Raymond Ibrahim > Quotes

“If the infidels live among the Muslims, in accordance with the conditions set out by the Prophet—there is nothing wrong with it provided they pay Jizya to the Islamic treasury. Other conditions are . . . that they do not renovate a church or a monastery, do not rebuild ones that were destroyed, that they feed for three days any Muslim who passes by their homes . . . that they rise when a Muslim wishes to sit, that they do not imitate Muslims in dress and speech, nor ride horses, nor own swords, nor arm themselves with any kind of weapon; that they do not sell wine, do not show the cross, do not ring church bells, do not raise their voices during prayer, that they shave their hair in front so as to make them easily identifiable, do not incite anyone against the Muslims, and do not strike a Muslim. . . . If they violate these conditions, they have no protection .40”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians

“In March 2012, the current Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches” in the Arabian Peninsula, basing his decree on the Muslim prophet’s deathbed wish that the Peninsula tolerate no other religion than Islam.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians

“Shocking as it may seem, love—not of the modern, sentimental variety, but a medieval, muscular one, characterized by Christian altruism, agape—was the primary driving force behind the crusades.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Constantinople’s perennial conspirators destroyed yet another man who had fought for God and empire; and in both cases Muslim posterity told of Allah’s vengeance on the Dogs of Rome who most defied him.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“In previous wars with the Muslims the Byzantines had all too often been on the defensive, with the retaining of Christian territory their aim, not its expansion. However, both Nicephorus and John declared their wars to be for the glory of Christendom”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“As Rodney Stark puts it, “Almost generation after generation, Christian writers recorded acts of persecution and harassment, to the point of slaughter and destruction, suffered at the hands of Muslim [Arab, Persian, and Turkish] rulers.”9 That said, the persecution and carnage had reached apocalyptic levels by the 1090s. THE CALL FROM CLERMONT It was in this context that, on November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II (r. 1088–1099) made his famous appeal to the knights of Christendom.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“when Urban made his call in 1095, Christians everywhere felt ready to take the war to—instead of always receiving it from—the ancient foe.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“As Steven Runciman put it, “The Battle of Manzikert was the most decisive disaster in Byzantine history. The Byzantines themselves had no illusions about it. Again and again their historians refer to that ‘dreadful day.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“On reaching their new dwelling places in Ottoman territory, the boys were “either persuaded or forced to be circumcised and made Muslim.” Nor were these merely symbolic or superficial acts: “The first thing they are made to learn is the Turks’ false religion, which they know so well as to put us to shame.”28 Having learned to submit, they were next subjected to a draconian training system not unlike the ancient Spartan agoge: “They make them drudge day and night, and they give them no bed to sleep on and very little food.” They were allowed to “speak to each other only when it is urgently necessary” and were made to “pray together without fail at four prescribed times every day.” As “for any little offense, they beat them cruelly with sticks, rarely hitting them less than a hundred times, and often as much as a thousand. After punishments the boys have to come to them and kiss their clothing and thank them for the cudgelings they have received. You can see, then,” concluded the Italian observer, “that moral degradation and humiliation are part of the training system.”29 Ironically, however—and as with other historically Muslim institutions that have been whitewashed¶—this abduction, forced conversion, and jihadi indoctrination of Christian children is portrayed by several leading academics “as the equivalent of sending a child away for a prestigious education and training for a lucrative career.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Here one could see an appalling sight,” reflected the contemporary chronicler John Skylitzes (b. 1040). The men were “deprived of their full armour,” lacked “swords and other weapons of war,” and were “short of war horses and other equipment† because no emperor had campaigned in this area for a long time.… All that caused great despondency in the hearts of those who saw them, when they reflected on the state to which the Roman armies had come and from which they had fallen.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“The reason for this correlation is simple: Islam’s Sharia, its way, teaches intolerance and violence against non-Muslims, no less than it teaches that Muslim women should wear the hijab. Where one returns the other will naturally follow.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians

“perhaps the most unforeseen and ironic aspect of the crusades is that a distorted and demonized version of them was eventually disseminated in and continues to haunt the West—while exonerating ongoing Muslim aggression as “payback”—to this very day.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“The archeological facts speak for themselves: although churches dotted Spain’s landscape when Islam came in 711, “today, the remains of even small ‘Mozarabic’ [dhimmi] churches can be found only outside the former ‘al-Andalus,’ and none of them in major urban centers.”21”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“In short, Manzikert was for the Turks what Yarmuk was for the Arabs. In both battles—and according to the Muslim narrative—outnumbered Muslims won because, seeing their readiness to be martyred for his cause, Allah had enabled them to triumph over the infidels.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“How could the crusaders be motivated by love and piety, considering all the brutal violence and bloodshed they committed? Not only is such a question anachronistic—violence was part and parcel of the medieval world—but centuries before Islam, Christian theologians had concluded that “the so called charity texts of the New Testament that preached passivism and forgiveness, not retaliation, were firmly defined as applying to the beliefs and behavior of the private person” and not the state, explains historian Christopher Tyerman. Christ himself distinguished between political and spiritual obligations (Matt. 22:21). He praised a Roman centurion without calling on him to “repent” by resigning from one of the most brutal militaries of history (Matt. 8: 5–13). When a group of soldiers asked John the Baptist how they should repent, he advised them always to be content with their army wages (Luke 3:14). Paul urged Christians to pray for “kings and all that are in authority” (1 Tim. 2:2). In short, “there was no intrinsic contradiction in a doctrine of personal, individual forgiveness condoning certain forms of necessary public violence to ensure the security in which, in St. Paul’s phrase, Christians ‘may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty’ (1 Tim. 2:2).”27 Or as that chief articulator of “Just War” theory, Saint Augustine (d. 430), concluded, “It is the injustice of the opposing side, that lays on the wise man the duty to wage war.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Due to a century of successes at the hands of the aforementioned emperors—from Basil I to Basil II—a false sense of security prevailed. Vigilance was abandoned; rule “passed into the hands of a series of dotards, sensualists and courtesans—female rule once again predominated.” The twenty-nine-year reign of Empress Zoe, “a middle-aged harlot,” saw her marry and divorce—often by blinding or murdering—several men.27 Concern for the frontier and the struggle against Islam was dropped; the empire’s resources were squandered on the fancies of the civil bureaucracy, which came to rule in all but name.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Even the ancient Visigothic church of Saint Vincent, the main basilica of Cordoba, which the invaders initially vouchsafed to Christians on condition of surrender, was coercively “purchased,” razed to the ground, and its precious materials cannibalized to construct the Great Mosque of Cordoba—on the heads of northern Christian slaves no less.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“The Eastern Roman Empire lost much after Manzikert. It lost the richest and most fertile part of its empire, whence its hardiest soldiers and not a few warrior-emperors (including Leo III and Nikephoros II) historically came from; it lost its prestige and reputation as the world’s greatest power for seven centuries—not just in the eyes of Muslims who had still been reeling under the shadow of defeat from the empire’s tenth-century comeback, but Western eyes as well.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“In 809, and again in 813, multiple monasteries, convents, and churches were attacked in and around Jerusalem; Christians of both sexes were gang raped and massacred. In 929, on Palm Sunday,* another wave of atrocities broke out; churches were destroyed and Christians slaughtered.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“After portraying Arabs as “wild, untamable (animals) and dumb beasts of prey,” he wrote, “In the West, the nomadic Berbers… are their counterparts, and in the East, the Kurds, the Turkomans, and the Turks.”31 In short, “if taking lives and ravaging the lands of the infidel were the means by which the ends of expanding Islam were served, then the new [Turkic] converts’ traditional pleasures were now happily endowed with a pious rationale.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“In December 2011 in supposedly moderate Malaysia, priests and church youth leaders were required to obtain “caroling permits” by submitting their full names and identity card numbers at police stations—always a harrowing experience—simply to visit their fellow church members and sing carols like “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians

“translations are like wives—either beautiful or faithful, seldom both.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader: The Essential Texts of Osama Bin Laden's Terrorist Organization

“[t]he campaigns of Nicephorus Phocas and John Tzimiskes once again made the Byzantine empire a great power in the east.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“All that is known of the True Cross’s fate is that Saladin ordered it to be paraded upside down in the streets of Damascus. From there, the Cross—discovered under Constantine, seized by Persians but recovered by Heraclius, smuggled to Constantinople during the Islamic siege of Jerusalem in 637 but then sent back to the Holy City when it was restored to Christendom—disappears from history and enters legend.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Due to some widespread and entrenched myths concerning the purported tolerance and enlightenment of al-Andalus, here it is necessary to document the reverse and establish context for the forthcoming centuries of war. For starters, the destruction and spoliation of churches was hardly limited to the initial conquest years (711–715). It was a constant—and deliberate—affair. Once Abd al-Rahman I (d. 788) became emir of Cordoba, all churches still standing “were immediately pulled down,” writes al-Maqqari.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“The best they did is make treaties with Sultan Tughril; and when roaming bands of Turks broke the treaty by invading and terrorizing Christian territory, and Constantinople objected, the sly sultan feigned innocence by saying he was unable to control these premodern “lone wolves,” even as they continued raiding deeper and deeper into western Anatolia.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Finally, in keeping with Islam’s perennial threat and primordial boast, they used Hagia Sophia and many other churches as “a stable for their horses,” which they fed from toppled altars turned into troughs. Indeed, lest the jihadi pedigree of the sack be missed, the invaders everywhere set to desecrating and mocking all vestiges of Christianity—a sort of “Islam was here.” Thus, “they paraded the [Hagia Sophia’s main] Crucifix in mocking procession through their camp, beating drums before it, crucifying the Christ again with spitting and blasphemies and curses. They placed a Turkish cap… upon His head, and jeeringly cried, ‘Behold the god of the Christians!’” They “gouged the eyes from the [embalmed] saints” and dumped their corpses “in the middle of the streets for swine and dogs to trample on… and the images of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Saints were burned or hacked to pieces.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Obviously, any Muslim who openly converts to Christianity and seeks to live as an acknowledged Christian is going to be seen as one who “openly commit[s] apostasy,” and when he talks to Muslims about Christianity he will be accused of proselytizing and blaspheming—for then he is perceived as “call[ing] for fitna, or voic[ing] harmful things against Allah and His Prophet.”26”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians

“proselytism can be disregarded: 1) when they are broken under duress—for example, a Muslim is threatened with torture and death if he does not curse Muhammad and apostatize from Islam (see Koran 3:28 and 16:106); or 2) as a stratagem of war, as when Muhammad permitted a Muslim to feign apostasy and to blaspheme his name to win the confidence of the poet Ka’b in order to assassinate him. Likewise, Muhammad once commanded Na’im bin Mas’ud, a young convert from a tribe that refused to submit to Muhammad, to conceal his new Muslim identity, go back to his tribe—which he cajoled with a perfidious “You are my stock and my family, the dearest of men to me”—only to betray them to Muhammad’s waiting jihadis.21”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians

“Similarly, Koran 5:33 decrees that “the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] mischief is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land.” Islam’s scholars agree that “wage war” most definitely includes verbal war. In fact, verbal attacks on Islam are often perceived as worse than physical attacks. As Ibn Taymiyya put it, Muharaba [waging war against Islam] is of two types: physical and verbal. Waging war verbally against Islam may be worse than waging war physically—hence the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) used to kill those who waged war against Islam verbally, while letting off some of those who waged war against Islam physically. This ruling is to be applied more strictly after the death of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). Mischief may be caused by physical action or by words, but the damage caused by words is many times greater than that caused by physical action; and the goodness achieved by words in reforming may be many times greater than that achieved by physical action. It is proven that waging war against Allah and His Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) verbally is worse and the efforts on earth to undermine religion by verbal means is more effective.8”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians