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Paul Fregosi

Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries Hardcover – Illustrated, October 1, 1998

by Paul Fregosi (Author)

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"Jihad," the Muslim holy war against Christians and others, has raged for 1,300 years with bloody conquests in Europe dating from campaigns to convert the infidels in the 7th century to today's random acts of terrorism in the name of Allah. Yet this huge unrecorded "hole" in European history has been censored and stifled by political and literary authorities who have feared reprisals from angry Muslims trying to hide a legacy of brutality vastly more bloody and six times longer in duration than the atrocities of the crusades.This is the engrossing factual account of the immense and little-known Islamic military invasions of Europe, and the major players who led them, beginning around 650 CE. The Islamic Arabs (and later the Moors) occupied a number of the Mediterranean Islands, and invaded Spain and Portugal in 711 CE, and ruled over much of the Iberian peninsula for the next 800 years. France was attacked and invaded, as was Italy, and the European coasts all the way to Ireland and Iceland. The Muslims swept over the Balkans, besieged Vienna, and were intermittent masters of Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary into the 19th century, destroying the Byzantines and conquering Constantinople (turning it into Istanbul). Ambitious and unrelenting, the Muslims also sought to conquer Austria and Russia.

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Editorial Reviews

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Jihad is back, says Paul Fregosi, but this current incarnation has a long history behind it. From the start, Islamic fundamentalism has intended to expand the Muslim religion to encompass the entire world through conversion, or, in many instances, violence. Yet until now it has lacked a general historical narrative: "The jihad has been the most unrecorded and disregarded major event of history," writes Fregosi. Jihad in the West attempts to describe the history of Islamic and European conflict over 1,500 years, including moments such as the climactic battle at Tours (if the Moors had won it in 732, much of Europe might be Muslim today), the sieges of Vienna, and the Barbary Corsairs (the battle U.S. Marines refer to when they sing about "the shores of Tripoli"). Such a sweep necessarily sacrifices detail for breadth, yet it still provides a helpful backdrop to understanding a religious movement that has played a prominent role in late-20th-century terrorism. Many Muslims will quarrel with Fregosi when he compares jihad to a Christian sacrament, and the book would benefit from footnotes. Jihad in the West nevertheless is a good introduction to an often-ignored topic. --John J. Miller

From Booklist

Although not The Satanic Verses, this book is sure to raise much of the same issues and ire, and come into demand simply because of its notoriety. It is a look at the darker side of the Islamic religion, from its inception with Muhammad up through the first half of this century, lightly touching on recent decades. Fregosi shows that jihad, or holy war, did not come about as a reaction to the Crusades but has been a continually integral part of Islam. While not excusing the barbarities of Christianity, he highlights how Islam has been particularly ruthless in its acquisition of lands and wealth and in dealing with those who have stood in its path. Although most of this history is well documented and factually indisputable, the author will likely generate considerable umbrage with his interpretation of many of Muhammad's actions and suryas (teachings) as manifesting a self-serving nature. This title is a highly recommended, if problematic, historical perspective, suitable for most libraries. Eric Robbins

Publisher : Prometheus (October 1, 1998)
Language: : English
Hardcover : 442 pages
ISBN-10 : 1573922471
ISBN-13 : 978-1573922470
Item Weight : 1.1 pounds
Dimensions : 5.6 x 1.09 x 8.4 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,048,519 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #590 in History of Islam
- #1,261 in History of Judaism
- #1,601 in Middle Eastern Politics

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72 ratings

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B. Horner

Difficult to Overstate the Critical Importance of This Book Today

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2017

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It is difficult to overstate the importance of this book, at this point in history. Fergrosi's "Jihad" is an excellent source of education for the vast majority of people in the West today who have never learned the facts about Islam's historic "Jihad" doctrine. The simple, undeniable fact is, Islam has been at war with the non-Islamic world from the first days of it's existence. Europe and the West in particular have been at war almost continuously for 1,400 years. That fact is not well understood because the war has been fought both in secret and on the battlefields of the world. While "JIhad" focuses exclusively on the age-old conflict between Islam and Europe, Islam has also been waging war of various kinds all over the world. Fregrosi wisely chose to limit his tome to the Islam/Europe conflict. The gory result of that conflict throughout history is now well documented, but still largely unknown. For example, most people have no idea that Islam ruled over the Balkan nations for over 400 years, subjugating the non-Muslims as slaves in their own lands. This book will stem the tide of ignorance that has kept the West blissfully insulated from the truth.
Today, this conflict between Europe and Islam is again on the rise. Sadly, this time, it is rising because the governments of the European Continent have no intention of stopping it and are even proactively importing Muslims by the tens of thousands - the vast majority being military aged men- into their countries. The results are disastrous and the disasters are, as any clear-thinking person could have easily predicted, growing in number and intensity. In the past, European nations were able to eventually defeat the Muslim invaders who sought, for over a thousand years, to conquer Europe. It is not clear that they even have the will to do so today. Hence the critical importance of this book. The old adage remains true - those who remain ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.

7 people found this helpful

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Monty Rainey

Critical Insight

Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2004

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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.

29 people found this helpful

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JAK

Highly recommended

Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2015

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This book will expose the history behind today's conflicts from the Sunni/Shitte divide to the beliefs & strategy of ISIS. In fact it is a lot easier to understand that the claim of ISIS that they represent the true Islam has some support from history. The Crusades were like child's play compared to the aggression & depravity of Muslims starting in the seventh century & continuing until today. Political correctness & fear muffles the truth.

5 people found this helpful

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Paul Jackson

Good read - important read

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2006

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For an ordinary history of wars, rulers and kingdoms, this book is a remarkably good read. It's fun and easy reading, that's hard to put down. I found myself thumbing through the book when I had finished, disappointed that there was no more, looking for perhaps some part of a chapter that I had missed. The author has wonderful sense of humour. At the same time, he's presenting the 1300 years of history of almost unrelenting war, driven by Islam's efforts to conquer and convert Europe and Christianity. The war has ebbed and flowed over the centuries, and is ebbing again, funded by oil. This is history we must know, to understand where we are now, and how brutal we will need to become, before we push back this latest onslaught. The death toll for this latest round in a war of civilizations lasting over a millenium has hardly begun to be taken. Islam is a cancer on human civilization. We might have thought we were in remission, but oil money has reinvigorated the cancer, and a shrinking world means that no place is a far away place anymore.

21 people found this helpful

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Kenneth Brown

Read to counter-balance Western media propaganda about the so called Religion of Peace

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 5, 2018

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You have got to read this! It describes the constant warring by and invasions by Islam, specifically warring against Europe. Constant for 1300/1400 years - and it's not over of course. Sometimes the author (or perhaps the translator, as it's translated from the French) seems to be a bit over the top, but read it to help counter-balance the propaganda the Western media and political establishment feeds us with all the time.

Eduardo

Excellent condition. And I think I am going to ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 31, 2015

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The book arrived as expected. Excellent condition. And I think I am going to have much satisfaction when reading it. I have already read some pages and it doesn't disappoint me at all.

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 25, 2018

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Great book. ANd very quick service :-)

M. D Roberts

Correcting popular misconceptions.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 19, 2006

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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.

24 people found this helpful

Token

An invaluable addition to the history of Islam and the West.

Reviewed in Canada on June 7, 2017

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An excellent history of the conflict between Islam and the West. Unfortunately Fregosi died before the events of 9/11 so w don't get his perspective on that. A follow up on the conflict between Islam and the various civilizations of the Far East and Indian subcontinent would have been welcome too.

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Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries Hardcover – Illustrated, October 1, 1998

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