This well researched, easy to read and perhaps timely book grips the readers attention throughout.
A contention is held in the book that the described Muslim military conquests of centuries past, and the terrorist campaigns of the modern day, share much more than just the same name of "Jihad" but also encompass what the book cites as the Muslim "distaste for and basic antagonism to" the entire non-Muslim world that is described herein as being seen to be "blasphemers and infidels".
While some readers may find such comments to be contentious or inflammatory, the book submits these subjects to a meticulous scrutiny with a view to presenting an appropriate context to these assertions.
Throughout it is clear that the writer strives to provide an objective analysis wherever possible without attacking the fundamental aspects of the Islamic religion - instead attempting to concentrate on the context of it's implications & relationship to the furtherance of Jihad itself.
The writer states that Jihad has possibly been the most unrecorded and disregarded major event of history and introduces his study as perhaps being one of the first pertaining to the subject of Jihad, arguing that history has largely ignored what are described as the Muslim attacks and invasions of Europe from the seventh to the twentieth centuries, instead being content to remain transfixed on the Christian Crusades.
Beginning his investigations from the time of Muhammad and the writing of the Islamic Koran in the early 7th century, the text illustrates in commendable detail the origins of Jihad during that period and throughout the wars of some 1,300 years ago in Arabia, during which the study depicts how Muhammad purportedly fought against what he describes as the pagan Arab tribes of the peninsula, allegedly demanding that they acknowledge his suzerainty and convert to Islam itself.
Although this work is not written from the platform of any religious persuasion, the reader is confronted with a direct comparison between the Christian Crusades and Islamic Jihad. The study illustrating how Muhammad purportedly cited to his followers that the "sword" is the key to heaven and hell, but that Christ had said to his followers some six hundred years earlier, that he who lives by the "sword" shall perish by the sword.
The writer drawing attention to what he calls the ethical differences between Islam and Christianity, with Christians who kill being responsible for ignoring the words of Christ, but that Muslims who kill are following the commands given to them.
Recognition is also given in the study to how many devout followers of Islam allegedly believe that the Crusades are a prime factor for what is cited as the "confrontation between Christendom and Islam" and therefore believe that it was the Crusaders who "forced" Islam to create Jihad as a means of self defence.
Due detail is provided to illustrate how Jihad had already been in action against Christendom for nearly five hundred years before the Crusades were launched in 1096.
As an aside, the book makes reference to a number of factors/comparisons including how, in Europe today, Muslims can worship in their own mosques but that some Muslim countries forbid Christians to practice their own faith or build churches for their own worship, with even stricter restrictions being placed upon Judaism. Another factor referred to is how Muslims are forbidden to change their religion at the risk of their own lives, with apostasy being punishable by death. The book recognises what it describes as the often uncritical devotion of Muslims in regard to their Prophet Muhammad, while citing that any criticism or the Prophet or attack upon Islam is also undertaken under similar risk.
As the investigation into the history and precepts of Jihad progresses, the study declares that the purpose of Jihad became, and allegedly still is, to "expand and extend Islam" until the whole world is under Islamic rule.
Jihad also being further clarified in the text as purportedly being what is cited as the permanent state of hostility maintained by Islam against the rest of the world, with or without hostility, for the purpose of obtaining sovereignty over more territory.
One notable quote mentioned is that of the contemporary Ayatollah Khomeini who allegedly referred to Jihad in the following context; "...the conquest of non-Muslim territory. The domination of Koranic law from one end of the earth to the other..is the final goal...of this war of conquest."
Another reference is also made to a further statement from he same Islamic leader, who recently died, where he describes eleven unclean things as being urine, excrement, sperm, blood, a dog, a pig, bones, a non-Muslim man and woman, wine, beer and the perspiration of the camel that eats filth. Such reference being made to explicate the mind-set behind the precepts investigated in this work which proceeds to cover nearly one and a half thousand years of European and Islamic military and political confrontation.
Italy, Sicily, Portugal, France, Spain, Austria, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Rumania, Wallachia, Albania, Moldavia, Bulgaria, Greece, Armenia, Georgia, Poland, Ukraine, eastern and southern Russia are all cited as being battlefields where Islam either conquered or was conquered.
The details surrounding some of the ensuing conflicts are at times quite graphic but this is an essential study for anyone interesting in the history of Islam and how many proponents may perceive it's future. Highly recommended.
