent an army against Alava; it encamped near Hisn al-Gharat, which it besieged; it seized the booty that was found there, killed the inhabitants and withdrew, carrying off women and children as captives. In 231 <6>, a Muslim army advanced into Galicia on the territory of the infidels, where it pillaged and massacred everyone. In 246 <27>, Muhammad b. Abd ar-Rahman advanced with many troops and a large military apparatus against the region of Pamplona. He reduced, ruined and ravaged this territory, where he pillaged and sowed death. (Ibn al-Athir, Annals, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 281-2.)
This first wave of jihad engulfed much of the Byzantine, Visigothic, Frankish, and Persian Empires and left the newborn Islamic Empire controlling territory from Southern France, south through Spain, east across North Africa to India, and north to Russia. Early in the second millennium AD, the Mongol invasion from the east greatly weakened the Islamic Empire and ended Arab predominance therein.

The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 AD
Some twenty-five years before the first Crusading army set out from central Europe for the Holy Land, the Turkish (Ottoman) armies began an assault on the Christian Byzantine Empire, which had ruled what is now Turkey since the Roman Empire's capital was moved to Constantinople in 325 AD. At the battle of Manzikert, in 1071, the Christian forces suffered a disastrous defeat, which left much of Anatolia (Turkey) open to invasion. This second wave of jihad was temporarily held up by the invading Latin Armies during the Crusades (see Islam 101 FAQs), but, by the beginning of the 14th century, the Turks were threatening Constantinople and Europe itself.
In the West, Roman Catholic armies were bit by bit forcing Muslim forces down the Iberian peninsula, until, in 1492, they were definitively expelled (the Reconquista). In Eastern Europe, however, Islam continued in the ascendant. One of the most significant engagements between the invading Muslims and the indigenous peoples of the region was the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where the Turks annihilated a multinational army under the Serbian King, St. Lazar, though their progress into Europe was significantly slowed. After numerous attempts dating back to the seventh century, Constantinople, the jewel of Eastern Christendom, finally fell in 1453 to the armies of Sultan Mahomet II. Lest one ascribe the atrocities of the first wave of jihad to the "Arabness" of its perpetrators, the Turks showed they were fully capable of living up to the principles of the Quran and the Sunnah. Paul Fregosi in his book Jihad describes the scene following the final assault on Constantinople:
Several thousand of the survivors had taken refuge in the cathedral: nobles, servants, ordinary citizens, their wives and children, priests and nuns. They locked the huge doors, prayed, and waited. {Caliph} Mahomet {II} had given the troops free quarter. They raped, of course, the nuns being the first victims, and slaughtered. At least four thousand were killed before Mahomet stopped the massacre at noon. He ordered a muezzin {one who issues the call to prayer} to climb into the pulpit of St. Sophia and dedicate the building to Allah. It has remained a mosque ever since. Fifty thousand of the inhabitants, more than half the population, were rounded up and taken away as slaves. For months afterward, slaves were the cheapest commodity in the markets of Turkey. Mahomet asked that the body of the dead emperor be brought to him. Some Turkish soldiers found it in a pile of corpses and recognized Constantine {XI} by the golden eagles embroidered on his boots. The sultan ordered his head to be cut off and placed between the horse's legs under the equestrian bronze statue of the emperor Justinian. The head was later embalmed and sent around the chief cities of the Ottoman empire for the delectation of the citizens. Next, Mahomet ordered the Grand Duke Notaras, who had survived, be brought before him, asked him for the names and addresses of all the leading nobles, officials, and citizens, which Notaras gave him. He had them all arrested and decapitated. He sadistically bought from their owners {i.e., Muslim commanders} high-ranking prisoners who had been enslaved, for the pleasure of having them beheaded in front of him. (Fregosi, Jihad, 256-7.)
This second, Turkish wave of jihad reached its farthest extent at the failed sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, where in the latter instance the Muslim army under Kara Mustapha was thrown back by the Roman Catholics under the command of the Polish King, John Sobieski. In the decades that followed, the Ottomans were driven back down through the Balkans, though they were never ejected from the European continent entirely. Still, even while the imperial jihad faltered, Muslim land- and sea-borne razzias into Christian territory continued, and Christians were being abducted into slavery from as far away as Ireland into the 19th century.

continues here http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam101/

Battle of Constantinope - 715 A.D.

Since there is currently a war going on in the Black Sea area. I wanted to send you this article which describes another battle that happend over 1000 years ago in the area. If you are a history buff , then you might find this interesting.

Raymond Ibrahim: Today in History, Constantinople saves Western Civilization from IslamSince certain Muslim media are fond of rehashing old history, reminding Muslims of the “atrocities” committed by the hated Crusader—past and present—it seems only logical that we here in the West also remember the past. Today in history, Christendom secured a great victory over Islam—one that is responsible for the very existence of Western civilization.The year was 715, and one Suleiman had risen to the caliphate. He immediately made it clear that he would be the one Muslim who would fulfill Muhammad’s prophecy that Constantinople would eventually be subsumed into the umma. After spending nearly two years mustering the Muslims and preparing a massive navy, he unleashed the full might of the caliphate: the chroniclers say that 120,000 infantry and cavalry, along with 80,000 seamen, were sent to seal Constantinople’s fate. To further give his “blessing” to this campaign, and evincing how seriously he took it, he appointed his own brother, Maslama, at the head of the land army.While making their way through that great desolate no-man’s land between the Byzantine and Umayyad empires, where certain Turkic tribes (then mushrikin) frequented the region, the Muslims would often wait till near dawn, and then shout in mass “Allahu Akbar!” (God is greatest), attacking and slaying all in their path. According to the Muslim chronicler al-Tabari, “The inhabitants of the city were filled with terror the likes of which they had never experienced before. All they saw were Muslims in their midst screaming ‘Allahu Akbar!’ Allah planted terror in their hearts…. The men were crucified over the course of 24 km.” (Al-Tabari, goes on to explain that they did so, and were successful, in accordance to Koranic verse 3:151: “We shall cast terror into the hearts of infidels!”)Continue reading "Raymond Ibrahim: Today in History, Constantinople saves Western Civilization from Islam"

Jihad after the Crusades and Dhimmitude

This follows the previous articles I sent about the Jihad and Crusades. This article shows how the Jihad continued after the Crusades and also describes how non-Muslims lived in conquered lands for up to 14 centuries. I hope you find this historic background material to be interesting.

Jihad in the Modern EraFollowing its defeat at the walls of Vienna in 1683, Islam entered a period of strategic decline in which it was increasingly dominated by the rising European colonial powers. Due to its material weakness vis-à-vis the West, dar al-Islam was unable to prosecute large-scale military campaigns into infidel territory. The Islamic Empire, then ruled by the Ottoman Turks, was reduced to fending of the increasingly predatory European powers.In 1856, Western pressure compelled the Ottoman government to suspend the dhimma under which the Empire's non-Muslim subjects labored. This provided hitherto unknown opportunities for social and personal improvement by the former dhimmis, but it also fomented resentment by orthodox Muslims who saw this as a violation of the Sharia and their Allah-given superiority over unbelievers.By the late 19th century, tensions among the European subjects of the Empire broke out into the open when the Ottoman government massacred 30,000 Bulgarians in 1876 for allegedly rebelling against Ottoman rule. Following Western intervention that resulted in Bulgarian independence, the Ottoman government and its Muslim subjects were increasingly nervous about other non-Muslim groups seeking independence.It was in this atmosphere that the first stage of the Armenian genocide took place in 1896 with the slaughter of some 250,000 Armenians. Both civilians and military personnel took place in the massacres. Peter Balakian, in his book, The Burning Tigris, documents the whole horrific story. But the massacres of the 1890s were only the prelude to the much larger holocaust of 1915, which claimed some 1.5 million lives. While various factors contributed to the slaughter, there is no mistaking that the massacres were nothing other than a jihad waged against the Armenians, no longer protected as they were by the dhimma. In 1914, as the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the central powers, an official anti-Christian jihad was proclaimed.
To promote the idea of jihad, the sheikh-ul-Islam’s {the most senior religious leader in the Ottoman Empire} published proclamation summoned the Muslim world to arise and massacre its Christian oppressors. “Oh Moslems,” the document read, “Ye who are smitten with happiness and are on the verge of sacrificing your life and your good for the cause of right, and of braving perils, gather now around the Imperial throne.” In the Ikdam, the Turkish newspaper that had just passed into German ownership, the idea of jihad was underscored: “The deeds of our enemies have brought down the wrath of God. A gleam of hope has appeared. All Mohammedans, young and old, men, women, and children must fulfill their duty. … If we do it, the deliverance of the subjected Mohammedan kingdoms is assured.” … “He who kills even one unbeliever,” one pamphlet read, “of those who rule over us, whether he does it secretly or openly, shall be rewarded by God.” (quoted in Balakian, The Burning Tigris, 169-70.)The anti-Christian jihad culminated in 1922 at Smyrna, on the Mediterranean coast, where 150,000 Greek Christians were massacred by the Turkish army under the indifferent eye of Allied warships. All in, from 1896-1923, some 2.5 million Christians were killed, the first modern genocide, which to this day is denied by the Turkish government.Since the breakup of the Islamic Empire following World War I, various jihads have been fought around the globe by the independent Muslim nations and sub-state jihadist groups. The most sustained effort has been directed against Israel, which has committed the unpardonable sin of rebuilding dar al-harb on land formerly a part of dar al-Islam. Other prominent jihads include that fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Muslim Bosnians against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, the Muslim Albanians against the Serbs in Kosovo, and the Chechens against the Russians in the Caucasus. Jihads have also been waged throughout northern Africa, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, and a host of other places throughout the world. In addition, the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks around the world have been committed by Muslims, including, of course, the spectacular attacks of 9/11/01 (USA), 3/11/04 (Spain), and 7/7/05 (UK). (For a more comprehensive list of Muslim attacks, visit www.thereligionofpeace.com.)The fact is, the percentage of conflicts in the world today that do not include Islam is pretty small. Islam is making a comeback. DhimmitudeIslam's persecution of non-Muslims is in no way limited to jihad, even though that is the basic relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim world. After the jihad concludes in a given area with the conquest of infidel territory, the dhimma, or treaty of protection, may be granted to the conquered "People of the Book" -- historically, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians. The dhimma provides that the life and property of the infidel are exempted from jihad for as long as the Muslim rulers permit, which has generally meant for as long as the subject non-Muslims -- the dhimmi -- prove economically useful to the Islamic state. The Quran spells out the payment of the jizya (poll- or head-tax; Sura 9:29), which is the most conspicuous means by which the Muslim overlords exploit the dhimmi. But the jizya is not merely economic in its function; it exists also to humiliate the dhimmi and impress on him the superiority of Islam. Al-Maghili, a fifteenth century Muslim theologian, explains:
On the day of payment {of the jizya} they {the dhimmi} shall be assembled in a public place like the suq {place of commerce}. They should be standing there waiting in the lowest and dirtiest place. The acting officials representing the Law shall be placed above them and shall adopt a threatening attitude so that it seems to them, as well as to others, that our object is to degrade them by pretending to take their possessions. They will realize that we are doing them a favor in accepting from them the jizya and letting them go free. (Al-Maghili, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 361.)Islamic law codifies various other restrictions on the dhimmi, all of which derive from the Quran and the Sunnah. Several hundred years of Islamic thought on the right treatment of dhimmi peoples is summed up by Al-Damanhuri, a seventeenth century head of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the most prestigious center for learning in the Muslim world:
… just as the dhimmis are prohibited from building churches, other things also are prohibited to them. They must not assist an unbeliever against a Muslim … raise the cross in an Islamic assemblage … display banners on their own holidays; bear arms … or keep them in their homes. Should they do anything of the sort, they must be punished, and the arms seized. … The Companions [of the Prophet] agreed upon these points in order to demonstrate the abasement of the infidel and to protect the weak believer's faith. For if he sees them humbled, he will not be inclined toward their belief, which is not true if he sees them in power, pride, or luxury garb, as all this urges him to esteem them and incline toward them, in view of his own distress and poverty. Yet esteem for the unbeliever is unbelief. (Al-Damanhuri, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 382.)The Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian peoples of the Middle East, North Africa, and much of Europe suffered under the oppressive strictures of the dhimma for centuries. The status of these dhimmi peoples is comparable in many ways to that of former slaves in the post-bellum American South. Forbidden to construct houses of worship or repair extant ones, economically crippled by the jizya, socially humiliated, legally discriminated against, and generally kept in a permanent state of weakness and vulnerability by the Muslim overlords, it should not be surprising that their numbers dwindled, in many places to the point of extinction. The generally misunderstood decline of Islamic civilization over the past several centuries is easily explained by the demographic decline of the dhimmi populations, which had provided the principle engines of technical and administrative competence. Should the dhimmi violate the conditions of the dhimma -- perhaps through practicing his own religion indiscreetly or failing to show adequate deference to a Muslim -- then the jihad resumes. At various times in Islamic history, dhimmi peoples rose above their subjected status, and this was often the occasion for violent reprisals by Muslim populations who believed them to have violated the terms of the dhimma. Medieval Andalusia (Moorish Spain) is often pointed out by Muslim apologists as a kind of multicultural wonderland, in which Jews and Christians were permitted by the Islamic government to rise through the ranks of learning and government administration. What we are not told, however, is that this relaxation of the disabilities resulted in widespread rioting on the part of the Muslim populace that killed hundreds of dhimmis, mainly Jews. By refusing to convert to Islam and straying from the traditional constraints of the dhimma (even at the behest of the Islamic government, which was in need of capable manpower), the dhimmi had implicitly chosen the only other option permitted by the Quran: death.

www.jihadwatch.com

After Jihad, then Crusades

wanted to send this article which describes the Crusades. The crusades did happen after 4 Centuries of Jihad against the western world. As the article shows, they were bloody, as all wars are, and are not the way that someone who wants to follow the command about loving your enemies should act, but from a secular point of view, they were a delayed reaction to continual warfare. I hope you find this interesting.

What about the Crusades?The obvious response to this question is, "Well, what about them?" Violence committed in the name of other religions is logically unconnected to the question of whether Islam is violent. But, by mentioning the Crusades, the hope of the Islamic apologist is to draw attention away from Islamic violence and paint religions in general as morally equivalent.In both the Western academia and media as well as in the Islamic world, the Crusades are viewed as wars of aggression fought by bloody-minded Christians against peaceful Muslims. While the Crusades were certainly bloody, they are more accurately understood as a belated Western response to centuries of jihad than as an unprovoked, unilateral attack. Muslim rule in the Holy Land began in the second half of the 7th century during the Arab wave of jihad with the conquests of Damascus and Jerusalem by the second "rightly-guided Caliph," Umar. After the initial bloody jihad, Christian and Jewish life there was tolerated within the strictures of the dhimma and the Muslim Arabs generally permitted Christians abroad to continue to make pilgrimage to their holy sites, a practice which proved lucrative for the Muslim state. In the 11th century, the relatively benign Arab administration of the Holy Land was replaced with that of Seljuk Turks, due to civil war in the Islamic Empire. Throughout the latter half of the 11th century, the Turks waged war against the Christian Byzantine Empire and pushed it back from its strongholds in Antioch and Anatolia (now Turkey). In 1071, Byzantine forces suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in what is now Eastern Turkey. The Turks resumed the jihad in the Holy Land, abusing, robbing, enslaving, and killing Christians there and throughout Asia Minor. They threatened to cut off Christendom from its holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, rebuilt under Byzantine stewardship after it was destroyed by Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in 1009.It was in this context of a renewed jihad in the Middle East that the Roman Pope, Urban II, issued a call in 1095 for Western Christians to come to the aid of their Eastern cousins (and seems to have harbored the hope of claiming Jerusalem for the Papacy after the Great Schism with Eastern Christianity in 1054). This "armed pilgrimage," in which numerous civilians as well as soldiers took part, would eventually become known years later as the First Crusade. The idea of a "crusade" as we now understand that term, i.e., a Christian "holy war," developed years later with the rise of such organizations as the Knights Templar that made "crusading" a way of life. It worth noting that the most ardent Crusaders, the Franks, were exactly those who had faced jihad and razzias for centuries along the Franco-Spanish border and knew better than most the horrors to which Muslims subjected Christians. At the time of the First Crusade, the populations of Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, though ruled by Muslims, were still overwhelmingly Christian. The "Crusading" campaigns of the Western Christian armies were justified at the time as a war liberating the Eastern Christians, whose population, lands, and culture had been devastated by centuries of jihad and dhimmitude. Conquering territory for God in the mode of jihad was an alien idea to Christianity and it should not be surprising that it eventually died out in the West and never gained ascendancy in the East.Following the very bloody capture of Jerusalem in 1099 by the Latin armies and the establishment of the Crusader States in Edessa, Antioch, and Jerusalem, the Muslim and Christian forces fought a see-saw series of wars, in which both parties were guilty of the usual gamut of wartime immorality. Over time, even with reinforcing Crusades waged from Europe, the Crusader States, strung out on precarious lines of communication, slowly succumbed to superior Muslim power. In 1271, the last Christian citadel, Antioch, fell to the Muslims. No longer having to divert forces to subdue the Christian beachhead on the Eastern Mediterranean, the Muslims regrouped for a 400-year-long jihad against Southern and Eastern Europe, which twice reached as far as Vienna before it was halted. In geostrategic terms, the Crusades can be viewed as an attempt by the West to forestall its own destruction at the hands of Islamic jihad by carrying the fight to the enemy. It worked for a while.Significantly, while the West has for some time now lamented the Crusades as mistaken, there has never been any mention from any serious Islamic authority of regret for the centuries and centuries of jihad and dhimmitude perpetrated against other societies. But this is hardly surprising: while religious violence contradicts the fundamentals of Christianity, religious violence is written into Islam's DNA.

Jihad Before Crusades II

I previously sent an article showing how the Crusades happened after 4 CENTURIES of jihad against the west. I wanted to send this as a follow up article which shows some more of the events that happened before the Crusades began. I hope you find this to be interesting history.

The Second Major Wave of Jihad: the Turks, 1071-1683 ADSome twenty-five years before the first Crusading army set out from central Europe for the Holy Land, the Turkish (Ottoman) armies began an assault on the Christian Byzantine Empire, which had ruled what is now Turkey since the Roman Empire's capital was moved to Constantinople in 325 AD. At the battle of Manzikert, in 1071, the Christian forces suffered a disastrous defeat, which left much of Anatolia (Turkey) open to invasion. This second wave of jihad was temporarily held up by the invading Latin Armies during the Crusades but, by the beginning of the 14th century, the Turks were threatening Constantinople and Europe itself.In the West, Roman Catholic armies were bit by bit forcing Muslim forces down the Iberian peninsula, until, in 1492, they were definitively expelled (the Reconquista). In Eastern Europe, however, Islam continued in the ascendant. One of the most significant engagements between the invading Muslims and the indigenous peoples of the region was the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where the Turks annihilated a multinational army under the Serbian King, St. Lazar, though their progress into Europe was significantly slowed. After numerous attempts dating back to the seventh century, Constantinople, the jewel of Eastern Christendom, finally fell in 1453 to the armies of Sultan Mahomet II. Lest one ascribe the atrocities of the first wave of jihad to the "Arabness" of its perpetrators, the Turks showed they were fully capable of living up to the principles of the Quran and the Sunnah. Paul Fregosi in his book Jihad describes the scene following the final assault on Constantinople:
Several thousand of the survivors had taken refuge in the cathedral: nobles, servants, ordinary citizens, their wives and children, priests and nuns. They locked the huge doors, prayed, and waited. {Caliph} Mahomet {II} had given the troops free quarter. They raped, of course, the nuns being the first victims, and slaughtered. At least four thousand were killed before Mahomet stopped the massacre at noon. He ordered a muezzin {one who issues the call to prayer} to climb into the pulpit of St. Sophia and dedicate the building to Allah. It has remained a mosque ever since. Fifty thousand of the inhabitants, more than half the population, were rounded up and taken away as slaves. For months afterward, slaves were the cheapest commodity in the markets of Turkey. Mahomet asked that the body of the dead emperor be brought to him. Some Turkish soldiers found it in a pile of corpses and recognized Constantine {XI} by the golden eagles embroidered on his boots. The sultan ordered his head to be cut off and placed between the horse's legs under the equestrian bronze statue of the emperor Justinian. The head was later embalmed and sent around the chief cities of the Ottoman empire for the delectation of the citizens. Next, Mahomet ordered the Grand Duke Notaras, who had survived, be brought before him, asked him for the names and addresses of all the leading nobles, officials, and citizens, which Notaras gave him. He had them all arrested and decapitated. He sadistically bought from their owners {i.e., Muslim commanders} high-ranking prisoners who had been enslaved, for the pleasure of having them beheaded in front of him. (Fregosi, Jihad, 256-7.) This second, Turkish wave of jihad reached its farthest extent at the failed sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, where in the latter instance the Muslim army under Kara Mustapha was thrown back by the Roman Catholics under the command of the Polish King, John Sobieski. In the decades that followed, the Ottomans were driven back down through the Balkans, though they were never ejected from the European continent entirely. Still, even while the imperial jihad faltered, Muslim land- and sea-borne razzias into Christian territory continued, and Christians were being abducted into slavery from as far away as Ireland into the 19th century.

Jihad Before Crusades

I wanted to send this article which is historic in nature, which describes the Jihad in the centuries before the Crusades began. Of course the Crusades themselves were wars that weren't righteous in the eyes of God who says to love your enemies, but from a purely worldly point of view, they were wars that were begun after 4 centuries of Jihad. Anyway, I thought you might find this interesting.

i. The First Major Wave of Jihad: the Arabs, 622-750 ADNear the end of his life, Muhammad sent letters to the great empires of the Middle East demanding their submission to his authority. This dispels any notion that the Prophet intended Islam's expansion to stop with Arabia. Indeed, it is only logical that the one true religion, revealed by the final and fullest prophet, should have universal sway. Thus, as Muhammad had fought and subdued the peoples of the Arabian peninsula, his successors Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali (known as "the four rightly-guided Caliphs") and other Caliphs fought and subdued the people of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe in the name of Allah.
Volume 4, Book 53, Number 386; Narrated Jubair bin Haiya: Umar {the second Caliph} sent the Muslims to the great countries to fight the pagans. ? When we reached the land of the enemy, the representative of Khosrau {Persia} came out with forty-thousand warriors, and an interpreter got up saying, "Let one of you talk to me!" Al-Mughira replied, ? "Our Prophet, the Messenger of our Lord, has ordered us to fight you till you worship Allah Alone or give Jizya (i.e. tribute); and our Prophet has informed us that our Lord says: "Whoever amongst us is killed (i.e. martyred), shall go to Paradise to lead such a luxurious life as he has never seen, and whoever amongst us remain alive, shall become your master."Unleashing upon the world the blitzkrieg of its day, Islam rapidly spread into the territories of Byzantium, Persia, and Western Europe in the decades after Muhammad's death. The creaking Byzantine and Persian powers, having battled each other into mutual decline, offered little resistance to this unanticipated onslaught. The Arab Muslim armies charged into the Holy Land, conquered what is now Iraq and Iran, then swept west across North Africa, into Spain, and finally into France. The Muslim offensive was finally halted in the West at the Battle of Poitiers/Tours, not far from Paris, in 732 AD. In the east, the jihad penetrated deep into Central Asia. As Muhammad had plundered his foes, so his successors also stripped the conquered areas -- incomparably richer both materially and culturally than the desolate sands of Arabia -- of their wealth and manpower. Almost overnight, the more advanced civilizations of the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, and Iberia saw their agriculture, native religions, and populations destroyed or plundered. Save for a handful of walled cities that managed to negotiate conditional surrenders, the catastrophes those lands suffered were very nearly complete.Bat Ye'or, the leading scholar of Islam's expansion and its treatment of non-Muslims, has provided an inestimable service through the compilation and translation of numerous primary source documents describing centuries of Islamic conquest. She includes these documents in her works on Islamic history and the plight of non-Muslims under Islamic rule. In the history of jihad, the slaughter of civilians, the desecration of churches, and the plundering of the countryside are commonplace. Here is Michael the Syrian's account of the Muslim invasion of Cappodocia (southern Turkey) in 650 AD under Caliph Umar:
… when Muawiya {the Muslim commander} arrived {in Euchaita in Armenia} he ordered all the inhabitants to be put to the sword; he placed guards so that no one escaped. After gathering up all the wealth of the town, they set to torturing the leaders to make them show them things [treasures] that had been hidden. The Taiyaye {Muslim Arabs} led everyone into slavery -- men and women, boys and girls -- and they committed much debauchery in that unfortunate town: they wickedly committed immoralities inside churches. They returned to their country rejoicing. (Michael the Syrian, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 276-7.)The following description by the Muslim historian, Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233 AD), of razzias (raiding expeditions) in Northern Spain and France in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, conveys nothing but satisfaction at the extent of the destruction wrought upon the infidels, including noncombatants.
In 177 <17>, Hisham, prince of Spain, sent a large army commanded by Abd al-Malik b. Abd al-Wahid b. Mugith into enemy territory, and which made forays as far as Narbonne and Jaranda . This general first attacked Jaranda where there was an elite Frank garrison; he killed the bravest, destroyed the walls and towers of the town and almost managed to seize it. He then marched on to Narbonne, where he repeated the same actions, then, pushing forward, he trampled underfoot the land of the Cerdagne {near Andorra in the Pyrenees}. For several months he traversed this land in every direction, raping women, killing warriors, destroying fortresses, burning and pillaging everything, driving back the enemy who fled in disorder. He returned safe and sound, dragging behind him God alone knows how much booty. This is one of the most famous expeditions of the Muslims in Spain. In 223 <2>, Abd ar-Rahman b. al Hakam, sovereign of Spain, sent an army against Alava; it encamped near Hisn al-Gharat, which it besieged; it seized the booty that was found there, killed the inhabitants and withdrew, carrying off women and children as captives. In 231 <6>, a Muslim army advanced into Galicia on the territory of the infidels, where it pillaged and massacred everyone. In 246 <27>, Muhammad b. Abd ar-Rahman advanced with many troops and a large military apparatus against the region of Pamplona. He reduced, ruined and ravaged this territory, where he pillaged and sowed death. (Ibn al-Athir, Annals, quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 281-2.)This first wave of jihad engulfed much of the Byzantine, Visigothic, Frankish, and Persian Empires and left the newborn Islamic Empire controlling territory from Southern France, south through Spain, east across North Africa to India, and north to Russia. Early in the second millennium AD, the Mongol invasion from the east greatly weakened the Islamic Empire and ended Arab predominance therein.

Post 100!!!- Where Muslims Prefer to Live!

My 100th Post!!

I wanted to send this article which does make an unusual point that most Muslims don't prefer to live in majority-Muslim countries yet still want to make other countries into Muslim majority countries, or at least into Dhimmi (submissive to Muslim Sharia law) countries. I do hope you find this interesting. James Capo made reference to the Islamic division of the world in his public bible lecture in El Paso in 2007 so you can read this as a follow up to that.

Fitzgerald: Where Muslims prefer to live
There are, within Robert Spencer’s General Evisceration of CAIR’s Omer Subhani, some details that deserve to be held up for special inspection.This is the part that struck me the most. Spencer says:
What's more, the Spanish Muslim Ibn Jubayr (1145-1217), who traversed the Mediterranean on his way to Mecca in the early 1180s, found that even Muslims preferred living in Crusader lands. He lamented that near Tyre he passed a series of farms where "the inhabitants were all Muslims, but they live in comfort with the Franj [Franks, or Crusaders] -- may Allah preserve them from temptation! Their dwellings belong to them and all their property is unmolested....Now, doubt invests the heart of a great number of these men when they compare their lot to that of their brothers living in Muslim territory. Indeed, the latter suffer from the injustice of their coreligionists, while the Franj act with equity."Does anyone doubt that Muslims today flock to non-Muslim lands because they are better run? They are safer, the lives of the citizens are more secure, and the possibility of redress against authority is greater. There is access to the wonders of the modern world that are the product of a mental freedom, and an absence of the inshallah-fatalism that is the hallmark of mind-forged-manacled Muslims. So any Muslim in his right mind of course wishes to live in Great Britain, say, rather than in Pakistan, or in France rather than Algeria or Morocco, or in the Netherlands rather than in Morocco or Turkey, and so on. Even Turkey? Yes, because Kemalism did not go far enough, and the remains of the pre-Kemalist Day, that is Islam, are all about, and indeed now being relentlessly revived. But these Muslim "refugees from Islam" do not recognize that what they find and like in the West is precisely owed to the fact of the West's non-Islamic history. And so, quite unlike previous refugees, such as those from the Nazis who worked to warn people about the Nazis, and refugees from Russia or Eastern Europe or China, who worked to warn people in the West, where they found refuge, about the menace of Communism, about the threat from Soviet Union and Communist China, Muslims in the West come not to warn the West about Islam. Rather, they bring with them the very Islam that has caused their own countries to be so unpleasant or unlivable in the first place. They do not see this. They are "slaves to Allah," or rather, slaves to Islam as a Total Belief-System. And while the morally and intellectually most advanced see this, and some of them become apostates, others are afraid to follow them in this, or are tied down by filial piety. They have a desire to retain, as many feel they must, "cultural" or "family" ties. They do not wish to suffer the ostracism that they fear they will suffer (and they have very good reason for that fear) if they do indeed break openly with Islam.Only the very most advanced, and the bravest, dare to see Islam for what it is and what it inculcates. Only the bravest and most advanced dare to see the actual content of its texts, its tenets, its attitudes -- the very attitudes that they hear expressed openly in Muslim-only gatherings, where the hostility to Infidels is not hidden. Some of them hear this with horror, but many others hear it and are prompted not to break with Islam, which often means breaking with their families. Instead, they choose to hide or disguise that anti-Infidel feeling that they know about, know all about. They decide to lie about it in order to protect their coreligionists -- whether out of embarrassment or out of fear that Muslims may lose their truly "protected status" in the lands of the Infidels. In those lands so far they are allowed to essentially retain a loyalty to Islam, and therefore to the Shari'a and to a general worldview that necessarily bespeaks permanent hostility to the Infidel nation-states, to the legal and political institutions of those nation-states, in which they now live and of which they have even been permitted, by those too ignorant to understand Islam, to obtain citizenship. http://www.jihadwatch.org/