Customer Reviews

Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries

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This book is brilliant and the first one of its kind that I encountered in my reading experience. It is one of those unique books that hold such an antagonistic and seemingly biased tone, and yet this element of extremely strong and vivid personal opinion hardly interferes with this book's facts, credibility, and two-sided analysis. In any case, the subject of Jihad is probably the only subject in history in which an objective argument fails in eliminating persistent biased tones, especially tones of anger and disgust. Why? Because the extremity of historical truth in this matter is self-evident.

This book is probably bound, at first,to discourage most objective people with no bias towards Islam, from continuing to read it; it's definitely going to have Imams and sheiks shrieking for blood and to have devout Muslims, fanatics and moderates alike, insulted to a large degree, but a persistent reader who can ignore for a while the apparent hostility in this book, may slowly find out that this work rests its claims on many reliable sources that can be found in a rich bibliography and is an accurate portrayal of long-hidden historical facts that have been shrugged off by many as hogwash or kept in the closet by those too intimidated by the Muslim World in exposing as apparent truths the base and unequaled crimes committed by the Muslim World throughout its long forgotten history.

This book even goes so far as to critique Muslim teachings and the prophet's life itself, the very core of Islam, thus crushing the common argument that the Muslim World's actions (or rather today's fundamentalists') were never in concord with its inherent religion or its prophet. From a man who has lived all his life in the Arab world with Muslims, I can tell you that this book mentions and very effectively addresses most of the common Muslim cliches that are used in defense of this religion's barbaric history, most notably that the Crusades began the whole mess between Islam and the West, a totally false and ludicrous claim. Fregosi also focuses on the lives of Muhammad and the caliphs, the period of the Jihad from beginning to its unresolved present, the conditions of the conquered peoples' lives in most regions of the Muslim World, and on many informative primary sources. He also gives his own personal insight on the connection between the terrorists of today and the historical Jihad.

I strongly oppose any reviewers who think this book is just another work taken from the batch of rhetorical, uncredible, and evidence-lacking anti-Islamic trash. Yes, I did think so at first, and yes, Paul Fregosi does have a hostile view and expresses that quite strongly, but, he does this as a result of objective analysis where he doesn't fail to make concessions and to criticize (sometimes with the same sarcastic tone) every non-Islamic side for its faults throughout various periods of history. Neither does he cringe at mentioning the few benevolent and noble exceptions among the Islamic rulers. His notable final remarks are not consistent to those of a crusading fanatic. And rightfully, he discovers that his objective analysis and recognition of virtuous figures in Islam fail in changing the conclusion that Islam and its Empire were and still are as ruthless as he portrays them.

I highly recommend this book to everyone interested in a credible source for the Jihad; however, I warn biased readers who are looking to analyze this information objectively not to get carried away by Fregosi's attitude and "romance", and I strongly urge objective readers to look past it and concentrate on the facts and take Fregosi's conclusion seriously, no matter how stereotypical it may seem. However, any El Cid or Song of Roland admirer or lamenting Greek who simply wants to chuck the facts aside and wishes to basically indulge his hate or grief for the Muslims' "rape" of Spain or for the fall of Constantinople or the like will enjoy reading this book with its dramatic facts mixed in with the author's emotions (the fall of Constantinople is a must-read!).

This brilliant book is a wake up call and should have been out long ago, and as an "Arab" Catholic, I recommend it above all to those "Arab Christians" who still, after centuries of Muslim brainwashing, live with the delusion that they had lived peacefully with Muslims throughout their history, except under the Ottomans, and that Islam is a religion of peace that is similar to Christianity, when in truth it is a vile religion that had persecuted native Christians for centuries (by Arabs even more than by the Turks) and that, in effect had stolen their various languages and cultures, thus assimilating them and instilling in them the myth that they are and have been Arabs for centuries and that that all the Middle East had been Arabic since before Christ.

The events Fregosi reveals to us in his book reflect on the Middle East today, where Islam's brainwashing propaganda upon Christians and even Muslims,its restrictions upon the freedom of the Churches to even publicly teach the faithful their simple doctrinal rejection of Islam as a religion or to inform them of their past history of sufferings from the Muslims as well as the Muslims' preventing them evangelizing to produce future willing Muslim converts to Christianity have sunk to such low levels of degradation that I myself have heard people of my faith asking their priests, "Father, could Muhammad possibly be a prophet as well?" This book would surely answer that question and enlighten such lost people.

This book should not be ignored by anyone interested in medieval history or in discovering the motives behind Muslim propaganda. Its "zealotry" does require patience but one can learn a lot from its candidness. I dare say that I personally would consider Paul Fregosi worthy of a place among the well known and leading anti-Islamic polemics of our time

If you think Christianity has been the biggest bogeyman for millennia then you might want to check out this big book on imperialism of a different name.For 1,300 years Islam has been every bit as ruthless,insatiable for land and loot and ready for war as any force imaginable.This fact has been largely forgotten and mythologized(Orientalized)in the last 100-150 years,and Westerners(intellectuals mainly),uneasy over European-American dominance,have indulged in every guilt-mongering,apologetic, and hairshirt wearing antic imaginable to apologize for our contemporary dominance.The self-bashing of the West may at last be coming to its end precisely because the quaint cultures of old Islam that were so long patronized and cartoonized are suddenly real and spreading again...and they are far from quaint and cute and noble.This book would be best read by those who take a far too myopic,European view of history;people who think that religious intolerance,slavery,warmongering and every evil under the sun are strictly European specialties.

I finished reading Paul Fregosi's book two nights ago and am still thinking about it. This was a memorable and engaging work of history, vividly written. I thought Fregosi's work was well documented and well "sourced" from an historian's and academician's standpoint. I also thought his was an original contribution (and counterbalance) to the existing literature. The early Islamists were the original imperialists. Centuries before Spain began its empire in the New World or the Hapsburg's ruled theirs, the Arabic Empire under the Umayyads and the Abbasids had already subjected (and even forcibly enslaved) entire peoples across North Africa, southern Europe, Italy, Sicily and the Middle East at the point (literally) of the sword. The imperialist facets of early Islam are a fact. When viewed from the perspective of the Islamic conquests of Europe in the 7th-12th centuries, the Christian Crusades are revealed to be what they always were - a counter-jihad or counter-crusade. These were responses to the highly successful Jihad of the Muslims. Pope Urban lifted a page from the Muslim playbook and came up with the Crusade idea. This is detailed in the book with appropriate cites.

For all that, I thought Fregosi was fair, dispassionate and hard on both sides of these wars. At not several but MANY points in the book he condemns violence committed by both sides. I think he goes to some pains to indicate he is not anti-Muslim by sticking to the facts and by equally condemning all violence. Smart thing too, since some Muslims can display a tendency to violently react to anyone who criticizes or asks uncomfortably honest questions about their culture, faith, past military history, warrior-mentality, etcetera. Salman Rushdie is just the most famous victim of this reflex to condemn those who write or say things people of the Islamic faith don't like. Taslima Nasrin of Bangledesh is another example of a writer who has felt Islam's wrath. There are others languishing in jails who are less known to us in the West who did not tow the right Islamic line. So, Fregosi displayed some courage to write so eloquently on this type of subject.

Fregosi's humanism, compassion, his passionate hope for a better and less violent future come through in his dedication (read it to see what I mean) and his final chapter, among other places. Fregosi can be tart, humorous, yes - a bit sarcastic too, but always, always, there is a caring, deeply morally concerned human being writing the story who mourns the deaths of so many. At some, more subliminal level, there is a deep sadness that permeates this book. Fregosi is by no means a "happy warrior" out to "get Islam." He mourns the torture, death, violence and enslavement of so many. He mourns the human rights abuses and abuse of women by the Arab empire and the Ottoman empire. He mourns the genocide committed by these regimes. I suspect he must have been under some psychological duress when he wrote his book given the seriousness of the subject matter. That too comes through. But there are also WONDERFUL real life heroes and leaders of wisdom, vision and compassion on both sides. And he happily discusses those individuals as well. I met some wonderful people in this book and they deserve to be remembered by us today.

...I can honestly recommend it.

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.

Paul Fergosi has presented an history that clarifies many of the most bitter ethnic, religious, and political conflicts that are destabilizing the world today. His writing style is compellingly readable. Some may be surprized that history can be both informative and satisfying ("entertaining" would be an inappropriate word, though it comes to mind.) This book presents an abridged chronology of world-shaping events and people. There WERE truly heroic and evil individuals behind the works of fiction such as "The Lord of the Rings" that will be recognizable to even the casual reader. The battles of good versus evil, and not-so-good versus evil, and evil versus evil, are often horrific, and are presented as such, with heroism or duplicity or incompetence presented without silly notions of moral equivalence or political correctness. You learn of the events that created the hates between Serbs and Bosnians, Turks and Greeks. I've read many books, ranging from the dry and rather detached to the hysterical, liking Thomas Sowell's "Conquests and Cultures," Samuel Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order," and the English translations of Bat Ye'or's books on Dhimmi. They won't appeal to the casual reader the way this book will, even if it is just because it contains descriptions of mayhem and a gay revolt. This book should be read because it helps define what the West is contending with today. As Huntington said on page 217, op. cit."The problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, it's Islam,..." The people teaching history in high schools and colleges today don't KNOW history, or they choose to ignore it. My children have all had college-level history classes, and even in upper-division courses, were fed non-sense about the "diffusion of Islam" around the world. The latter courses were post-9-11.

This is an excellent book which is long overdue. The author and the publisher deserves much praise for their courage as this book is not only about military history but opens the eyes of the non-Muslim world, especially the West, to what Islam truly is, contrary to what Muslims wish to portray.

Most Westerners I know perceive that all religions are the same. In this regard, there are two completely opposite views (although ironically, both reach the same aforesaid conclusion) which are as follows :
1) that all religions promote friction, war and hatred;
2) that all religions promote peace and love and abhors violence.

With regards to the first view, there are evil men from all faiths, some of whom use religion as a vehicle to drive towards their own goals and for justifying their own wicked deeds. In such cases, religion should not be attributed as the cause, in the same way cars should not be blamed for causing road accidents. In response to the latter view, indeed all major religions do promote love and peace save for one.

The Quran says:
"Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection."

What this book has succeeded in pointing out is that Osama and Ayatollah Khomeini did not come up with the concept of Jihad. The Quran did !!! Jihad is Muhammad's equivalent to Jesus' "Go ye and preach the gospel to the world". The Quran divides the world into the Abode of Peace (the Lands of Islam) and the Abode of War (the Lands of the Infidels) which should be conquered and subjugated by the faithful. The "offer" given to an unbeliever conquered in a Jihad is this: accept Islam or die. For Christians, Jews and other peoples of the Book, there exist a third option; to become a dhimmi, who had very little rights (ie. imagine, he was not even allowed to defend himself if he or his wife was attacked by a Muslim without reason) and was heavily taxed. Convert to Islam and problems solved.

Time and again, Muslims and their Western apologists often cite the predicament of the Spanish Jews after the conquest of Granada and how they lived "happily ever after" after migrating to the Ottoman Empire. What they conveniently fail to mention is the fact that the religion in which the great Spanish-Jewish philosopher, Maimonides, was compelled to convert to was Islam and not Christianity; that Sabbetai Zevi (the "Jewish Messiah"), a Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire was forced to accept Islam on the pain of death and commissioned to evangelize the Jews for Islam; that in Morocco prior to the European colonization, the Jews were living under intense oppression; that the descendants of the Sephardim who had migrated to England, Holland, France, Italy and later on America, have achieved far greater wealth and success than those who have migrated to Muslim lands; that on the eve of the holocaust the overwhelming majority of the world's Jewry was of European origin, whilst the Jewish population in Persia and North Africa which use to number in the millions in ancient times have greatly diminished.

In contrast to Jihad, the Inquisition and the Crusades were in direct contravention with the fundamentals of Christianity. The Bible teaches those who live by the sword shall die by the sword and all murderers shall be cast into the lake of fire. If the Bible is the word of God, then the Crusaders (who sought to "save" the then Christian Middle East from the Muslims) and the Inquisitors' of Ferdinand and Isabella's Catholic Spain would probably be now languishing in hell even if they sincerely believe that they were doing it for God. On the other hand, those who die in a Jihad (or the war against unbelievers for the purpose of propagating Islam) are justly rewarded with a place in Paradise with 70 virgins each for their enjoyment. Again, this is from the Quran and not another lie and slander against Islam. One cannot blame the martyrs in Jihad for trying to be more like the Prophet himself.

On the historical aspect, this book reminds us of how great a threat Islam was to Europe. So many national heroes of European nations such as Albania's George Kastrioti (Skanderberg), Spain's Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar (El Cid), Hungary's Janos Hunyandi, Serbia's Prince Lazar, Malta's French-born Jean Parisot de Valette, Poland's John Sobieski fought to stem the Muslim tide. Muslims decry the treatment of their coreligionists in Bosnia but fail to ask how Islam got there in the first place.

On a more personal note, all my Muslim acquaintances without exception, strongly support the Sept 11th attack. It is a paradox when they say to America "show me proof that Osama did it" whilst regarding Osama as a hero, because if they did not believe that he was behind it, they would not have revered him as such. Even my not so pious, alcohol-drinking Muslim friends, admire Osama the same way a lukewarm Catholic would admire his priest who had the strength to make the hard choice of giving up the world to take up the cross.Why? Read this book.

Jihad is not a work of scholarship, thank goodness. To see why I think this a virtue, compare what the Oxford History of Islam (edited by John Esposito, whom one critic below recommends in place of Fregosi) says about the Muslim conquerer, Tamerlane. On page 352 of Esposito's book, there is a picture of Tamerlane's tomb. "His majestic blue-domed tomb epitomizes the splendour of Timurid architecture," the caption reads. That's about all you get in 700 plus pages. Here's Fregosi, on the other hand: "Constantinople was, however, saved for another half century thanks to the intrusion of another massacrer of men, women, and children even viler than Bajazet: the Mongol Timurlane, Muslim ruler of Samarkand, who on his career of conquest across Asia . . . (left) huge piles of decapitated heads as a memento of his visit."

If you think tiles more important than human beings, Esposito is the man for you, by all means. Personally, I found it refreshing to come across a historian who has less to say about art than about people.

Still, the two volumes can be read as complementary. The Oxford authors admit, for example, (let the critics below take note) that at the heart of the Ottoman theology was a "divinely given mission to conquer the world." Esposito tends to look the other way while the killing is going on, as if out of politeness, while Fregosi thinks we should take a long, hard look at what happened, and figure out why.

The book may sound depressing. I bought it from duty. But I found myself reading it for pleasure, though skipping some of the worst parts

Jihad is good reading. Fregosi sprinkles the text with poignant anecdotes and poetic lines. "If I have to choose, I prefer to be a camel-driver in Africa rather than a swineherd in Castile." "Behold the furthest limits of Andalusia which I have trampled underfoot." "If thou wilt not this day help thy children the Christians, at least do not help those dogs the Turks." He gives tongue-in-cheek asides on the important in history of wine, women, and song. (Though sometimes repeats his favorite lines a bit too often -- "cherchez la femme" in particular.) Best of all, he knows that a story needs a hero -- and there is real-life material enough in this book for several great movies.

Fregosi follows the method of Solzhenitsyn of passion directed into sardonic anger. He is not as good as Solzhenitsyn, of course. This is not great literature; just a good book, a romance in the old sense, and a vital piece of history.

It is also about as politically incorrect as you can get. This is not only because the author portrays Mohammed as a bloody tyrant. (Accurately. See Rodinson's biography for details.) Nor is it because he describes jihad, in the military sense, as an Islamic dogma. (Contrary to the reviewer below, even Oxford agrees, defining jihad, at least for "Muslim exoterists," as "war of Islamic expansion.") Worst of all, he dares to suggest that, while "Christians" often fail to act like Christ, the fundamentals of Christianity and Islam are radically different, and that Jesus had a better idea than Mohammed.

I can understand why Muslims, and some sensitive Westerners, would find this offensive. Proposing that in their essentials, religions actually differ, and that those differences really affect human history, is to many Western liberals like saying the sky is purple. I suggest that those who believe that Islam is essentially a tolerant and peaceful religion work to bring about a situation in which free religious debate becomes possible even in places like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and persecution of people of other faiths, and denegration of women, become a lot rarer in the Muslim world.

author, Jesus and the Religions of Man

Fregosi undertakes what turns out to be a prodigious task, describing jihad by the Muslims against Europe since the inception of Islam. He confines himself exclusively to Europe, but due to the relentless and unrelenting nature of jihad this book ends up being a rather superficial treatment of European jihad. This book was written before 9-11 and its politically correct perspective reflects that pre-911 mentality. Fregosi bends over backwards to treat both sides even-handedly at times even going so far as to draw a moral equivalency between the two. This despite the fact, in his own words, "Muslims who kill are following the commands of Muhammad, but Christians who kill - and there are many - are ignoring the words of Christ. Therein perhaps lies one of the basic philosophical differences, as well as one of the basic ethical differences, between Islam and Christianity." Perhaps?! Just perhaps this is one of the basic philosophical differences?!

Despite Fregosi's reluctance to call a spade a spade this remains an excellent catalog of Islam's ruthless supremacist imperialistic ideology. For at its heart Islam is an ideology rather than a religion. In assessing the nature of Islam William Gladstone put it best: "They [Muslims] were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as far as their dominion reached, civilization disappeared from view. They represented everywhere government by forces opposed to government by law."

Winston Churchill said, "The influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."

William Durant in his "The Story of Civilization" succinctly stated, [Islam is] "probably the bloodiest story in history." He called it a "discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within." The bitter lesson, Durant concluded, was that "eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but keep its powder dry."

Despite the bleakness of his topic Fregosi manages to be funny at times and at others waxes poetic. Though Fregosi refuses to draw undeniable conclusions from his own material this is an exceptional book and an excellent description of Durant's "bloodies story in history," Gladstone's "broad line of blood," and Churchill's "militant and proselytizing faith." I strongly recommend this book.

Reading this book is to discover a lost history of a besieged and battered Europe that was either glossed over or treated very superficially in History of Western Civilization 101.

Paul Fregosi deserves a great deal of credit for returning this history to those of us who are sorely tired of the "hate the West" propaganda that our intellectual elites pump out on a daily basis. The latest version of this phenom is the "Islamic civilization good, Christendom civilization bad" paradigm that is so prevalent in Western media and academia today. An anonymous academic of Islamic studies recently told the NY Times, "You can't say anything but sugary nonsense about Islam on college campuses today." The powerful twin silencers of our political correctness cult and the threat of violence a la the Rushdie affair have colluded to deprive us of the true history of Islamic civilization, even here in the "free" West.

Undeterred by the fact that the originally intended publisher of this book, Little Brown, declined to publish his book due to fear of a violent Rushdie-like reaction, the courageous Fregosi dishes out anything but sugary nonsense in this well-written book.

He introduces us to a long line of Ottoman Sultans who make the worst medieval monarchs of France or England look like Boy Scouts in comparison. Using the Quranic verse denouncing "mischief as worse than homicide" as justification, the triumphant heirs to the Ottoman throne routinely murdered their brothers, sons, half-brothers, male cousins and nephews to ensure a "peaceful" succession to the trhone. (Even three-year-old toddlers and pregnant concubines of the previous Sultan were not spared). Each Sultan and most wealthy nobles maintained huge harems of women captured by slavers to serve as "concubines" -- i.e. sex slaves who had little choice in the matter. Even in the pre-Enlightenment times, Westerners would have considered this practice as "rape" but the Ottoman nobles considered it God's law as outlined in the Quran. The Ottomans also depended heavily on assassination as both a domestic and foreign policy tool. Those who displeased the Sultan, high or low, could count on a silent throttling or poisoning or summary beheading on any pretext, without benefit of trial. One Sultan had his entire harem of nearly three hundred concubines executed simply because he suspected that one of them was unfaithful.

That was the way that the Ottomans treated their own kind; imagine how they treated those they considered their "enemies." Here's an example: when one Ottoman conqueror slaughtered a garrison of several hundred Christian troops guarding a Mediterranean fort, he had their dead bodies laid out in a huge rectangle and ordered wooden planks to be placed upon them. Then he and his troops gathered around this unusual table and ate a picnic meal off of it.

Fregosi outlines the constant, often unilateral attacks that were visited on European Christendom by first the Moors and secondly, the Ottomans. He introduces us to long-forgotten heroes who fought valiantly to stem the tide of these vicious attacks: Janos Hunyadi of Hungary; Jan III Sobieski of Poland, Skanderberg of Albania; Don Juan of Austria (today, chiefly remembered as the prototypical "Latin Lover" rather than the hero of the decisive naval Battle of Lepanto, which checked Ottoman hegemony in the Mediterraneon.) He rehabilitates the image of the much-maligned Isabella of Spain and correctly points out that the Reconquesta of Spain -- often portrayed by the politically correct as the regrettable triumph of Christian fanaticism over Muslim "tolerance" -- was actually the brutal nationalistic struggle of an indigenous people intent on driving out an alien occupier. (After all, the official language of "Muslim Spain" was Arabic, not Spanish.)

I am not opposed to giving Islamic civilization its due for its many positive achievements. But neither do I support the current fashion of softening, disguising and discounting the dark side of this belief system's past, out of fear of causing another Rushdie situation or for the politically correct sake of avoiding the "hurt feelings" of Muslims. All other religions and belief systems are subjected to rigorous analysis in our popular press, on our college campuses and in scholarly books. We do a disservice to ourselves when we exempt Islam from this process because of fear or political correctness, but this is the prevailing norm we encounter today, except for those rare instances when a courageous author like Paul Fregosi steps forward to remind us of the truth.

As another reviewer noted, this book is a welcome antidote to prevailing propaganda pumped out by "historians" such as Karen Armstrong. Published by an obscure house called Prometheus Books, this work doesn't have the benefit of the marketing budget or cushy magazine reviews that push along a Karen Armstrong book. But it has gained an audience, largely through word of mouth. I recommend that readers not only purchase it but pass it along to their friends to continue this word of mouth trend.

This is the first thing I have ever read from Paul Fregosi and he gained my immediate admiration, not just as a person, but as a writer who is not afraid to convey his message without mincing words. Readers will instantly notice a total lack of political correctness in Fregosi's work. Too many writers today are scared to "offend" the reader. You won't find that here. Fregosi has a message to send and he lays it right out. I'm sure many Muslims and Muslim apologists will be offended by this work, but that's okay. Let them dispute it with facts of their own.

Muslims and others of the anti-Christian crowd like to cite the Crusades as the beginning of the Jihad, but Fregosi blows that out of water by giving 1,300 years of examples of Jihad. He begins by giving the reader a look into the origins of the Islamic faith. Fregosi cuts right to the chase by exposing the Prophet Muhammad for what he truly was; a thief, a pedophile and a murderer. I get the picture of a Charles Manson with 600,000,000 followers. He goes on to expose many of the myths perpetrated by the Islamic faith, such as the Holiness of Jerusalem to the Muslims. We have been force fed to believe Jerusalem holds significant religious value to the Muslims because Muhammad spent time there. It turns out, his only time there by way of a "night walk" which appears to have been little more than a 7th century acid trip. In short, Fregosi gives us information about Islam that we will never get from the evening news.

I don't want to give the false impression that this is little more than Islam bashing, because that is not the case. Fregosi also goes out of his way to present two sides to this story. When Christians and other groups wrongly treated or abused Muslims, Fregosi is quick to point it out.

This isn't just a book about Jihad either. This book gives the reader a basic insight into much about the Arab world that is largely unknown to western culture, such as politics, in-fighting among Arabs, social trends and much more. I know of no other source where the reader can obtain so much information about the Muslim world in a single volume.

As this book has been on the market for several years now, it has been condemned by many who claim it to be a work of biased hatred. To those people I would simply ask a few true or false questions.

1) Fregosi states that Islamic Jihad against the infidels has been going on for over 1,300 years. True or False

2) In a March 1941 radio address from Berlin to the Arab countries, the Grand Mufti, al-Haj Mohamed Amin al Hussein, called on his listeners to "kill the Jews wherever you find them," for, he said, "this pleases God, history and religion." True or False

3) Islam considers itself doctrinally a religion where destiny is to dominate and rule the world. True or False

4) History gives us undisputable evidence that the Prophet Muhammad was a thief, a pedophile and a murderer. True or False

If one were able to dispute that all of these and many other statements were true, then you might be able to call this book a work of biased hatred, but they are all true statements. If detractors chose to be obtuse about the truth and be obdurate in their belief, then that is their problem, not the authors.

The cold, hard, non-politically correct truth is, the predominantly Christian west is at war with the Muslim world. That war isn't going to stop in our lifetimes. If you believe, as I do, that it is best to know your enemy, then this book is a must read. If you think the Muslim desire to destroy the infidel was brought about by recent western interference in the Middle East, then wake up and buy this book.