pillaged and looted Christian churches, all
through these lands, terrorizing monks and
vio la ti ng nuns. By 846 , the y had rea che d
Rome, where they exacted a promise of trib-
ute from the pope. While their hold an Italy
was never strong, they held Sicily until
1091 —when the Normans drove them out.
In Spain, of course, the reconquista began
to slo wly chi p away at Mus lim dom ain s,
until 1492, when the Christians had entirely
recaptured the nation. However, as battles
rage d in Spa in, the Mus lim s con tin ued to
press Ch ri st en do m' s ea st er n fl an k. Th e
Se ljuk Turks decisively defeated the forces
of the Byza nti ne Empi re at the Arme nia n
town of Manzikert in 1071, paving the way
forthe Muslim occupation of virtually all of
Asia Minor—some of the central and most
wel1.-known lands of Christendom. Hence-
forthChristians would suffer second-class
dhimmi status in the great Christian cities to which Paul addressed
many of his canonical epistles. It is against the backdrop of all this, as
we shall seethat Pope Urban II called the first Crusade in 1095.Not only West, but east
Mus lim for ces pre sse d eas twar d as well aswest ward , moun tin g asea
invasion of India as early as 634. Land invad ers press ed into what are
now Afghan ista n, Pakis tan, and India begin ning in the eight h centu ry,
makin gslow but steady progres s. Histori an Sita Ram Goel observe s that
by1206, the Muslim invaders had conquered "the Punjab, Sindh, Delhi,just Like Today: Islam
must be spread by forcesome ofthe modern-day Islamict h i n k e r s
w h o a r e m o s t r e v e r e d today by jihad
terrorists taught {in no uncertain terms) that
Islam must imposeitse lf by for ce uponnon-
Musl ims—not asa religion, for that would
violate theQu r'a n'sdic tum tha t "th ere is no
com pulsion in religion" (Qur'an 2156)—but as
asystem of lawsand societal norms.They
taught that Muslims must fight to impose
Islami c law on non-Muslim state s, relegating
its citizens to dhimmi status or worse.