Islam: The West's 'Most Formidable and Persistent Enemy'

By Raymond Ibrahim   

At the height of Western dominance over Islam in the early twentieth century, the European historian Hilaire Belloc (b. 1870) made a remarkably prescient observation that may have seemed exaggerated at the time:

Millions of modern people of the white civilization -- that is, the civilization of Europe and America -- have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them.   

It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past” (from Belloc’s The Great Heresies, emphasis added).

Anyone who doubts that Islam has been “the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had,” should familiarize themselves with that civilization’s long militant history vis-à-vis the West.

According to Islamic history, in 628, Muhammed, the Arabic founder of Islam, called on the Byzantine Emperor, Heraclius -- the symbolic head of Christendom -- to recant Christianity and embrace Islam.  The emperor refused, jihad was declared, and the Arabs invaded Christian Syria, defeating the imperial army at the pivotal Battle of Yarmuk in 636 (see my MA thesis on this battle, which one prominent historian described as the world’s “most consequential”).

This victory enabled the Muslims to swarm in all directions, so that, less than a century later, they had conquered the greater, older, and richer part of Christendom, including Syria, Egypt, and North Africa.

Their drive into Europe from the east was repeatedly frustrated by the Walls of Constantinople; after the spectacularly failed siege of 717-718, many centuries would pass before any Muslim power thought to capture the imperial city. The Arabs did manage to invade Europe proper and conquered Spain but were stopped at the Battle of Tours in 732 and eventually driven back south of the Pyrenees................

The above map should give an idea of how far-reaching and multitentacled the perennial jihad was. The darkest shading represents Western/Christian nations that were permanently conquered by Islam; the lighter or gray shading represents those Western/Christian nations that were temporarily conquered by Islam (sometimes for many centuries, as in Spain, Russia, and the Balkans); stripes represent areas that were raided, often repeatedly, though not necessarily annexed by Islam; the crossed swords mark the sites of the eight most landmark battles between Islam and the West.........To Read More