even Iceland). Nearly a century before the creation of the
US Navy, Englishman Joseph Pitts escaped from a life of
enslavement as a soldier for Islam, and upon returning to
England in 1704 he published the first account of the
pilgrimage to Mecca (he had been able to go to Mecca on
pilgrimage because he had undergone a forced conversion
to Islam).^45 Across Europe the humble crescent-shaped
croissant was supposed to remind people on a daily basis of
the unceasing threat from Islam, after the centuries of
military assault on Europe by the Caliphate was stopped in
Vienna in 1683.^46 Cervantes published what is considered
the first novel in literature and the most famous novel in the
Spanish language. The novel contains several chapters on
Christian slaves held by Muslims in Algeria, and this was
written from personal experience, as from 1575 Cervantes
himself was enslaved by Muslims for five years.^47 In
Dante’s Divine Comedy from 1320, one of the West’s
greatest works of literature, Mohammed is consigned to
eternal torment in the eighth circle of Hell.^48 And of course,
most famously of all, in 1096 the Pope raised the first
Christian jihad against Islam, in response to centuries of
Islamic jihad against Christendom and the persecution of
Christians in their own lands, lands which have mostly
never been reclaimed for Christians since they were
conquered and occupied by the soldiers of Allah.^49 It is thus
demonstrable that for 1000 years the educated elite in the
West have known that Islam was a religion of war, with the
Koran being the fundamental instruction manual. From the
Crusades of the eleventh century to the creation of the US