Rough transcript by Doug:
Winston Marshall: So what’s happening at the battle of the Yarmmuk then Ben?
Raymond Ibrahim: The interest to me in the battle of Yarmmuk —is it it’s the genesis of the conflict between Christiandom and Islam. That’s really its significance.
Basically we must go back to the beginning to Muhammad, right? Muhammad is dead in 632 and now you have what’s called the Ridda wars which is, after he died a lot of Arabian tribes tried to break away from the fold of Islam, and the first Khalif Abu Bakr launched these apostasy wars— which is very interesting because even till this day Muslim clerics will tell you without the law of apostasy, which is you kill anyone who tries to leave Islam, Islam would have died out. I mean that they actually say that they admit it. That’s why we have to have the apostasy law because if people have freedom to leave it will it’ll be gone.
Marshall: So those the the the culture of apostasy punishing apostasy didn’t exist before then under Muhammad.
Ibrahim: No no it did. He’s the one who did it. It goes to a hadith, a statement attributed to him which is considered canonical in Sah Bkari, where he says literally uwhoever leaves his religion meaning Islam — kill him. So that was always part of the religion according to that teaching that hadith and that’s why it’s still there.
Marshall: Okay. So by the second generation of Muslim leaders they’re, now codifying that..
Ibrahim: yeah, well when and how Islamic law gets codified is kind of a controversial thing depending on which version you want to go to. But much most most of it it’s happens much later after Muhammad. As in, he dies in 632. Really the first writings and the hadith date from, maybe around 750. And this is why there’s a school of thought that says Muhammad never existed and it was all fabricated later to give a hagioraphical foundational story to the Umad Empire.
But at any rate, so you have now the Muslim, the Muslim power is consolidated on Darbu Bakr and then later the other Khalif Omar; who are companions and friends of Muhammad and now the jihad is waged in earnest.
Now, here’s the first interesting thing that a few people understand. In 632, you know, if I talk to someone, your average person, and I talk about the Middle East or North Africa, and they know it’s Muslim, they don’t know how it got Muslim. They think it’s always been Muslim.
In in the dawn of Islam, during this time that I’m discussing, ie., 632 and so forth, the Eastern world, Egypt, greater Syria as it was called, which encompassed modern day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, it was a big chunk. Anatolia or Turkey, what we call Turkey, and like I said Egypt all the way down to Morocco Mauritanium and you you know and Augustine’s hippo was there in Tunisia —all that was actually more Christian than Europe. So if you talked about Christianity at the dawn of Islam you were talking about Egypt, you were talking about Syria, you’re talking about Asia Minor, Greece of course and Europe — but Europe was actually less Christian and of course anything northwest of the Danube / Rhine was still not even Germany you know the Scandinavian lands hadn’t even reached Christianity at that point.
This is why the Roman Emperor Constantine moved the capital of Rome, New Rome, Constantinople, to the east because that’s where everything was. That’s where the learning was. That’s where the sophisticated culture was, the wealth. And again, then people we have records of people traveling through Egypt and they say all we heard from the top of the Nile to the bottom is just hymns and church bells etc.
This is before Islam. Same thing with Syria. Okay. So people miss this context. This is what the Middle East was. If you want to talk about Christianity, there were five major centers. Okay, they call them Sees. One was Rome and the other four were in the Middle East. Okay, one was Alexandria, one was uh Antioch, one was Jerusalem, and then later Constantinople. All east and all conquered by Islam.
Okay, which we’ll get into. So anyway, we have the first major attack um and we have the battle of Yarmmuk in 636 and the the Muslims prevail.
Marshall: Where is Yarmmuk?
Ibrahim: Yarmmuk is a river in Syria. Or it was in greater Syria at the time, so I don’t know if it’s in part of Jordan now, but I’m pretty sure it’s in Syria still. That’s where the two major armies, the Eastern Roman Empire, which they call Byzantium. I sort of don’t like that word because it sort of creates a discontinuity between the Roman Empire. — they saw themselves as Romans. Even the Arab accounts call them Romans, you know. So, this word Byzantine, I just say anyway, as it’s short, it’s easy, it’s succinct. So, I interchange them.
But the Eastern Roman Empire and the Arabs, ie., the Muslims, fought there and it was a major epic confrontation and the Christians lost. And for various reasons: Among the reasons cite was desert conditions and storms which they weren’t used to fighting in it, whereas the Arabs were and it takes on a great, you know, it’s very hagioraphical tradition amongst Arabs—it’s this is where it all begins and where ‘Allah proved he was for us because we beat the infidels,’ etc etc
And you know, I won’t get into it, but anyone who’s interested really should read about that battle. When I think about what ISIS, the Islamic State, said, the stuff they would say things like, um, “We’ve tasted American blood and none is sweeter and people just thought they were being gross.” But actually, they were quoting characters from the Battle of Yarmuk, ie., the Muslim heroes, specifically Whaleed, known as the Sword of Allah, who said to the Romans, “We’ve tasted Roman blood and none is sweeter.”
All right. So when a lot of the things they say is actually from that battle and other battles as well. But that’s how you know these these battles and major confrontations with the Christian world, where they prevailed, still figure prominently in their historical consciousness whereas to most westerners they have no clue.
So at any rate the battle happens. The west, the Christians lose and now begins the great takeover of the of the Middle East and then North Africa.
Egypt which was a major center for the Roman Empire gets conquered four years later or about 5 years around 640 to 641. And you know the they continue marching all the way west until they get to Morocco, around 690. They take over Carthage you know where Augustine of Hippo wrote and taught— so all these major centers were taken. Also Syria as well was completely conquered. Jerusalem is conquered one year after Yarmmuk.
It’s like a complete domino effect and there’s theories of why this is; one of them is is that the Byzantine Empire was very weakened at the time. But at the same time, the Muslims enter and conquer Persia, the Cesanian Empire at the time. And now it’s in now Iran’s been conquered and they continue eastward [Doug here: all the way to Asia and SE Asia] . But just for brevity sake, I’ll continue focusing on the Western Christian world. [Doug here: see the map below for Islam’s expansion into Europe and also into Asia]
And so now, so from 632, the year Muhammad died, one century later, 732, Muslims are now in the middle of Europe fighting and abducting people and destroying churches.
Marshall: Not just the middle of Europe, it’s far north in France.
Ibrahim: Yeah, that’s the date; 732 is the battle of Tours, which is right in the heart of France. Spain had been conquered since 711. After they they took over Morocco, now they sailed into Spain and that was completely conquered and devastated and now they’re in the middle of France, okay, attacking— and this is the battle of Tours.
So in one century from Muhammed’s death, and historians have actually quantified it, but it’s basically they conquered three quarters of the original Christian world permanently!
In Spain, not permanently, but for like eight centuries the Muslims were there. And of course in France they still continued depradations. And the Mediterranean islands were all conquered around the 8th century. You know, Sicily and Malta and and all of them; Cyprus and and Rhodes for centuries.
I’m just baffled at how people don’t understand these were not just Christian countries. These were the main Christian countries and they just got conquered and Islamized. And nobody knows this!
If you talk about those countries now, like Egypt or Syria, most people just have this vague notion they were always Muslim and you know Muslim just spread Islam spread there.
No. And again if you look at the sources, both the Arabic and Islamic, and the European chronicles, they make it unequivocally clear this was violent, bloody conquest. And it’s even worse in the Arabic recordings because they boast about it. The more violent it is, the more the atrocities committed against the Christian infidels and the more churches destroyed—this is more a reflection of how pious the Muslim conquerors were. So it’s actually worse in the Arab areas. I always find this amazing that it’s more graphic sometimes than the European ones which are a little more objective. They say yes we were attacked and thousands were butchered and enslaved and churches but the Muslim ones revel in it in their brutality…[Doug here: you know, like Hamas in their recent Jew butchery in Gaza. NO DIFFERENT! ]
And so now let’s just stop for a moment. None of this is being taught in any school at all.
Marshall: Can I just ask, do you have a sense of the death toll in that first century?
Ibrahim: Uh, no. I mean, unfortunately the seventh century is what we’re talking about. We’re lucky to have just the records that we have, but I know I put it in Sword and Scimitar where I talk about various regions that get conquered and some chronicle mentions a number, but it’s it’s very hard, to tally such numbers.
Thus Begins the European Dark Ages?
It’s very sketchy that time, and this is, that is, we’re now nearing to what traditionally was called the Dark Ages — because we have, which by the way, is a product of Islam— that most people don’t know this.
And since I’m at it, ok we’re almost there. So basically after what happened; so the Mediterranean used to be known as kind of the “Roman lake” and Egypt, Syria and all of North Africa and Europe were all connected — it was part of one empire. After Islam took everything basically south of that; north Africa and the Middle East—which I already told you, was the richer, more profound and the more sophisticated region.
Little Europe, the the rest of the Christian world was cut off completely. Papyrus ended. It used to come from Egypt. That supply was eliminated. All of that is historically is was the beginning of what historians would call the Dark ages.
One historian, Henry Perrin, he was I think a Belgian historian in the 19th century, an orientalist as they called him. He actually had an entire thesis about this [Doug here: see below]. And basically his line is ‘without Muhammad there’d be no Charlemagne.’ That the rise of Charlemagne and the Frankish state was basically a response to the non-stop Islamic aggression and the discontinuity of trade in the Mediterranean.
This is why now Europe had to develop on its own and start a new. And it was you know it was the young kid on the block. The barbarians who had conquered and assimilated into Christryendom in the fifth century and whatnot. Um, they didn’t they no longer had the assistance of the east as they did before.
Okay. And so now they became the small final bastion of Christendom and they continued being attacked by Muslims.
So you know to finish this idea of the dark ages. So that’s yeah so people will tell you the dark ages historic and they don’t even want to use that term anymore for various reasons but they would say it was the 8th century and the 9th century and they would tell you because of Viking attacks and you know attacks from nomadic tribes in the east — but the real attack was Islam. That was the main one; from the south.
And uh the Vikings people don’t even understand that a lot of the Viking raids, especially for slaves, white slaves, was to feed the Arab slave emporium, because there was such a demand for white slaves.
Vikings would go to Ireland and England and France and wherever and conquered. And all those slaves, most of them would be sold down through the rivers of Russia to, you know, uh to the caliphates, the Abbassids, for example.
Um the Abbassid caliphate that used to be a well-known thing. And we know this as well because a lot of the treasure troves of Viking coins that are found in Scandinavia are Arab coins, you know. So what commodity do Vikings have to give? Slaves! And we also have records for it.
So, you know, the whole point is uh Islam has had a profound impact on the shaping of Europe. And there’s historians, I quote one in one of my books, um uh something Cardini where he basically says Islam was a midwife to Europe. It created Europe and the reason Europe became Marshall and you had the night culture and everything and a very staunch Christian kind of defensive posture was because of Islam. It was surrounding it and it was and they knew what happened. They understood that three-quarters of Christendom was destroyed and conquered and Islamized.
And we haven’t even reached the Crusades, okay? And look what what Islam had done. And I’m here to tell you and I’ve because I’ve looked at this and parents write to me about school books, textbooks, and social science books. What I just described you doesn’t even get any mention. You just get get one sentence about how Islam spread through trade in the Middle East. And they won’t tell you the Middle East was the heart of Christianity before that. They always like to act like Europe was Christian Christian and everything else wasn’t. No, Europe was the the the the leftover portion of Christendom that never got conquered.
The Spread of Islam From the 7th Century to Early 20th Century
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The Timeline of the Spread of Islam. Click Image to Enlarge to a Giant Size |
Islam’s Early Expansion (7th-10th Century) Taken From Here.
Founding and Early Expansion (7th Century):
Prophet Muhammad: Islam began in the 7th century CE with the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca, in present-day Saudi Arabia. After his death in 632 CE, his followers rapidly expanded the religion.
Rashidun Caliphate (632-661 CE): The first four caliphs, known as the Rashidun (“Rightly Guided”) Caliphs, oversaw rapid expansion. They conquered vast territories, including the Sassanian Empire in Persia and significant parts of the Byzantine Empire.
Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 CE):
The Umayyad Caliphate established its capital in Damascus and extended its reach into Spain (Al-Andalus), North Africa, and parts of the Indian subcontinent. This expansion introduced Islam to diverse cultures and regions, leading to the establishment of Islamic rule in Spain, Morocco, and parts of India.
Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258 CE):
The Abbasids, who established their capital in Baghdad, focused on consolidating and administrating their vast empire. This period saw significant cultural and intellectual achievements and the spread of Islam into Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent through trade and missionary activity.
Medieval Expansion (11th-15th Century)
South Asia:
Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526 CE): Muslim rulers established the Delhi Sultanate in India, which significantly influenced the region’s politics and culture.
Mughal Empire (1526-1857 CE): The Mughals further consolidated Islamic rule in India, with rulers like Akbar promoting religious tolerance and integrating various cultures.
Southeast Asia:
Spread Through Trade: Islamic traders and missionaries spread Islam to Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. By the 13th century, Islam had established a strong presence in the region, particularly through the influence of Sufi missionaries.
Sub-Saharan Africa:
Trans-Saharan Trade: Islam spread to West Africa through trade routes across the Sahara Desert. The rise of powerful Islamic empires, such as the Mali and Songhai Empires, further entrenched Islam in the region.
Early Modern Period (16th-18th Century)
Ottoman Empire (1299-1922 CE):
The Ottoman Empire became one of the most powerful Islamic empires, influencing much of southeastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Its strategic position and military strength facilitated the spread of Islam.
Mughal Empire:
The Mughals continued to play a significant role in South Asia, with their influence extending into the modern period and contributing to the widespread presence of Islam in India.
Modern Era (19th Century-Present)
Colonial Period:
European colonial powers often imposed their own systems, but Islamic practices and communities persisted and sometimes adapted under colonial rule.
Post-Colonial Era:
After World War II, many former colonies gained independence, leading to a resurgence and reassertion of Islamic identities and practices in various countries.
Globalization and Migration:
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, globalization and migration have contributed to the spread of Islam beyond traditional regions. Significant Muslim communities have formed in Europe, the Americas, and Oceania due to migration and diaspora.
Pirenne’s Thesis
From Wikipedia: Henri Pirenne was a famous Belgian historian who wrote about some aspects of the impacts on Islam on Europe and the modern European city.
He said that the real break in Roman history occurred in the 8th century as a result of Arab expansion. Islamic conquest of the area of today’s south-eastern Turkey, Syria, Palestine, North Africa, Spain and Portugal ruptured economic ties to western Europe, cutting the region off from trade and turning it into a stagnant backwater, with wealth flowing out in the form of raw resources and nothing coming back.
This began a steady decline and impoverishment so that, by the time of Charlemagne, western Europe had become almost entirely agrarian at a subsistence level, with no long-distance trade.[11]
In a summary, Pirenne stated that “Without Islam, the Frankish Empire would probably never have existed, and Charlemagne, without Muhammad, would be inconceivable.”[12] That is, he rejected the notion that barbarian invasions in the 4th and 5th centuries caused the collapse of the Roman Empire. Instead, the Muslim conquest of north Africa made the Mediterranean a barrier, cutting western Europe off from the east, enabling the Carolingians, especially Charlemagne, to create a new, distinctly western form of government.
Pirenne used statistical data regarding money in support of his thesis. Much of his argument builds upon the disappearance from western Europe of items that had to come from outside. For example, the minting of gold coins north of the Alps stopped after the 7th century, indicating a loss of access to wealthier parts of the world. Papyrus, made only in Egypt, no longer appeared in northern Europe after the 7th century; writing reverted to using parchment, indicating its economic isolation.
Pirenne was also the author of Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade (1927), a book based on lectures he delivered in the United States in 1922. In this book, he contends that through the period from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, Europe finally reclaimed control of the Mediterranean from the Muslim world, and opened up sea routes to the Orient. This allowed the formation of a merchant/middle class and the development of the modern city.
He argued that capitalism originated in northern Europe’s cities, as did democracy.
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