- In 2007, just a couple of years after Muslims detonated bombs on the
London Underground, a professor at the University of London named
Efraim Karsh published a book entitled Islamic Imperialism: a History
(Yale University Press, London). The book contains chapters with titles
such as “The Warrior Prophet”, “The House of Islam and the House of
War”. Hereʼs how Prof. Karsh shows that Islam was not about simply
fighting off oppressors:
Expelling occupiers from one’s patrimony is an act of self-liberation.
Conquering foreign lands and subjugating their populations is pure
imperialism [... Yet] this is precisely what Muhammad asked of his
followers once he had fled from his hometown of Mecca (in 622) to the
town of Medina to become a political and military leader rather than a
private preacher: not to rid themselves of foreign occupation but to strive
for a new universal order in which the whole of humanity would embrace
Islam or live under its domination. As he told his followers in his farewell
address: “I was ordered to fight all men until they say 'There is no god but
Allah’”. (p.3)
For further examples see the two dozen items published before the end
of the twentieth century and listed in the “Recommended Books” at the
end of the book you are reading. ↵
dana p.
(Dana P.)
#1