In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a revolutionary state created by animals who chased off a farmer gradually becomes just as oppressive as the oppressors it overthrew. As the animal state grows more and more dictatorial and totalitarian, a good-hearted and simple horse, Boxer, has growing suspicions that things weren’t always this way: in the early days of the revolution, all the animals really were equal, and none were arrogating special powers or privileges for themselves. If he could remember, maybe he could stop the oppressors. But Boxer can’t quite remember how it was, and none of the animals who are busy grabbing power and privilege for themselves are in any mood to remind him. The pigs who rule the farm eventually send Boxer off to the knackers; even his half-memory has become a nuisance.
It is so important to remember what has happened. But just as it was in Animal Farm, and for much the same reasons, today making people forget is a big business. In our schools, our children learn that the United States of America, the most magnanimous and benevolent nation in human history, is a racist, colonialist polity founded by slaveowners. They learn that Judeo-Christian civilization, which gave the world its understanding of human rights and the dignity of every human being, has been nothing more than an instrument of injustice and oppression worldwide. They learn that Islam is peace, that Muslims and Islam are responsible for the great inventions and innovations of the Western world, and that it has been a beacon of light and tolerance throughout the world.
These are lies. Yet they are universally told, and it appears that those who are telling them have an oppressive agenda, just as in Orwell’s parable. That’s why I wrote The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS.
One of the least-known areas of history for most Americans, in this age when all history is being obscured by disinformation, is that of the spread of Islam throughout the world, and the record of how Muslims have interacted with non-Muslims since the beginning of Islam. Yet today this is crucial for Americans to know, as Islam and Muslims become an ever larger presence in Europe and North America. This book shows what happened when Muslims arrived in the Middle East, and North Africa, and Spain, and France, and Persia, and India, and Russia, and elsewhere. It reveals the hollowness of the myths we’re being told, and that many take for granted, about Islamic history and the vaunted tolerance of Islam.
To avoid the biases of contemporary historians, I relied almost exclusively upon, and quote extensively from, historians and chroniclers who were eyewitnesses of the events described, or who are writing about them shortly thereafter.
Find out the truth about Islamic Spain, and the jihad in India, and the status of non-Muslims in Islamic history, and the prevalence of jihad activity in that history. Find out the truth about the claim that jihad terror is a recent phenomenon, a reaction to the actions of the United States and Israel. Arm yourself with the most potent weapon of all, the one that the oppressors most urgently want to strip from you: the truth.
Preorder your copy of The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS here.