Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between I… (2025)

Let me preface by saying the author's biases are so extreme, and so divergent from the mainstream perspective of Islam within my culture, that I cannot imagine his framing and conclusions are actually correct. But, this book has set me off to do further research and try to figure out what in the actual fuck is going on.

Still, the history in the book, as brought to life by historical accounts from both sides, completely changed the way I view the history of Europe in general and in the context of the Islamic world in particular. It was just one bombshell after another. From the millions and millions of European/Christian slaves being taken from the inception of Islam into the 19th (!!!) century, the framing of the Islamic world as one that was formerly and for many centuries Christian before the founding of Islam and subsequent conquest via jihad, the clarification that the first Crusades were missions of reconquest and emancipation with deeply pious origins, the significance of Yarmouk in the history of civilization, the role of the Vikings as providers of white slaves to the Islamic world, the ways that slave raiding from Vikings in the north and Islam in the south pushed fearful people inland in search of protection playing a meaningful role in the feudal system and acceleration of the Dark Ages, and onward.

As a socially liberal person and someone predisposed to assume conciliatory narratives about the nature of Islam and an assumption that the Christians were the oppressors as opposed to the oppressed, this book has given me a lot to think about. Was Moorish Spain not the socially tolerant center for learning and knowledge that I had believed? How the heck is it possible the Islamic world was the torchbearer of science and knowledge for centuries given the realities shared in the book? The Barbary Pirates were slavers, part of a tradition of Christian slavery stretching more than a thousand years?

I'm now open to being very wrong about a lot of different things. But I'm not going to take Ibrahim's word on it. I'm going to read and learn more and try to understand what the heck is really going on. I am thankful to him for exposing me to these things and giving me the impetus to thus do so.

We are told, over and over, that Islam is a religion of peace and that saying or believing otherwise is insulting to the 4 billion Muslims in the world. This attitude completely ignores thousands of years of conflict between Muslims and Christians (now identified as "the West.) History did not begin with Western Imperialism. Slavery did not originate in the Unites States. Muslim Imperialism lasted from 630 to the end of the Ottoman Empire after WWI. It enslaved millions of people from all of the lands it conquered. The Crusades were not an example of "aggression" against peaceful Muslims. The Crusades were intended to take back the Holy Lands from the Muslim conquerors.

Islam is only a "religion of peace" if you are a Muslim. That seems fairly obvious from any reading of the Koran (the Islamic sacred book, believed to be the word of God as dictated to Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel and written down in Arabic) or the Hadith (a collection of traditions containing sayings of the prophet Muhammad) or the Sunnah (all the traditions and practices" of the Islamic prophet that "have become models to be followed" by Muslims.) Anyone not belonging to the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam) belongs to the Dar al-harb (House of War.) The "denizens of the Dar al-harb, the House of War, who remain outside the Islamic frontier, and with whom therefore there is in principle, a canonically obligatory perpetual state of war until the whole world is either converted or subjugated." See The Multiple Identities of the Middle East p. 121-122.

In pre-Islamic Arabia, tribal raids were the means for advancement or material gain. You attacked a neighboring tribe, killed their men, stole their stuff, and enslaved their women. It was pretty much a zero-sum game. What was different about Islam is that Muhammad promised that if your tribe joined the Islamic Ummah, he would not attack your tribe. On the other hand, you were obligated to attack any tribe NOT of the Ummah. As a reward, the booty would be fairly divided. According to Muhammad, anyone who avoided participating in the raids would "be tortured like no other sinful human."

"Non-Muslims are described in the Koran as 'vile animals and beasts, the worst of creataures and demons; perverted transgressors and partners of Satan to be fought until religion is Allah's alone. They are to be beheaded; terrorized, annihilated, crucified, punished, and expelled, and plotted against by deceit.'" (p. 4) Muslims are obligated to attack and subjugate (carry out jihad against) the "infidels" until the entire world has submitted to Islam.

Ibrahim's main argument is that Islam motivated jihadiis with both temporal and eternal rewards. It was the promise of booty and slaves in this life, juxstaposed with the promise of never-ending sex with women who had dark eyes and large breasts if you were killed, that motivated the fervor of Muslim warriors. You didn't really even have to be sincere in your religious beliefs as long as you fought to "open the way" for Islam.

If you undertook jihad, you did not need to uphold the requirements for prayers or fasting. All your sins were instantly forgiven. Ibrahim backs up his contention that those who undertook jihad were not obligated to have sincere or pious intentions with quotes from Muhammad, and many verses from the Koran. In other words, if you were fighting out of a desire for booty alone, that was perfectly ok. You were revered for waging successful jihads on the infidel no matter how un-Islamic your life.

What Ibrahim does in this book is to document what the Muslims have actually done to and in the West for centuries using a huge variety of primary and secondary sources across time and in a variety of languages. Ibrahim focuses on the major or most profound military encounters between Islam and the West that have shaped history, and illustrate the continuity of Islamic motives (booty and slaves) and method.

The entire civilized world at the time of the Islamic conquests was Christian, and shared a centuries old Greco-Roman heritage. When the "Saracens" overan your town or village, you had three choices: convert to Islam, pay an exhorbitant tax, or die. Sometimes, the choices were two: Submit or die. Ibrahim spares no detail of what it was like to be attacked by Muslim warriors. It was sort of appalling to read about the death, wanton destruction, devastation, burning alive, skinning alive, impalement, rape, pillage, and slavery that accompanied the spread of Islam. And this was over 14 centuries. A contemporary chronicle ends his bloodshed-riddled account with "But let us say no more, for it is impossible to describe the horrors the Muslims committed."

Interesting and should be considered here.
Raymond Ibrahim was invited to talk about his book at the Army War College. Then he was "uninvited" after pressure from Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

According to Melanie Phillips:"They claimed (without any evidence) that the book “advances an Orientalist and inaccurate view of Islam” and that its “simplistic and flawed version of history — riddled with prejudiced stereotypes of Islam — espouses a dangerous agenda that demonises Muslims.”

Ibrahim, they said, was a “racist” and “Islamophobe” and guilty of “white nationalism”. If allowed to speak before American soldiers, he would “normalise and justify violence against Muslims, which is already a burgeoning problem for the military.”

Melanie Phillips: “The US Army War College Surrenders to Intimidation”
07/09/2019 by Raymond Ibrahim
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2019/0...

Ibrahim's response to CAIR accusations can be found here:
Q&A on War College/CAIR Fiasco
07/02/2019 by Raymond Ibrahim
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2019/0...

Very nearly 5 stars. You must read the Foreword and Preface sections. Definitions of "West" and for what territory of the Mideast was labeled Syria etc. ARE within the earliest parts of this 1000 year history essential to the equivocations and the progressions.

Not an easy read and the people who say this doesn't give historic reality of the 6 prime battles? Ridiculous. References and source material are so lengthy they seem endless. Footnotes too become specific to quotes of exact Koran wording. The book is a tome with all the resource listings.

We were taught this very piecemeal in the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's. For sure. And not taught the actual Koran and original premises of speech in Muslim beginnings or the invasions of the earliest periods. Nor the core cement of tribalism which is the key. That's just as bad as making the Crusades much later an offensive based strategy as we were lead to believe. It never was. It was an attempt to reestablish Christian land/rule for populations that had become slave fodder.

The pure brutality of this 1000 year invasion/ conquering practices and wars is terrible to read. Against your own family too at times which is beyond my cognitive ability to understand.

But I do recommend reading it. The quotes (100's) are worth the read alone. I did know Islam meant "submit". I didn't really understand what that curtailed and contained in the process or viability to "submission" of afterwards. Although I read the Koran about 25 years ago- I understand the jihad and the core of belief (especially if there is no true practicing and only the required words repeated) now much better.

My professor back in the early 1990's had his tires slashed and car robbed (Community College parking lot) and ruined for teaching the Koran's directives. It was the day after the readings for the passage about committing frauds, duplicity, crime etc. which are approved and highly sanctioned by the necessity to submit the entire unbelieving infidels.

In his 1996 bestseller, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington argued “culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest are civilization identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War world.” He went on to describe several civilizational cohorts, but a comment on Islam is germane here: “In the early 1990s, Muslims were engaged in more intergroup violence than were non-Muslims, and two-thirds to three-quarters of intercivilizational wars were between Muslims and non-Muslims.” Then came his famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) conclusion: “Islam’s bordersarebloody and so are its innards.”

Raymond Ibrahim neither quotes nor cites Huntington in Sword and Scimitar—and of course, Huntington can’t be held responsible for Ibrahim’s scholarship since he’s dead—but I get the impression that Ibrahim would assent to Huntington’s characterization of Islam, then kick it up a notch. Here’s how he describes the book’s thesis in the Preface:

“Sword and Scimitardocuments how the West and Islam have been mortal enemies since the latter’s birth some fourteen centuries ago. It does this in the context of narrating their military history, with a focus on their most landmark encounters, some of which have had a profound impact on the shaping of the world. However, unlike most military histories—which no matter how fascinating are ultimately academic—this one offers timely correctives: it sets the much distorted historical record between the two civilizations straight and, in so doing, demonstrates once and for all that Muslim hostility for the West is not an aberration but a continuation of Islamic history.”

Islam’s borders have been bloody since its inception, in other words.

Ibrahim argues in favor of this thesis by tracing the causes, fighting, and outcomes of eight key battles between “Islam and the West,” as the book’s subtitle puts it. Four were won by Muslim forces, four by Christian forces. The key battles are, in order, Yarmuk (636), Constantinople (717), Tours (732), Manzikert (1071), Hattin (1187), Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), Constantinople again (1453), and Vienna (1683). His narration of those events is riveting, often drawing on contemporary Christian and Muslim sources. Moreover, he shows the relationship of these battles to other practices, especially Islamic slavery and the Christian Crusades.

Obviously, Ibrahim’s is not a politically correct thesis. Essentially, it blames Islam for centuries of violence against what its author variously describes as “the West” or “Christendom.” Specifically, it identifies the source of that violence as the command of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, as expressed in both the Koran and the most authoritative Hadith. “I have been commanded to wage war against mankind,” Ibrahim quotes the prophet as saying, “until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

It is tempting to dismiss this interpretation of Islam out of hand, but it is an old one. Ibrahim cites both Muslim explanations for and Christian denunciations of the warfare that erupted out of Arabia from the get-go. The Battle of Yarmuk, for example, took place in 636, just four years after the death of Muhammad. In the late fourteenth century, Manuel II Palailogos, heir to the throne of Constantinople, but then a hostage in the court of Turkish Sultan Bayezid, said, “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread the sword the faith he preached.” Pope Benedict XVI quoted these words in his 2006 speech at Regensburg, and several anti-Christian riots erupted in a few places in the Muslim world, which seemed to some to prove his point.

We often think of the relationship between the West and the Muslim ummaas one of colonizer and colonized, respectively. That’s a somewhat accurate way to describe their relationship since the eighteenth century, but until then, it’s just as plausible to reverse the relationships. Until largely Catholic forces under Jan Sobieski defeated Kara Mustafa Pasha before the gates of Vienna on September 12, 1683, the relationship was often the reverse. Successive waves of Muslim colonizers controlled formerly Christian lands, first in the Middle East and Africa, then in parts of southern and eastern Europe. (Ibrahim doesn’t mention the expansion of Islam in other lands). We’re accustomed in this postmodern age to read history from its underside. Ibrahim isn’t a postmodernist by any stretch of the imagination, but much of his narration depends on reminding readers what the defeated Christian populations of the once Christianized Roman empire thought of their new Islamic overlords. It’s definitely an underside perspective.

Still, I have significant reservations about the book. First, Ibrahim positions that book as a history of warfare between “Islam” and the “West.” But by “West,” he really means “Christendom,” which included both western and eastern halves. With the exception of Moorish Spain, it’s the eastern half of Christendom that has been subject to Muslim control the longest. But more problematically, both “Islam” and “Christendom” are complex realities, whose essence is difficult to define. As a Pentecostal, for example, I’m not sure I want to be on the hook for the Crusades, as important as they may have been to medieval Christendom, let alone the cozy Constantinian relationship between Church and State that preceded it. Obviously, I can’t speak for Muslims, but if I were them, I’m not sure I’d buy Ibrahim’s essentialist understanding of Islam as jihadist.

Second, methodologically, by focusing on battles, Ibrahim paints a picture of Christian-Islamic relations that emphasizes warfighting but deemphasizes day-to-day realities. Ibrahim’s subtitle speaks of “fourteen centuries of war between Islam and the West,” but in reality, the battles were not nonstop. They occurred, then things settled down into an equilibrium. We shouldn’t paint too rosy a picture of dhimmistatus, of course. Non-Muslim residents of the ummawere not treated as the equals of believers, after all. But their lot wasn’t one of constant oppression, either. As Ibrahim himself notes, the brutality often happened in the wake of Muslim losses to Christian forces.

Third, we shouldn’t discount nonreligious, realpolitik, and geopolitical motivations for the warfare that occurred over the centuries. Take the Battle of Vienna, for example, which historians conventionally use to demarcate the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The September 12thbattle pitted Catholic forces against Muslim forces, at least those were the dominant religious identities of the two sides. But the forces led by Sobieski included Crimean Tatars (Muslims), and the forces led by Mustafa included French and Transylvanian Catholics, as well as Hungarian Protestants. Each of the minority groups within these coalitions had grievances against their coreligionists that impelled them to join forces with the “other side.” In other words, more was at work than simple religious identity.

Fourth, contemporary Christians who read the justifications for violence blanche at the religious motives at work. When Pope Urban II called for the Crusades, he said, “Rise up and remember the manly deeds of your ancestors, the prowess and greatness of Charlemagne, of his son Louis, and of your other kings, who destroyed pagan kingdoms and planted the holy church in their territories.” No Christian today would argue that the State should plant the Church in heathen lands for the perfectly good reason that that’s not the way of Jesus Christ. Christians in earlier ages had no problems with this kind of Church-sanctioned, State-enforced violence, but we do, and with good cause. Given that contemporary Christians scratch their heads at our ancestors religious justifications for war, perhaps we should extend the same courtesy to Muslims as they read their own foundational texts.

Fifth and finally, even acknowledging that some Muslims—say, the fanatics of the Islamic State—read their foundational texts to license violence against others, the vast majority of Muslims don’t. This is the great failing of Ibrahim’s book, it seems to me. Are Islam’s borders and innards bloody? Perhaps, but the first victims are often Muslims themselves, who suffer at the hands of fanatical coreligionists they do not support but cannot overcome. This calls into question the notion that Islam, at its civilizational essence, is little more than ceaseless jihad against unbelievers.

In conclusion, Sword and Scimitar is an interesting book, especially in its quotation of primary sources, which provide a lens through which to view those battles in their historical contexts. The problem is that if you look at Muslim-Christian interactions only through that lens, you miss out on important aspects of the scene before you.

Book Reviewed
Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West(New York: Da Capo Press, 2018).

P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.

This was a good read. "Sword and Scimitar" is a chronological telling of ~1,400 years of warfare between Christianity and Islam. This topic is author Raymond Ibrahim's master’s thesis, written under the chairmanship of noted military historian Victor Davis Hanson.

The book is a very detailed account of the many battles between the two Abrahamic faiths.
"Sword and Scimitar" covers the rise of Mohammed; from an unknown illiterate cave-dweller, through his transformation into a ruthless, conquering warlord, via his doctrine of jihad.

The book contains all the major players, and defining battles: Jerusalem, Saladin, the Islamic conquests of Spain, the Reconquista, the Barbary Slave trade, Dhimmitude, and many others.
"Sword and Scimitar" makes an excellent reference book.
My only criticism is its somewhat dry style; the book reads like a long-form encyclopedia article.
This was not a huge issue though, and the book is still full of super-interesting and relevant historical information, including an excellent piece of writing in the postscript/epilogue, which includes a prescient warning to a largely apathetic West to avoid the lessons written about in these pages at its own peril...

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested.
4.5 stars.

Unfortunately, I find it very hard to trust the contents of this book, because it is really a polemic more than a serious history of the conflict between Islam and the West. Ibrahim is very clearly trying to make the case that Islam is a fundamentally violent and self-serving religion and that it is essentially the codification of tribal values into a religion. He does this by describing various conquests (mostly from Islamic cultures) and describing them in such a way to paint the conquerors in the most unflattering light possible. Even if he had sufficiently established that the Islamic warriors were especially brutal (and based on my other reading unrelated to this particular culture war, I don't think this is the case), he doesn't really make a strong case that this is somehow intrinsic to Islam, then or especially now.

I say this as someone who is not entirely unsympathetic to Ibrahim's worldview. I think that the current trend towards cultural relativism has overshot the mark, and I think that a lot of the history and cultural aspects of Islam (and many other non-Western culture) has gotten at least partially white-washed as a result. I think that Islam in particular gets treated with "kid gloves" in a way that Christianity does not, partially as an over-reaction to real xenophobic attitudes towards Islam. Still, I am not really interested in reading a salvo in some sort of culture war or a thinly-veiled criticism of the modern Islamic world in the guise of history.

I am actually quite interested in reading an impartial history of this period and these battles, because I did not know very much about them and I'm not convinced that I know much more now.

1.5 of 5 stars

Although I pride myself on knowing more history than most, I was shocked at how this book shifted my worldview. My education, as was the case with most modern Americans, looked at key events through a secular, Western Civilization lens, moving from era to era without looking back at what happened afterward to "faded" civilizations. Ibrahim's chronicling of battles over the same turf surrounding the Mediterranean was eye-opening, as was the theory of the motivation for Portuguese and Spanish exploration of the oceans was partly to end-around the Muslim armies dominating the land which blocked access to Asia. While it might be convenient and politically correct to not bring religion into discussions, it is foolish to ignore the fundamental differences of Christianity and Islam which shaped our past and still crafts our foreign policies and national security debates. I finished the book disconcerted to realize that we may simply be continuing a global battle that will never end, or certainly never end well.

Three-quarters through the book, I find in today’s Wall Street Journal “The New War Against Africa’s Christians,” by Bernard-Henri Levy. Readers of the book will recognize that little has changed.

“I meet a beautiful woman named Jumai Victor, 28. On July 15, she says, Fulani extremists stormed into her village on long-saddle motorcycles, three to a bike, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” They torched houses and killed her four children before her eyes. When her turn came and they noticed she was pregnant, a discussion ensued. Some didn’t want to see her belly slit, so they compromised by cutting up and amputating her left arm with a machete.”

It pains me to have typed that. How can this barbarism still be happening in the 21st Century?

Perhaps you have also wondered how a tribe in Saudi Arabia could conquer all of northern Africa, from Cairo to the Atlantic Ocean, in less than a hundred years. How could most of the Iberian Peninsula be conquered? Northern Europe itself threatened? What made the Muslims so successful in battle, and why did so many flock to their banner?
Finally, it becomes clear.

In ten years, using speech and persuasion, Muhammed had managed to gather only a hundred followers. In a stroke of genius, he changed the rules, saying that if one dies in jihad, one goes to heaven to enjoy the pleasures of ravishing houris. And if one doesn’t die in jihad, if the attack is successful, one plunders and enjoys, in this life, the pleasures of ravishing slave women. White ones, no less, for the raiders by far the most desirable. Not my opinion, and often cited in the book. (“White Women: the Forgotten Lure of Jihad” – page 47, one example of many.) It didn’t hurt Muhammed’s marketing that Allah allowed up to four wives and unlimited concubines.

Muhammed’s armies gave its enemies – primarily Christian – an offer harder to refuse than any by a Mafia don. Convert to Islam, join forces on the next raids, and all was well. Or submit, living a restricted life, paying onerous taxes (jizya) forever. Or fight to the death. Cities that resisted the Muslims and lost were razed, most of their inhabitants beheaded or mundanely murdered, their churches desecrated or converted into mosques (Hagia Sophia in Constantinople perhaps the best example). “The destruction and spoliation of churches was hardly limited to the initial conquest years (711-715). It was a constant – and deliberate – affair.” – page 169.

I used to suffer under the common misconception that, well, we had it coming. If we hadn’t attacked the Muslims in the Crusades, they wouldn’t have been so bellicose. “Sword and Scimitar” shows how much I misunderstood. The Koran excoriates Christians for being polytheistic. Muslim attacks against Christians started even before Muhammed’s death in 632, and continued without pause. An army of 100,000 (according to Theophanes) laid siege, unsuccessfully, to Constantinople from 674-678. A Muslim army was defeated by 30,000 Franks under Charles Martel at Tours, just 130 miles south of Paris, in 732.

These battles – assaults against Christianity, not defenses from it -- were four hundred years before the First Crusade.

Raymond Ibrahim is a scholar, fluent in both English and Arabic, and with a Masters in history from California State University. His book has hundreds of footnotes (but regrettably, only one map). The book’s bibliography is eleven pages long. I recommend his book to all who wish to increase our knowledge of history and, coming back to the attacks in Nigeria, to the world we live in today.

Just five years ago, ISIS showed the world – with sharia law, beheadings, immolations, enslaved women, and recruits drawn from Europe and elsewhere – that it was serious about trying to reestablish the Caliphate. Civilization had a close call. After 1400 years, it’s certain to not be the last.

I was looking forward to some impartial literature detailing the battles and wars between Islam and Christendom. I was more than disappointed to say the least. I should have known by having the word "West" in the title this is not a history lesson but a rallying call with political ambition. Why is it authors of this ilk feel the need to push their ideology and agenda so vehemently without any attempt to even sound somewhat unbiased?

If you want to hear how innocent Christians are and how inherently evil Islam and Muslims are this is the book for you. The author starts by linking Islam of the past to present groups because in their address they both start with the same greeting of peace... He then justifies any wrongdoing for any Christian offensive by stating that all land that was ever under Muslim control (including Africa) rightfully belonged to Christendom because of the Greek conquests in earlier centuries! The author then goes to explain how Islam is a "death cult" and any honourable behaviour or acts of compassion by Muslims is Taqiyah (deceit) although this is a concept that belongs to the sect of Shia Islam who are generally thought of as deviant and only make up 10-20% of all "Muslims". The book continues to criticise everything that can be criticised and preaches hate of "the other".

This is more like a fictional story, a reductionist novel about a black and white world where there is absolute good and absolute evil. Overall a very immature, simple minded and egoist approach- to attack a culture that is not your own and defend the one you belong to. It's painfully cringeworthy to go through this bigoted garble.

This type of fanatical critique makes any presentation of historic events seem greatly flawed and one sided, the reader cannot help but question the accuracy of what is being said. If you're looking for an honest balanced and reliable book about the past this book is one that should be avoided.

The author takes seriously the history, writings, and practice of Islam and Christianity, employing extensive first hand accounts gleaned from Arabic and Greek sources. Sword and Scimitar sets our current conflict into its historic perspective.

Excellent historical eye opening book

Finally a great historical treatment on the history of Islamic conquest and Jihad as understood by Mohammad and his successors.

This book is an account of the Muslim Jihad against Christians and Jews since the 7th century. At times I felt so sick from what I was reading that I had to put it aside and return to it later. 1,300 years of ceaseless war and humiliation and rape and torture and slavery and death all because they were not Muslims. This book comprehensively demonstrates that the recent Caliphate of ISIS in Iraq / Syria was no aberration , but merely a continuation of attempted conquest and destruction and annihilation that has been going on since the 8th century. An important book that needs to be read by as many people in the west as possible.

This is easily one of my favorite reads in recent memory. Having near zero knowledge of history in the Middle East and Europe from ~ 400 - 1500 AD, the historical quotes are mind blowing. I truly wish every westerner, and every Christian, would read this book.

Should be required reading.

Having some difficulty processing this one as a consequence of a liberal Western education. It seems like propaganda, right? You read it, you see the vitriol that Ibrahim talks about Islam with, it feels like invective and you assume the well is poisoned. The problem is, he's quoting verified firsthand historical accounts from both sides of these battlefields.

So he's not out here making up all the sex slavery, marauding, or torture. These aren't fictionalized accounts of increasingly sadomasochistic blasphemy. All parties involved agree on what happened, and many of the sources he quotes from are celebrating these atrocities as victories for the faith.

Now, yeah yeah, all of human history is a record of various atrocities and it's usually done in the name of some church or other. Nothing new. But the main thrust of Ibrahim's argument, the message he's trying to deliver, is that the impalement and looting and sexual sadism was not a side effect of this particular religion, it was the driving force behind it. A set of supernal justifications developed by a petty warlord to secure his power and first pick of the plunder, whether that refers to the monetary gain, the land conquered, or the women and children taken as house and sex slaves.

And typing that is phobic, right? Massively, instantly phobic. But it's not an unjust opinion I generated out of nowhere. It's what the historical record tells us. It's what the accounts provided by the Qaran itself tell us. Ibrahim isn't on some Ministry of Truth shit, he just pooled all of these factual, verified firsthand accounts of medieval battles and Mohammad quotes, and he said, "isn't that kind of fucked?"

This whole book, as well as Defenders of the West, is Ibrahim showing us his collection of horrifying firsthand war accounts that paint the past 1500 years of Islam in a really unflattering light, and then him looking right into the camera like in the Office and saying, "isn't that kind of fucked"?

Minus one star because Defenders of the West was better and my man says "par excellence" too much. I wouldn't say that to his face though. Ibrahim's built like a shit brickhouse.

This is an important book. Possibly the most important book written so far in this century. That’s not hyperbole, this book provides much needed perspective on the events that shaped the relationship of Islam to the rest of the world. Which, if you hadn’t noticed, has been kind of the theme of this century so far.

The book is a fresh take on world history from the perspective of the participants in the events. It provides the points of view of the people who lived through these situations, which in turn provides valuable context for the events. Put simply: it’s the events as they were, not how some might wish they were.

Judging by a few of the one-star reviews, that’s an issue for some people. Despite what some of these people have said, this book provides accounts of the events from the perspectives of both sides. Unfortunately for those looking at history through a modern lens of relativism, this means the information is presented in a way that is jarring to those who would otherwise be apologists.

In short, some people don’t like how this makes Islam look because their modern sensibilities tell them that it’s just another religion like all the rest. Unluckily for them, Mr. Ibrahim has done extensive research and presents the accounts from the Muslim perspective as well as the Christian.

This sheds real light on the conflict that exists between Islam and the rest of the world. It also helps to explain that this conflict occurs because it’s a fundamentally held Islamic view that it should.

Having said that, it throws a lot of information at you so the book can be hard to read because it’s a lot to take in. Despite the fact that I was heavily interested in the subject material and the read was compelling I found myself having to pause numerous times to take a break. I had to take time to let what I’d just read sink in. That’s not meant to detract from the book, it’s just an attempt to keep you aware of what you’re getting yourself into. It’s a dense book but definitely well worth the read.

Almost immediately you will ask yourself: "How do I not know this?" How did I not know about the Battle of Yarmuk, which may be the most important battle in the past several millennia. How did I not know about Leo III of Constantinople? Why don't I feel strange about the defeat of 2/3's of Christians? Of the slaves? Of the incessant, beyond cruel murders in the tens of thousands as a way of life until 1683? Why did the Christians use outdated military tactics for centuries?

Ibrahim uses sources from the events (one thousand notes in 297 pages) to document the unseemly and politically incorrect behavior of warriors; particularly Muslim ones. The fascination with light-skinned European women at first reads falsely, but later references to Muslim rulers adding black dye to their blond hair make it all too real. Islam was and is very attractive. Mr. Ibrahim captures its glory.

It should be noted that this isn't a third wave feminist book. Christian males and females appear to have had little agency dealing with Muslim males. There are few, if any, Muslim females in the text.

Islamophobic, but I expected that. I also expected poor academic writing, a lot of ideological bias, and agenda-pushing. But this exceeded all my expectations. By far. Apart from ideologically biased interpretations, there are countless factual errors and it is not a good military history book either - descriptions of battles are incomplete, unbalanced, and boring. It is a good book only if you want to show how it looks like when ideology affects historical writing in the worst possible sense.

Required Reading

This needs to be required reading for all high schoolers. When I think back on all the lies and omissions taught in public school, it is chillingly terrifying. As my favorite variation on the old saying goes: "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who fail to learn history correctly --- why they are simply doomed."

Should be required reading all high schools in USA.

Solid narrative on the historical movement and relations of Christianity and Islam.

Good companion to Defenders of the West with very little overlap except for some sections on the First Crusade. If you only read one, it should probably be this one since it's a more general overview of Islamic-Christian history (uh, warfare). Defenders of the West was more fun, I suppose, since it was essentially biographies of Great Men.

When looking at the table of contents for this you might think that it's just coverage of several major battles between Islam and Christianity. That's not really true - the battles are just the organizational framework. Each "chapter" on a battle actually covers a great deal of surrounding context before and after the battle, and you essentially get a thorough rundown of all the events between each battle.

After two books worth of reading about atrocities committed on women and children, I was moved almost to tears by the passage on the Siege of Vienna.

I’ve read a lot of history. And inevitably the more I read the more I realize how poor the dominant narrative or opinion is about a certain subject. The Civil War and 15th-16th century explorers are great examples, having been subjected recently to absurd and infantile reductionist interpretations that confuse and mislead the public to criminal proportions in their ignorance (or is it maliciousness?).

The same goes for the Crusades. Recent revisionist history has forged a dominant interpretation of 400 years into black and white thinking, good guys vs bad guys, no nuance whatsoever.

Well…actually that’s not far off. Except the actual history is about 180 degrees different from the new dominant interpretation (which really shouldn’t be that surprising when considering the differences in religions; you’d expect the motivations to reflect their core teachings).

This book is the best I’ve read at exposing the false facts and narratives presented by modern historians with an agenda and who hate Christianity. While that’s not the aim of the author exactly, it is what occurs.

Endlessly footnoted to death, quotes from Muslim fighters and leaders, putting over 1000 years into proper perspective, this work is tough, dry, but satisfying.

The early Crusaders did have a noble cause. They were fighting for truth and justice. For the protection of peoples all across the Middle East and beyond. The Islamists were the imperialists, an extremely violent and cruel tribe hellbent on conquest (again, the quotes are there to an absurd degree). How long this motivation and behavior lasted…well, you’ll be surprised at the answer (again, thoroughly backed up by sources).

To reiterate, this is a pretty dry book to read. Each chapter, which covers a different battle in a different time period (while providing appropriate context), will likely take you five or six reading sessions, 2 hours total to cover 30-40 pages. But it’s revolutionary. You’ll be dumbfounded at how poorly you’ve been taught world history.

My highest recommendation.

The book that I read was Sword and Scimitar by Raymond Ibrahim. The book is about the wars that have occurred between the Muslims and the Christians. It recounts from many sources from both sides about what really happened in all of the wars. The book starts out in the year circa 600 CE. It starts with how the companions of Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) conquered the Arabian peninsula. It mentions all of the next notable empires, kings, and battles. One such battle that was called the Battle of Yarmouk was fought in the year 636 between the commanders Khalid Ibn-Walid and the Emperor Heraclitus of the Byzantine empire. It then shows how and what happened in between and all of the important events that took place from the Middle Ages to WWI. I think that this book is very informative and interesting to read.
A quote that can reinforce this is located in the foreword on page ix as follows, “Similarly, he goes to some good length to highlight little known methodologies of Christian and Muslim historiography.” This shows that he looks at all sources which in my opinion is extremely important when writing a good, accurate, and interesting non fiction book about history. It is in addition extremely interesting to read because of how the author says the facts in such a way that the words on the page almost want to pull you in and force you to learn what happens next. The author then shows the importance of the event which also is enticing to learn of the outcome. It also informs you of both sides in order to make it a good way to keep an open mind as to what truly happened. Overall I would give this book rating of 4 out of 5 stars.

Eye Opening

Borrowed this from my library with Hoopla.

After reading this and its many sources I am in awe at the many historical battles that took place and horrified at the amount of blood that was and is still being shed allegedly in the name of god.
I think the author did a great job of using a lot of sources from Islam itself concerning the motivation of that specific religion.
I find it very concerning and just in total shock at the contents.
I find it troubling, however, that people can make fun of any religion out there and no one cares but as soon as someone talks bad about Islam or the Koran or Allah then there are death threats.
A lot of controversy concerning this book.
The author himself has been accused of being a "white supremist" even though he's Egyptian and he was also supposed to speak at our War College but was refused after they got pressure from a Muslim group. This same group also is the one that called Mr. Ibrahim a "white supremist"
I picked this up because of all the controversy so if you are curious, I recommend to anyone.

Sword and Schimitar is the best I've read in years. Mr. Ibrahim, in his exploration of eight consequential battles between Christendom and Islam from the rise of Mohammed and the Islamic juggernaut to the Siege of Vienna, uses both Christian and Islamic contemporaneous primary and secondary sources, and modern scholarship to contextualize the fraught relationship the two religions have had over the centuries and the the rise of Al Qaeda and Daesh as a continuation of the centuries of jihad. The book forces the revaluation of the Crusades, the Islamic conquest and the fundamental principles and precepts of Islam as taught in current curricula.

I Strongly recommend this book to everyone who has minimal knowledge or understanding of an intertwined ideology and religion that has caused great disruption around the perimeter of the Mediterranean Sea, Iberian Peninsula, eastern Europe, and the Levant. The Arabic language and Koran are the tools that tie all the Muslims into unity; if not practice of their ideology and religion. You have been advised and now it is time for you to make your own determination about Islam. Islam has sects, as do Judaism and Christianity, and those sects are not in agreement, even today, about many, many aspects of Islam.

A history of Islam vs Christianity

A well written and well sourced book outlining the major battles between Islam and Christianity/West over the past 1400 years. It gives good insight into the ways that Islamic thought continues to operate. Extrapolating the knowledge in the book to today’s headlines, we begin to understand why Islamic migration/refugees may negatively impact the social good in various countries, if a thousand years of Islamic thought is not modified or adjusted, as the basic tenets of the religion hold beliefs counter productive to assimilation and friendship between those of Islamic belief and those of non-Islamic belief. It’s a book worth reading.

My ninth audiobook. What a fantastic work this is. An incredibly cogent study of the history of the struggle between Islam and Christianity. The book, using as many current chroniclers as possible, shows how the Middle East and North Africa had been Christian territories for centuries. The modern view that the wars were Colonial invasions on lands always held by Arabs is a patently wrong view of history. Ibrahim also shows the innately religious aspects of the wars, from the Muslim viewpoint, a fact also denied by many western academics. The cites in this book of ancient and medieval chroniclers, to enlightenment and modern historians is amazing. A great read for all my history nerd friends

An Electrifying and Educational Read

I could not recommend this book more strongly. I initially bought it largely out of a sense of solidarity on hearing that Islamist activists has successfully bullied West Point into canceling a talk by Ibirham, but what I found is a compelling-written work that traces the early history of war between Islam and Christendom and does exceptional work in explaining the continuity of certain doctrines and attitudes across Islamic forces otherwise widely separated by time, geography, and culture.