The War with Islamist Jihad did not Begin with the Crusades
WHEN AND WHY THE
WEST BEGAN TO 'DEMONIZE' MUHAMMAD
by Raymond Ibrahim, December 22, 2017
Many people believe that
Christian demonization of Islam began with the Crusades. In reality, Christian writers wrote about the
aggressive and deplorable actions of Islamic armies as early as the mid-7th
century, not long after the death of Islamic founder Muhammad. “Around 650 A.D., John of Nikiu of
Egypt recorded that Islamic armies were not just "enemies of God" but
adherents of "the detestable doctrine of the beast." The oldest parchment that alludes to a
warlike prophet was written in 634—a mere two years after Muhammad's death. It
has a man asking a learned Jewish scribe what he knows about "the prophet
who has appeared among the Saracens." The elderly man, "with much
groaning," responded: "He is deceiving. For do prophets come with swords
and chariot?”
Muhammad is first mentioned by name in a Syriac fragment, also written
around 634. Although only scattered
phrases are intelligible, they all revolve around bloodshed: "many
villages [in Homs] were ravaged by the killing [of the followers] of Muhammad
and many people were slain and [taken] prisoner from Galilee to Beth..."
"Some ten thousand" people were slaughtered in "the vicinity of
Damascus.” Towards the end of the
seventh and beginning of the eighth centuries, learned Christians began to
scrutinize the theological claims of Islam. The image of Muslims went from bad
to worse. The Koran was believed to be "full of blasphemies with all its
ugly and vulgar filth," particularly its claim that heaven amounted to a
"sexual brothel." Eighth century writer Nicetas Byzantinos, examined
the Qur’an and denounced Allah as an impostor deity, namely Satan: "I
anathematize the God of Muhammad," read one Byzantine canonical rite.
Ironically, some of the most
damning criticism of Muhammad comes not from Christian accounts of the 7th-8th
centuries, but from the Islamic sources of Muhammad. For
instance, after proclaiming that Allah had permitted Muslims four wives and
unlimited concubines (Koran 4:3), he later declared that Allah had delivered a
new revelation (Koran 33:50-52) offering him, the prophet alone, a dispensation
to sleep with and marry as many women as he wanted. In response, none other
than his favorite wife, Aisha, the "Mother of Believers," quipped:
"I feel that your Lord hastens in fulfilling your wishes and desires."
Based
then on Muslim sources and early Christian writers of Semitic origins attest
that the only miracle Muhammad performed, was to invade, slaughter, and enslave
those who refused to submit to him—a "miracle that even highway bandits
can perform." The prophet clearly put whatever words best served him in
God's mouth, and made his religion appealing and justified his own behavior by
easing the sexual and moral codes of the Arabs and fusing the notion of
obedience to God with war to aggrandize oneself with booty and slaves. Perhaps most importantly, Muhammad's denial
of and war on all things distinctly Christian—the Trinity, the resurrection,
and "the cross"—proved for Christians that he was Satan's agent, "the
false prophet," "the hypocrite," "the liar," "the
adulterer," "the forerunner of Antichrist," and "the
Beast," became mainstream epithets for Muhammad among Christians hundreds
of years before the first Crusade.
Comments
Post a Comment