Read Sword and Scimitar Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West Raymond Ibrahim Victor Davis Hanson 9780306825552 Books
Download As PDF : Sword and Scimitar Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West Raymond Ibrahim Victor Davis Hanson 9780306825552 Books
A sweeping history of the often-violent conflict between Islam and the West, shedding a revealing light on current hostilities
The West and Islam--the sword and scimitar--have clashed since the mid-seventh century, when, according to Muslim tradition, the Roman emperor rejected Prophet Muhammad's order to abandon Christianity and convert to Islam, unleashing a centuries-long jihad on Christendom.
Sword and Scimitar chronicles the decisive battles that arose from this ages-old Islamic jihad, beginning with the first major Islamic attack on Christian territory in 636, through the Muslim occupation of nearly three-quarters of Christendom, which prompted the Crusades, followed by renewed Muslim conquests by Turks and Tatars, to the European colonization of the Muslim world in the 1800s, when Islam largely went on the retreat--until its reemergence in recent times. Using original sources in Arabic and Greek, preeminent historian Raymond Ibrahim describes each battle in vivid detail and explains how these wars and the larger historical currents of the age reflect the cultural fault lines between Islam and the West.
The majority of these landmark encounters--including the battles of Yarmuk, Tours, Manzikert, the sieges at Constantinople and Vienna, and the crusades in Syria and Spain--are now forgotten or considered inconsequential. Yet today, as the West faces a resurgence of this enduring Islamic jihad, Sword and Scimitar provides the needed historical context to understand the current relationship between the West and the Islamic world--and why the Islamic State is merely the latest chapter of an old history.
Read Sword and Scimitar Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West Raymond Ibrahim Victor Davis Hanson 9780306825552 Books
"It will make you sick what mankind has suffered due to Islam's jihad as decreed by Mohammad. This book documents jihad through 8 major battles from 632 AD through 1683 at the gates of Vienna. Killing, torture, raping, etc. are the result of Islam's following the Koran's command to kill or oppress the infidels.
Read it and open your eyes. Then read "The History of Jihad" by Robert Spencer to fill in the gaps."
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Sword and Scimitar Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West Raymond Ibrahim Victor Davis Hanson 9780306825552 Books Reviews :
Sword and Scimitar Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West Raymond Ibrahim Victor Davis Hanson 9780306825552 Books Reviews
- "Sword and Scimitar Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West" By Raymond Ibrahim (Aug. 2018) w/ 16 pages of b/w drawings of discussed battles. [This review by Col. William Garrison, USA (Ret.)]
The subject matter of this book is pretty well encapsulated by Victor Hanson who wrote the Foreword to this book
"Sword and Scimitar is a much-needed history of landmark battles between Islam and the West. Ibrahim offers eight representative engagements … from France to the Middl East, and over a millennium from 636 to 1683.
This book "is first and foremost riveting military history. It offers blow-by-blow concise accounts of the eight battles, and interprets them in the context of the times -- or rather, takes seriously what contemporary leaders claimed were their intentions and how they worked out their strategies..... the book advances larger cultural and religious arguments"
..."he has selected four exemplary Western defeats (the fall of Constantinople, Hattin, Manzikert, and Yarmuk) balanced by four victories (second defense of Constantinople, La Naas de Tolosa, Tours, and Vienna). ...Ibrahim's evidence reveals certain recurring themes about the interaction between Islam and the West....
"First, in most cases Islamic armies saw themselves as expansionary and messianic.... Second, while there were localized and intramural political and tribal rivalries, Muslim armies went to war against the West more often as religious rather than as national or ethnic forces.... Third, Ibrahim sees continuity between past and present; that is, Muslim religious leaders and jihadists have characteristically seen Christianity as both antithetical to the Islamic world and inherently ripe for conquest or conversion" (p. viii - ix).
This book is much more than just some military-school analysis of various Middle Age battles that will be appreciated only by infantry officers attempting to discover some obscure, medieval envelopment movements and apply them to the Vietnam War or the current "War On Terrorism" battles occurring throughout the Middle East today.
What is unique and informative about Ibrahim's important book is that he analyzes "that there [is] a much larger but wholly forgotten backstory to this … military history, the recollection of which can revolutionize the way the West understand its past, and thus its present, with Islam" (p. xiii).
Ibrahim notes how many (leftist) commentators today whitewash jihad terrorism as legitimate warfare against modern states that were birthed from European colonialism. Ibrahim observed "Even among less ideologically charged historians, the macrocosmic significance of the aforementioned millennium, when "Christian Europe was under constant threat from Islam," is unintelligible. They talk of "Arab," "Moorish," "Ottoman," or "Tartar" -- rarely Islamic -- invasions and conquests, even though the selfsame rational -- jihad -- impelled those otherwise diverse people to assault the West."
Ibrahim offers "the most timely aspect of this book. It definitively answers one of the most pressing questions of our time Are militant Muslims -- aka "terrorists," "radicals," "extremists" -- being true to Islam, as they insist, or are they "hijacking" it for their own agendas, as we are told?"
Ibrahim contends that this book "unlike most military histories -- which no matter how fascinating are ultimately academic -- this one offers timely correctives it sets the much distorted historical record between the two civilizations straight and, in so doing, demonstrates once and for all that Muslim hostility for the West is not an aberration but a continuation of Islamic history" (p. xvii).
Besides discussing the relevance to today of his selected medieval battles, Ibrahim also briefly discusses the Muslim Ottoman attacks in the Balkans during the 1870s.
Ibrahim also opines that the attacks upon Europeans today by Muslim "refugees" fleeing from war-torn Muslim lands are less about fleeing than actually spearheading a new Islamic-jihad invasion of an essentially ignorant European populace to the menace of the Muslims' "right or straight path" (sirat al-Mustaqim) of wanting to convert Europeans to Islam rather than integrate themselves with the liberal and permissive West.
[For a more expansive view of the great multitude of Muslim battles against non-Muslims see "The History of Jihad from Muhammad to ISIS" by Robert Spencer (Aug. 2018), and "The Islam in Islamic Terrorism The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology" by Ibn Warraq (May 2017). - Mr. Ibrahim is a foremost authority on Islam and its history. He pulls no punches with this one.
He goes into gory detail regarding the many atrocities committed by Islam from Muhammad down to the present.
8 major conflicts are outlined Yarmuk, The Siege of Constantinople in 717, Tours, Manzikert, Hattin, Las Navas de la Tolosa, The Final Siege of Constantinople in 1453, The Siege of Vienna, and more.
It would be safe to assume that most have never heard of these pivotal battles. It could easily be argued that the victories at Tours and Vienna saved Western Civilization from currently being Islamic.
Mr. Ibrahim goes into some unsettling detail about the horrible and ghastly tortures the Turks and other Muhammadans used against Christendom. Here are some excerpts
Did you know that skinning alive was a popular method of execution that was used on the commander of Famagusta in Cyprus in 1571 and the Serbian Orthodox bishop?.
Did you know the army that invaded Europe during the siege of Vienna in 1683 numbered 300,000?. This was an incredible army to muster in the late 17th c.
That blonde-haired and blue-eyed women were the most valued prize in the Arab slave markets, and Viking raids were elicited by this demand?.
That in 1785, the Mahometan Barbary pirates captured two American ships, the Dauphin and Maria, and enslaved and paraded the crew through the streets?.
That the Muslims knew about the New World since the 1500's and had "pious hopes that it would, in due course, be illuminated by Islam and added to the Ottoman realm"?
The book also has 8-pages of pictures, photos, and notes in the center as an added bonus.
I could go on and on with the fascinating history in this book. It is difficult to put down. Get this book and you will not be disappointed.
For those with libraries on Islam and its true history, Robert Spencer's latest very popular work and Paul Fregosi's oldie but goodie "Jihad in the West" are volumes that complement Mr. Ibrahim's latest book, which I would give 6 stars if I could. - It will make you sick what mankind has suffered due to Islam's jihad as decreed by Mohammad. This book documents jihad through 8 major battles from 632 AD through 1683 at the gates of Vienna. Killing, torture, raping, etc. are the result of Islam's following the Koran's command to kill or oppress the infidels.
Read it and open your eyes. Then read "The History of Jihad" by Robert Spencer to fill in the gaps. - Alarmingly apposite and engaging. Raymond Ibrahim hits the proverbial nail on the head with this strikingly important work. His writing style is palatable and ripe for mass consumption. I’d strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding Christian-Islamic relations throughout history.
Too many in the West remain perilously ignorant about true Islamic principles such as taqiyya, law of abrogation, etc. I’d recommend this book to anyone high school age older. If I could give it a six-star rating I would.
