My new book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS is nothing less than the crown and completion of my two decades of public work trying to alert people to the nature and magnitude of the global jihad threat.
I’ve written a guide to the Qur’an – The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran. I’ve written a biography of Muhammad based on the earliest Islamic sources: The Truth About Muhammad. And today, most people who are informed and willing to be honest about these issues understand that there are some deeply problematic aspects to both the Qur’an and to Muhammad’s career – I hope at least in part because of my efforts. But there persists among all too many people the idea that whatever is written in the Islamic texts, in practice it hasn’t really been that bad.
The accounts included in this book are as noteworthy for what they don’t say as for what they do. The attentive reader will note that there is no period since the beginning of Islam that was characterized by large-scale peaceful coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims. There was no time when mainstream and dominant Islamic authorities taught the equality of non-Muslims with Muslims, or the obsolescence of jihad warfare. There was no Era of Good Feeling, no Golden Age of Tolerance, no Paradise of Proto-Multiculturalism. There has always been, with virtually no interruption, jihad.
As such, this book completes the case I have been making for decades now. I hope that it will come to the attention of some people who can influence public policy, and that it will guide them to discard at least some of the foolish and false assumptions that have steered U.S. foreign policy for decades, and to place our foreign and domestic policies on a more realistic footing. Even if that does not happen, I hope this book will arm some people and help them stand for the truth amid the prevailing disinformation. Eventually, the truth will prevail, and this book is my bid to preserve the truth about Islam and jihad until the conditions are such that it can prevail.
Click here to preorder The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS.