In the light of this, the most expert view on Islam in the
West, how could any honest leader in a Western democracy
have ever responded to a terrorist attack from devout
Muslims by unequivocally describing Islam as “a religion of
peace”? There are scores of books by academics in the West
which document that Mohammed gave rise to a religion of
war, and we will cite many of them in this Introduction as
proof of this.^18 These books have made it clear that, from
the very first claim by Mohammed that he had a revelation,
Islam achieved almost no converts until it embraced
violence. Yet between the scholars who write the books and
the general public (whose votes are supposed to determine
policy in a democracy) there is a wall of politicians, clergy
and journalists who read these precise and informed
academic books but then lie to the public and claim that
“Islam is peace”, “up is down”, as if the scores of books
published in the previous 150 years proving the contrary
had never been written.
After 9/11 it was only those with no role officially
sanctioned by the institutions of the state who would
highlight once again the proof that there was a direct
connection between violence and the doctrines of Islam. A
couple of years after 9/11, in a book about religion and
terrorism, a philosopher attached to no institution wrote:
On almost every page, the Koran instructs
observant Muslims to despise non-believers.
On almost every page, it prepares the
ground for religious conflict. [...] Islam,
more than any other religion human beings