I’ve occasionally given readers a hint towards what I think of Islam, and particularly the third great wave of Islamic conquest that attacks Europe now, mostly via immigration. I haven’t read the Koran, don’t ever intend to enter a mosque without automatic weapons, and certainly haven’t attended a madrassa. My knowledge of and interest in Islam comes entirely from the perspective of an infidel who would very much like to keep them out of my lands. What goes on in Muslim lands doesn’t concern me: that’s their business. Close the mosques, send the immigrants back, and reconquer Constantinople. They can keep Antioch, Damascus, and Baghdad.
Over the last couple of years I realised that I’ve been treating Islam the same way Cold Warriors used to treat the Soviet Union, as a vast faceless monolith. Knowing that the white peoples of Europe consider themselves a multitude of nations with many variations in national character [1] I knew, deep down, that Islam isn’t one army all of a single purpose. For a long time this awareness just pecked at the edges of my main interest in reconquista. Little things here and there:
- Banging a few Muslim girls who hadn’t the slightest interest in jihad, and who drank beer.
- Reading Nassim Nicolas Taleb’s tweets about Levant culture and it’s historic opposition to Gulf culture.
- Seeing how little support ISIS actually had beyond a few goat-fucking longbeards and the Iranian mullahs.
- Hearing about how many Taliban fighters were recruited because the Taliban was the one organisation in Afghanistan that didn’t rape little boys.
I grew increasingly interested in learning a little more about the trends, divisions, and schools of thought within Islam. Reading Time Life’s March Of Islam is the first time I’ve become wise to Islam’s history and I dare say I’m rather surprised. Here are three learning points:
- Muhammad wasn’t a jihadi.
- Life under early Islamic rule was preferable to Byzantine, Sassassian, Turkic, Hun or Egyptian rule
- The first great wave of Islamic expansionism wasn’t the total war I thought it was.
Here’s the rise of Islam as I understand it from this book: For most of early history, Arabia was irrelevant. The Egyptians built pyramids, farmed the Nile valley, and created a vast empire. The Greeks and then the Romans built up massive cities, advanced the arts, and campaigned across the known world. Persians too. This whole time, the Arabs were riding camels from oasis to oasis and living under tents down in the desert scrub of what is now Saudi Arabia. The one exception to this was the flatter, greener coastal areas where thriving small towns built up at key sailing ports along the Chinese Silk Road through the Red Sea, as this was the most convenient route to the Mediterranean.
The first thousand years, basically
Muhammad comes off somewhat like Jesus. Of low birth, he grew up among the raider-trader Arab nomads and with it was imbued with their ascetic lifestyle and clannish value system. Upon moving in to Mecca he gained in prominence as a wise head so he set up in the courtyard of his modest home and dispensed both worldly and spiritual advice, and with time came to adjudicate disputes [2]. The rulers of Mecca thought him too big for his britches and chased him out. He settled again in nearby Medina, doing the same as before. But now he was pissed at the Mecca lads and, utilising his desert raider upbringing, he formed a small gang of bandits to raid the caravans between Mecca and Medina. Before long he was strong enough that Mecca bent the knee and let him back.
And that’s it. Soon after he died.
My overwhelming impression of Muhammad is that he was a hard-bitten desert nomad and wise sage who limited himself to his local area. No expansionism. No conquest. No jihad. He didn’t build palaces nor hoard gold. Didn’t take many wives. I suspect he’d have been as outraged with the pomp, arrogance and greed of the Ottoman Court as Jesus would be with the satanist pedophiles bishops who live in opulence in the Vatican today.
Muhammad was so small-scale. No-one outside the Arab peninsula even heard his name until he was long dead.
This would suit the Byzantines more than the first Muslims
Yes, yes, I’ve heard about him marrying a six-year-old girl. I’ve heard there is rather bloodthirsty advice in the Koran about stoning women and beheading infidels. Thing is, by the standards of the time (e.g. what the Persians, Olmecs, Chinese, Huns, and even Christians were getting up to those days) it’s mostly par for the course.
Squabbles over succession led to the Sunni-Shia split that remains to this day and in the next few hundred years of Islam, the hawkish Muslims were more concerned with fighting sectarian battles than conquering Europe. This book argues that the first great wave of Islamic expansionism was mostly peaceful [3]. The main reason they were able to spread so fast was because Islamic rule imposed such a light burden upon the conquered, and thus many found the Islamic yoke lighter than the Byzantine, Roman, Persian, or Egyptian yoke. These lands had spent 1,000 years passing between empires so they expected it to be someone’s yoke.
The Byzantines would tax you mercilessly, convert you to Orthodox Christianity, conscript you in their army, and it seemed a pretty oppressive rule all around. The first Muslims asked just five things of you:
- Worship Allah, with Muhammad the messenger
- Pray towards Mecca five times a day
- Give 2.5% of your money to charity
- Fast during the month of Ramadan
- A pilgrimage to Mecca one time in your life
But how should we fast, m’lord?
That’s really not a lot is it? Especially as you’re allowed to dodge the pilgrimage if too poor or infirm. So a conquered people need only nod their head when the Imam is banging on about Allah, spend a few minutes doing Allah-ballahs, pay a very light tax [4], save your eating for the evening and…. not much is it? If you put some heavy cavalry behind those preachers and send them into lands already riven with strife you can see how they’d sweep all before them.
Later caliphs acquired a taste for empire and became as vicious, grasping, and indulgent as the Roman emperors but for the first couple hundred years it seems like Islam was a very different beast to the likes of Erdogan or the Mullahs now. As an aside, this makes the theatrics of ISIS make more sense. I’d always found it odd that the ISIS goat-fuckers proudly trumpeted such an ascetic lifestyle, but I see that in this respect at least they were closer to Muhammad than the perfumed gold-bedecked Sultans of Istanbul.
So, while I still want the mosques closed and the kebab removed, I’m at least clearer about the Islamic world being no more a bunch of jihadis than the USA is a bunch of Neo-Cons.
If the ascetic nomadic lifestyle and dreams of conquest appeal to you, you should shed your materialistic opulence and give alms of £79 to the Church of Daygame Infinite and buy final absolution through Daygame Overkill for the very reasonable price of $200.
[1] French are slimy, Germans are aspy, Belgians are a joke nation, Spanish are lazy, Italians are greasy, Welsh are sheep-shaggers, Irish are dumb, and the porridge wogs of Scotland like Jews in girl’s skirts. The English stand alone without flaw.
[2] Written records of these sessions were later collected together to create the Koran.
[3] Again, by the bloodthirsty standards of the time
[4] Perhaps the most surprising thing of all in reading world history is that levels of taxation that live in infamy and led to revolutions back then are way lower than what the average European pays under yoke of the European Union thieves today.
Krauser PUA 
March 1, 2018 at 6:59 pm
You missed a few things.
Islam also requires you to have a bit of your dick snipped off.
If you change your mind and decide you want to go back to being a Christian, Jew, Hindu or heathen, then your head gets snipped off too.
It’s disingenous to argue that Islam is not jihadist based on the behaviour of its initial adherents. Early Christianity was also concerned with just survival and peaceful spread of the Word. Nothing like the justification it was used for rape and plunder that it became in the Crusades and the New World. Nothing like the heroic basis which I imagine you imagine it to be for your ‘cultural Christianity’. There is nonsense in the Torah and the Bible alike. The difference is, the readers of those particular books happen to have higher IQs and know when to ignore the crappy bits. With Islam, this simply isn’t the case. Muhammad changed his philosophy after taking Mecca from conciliatory and flexible (he had no choice) to aggressive and intolerant (he now had the power). For all the Bible’s failings, there is no ambiguity in Jesus’ message of love and peace. Not so with Muhammad. The Qur’an is filled with some really heavy stuff which no Christian, Jew or Hindu is exhorted to do to another human being. It doesn’t matter what Islam used to be like. It doesn’t matter what Muhammad’s intention was. He wrote the book and the book is all people are left with. It’s a religion primarily practised by low-IQ dross who cannot see beyond the literal to the abstract- and the Qur’an is literally preaching death to the infidel. We aren’t dealing with Islam in the early stages. We are dealing with the Islam of today which has a liturgical justification for barbarity and a relish of its historical military conquests and conversions. Your nice and pretty Time Life books written a while back and still with a Eurocentric view won’t cover the invasion of India and their experience of ‘non-jihadist’ Islam. We’re talking coffee table books with lovely pictures sanitized for the genteel sensibilities of a different age, high production values not withstanding. Seriously Nick, a man of your intellectual calibre should perhaps be digging a little deeper. Next you’ll be writing reviews of Hitler based on the Ladybird Book of Nazis. 😉
March 1, 2018 at 7:21 pm
We will win this war.
March 1, 2018 at 7:30 pm
They are not strong. We are weak. Today. But I have the feeling that changes. The signs are everywhere all around the west. In 5 years AFD will be the strongest party in Germany.
March 1, 2018 at 11:50 pm
The book everyone must read to understand what religion is and how it spreads is Virus of the Mind: https://www.amazon.com/Virus-Mind-New-Science-Meme/dp/1401924697
Some religions are very aggressive in making sure their memes are copied with high fidelity while others are more flexible and allow evolution. [I share the meme theory of religion. K.]
March 2, 2018 at 9:30 pm
who’s actually written these books K? Are you sure you can trust they aren’t a woolly liberal distorting the truth for their greater good?
Ive observed almost all western academics who write or discuss the subject of Islam or ME are like a modern Orientalist, they fawn over the culture, fully knowing the dark side and trying to obscure it from view. Similar to how they dealt with the Communists. [Each section is written by a couple of subject matter experts, nearly always professors or fellows at a university. Many many different writers. K]
March 3, 2018 at 12:06 pm
These same Western academics, many of whom are Jewish, have given us enduring myths such as the Islamic ‘Golden Age’ of science and the wonderful ‘tolerance’ of multicultural Islamic Spain. It’s all done to denigrate European culture.
That said, what K said in his review isn’t on the same level. He’s right that a lot of Islamic practice (such as stonings and beheadings) wasn’t really that out of the ordinary. Becker, in the essay ‘Christianity and Islam’ argues that at the time Islam came about it wasn’t that different to the form of Christianity being practised in the Middle-East and North Africa, which made conversion pretty seamless. Not sure what Muhammad’s intentions were for Islam beyond his death, but the fact that it allows polygamy means there are always going to be a cohort of surplus young men who will need to aggressively expand into other territories in order to find women with whom they can reproduce. [I wish you’d comment more. Usually very interesting ideas in your stuff. I think many Westerners don’t realise that we had two things to make modern Christianity so much less violent than the older variant: 1. a reformation 2. Europe killed all it’s savages through war and hideous criminal penalities. What remains is a population with the most extreme outliers of savagery very limited in number. K.]
March 4, 2018 at 12:41 am
“bastiat … this is why I warned K about trusting such a book. Western academics despite having letters after their name have some downright ludicrous views on Islam and the Islamic world. I always assumed that it was because of the some kind of affection for an exotic distant culture which seduced the early Western Orientalists which left a legacy since one academic usually makes a living quoting another academic. You get a sort of Chinese whispers going on. You seem to imply there is something more sinister going on. You say there is some campaign to denigrate Western culture. Id be interested to hear why you think they are going that? Any good books to read more? Z
March 4, 2018 at 2:01 am
Zatara: A good book in the field is Dario Fernandez Morera’s treatment of Islamic Spain, ‘The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise’.
Another which I own but haven’t yet read is Emmet Scott’s ‘Mohammed & Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy’ which argues that far from ‘carrying the flame’ of classical philosophy and science during Europe’s dark ages, Islam was actually responsible for Europe’s woes. A lot of the scientific advances which occurred under Islam were more likely to have come from Greeks, Persians and Hindus living under Islamic rule than by the nomadic Arab rulers, who may not have established firm control by that point.
If you’re talking about an actual attempt by historians to denigrate European history, there are lots of examples, but the one that springs to mind is Kramer’s ‘Jewish Discovery of Islam’. By this point we’re getting into JQ territory. It’s an example of Jewish attempts to undermine European culture by presenting a ‘sanitised’ version of Islam (while portraying Europeans as backwards and cruel) which has caused Westerners to lower their guard in the face of the ongoing Islamic invasion of Europe. It also undermines Westerners’ sense of identity if you’re now ascribing all their achievements to Muslims, while endlessly discussing European slavery and ignoring the Barbary slave trade (for example).
Kevin McDonald’s ‘Culture of Critique’ is probably the go-to book on these kind of tactics and what the end goal is. That said, there are a lot of gentiles who have jumped on the anti-white bandwagon for whatever reason so I don’t think it’s fair to lay the blame purely at the Jews’ feet.
March 5, 2018 at 9:39 pm
@Bastiat .. thanks for the shout on those. I’ll take a look.
March 3, 2018 at 11:40 am
I suspect Muhammad was a cut above many of those who followed him; whether that means he was sagely and wise is another story.
I highly recommend Russel G Rodgers’ essay ‘The Roar of Lions: The Asymmetric Campaigns of Muhammad’ in the book ‘The US Army and Irregular Warfare’ (available as a pdf online) which discusses Muhammad’s use of tactics which would later be ‘codified’ by Alinsky.
Click to access Sibul%20-%20The%20US%20Army%20and%20Irregular%20Warfare.pdf
One point made in the essay is the early Muslims were brutally and ruthlessly violent, but only applied such violence selectively (and often for minor offences) as a way of inspiring terror. This tended to make people submit (‘give their Islam’) without the appearance of great struggle.
March 3, 2018 at 2:16 pm
There’s a decent interview on YouTube with Tommy Robinson and a guy called Tawhidi titled “Meeting the world’s most notorious Imam”
March 4, 2018 at 1:24 am
The guy has a reputation as a bit of a snake. I think his detractors are correct to an extent, that he seems to be more interested in attacking and undermining Sunni Muslims (he’s a Shiite) than in defending Western civilisation or reforming Islam. In particular, he criticises the Sunni Hadith as an illegitimate add-on to the Koran.
He could be legitimate, in which case great, but I’m deeply suspicious of him.
March 3, 2018 at 2:32 pm
Its an interesting article. I will give a few bullet points for the lads out there:
1) Islam died the moment Muhammed died.
2) The Abbasid or Umayyad caliphate, it escapes me which one but they invented “Hadith” the go-to book for justifactions of the jihadis to conquer other lands and well basically carry on their totalitarian ambitions
“Hadith” as we know is book made 150-200 years later after the death of Muhammed. It is a collection of his sayings and doings which is very ridiculous and borderline absurd. Ironically, it was made by Persians which is followed by great fervor and zeal by the Arabs and Sunnis around the world.
3) Qur’an denounces Hadith while the Sunnis go on commenting a verse out of context where it is quoted to follow Muhammed.
4) Mecca which is in Saudi Arabia is not the true place for the shrine. In Qur’an the place is called Bacca. There is an interesting and eye opening documentary by Dan Gibson. Infact the shrine got destroyed twice and was therefore relocated, which billions of sunnis would never accept. Talk about cognitive dissonance. The place of the shrine is vividly described in the Qur’an and it does not match the current Saudi Arabia.
5) Muhammed preached to only follow Qur’an. Ironically, in the Hadith books he is quoted as saying not to have any of his sayings or doings except the Qur’an, Few caliphates after his death are recorded to have burnt these books and yet people still follow them which is your current sunnis.
There you go lads. Take away point is you are dealing with a version of armed feminism. This is what it looks like and trust me the only way to defeat them is to defeat their ideology like what the far right and Trump is doing to America. Can they win? Well I don’t think so their ideology as defective as feminism. There are a few muslims out there who live by the Qur’an only and trust me its easy to get beheaded just to preach its truth. Its crimethink literally.
The western values that we so like and cherish are in a major attack. The same values are given in the Qur’an. Our fight is with the sunnis, as there are no muslims left anymore which hold true to those humanitarian rights of life, liberty and freedom.
Interestingly, this idea of following the Qur’an only is very old but its gaining momentum. People who have preached this are either beheaded or living in exile.
In other words its a war of advertisement, if you can take away their moral high ground and show them how their current ideology is built on a foundation of hypocrisy and lies which not even Muhammed endorsed, you can gain some more soldiers to the cause of liberty, life and God. Lets not forget beauty and women.
Gentlemen, Happy Hunting.
P.S I hope the top brass in the oval office gets this. A simultaneous campaign of their hollow ideology plus the closing down of mass immigration will serve a crippling blow to their morale,
P.P.S Game saves all [Interesting. Are you arguing that Islam has it’s own problem of Churchianity, meaning a priestly class who conspire to turn the religion into a sick mockery of the leader they pretend to follow? K.]
March 3, 2018 at 8:12 pm
Hi Nick,
I’m an atheist who grew up in a very “multicultural” part of the UK (i.e. lots of crime and ethnic violence) and have read most of the Koran. I’m not exaggerating when I say it calls clearly for the violent death of “non-believers” every couple of pages, as well as calling them worthless and “less than animals”. It’s also clear on death for apostates and the use of non-Muslim women and girls as sex slaves. There is also much “reward” for spreading Islam. However, not unlike the Bible, it contains many “good” verses too about being charitable etc.
When you consider that many Muslims (especially in the UK) are indoctrinated and brought up to believe that the Koran is the final and incontrovertible word of God, then you can see how it creates problems, e.g. the mass rape and torture of young white girls up and down the country. And as Hitchens said, Islam makes one unique claim for itself – it is the final word of god, which is already an incitement to violence for some.
There are other sociological factors surrounding Islam and Muslims. You mention Taleb and in one of his essays he compares the hereditary spread of Islam with other religions e.g. children are always Muslim no matter if one parent is not (vs Judaism where the mother must be Jewish for the child to also be Jewish). Prof Satoshi Kanazawa (kicked out of the LSE for his non-PC views) has also written on Islam and how its polygyny creates societal imbalances creating angry young men who are much more susceptible to the lure of jihad, where they’re promised 72 virgins in heaven etc.
The historical perspective of Islam from the book you’ve reviewed may be a useful starting point, but to understand modern Islam and Islam in the West, I’d recommend reading more widely too. [While I’m sure you’re well-intentioned, I think you should read a bit more of my stuff before telling me what Islam is. Or indeed just re-read what I wrote. Which part of “Close the mosques, send the immigrants back, and reconquer Constantinople” struck you as sympathetic? K.]
March 3, 2018 at 10:14 pm
I am indeed well-intentioned and I also never said that you were sympathetic, just that the book you reviewed doesn’t paint a full picture, by any stretch, of modern Islam. I mentioned other sources/perspectives because you said you were “interested in learning a little more about the trends, divisions, and schools of thought within Islam”, I’m not trying to call you out for being an appeaser of Islam.
March 3, 2018 at 10:41 pm
You have to ask yourself what would make anyone think that Islam was a positive benefit to their society. It’s hard to us to imagine because we don’t come from countries where cousin marriage is routine.
Islam is a coping mechanism for tribal societies, offering a source of authority that sits above family or tribal loyalties. It attempts to widen the small radius of trust of people in the Middle East, North Africa, the “stans” etc, but with limited success. Nepotism is still rampant in the Muslim world. Alas it treats the symptom, but not the cause. It has not developed a cousin-marriage taboo and it can’t, because Muhammad married a cousin himself.
Faced with continual failure to match the success of the West, it nurtures a loathing of it, convincing itself that what it cannot have, must be evil.
March 4, 2018 at 12:33 am
Ah this is the fascinating thing … on reading the Quran during university (when I should have been reading economics textbooks) I developed a strange theory. I actually think that Mohammed was the liberal progressive of his age 🙂 I know it sounds crazy … but hear me out. Im assuming when I say this of course that the Quran is broadly based on his teachings, although I realise that it was in fact compiled in a comically disorganised way (in typical Arab fashion) and then rewritten over the next centuries which would have created huge distortion. Hitchens book goes into painstaking detail on this point .. it seems to have really got to him that this primitive nonsense makes the claim to be ‘the word of god’ and therefore he goes out of his way to disprove it at great great length LoL
The reason I think Mo was a liberal progressive is because if you read the Quran you see there is a theme …. its actually all based on reigning in or moderating evil. The missing piece of the puzzle is that you don’t see just how depraved and despicable the tribes were in the Middle East before he turned up. The message is essentially this … ‘look what you’re doing is bad, I don’t expect you to be saints, but try to do a little bad rather that a lot’.
Here are examples …. paraphrasing …
1) Dont be vain … so if you’re going wear jewellery don’t wear gold, instead wear silver (funny how the Arabs are happy to let this one slide as they love gold. not so happy to let some of the more unpleasant teachings go as easily)
2) Sex slaves … if your going to take a sex slave on the field of battle you can keep the ONE [and only one] that your right arm can grab.
3) Killing infidels …slay them BUT first give them a chance to pay or convert and you can let them go on their merry way!
… and on and on …
In essence, reading between the lines I think the tribes in the ME were so mean, nasty and vicious BEFORE that Mohammed realised he wasn’t going to civilise these diabolical motherfuckers overnight. He figured “hell, at least if I control them a bit, I’ll be doing SOME good!”. There were some flaws in the plan though. 1) The fact the Quran says this is the final word of God … ie no edits as followers civilise themselves 2) The followers seem to have low IQs therefore may take centuries to possibly never to civilise themselves 3) Nasty cretins actually seem to gravitate towards wanting to join up to this cult so this madness actually spreads to the worst of the worst.
The case rests that Mohammed was actually a nice guy. Just a little misunderstood.
March 4, 2018 at 2:34 am
Good points. In a podcast/livestream with white nationalist Richard Spencer he mentioned having a fair bit of respect for Islam in that it made a unified and potent force out of what are really 2nd and 3rd rate people.
The cousin marriage issue is a big problem in promoting clannishness. Islam not only allows it, but encourages it as it emulates the Prophet Muhammad. It would seem the Christian Church made Europe great entirely by accident, by stamping out cousin marriage in its quest to claim people’s inheritances.
March 4, 2018 at 1:42 pm
I suggest reading Tommy Robinsons “Mohammed’s Koran: Why Muslims Kill For Islam” if you want to really understand what’s going on.