I have written a series of essays over the years about Islam—its politics, history, culture and society. They always generate responses, especially from those who cannot believe there is anything at all unusual about that faith—it is a ‘religion of peace,’ as our own George Bush proclaimed.

Some Westerners have so swallowed the Islamic line that, for all intents and purposes they have become a dhimmi, a non-Moslem living either in the West or in Islamic lands who defends Islamic causes above all others. Dhimmi is thus a synonym for quisling.

Whether one whose mindset has led him to dhimmitude or one whose hatred of his own culture has led him to champion Islam, there is in both cases an ignorance of Islamic history, a history that anyone can easily discover by the simple act of opening a book.

Once that has been achieved one sees that Islam acts today exactly as Islam acted yesterday, exactly as it did from the time of Mohammed (570-632). Assassinations, beheadings, genocide, suicide murders, imperialistic wars, civil wars, disturbing sexual beliefs and practices, off and on Jew hatred—all have been present since the beginning.

What follows are three historical events that read as if they were written yesterday. Of course, they could have been.

World Headlines One

Moslems based in Libya seize US ships and hold their crews for ransom. The US president sends the navy to blockade the Libyan coast and to bombard Libyan military installations. US Marines then attack and take the Moslem capital.

Sound familiar? When did this occur?

In 1800 Moslem pirates based on Africa’s Barbary Coast seized American ships, enslaved American sailors and demanded ransom. They declared war upon the US because that fledgling nation refused to send more money for tribute. President Jefferson sent the military and the problem was solved. Thus the Marine Corps anthem, “…to the shores of Tripoli.”

World Headlines Two

Islamic assassins murder in secret and in public an entire range of both Western and Moslem leaders. Terrorist attacks on Western outposts are a continuous threat. Suicide attacks are common. Potential recruits are promised a life filled with virgins and wine after they die. Bases of these fanatical killers were in Iran and Syria.

Sound familiar? When did these events occur?

The highly secretive group of Assassins (perhaps from the word hashish, as the Moslem killers allegedly used the drug) was formed in Iran in the 1090s AD. These early Islamic fanatics sowed murder and terror throughout the Middle East. The sect was exterminated by the Mongols c. 1250 AD.

World Headlines Three

Fed up with Islamic attacks on Western cities, a coalition of Western nations forms to defeat the Moslems. Surprisingly the Moslems suffer a catastrophic, rapid and unexpected defeat, leaving the entire world amazed at the Western victory.

Sound familiar? When did these events occur?

In 1571 a group of Western nations organized and commanded by Spain engaged the Turkish navy at Lepanto. The Moslem Turks were defeated and 30,000 Christian slaves were liberated. Cervantes fought in this battle.

You see my point. All of the above seem to have come from any newspaper of today. Now recall all of the reasons given by the those after 9/11 who were against the war on terror. “We were attacked because of American support of Israel!” shrieked some. Others like Ron Paul and his supporters sniff that the US deserved the attack because of all of her meddling in the Middle East. Some claimed that Islam was only responding to Western imperialism and that Islamic grievances were thus justified.

Some history, please. All of the above events occurred before the US had any interests in the Middle East, all were before the 1947 formation of the state of Israel, and all of the above Western military responses were defensive in nature and were the result of unprovoked Moslem attacks.

From its foundation Islam began to attack the West long before the West had ever heard of anyone named Mohammed. Starting with the Byzantine Empire (c. 630 AD) Moslem armies began to raid and plunder Byzantine territory—all of which was Christian. Byzantium had just fought and won a 30 year war against Persia (another in the long struggle between Iran and Christianity) and was exhausted. Soon all of the territory of what we now call the Middle East and northern Africa was in Moslem hands.

It was without a doubt the most rapid and permanent military conquest in history, an astounding achievement that equals anything done by the Roman legions. This area includes the modern nations of Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco—all once Christian and except for tiny Israel all now Moslem.

Islam did not stop, but invaded Christian Spain in 711 and penetrated into northern France. It was only the supreme military effort of Charles Martel (“the Hammer”) and his Carolingian army of Christian soldiers at the battle of Tours in 732 that kept the Moslems out of Europe north of the Pyrenees. Christian Europe had had a very close call. Had Martel been defeated all of Europe might have become Islamic. The Moslems then fought the remaining Christians in Spain for over 700 years. Islam was finally defeated in Spain only in 1492.

Historical note: We wonder how Spain could conquer the great Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations so quickly, easily and with such a paucity of soldiers and materiel. But tell me, what shape would your military be in if it had had to fight a ferocious and competent enemy for 700 years? Practice does indeed make perfect.

Now for some perspective: From 626 AD until the Crusades more than 500 years later Islam was mostly victorious everywhere, whether in Iberia, Africa or Asia. Her armies were seemingly invincible and her god unconquerable. But then came a check, the 1st Crusade (1096), really the West’s first attempt at counter-attack. Many are those who mention the Crusades, and they usually do so to slander either the West or Catholicism.

But the Crusades—in Spain, north Africa and the Levant—were nothing but an attempt by Christians to reclaim what had been Christian land. They also were what we would now call preemptive wars. Islam had made no secret of its desire to exterminate the West—as the Turkish sultan said, to “stable horses in the Vatican.” He came close to doing this very thing. (And recall that al-Qaeda once tried to bomb the Vatican. Once these guys get an idea in their heads it stays there.)

The Crusades petered out after 1250 or so, but by then Eastern Islam was engaged in a terrible and losing series of wars against the Mongols. The West had a breather—but not for long. The Mongol tide came and went, staying only in Russia. By the middle of the 13th century Islam, furnished with new blood from the ferocious and expansionist Ottoman Turks, once again began to assault the West. After the Fall of Constantinople (1453) which destroyed the Christian empire of Byzantium the Moslems controlled all of Anatolia (modern Turkey) and pushed into Eastern Europe, taking what is now Greece, Macedon, Albania and threatening Poland and Austria—and all were Christian lands.

And twice the Turks were at the gates of Vienna. At the second siege (1683), by the way, the Moslems were aided by the French (you are not really surprised at this, are you?) and the West was saved by the Poles—who would continue to give the world examples of true heroism.

Thus the history of Islam—whatever the truth of its theological doctrines—was simply one of making unprovoked and imperialist war upon Christian lands, wars the Christians did not ask for and did not want. Why should we be surprised that these wars continue today? Islam is doing what it has always done. The West is responding as it always has. We have seen it all before. Truly, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

The wars of Islam and the West are part of the ongoing struggle between East and West. It began at Marathon (490 BC) and continues today: Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea, Arbela, the Punic Wars, the Mithradatic Wars, the wars of Rome and Parthia, the siege of Constantinople, Manzikert, the Crusades, Lepanto, the sieges of Vienna, Gallipoli…all are but episodes in this 2500 year-long war. Since 640 AD this long war of East against West has been waged by Islam. It will end when one side is utterly and permanently defeated and not before.

Believe it, this is war. Close your eyes to it, deny it, blame and hate your own civilization and excuse the other—none of this will change a thing. Our enemies certainly are not deceived at all. They know this as war. All of their actions, their sermons, their writings and their political and military maneuverings are those of a civilization at war.

As I have written before, when civilizations go to war it is to the death. Rome and Carthage, Macedon and Persia, the Union and the Confederacy, the Allies and the Nazis, the US and militaristic Japan, the US and the USSR: one ceases to exist. So either the West or radical Islam. Take your choice. Should I ask you what the world would look like if radical Islam is victorious?

And let us not have any of that silly and lachrymose sentiment that claims Islam brings much good to its people. There is nothing particularly Islamic about this. Any religion offers it. Zoroastrianism offers it.

But “Live and Let live!” you say. Impossible, for radical Islam will not allow this. Wherever Islam has gone she has brought war. For her there are only two worlds, that of Islam (Dar es Salaam) and that of war (Dar el-Harb). Peace will come only when the entire world is Islam. In almost all of the wars being fought as I write these words one or both sides involve a Moslem group or nation.

From the first Islam preyed upon the Arabs, then the Jews, then upon fellow Moslems—thus the Sunni – Shiite split. Then upon Christians, then Persians, then Hindus—and my God how Islam made war upon the Hindus! We read of cities of skulls, of walls of corpses, of towers constructed of human heads, in the Moslem invasions of Hindu lands. Any confusion now why India and Pakistan are for all intents and purposes at war still?

And what of the Taliban´s destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan? Radical Islam even makes war upon stones. And should I mention Islam’s war against the Jews? But Islam is also at war with itself—in Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, the Palestinian-occupied territories, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia we can see the awful slaughter of Moslem killing Moslem. In the fading light of its long-gone glory, Islam is really at war with the entire world, with modernity itself. Recall that bin-Laden has many times expressed his desire to return the Islamic world to what it was 1000 years ago.

And what must certainly be humiliating to bear is the knowledge that Moslem political society has no mechanism to prevent this killing. The result is that the US, a Christian nation, has become the savior of Moslems in Kuwait, in Somalia, in Afghanistan, in Indonesia, in Kosovo, in Iraq. Without the US Moslem history would be even more incarnadined.

And the response from the Moslem world when the US saves untold millions of Moslems from murder and famine and poverty and tyranny? She is bombed; her embassies are destroyed; her people are murdered; her buildings are demolished; her airplanes are bombed out of the sky; she is called ‘the Great Satan;’ and at every instance of this terrorism Islamic rabble dance in the street. Even to help Moslems is to invite their hatred.

This is one of history’s tragedies, for Islamic civilization from 900 AD until 1100 was a shining glory, in some aspects even surpassing that of Western Europe. The Moslem cities were gleaming metropolises of learning, science and the arts. Their governments were by and large humane and tolerant, and at times provided a haven for Jews in a hostile world. Their mosques were (and are) wonders of the world, their poetry and art hallmarks of refinement.

All of that is gone now, save for what is left of their monuments, literature and architecture. The poverty, ignorance, illiteracy, theological obscurantism, misogyny, violence, tyranny, envy and mind-boggling Jew-hatred one sees in the Islamic world today are a far cry from what once was a marvelously brilliant culture.

Here is an example of Islam then—the Blue Mosque of Istanbul.

Here is an example of Islam now.

After 1400 years of history Islam can do little more than create the most degraded people upon this earth, a people who murder each other over cartoons.

Please keep all of this in mind when those anti-war types, the dhimmis, the media and the apologists for Islam begin their predictable and silly America and Western civilization-hating diatribe. There are many well-educated fools among them—Noam Chomsky, Gabriel García Márquez, Ron Paul, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn and the entire leadership of the Democrat Party all come to mind.

I wonder what the average Moslem thinks when he strolls into a relic from his own past—the Blue Mosque for example. There is hardly anything built by human hands as stunningly beautiful as that. Yet modern Islam can no more design and build its equal than it can design and build a sewer or light bulb or running shoe.

The Blue Mosque was built by Moslems 400 years ago. What has happened since? Why is Islam so mentally and spiritually and materially impoverished? And why is it so bloody? And why do so few Moslems speak out against its bloodshed and terror and violence?

(Note: This essay is a summation of several essays I have written over the years. They have been edited and updated.)