by Islam. Following on from Mohammedʼs wars in Arabia
which gave him control of Medina and Mecca, the Muslim
armies swept out to slaughter and enslave people in France
and Spain (and even as far as India and China). As Prof.
Lewis says “the historical tradition of the West acclaims the
Frankish victors at Poitiers [in France] in 732 A.D. as the
saviours of Christendom from Islam; Muslim tradition
mentions the battle, if at all, only as a minor episode”.^166
Muslims do not hate unbelievers because our ancestors
fought off their past invasions. The terrorism we see is
just a manifestation of the commands in Islam to hate the
Kuffar, a tradition which goes back to year one of the
Islamic calendar.
It is hard for us liberal Westerners to grasp just how
much loathing there is in Islam towards the Kuffar.
Mohammed Baqer Majlesi, a notable seventeenth-century
Muslim scholar, highlighted how dirty the Muslims
considered us Kuffar: “It would be better [...] if the ruler of
the Muslims would establish that all infidels [non-Muslims]
could not move out of their homes on days when it rains or
snows because they could make Muslims impure”.^167 The
Leftist allies of Islam in the West will say this ancient
prejudice and hostility towards us Kuffar is a thing of the
past. Not true. Even in the twenty-first century, when
Muslims in the West swear an oath of truth in a court of law,
or where Muslims are sworn-in as politicians, those of us
officiating these events are considered too dirty to touch the
Koran. We must handle the Koran while wearing gloves, or
the Koran is handed to the Muslim in a slip-case, so that the