The Real History of Islam with Raymond Ibrahim

32:28And that's, see, that's the missing piece of the puzzle. And nobody, you know, invariably when we talk about Muslim Christian hostilities from a historical point of view, it starts with the Crusades. Everyone starts with the Crusades. And nobody seems to understand what was building up towards the crusade, which included a lot of fear and terror. Because, you know, Bernard Lewis has a great quote, which I quote from him. And he talks about how, you know, by the time it was, you know, after these Arab conquests, and now let's say it's the 8th and 9th century, the Europeans were just traumatized and devastated.

32:59And a lot of what we called or used to call, it's not a very favorable term anymore, but the Dark Ages, was in large measure because of these Arab conquests. Okay. And Henry Perrin, for example, he was a historian, 19th century. That was his thesis, which is that the Dark Ages was a byproduct of these Muslim conquests, which took what was once a Roman Christian lake at the time. Right. Egypt had commerce with Spain and with Rome and Syria. You know, it was one. It was Christendom. and by by you know chopping that in half and essentially appropriating and seizing the older richer more sophisticated more educated region which was the middle east and the near east that's one of the main reasons that europe entered into this perilous dark age and henry perrin also you know he i think the title of his book or his argument is or his famous line is that without muhammad there's no charlemagne okay so the one necessarily led to the rise of the other and that entire system.

33:56And, you know, so most people don't know what built up and what was coming, you know, in the centuries before the First Crusade. They just assume there's these, you know, these powerful land grabbing hungry, greedy knights want to go and just, I've quoted this quote, and I'm going to quote it for you guys so many times, I think I've memorized it. But it just, it shows you the rot of academia. And it really underscores what I'm trying to tell you. And it's by John Esposito. This is a professor at Georgetown University. I don't know if he's still there he's probably very old uh right now but he was there when i was there i went to georgetown university for a time in washington dc and um and it it's a bastion of kind of islamic studies and whatnot but i didn't know this at the time but it was a very kind of compromised bastion anyway one of his books which is uh it's called islam the straight path and keep in mind this guy he was this is in the early 2000s let's say he was very very active and his book came out and he's the editor of the Oxford History of Islam, for example.

34:53He was the guy that, you know, the FBI and the CIA intelligence analysts, they talked to him to understand about Islam and whatever. He has this line in his book, Islam, the Straight Path, which verbatim, I might be getting a little off, but he says, five centuries of peaceful coexistence elapsed between Christians and Muslims before an imperial papal power play led to a series of so-called holy wars that have left an enduring legacy of mistrust from Muslims to Christians. So what he's saying is before the First Crusade, which starts in 1095, everything before that, from Muhammad's life until all the stuff I'm telling you, was peaceful coexistence.

35:31Okay? That's the official narrative. So that's why I think it's very important to really highlight what you just mentioned, which is this really, this was a traumatizing event, the sundering, you know, the first breakup of Christendom with most of it being conquered by this hostile faith and the rest of it being bombarded in the eighth century all these islands were caught in the mediterranean islands were constantly being attacked and conquered slave raids were constantly a given thing the whole idea of so much of what we know as feudalism and had to do with all these the coasts of the southern coast of europe so many people actually abandoned them because they were the site of rage slave raids coming from the Islamic world now, North Africa, and they would habitually go and enslave Europeans and take them back.

36:16And the emporium for white flesh was Cordoba in Spain, which was conquered, like I said, starting in 7-Eleven. And that was where they would sell white flesh, which always fetched a high price amongst the Muslims. So before we move on to the crusades, I just wanted to concentrate on the Islamic Golden Age. Was that around the time that we know as the Islamic golden age yeah so the islamic golden age well there's kind of two and the one is the abbasids in baghdad and this is the the abbasid um empire starts after the umayyads and the umayyads are like so around 750. usually the abbasid golden age would be sometime after 800.

37:00okay and this is haram el rasheed who's now allied with or on friendly terms with charlemagne but there's also a supposed golden age in spain umayyad spain uh in cordoba and what what needs to be understood about the golden age is this um the let me try to start off by giving an analogy right i forget which country which arab country or you know in the gulf which is the one that has those skyscrapers that everyone dubai dubai ua yeah okay imagine you know many many let's say decades or centuries from now, those buildings are still standing there. And, you know, the whole, everything's changed and, you know, Islam maybe is gone or whatever.

37:41And people look at it and go, wow, that was a golden age, that country, that civilization, because look what it led to. Now we would say, well, no, I mean, they had their Islam, sure, but this is actually money and Westerners built it, Western technology, Western workers. And it just so happened that these Arabs had the money to spend on it. That, I submit to you, is the best way to understand the golden age that happened historically. It didn't happen due to anything to do with Islam, quite the contrary. It happened despite Islam, okay? And it was basically, so let's, if we go to the Abbasid, as I was telling you, which is the primary golden age, this is now, okay, so now the Abbasid empire is more Persianized, and it's in Baghdad, okay?

38:24And it's heavily Persianized. And at the time a lot of the people keep in mind when these arab muslim conquests happen most of so let's say egypt and syria which were highly christian let's say in the eighth century ninth century 10th century there's still majority christian and there's jews also as well especially in alexandria and various cities and you have a lot of zoroastrians and persia okay you have all these different groups who are living underneath now islamic rule they're the ones who are doing all the stuff that we call the golden age okay it's christians is jews and and especially it's persians in in the abbasid era and it's not because of anything special about islam i mean they are literally not muslims and though and a few of them who are are literally like they just converted their first generation converts which means they're still primarily whatever their former religion was so the best that you can say is that the muslims uh you know uh sponsored it maybe paid for it okay but there was nothing intrinsic to islam and once islam started to harden because even at this time the abbassad caliphate in the golden age there's still debates uh between the various schools of islamic law and there's some that were actually considered liberal you know if we can use that term um but by i forget the exact time something like in the 10th century what's known as uh the doors of ishtahad ishtahad was a way for the liberals to get around draconian islam and the saying is the doors were closed and basically the hardliners won the islamic debate and now if anything all that stuff started dwindling away okay so it was never because of islam but there was a time where islam in its early nascent period was you can say liberal enough to allow this sort of thing to happen but the people who were doing the achievements were actually not muslims and if they were they were like literally just converted to join the winning crowd like a lot of people did over the years and their mind and the way they thought and their heritage was still non-muslim so that's why i give you that analogy you know of yeah saudi arabia and these places if you look at their world view their culture which is based on islam well yeah it's uh draconian sharia law living in a desert polygamy etc etc but they have wealth and look at what they can have and they can build skyscrapers they can have the greatest stuff that Westerners can't have.

40:49That doesn't mean it's actually part and parcel of Islam. So that's the best way, I think, to understand it. The holidays are supposed to be relaxing, but between travel, gifts and family gatherings, it's chaos. You lose track of what's going out, what's coming in. And before long, your money's doing its own thing. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. Rated Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface, on your phone or on your laptop.

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42:10Francis Foster:And you mentioned that after the rapid expansion, you might even say explosion of Islam across what was prior to that the Christian world, there were nonetheless lots of Christians and Jews living there. And also, of course, in the Persian side, Zoroastrians, which was the religion of Persia until the Islamic conquest. What was life like for non-Muslims under Muslim rule? well so we okay let's first start off with what islam teaches because islam is very specific about life for non-muslims if you're going to be a if you're going to be a non-muslim so again like i said earlier theoretically according to islamic law you have to be a person of the book to be granted any measure of tolerance all right monotheistic you have to believe there's one guy yeah yeah and well by but or what do they mean specifically christians and No, well, that's the question.

43:07The term is Ahl al-Kitab, which means literally the people of scriptures or the book. And the idea, it was more or less the Jews and the Christians. But then later on, it sort of became, it was extended to people who weren't Jews and Christians. And that was because they got tired of the bloodbath. So, for example, for five centuries, I want to say between, let's say, the year 1000 to 1500, Muslims, according to well-documented historians, historical sources, and the historian I'm thinking of, I know his name, but he's an Indian historian. And anyway, he says that in that five centuries, 80 million Hindus were slaughtered because they weren't granted the option of becoming dhimmis, which Christians and Jews could.

43:55You could keep your religion. You just have to pay extra tribute. And you, of course, have to be a second class citizen, which was not in any way, shape or form.

44:02Francis Foster:Dig into that. So you have to pay jizya. Yeah. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. No. Yeah. Jizya. Jizya. I thought you laughed in my face for the pronunciation. No, it's just a funny word. So you have to pay jizya, and you are allowed and not allowed certain things, right? So talk to us about what that looks like. Okay, so it goes back, according to Islamic teaching, remember the caliph Omar? Yeah. The second caliph. So apparently, historians aren't sure where, but the Islamic tradition believes it's when Jerusalem was conquered in 637, and he came there. There's this big narrative about how he came there and whatnot.

44:41But supposedly he made a pact. It's called in Arabic Ahd Omar, or the Pact of Omar, with the Christians. And they basically told him, here's what you have to do in order for us to not kill you, basically. And according to this pact, things that they could not do. They can't build churches. They can't repair churches. They can't sing out loud. They can't show a crucifix or a Bible around Muslims. They certainly can't try to proselytize. they can't stand in the way of their own relatives turning Muslim. And it's a number of lists. I actually translated it in one of my books. It's called The Conditions or Stipulations of Omar.

45:20Some of them are if a Muslim wants your seat, get up and give it to them. If a Muslim is traveling and wants to enter your house, you have to let him live there. So it's not stuff that you necessarily want to enjoy, but what it really coalesced around is, and it's still evident until today, okay is you know you're just you know it's it's i guess to give you a good analogy is kind of think of uh you know how blacks were treated in america and you know before civil civil rights and uh and that which is like kind of like who do you think you are okay you know to even think you're my equal that kind of mentality is what prevailed in these islamic societies so if you're a christian or a jew you better know your place and don't complain and don't if someone if if they abuse you or muslims rise up and and commit an injustice against you the law is not going to come on your side that continues till this very day even even in you know the things about like building churches that's still very evident in places like egypt you know where they it's so hard for them to get it you know it used to be actually you need a presidential decree to build a church in egypt okay and uh now it's supposedly become lenient but a lot of that people say it's just for show for western consumption um but in egypt constantly just this weekend i covered a story which has happened countless times including going centuries back which is basically some sort of romantic liaison group between a christian man in egypt and a muslim woman and so the muslims after friday prayers rose up completely devastated the christian village or where the christians were living burned homes attacked through rocks rioted screaming allah akbar and why well actually because according to Islamic law, a Muslim man can marry a Christian or a Jew or a person of the book, like I said, but he has to hate her.

47:04But a non-Muslim cannot marry a Muslim woman. And the obvious reason in the Islamic mentality is the man's in charge. So we cannot have an infidel in charge of a Muslim. Okay, but it's okay if the man's a Muslim and the infidel, it's already a second class. So it's a woman, you know, that's the mentality. So that's why they got angry. But this story has happened countless times in Egypt, where they get up and they engage in collective punishment, which the conditions of Omar, which I was describing to you, actually, it says if one of you does this, then the pact is broken for all of you. So it actually does promote collective punishment of the dhimmi's as they're known.

47:42And this, like I said, it just happened this week. It happened maybe two weeks before that, because there was a rumor of a church being built also in Egypt. And it goes way, way back. So my point is that it's actually a written, codified thing and it's become absorbed in Islamic law and Islamic Sharia. But it's also just part of the society because it's a supremacist idea. Okay, I'm better than you. You're the dirty kafir. You're the infidel. You're the Christian. You're the Jew, whatever. So how dare you want equal rights with me? That's the overarching principle, and it continues to manifest itself with extreme regularity.

48:16Francis Foster:And your thesis essentially is, if I'm understanding you correctly, is you have this rapid expansion of the Islamic world from nothing into taking over most of the Christian world, including its key areas. That would be equivalent of, like, most of Europe and half of the United States being conquered by Hindus, right? Over, what, 100 years? Something like that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, let's say the... I mean, in the first 10 years, a huge chunk, you know, Egypt and Syria were taken, and by Syria, I mean the Middle East. and Egypt and most of what we would call Libya, though there wasn't much there anyway.

48:53And then, you know, Tunisia. I mean, think about Augustine, St. Augustine, who was known as the father of sort of Western theology. Well, he was from North Africa, from Hippo, which I believe is in Tunisia. That too was conquered very early, maybe by like 650s.

49:09Francis Foster:So continuing my metaphor, let's say just for the avoidance of any triggering too far. The Hindus have taken over most of Europe and half of the United States and North America. And what you're saying is that plus the way that the pre-existing population were being treated by their conquerors is what gives rise to the Crusades. Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, it depends on the time we're talking. I still haven't gotten to what really gave rise, which is similar. It was more of the same. okay so in other words what I'm talking about is you know the seventh eighth ninth centuries and that's what's going on and you know Europe knows about it Europe is also bombarded especially from Spain because that's now the latest they're in the continent right there in Europe but right before the first crusade there was a new sort of outburst Islamic outburst and now the Turks come onto the scene they start coming in really in the ninth century as slaves slave soldiers, and they're very good warriors.

50:14So the caliphates start bringing these Turks from Central Asia as slaves, and they Islamize them, and they just train them to be great warriors, jihadists. And before long, they essentially take over. And so this is the Abbasid Caliphate, the Golden Age Caliphate. And before long, you know, you have these, the Turks, especially with the Seljuk Empire, this is now, we're coming right before the First crusade um they essentially they keep the abbasid caliph as a puppet right but now they're the real power and um they're the sultan in fact the word sultan means power holder so now uh so let's say okay the first crusade is 1095 the turks really start spreading and causing havoc around 1037 and it's especially against the armenians you know you talk about the armenian genocide it actually goes back a millennium before what we think you know it's not uh it's not in the year just 1900 early 1900s or late 1800s it actually goes back to the year 1000 and if you read the sources and I have in mind especially Matthew Vedessa who's a near contemporary though what the Turks were doing to the Armenians and of course other Christians as they went further west into Asia Minor is just mind-boggling I mean it talks about tens of thousands of Armenians are being massacred thousands of churches being set on fire the capital at the time on he was known as the as the city of 1001 churches, all of which were just completely devastated and torched.

51:38And, you know, it's also interesting to note, and a lot of historians don't do this, they make you think, okay, these Seljuks were nominal Muslims. You know, yeah, they're called Muslims, but they were just, you know, fighters who were conquering whoever. But in the sources, you see the religious hostility, okay, where they like to go and desecrate, break crosses and decapitate statues and gouge the eyes of icons. and you know of course look and desecrate tabernet or the art the altars so that also comes out and this is now going on and until the year 1071 now in 1071 you have the pivotal battle of manzikert which is in that area it's actually it's again in Asia Minor sort of near Lake Vaughn I think again by the Armenian areas and the Eastern Roman Emperor the Byzantine Emperor marches one of their largest armies to stop these Turks and they lose and it's one of the worst and the Emperor gets captured with first one in like a thousand years I think and so now after that they start just spreading further west and cover all of Asia Minor Turkey till they're not far from Constantinople now at the same time these same Turks are from the moment the Holy Land was conquered it was very early on a lot of these caliphs including the Abbasid like I told you who who's sort of diplomatic relations with Charlemagne.

53:00Pilgrimage was very important to Christians, okay? Especially after Constantine, you know, really rebuilt Jerusalem, built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre around where Christ was buried and crucified and resurrected. It was a huge complex. So pilgrimages were a major thing. And a lot of Muslims allowed Christians to come, especially during the Abbasid period. You have to pay, of course, and, you know, put up with all sorts of things, but they would come. But now these Turks, they really went they ran havoc and um they started attacking pilgrims they started charging them even more money and then not letting them go and one of the worst one of the worst anecdotes that was pretty famous that happened in 1064 was a large german pilgrimage went uh went to the holy land and among them is described it's it's an early source they describe a very beautiful abbess had none who was told don't do it because everyone knew it was dangerous to go on pilgrimage and but she wouldn't relent and she went and they say you know all the all the all of them were killed by the turks and she was gang raped until she died and then it says in the end and the turks did this very frequently to pilgrims and of course they were desecrating the christian holy sites including the holy sepulcher and actually before that before the turks just just so you don't think it's just the turks but a fatimid caliph from egypt hakim amrallah in the the Holy Sepulcher, raised it to the ground.

54:27And according to Muslim sources, and I'm thinking of Al-Makrizi, who was an Egyptian historian, he wrote that this guy, the Sfatimid Caliph, destroyed 30 ,000 churches and synagogues in Egypt and greater Syria, which makes sense because, like I told you, that was a very Christian, heavily Christianized region, one of the oldest. Okay, so, and at that time, in 1009, the Pope of the time wanted to call a kind of a proto-Cristian They didn't have it at the time. And nothing happened. But then, like I said, so now it's building up, and you're getting these Turks doing what they're doing, and they're killing European pilgrims.

55:04And now the emperor of Constantinople, they're right there at his doorstep, in Asia Minor, right across the straits from Constantinople. So he calls for aid. And that was the origin of the First Crusade.

55:17Francis Foster:And what was the stated objective of the First Crusade? What did they actually want? For the pilgrims to be able to go unmolested or to recapture the land? What was the plan? Well, the ultimate goal, of course, was to have pilgrims to be able to go to the Holy Land unmolested. That was the number one. But it was obvious that's not going to happen. It hadn't really happened even before the Turks. Like I told you, there was a lot of exploitation and abuse. But now they were just running amok and killing anyone and everyone and abusing them. So it was basically time to retake the Holy Land, which used to be Christian before the Muslims took it.

55:49and because you couldn't rely on the Muslims anymore. So it was time to retake and rededicate and cleanse the Holy Land from these people. That was number one. But also the second one, which is not really remembered much or talked about was to help fellow Christians, the Eastern Church. The call from, according to some historians, that was the chief catalyst. One historian recently wrote a book, Franco Pan, I think is his name. And that's the whole thesis, which is this was really orchestrated and ultimately because of alexius the emperor who needed because because of what was happening to him and so one of the verses even that uh biblical verses a lot of christians and you see it was basically you know where jesus says love god with all your heart and love your fellow man so loving god was going because holy places mattered then and it was going to liberate his holy the holy land and loving your fellow man was helping these eastern christians and pilgrims who wanted, you know, to go and not be molested.

56:47So that, and it, you know, it's just sad because a lot of people and historians will argue, you know, give you these cynical motives. You know, oh, this is Second Sons. This was an old thesis that I think goes to, you know, Runciman, Stephen Runciman, where basically, oh, a lot of these were just Second Sons who just had no inheritance, so they just wanted to go, and it was a colonizing mission that had no rhyme or reason. Well, if you look at the sources, that's all they talk about is what's happening to Christians, how they're being slaughtered, how the Holy Land is being defiled and polluted, and how we have to do something about it.

57:22So, I mean, that is unequivocally clear from an objective reading of the sources.

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58:04Francis Foster:It's a window into the foundations of real democracy. how to design a system that guards liberty without collapsing into chaos. It's thoughtful, clear, and entirely free. If you care about political philosophy, good government, or just want to understand how power is supposed to work, go to hillsdale.edu slash trigger. That's hillsdale.edu slash trigger and enroll for free. And we had another historian, Dan Johns, on the show to talk about the Crusades. It didn't sound like the way he told it, at least like a particularly successful or happy story, really. Yeah, really the only one was successful was the first one.

58:41It did achieve its mission. It liberated, you know, Jerusalem, and not just Jerusalem, but they had various counties, and the first one being Edessa and principalities. So they, you know, they carved a whole niche that became part of Christendom, and pilgrims were allowed to come and whatnot. But then after that, yeah, I mean, every other crusade, the second was a complete disaster. The third had made minimal gains with King Richard. but it didn't it didn't re-win Jerusalem but it made good gains because right before it right before the Third Crusade it looked like Saladin was going to completely eject the Crusaders once and for all that was his goal but with with the third that's the second most successful uh King Richard actually gave kind of a breathing space back to the Christians and re-won various regions um and then you know the Fourth Crusade is neither here nor there that just went spun off course completely well they sacked constantinople that's the one where they sacked constantinople and i mean that's the big aha moment that everyone loves to like harp on you know the fourth crusade and it's just uh i don't find it as remarkable as most people think um if you really look at it uh it started off as a normal crusade and you had all these various crusaders i think from france wanted um you know uh commissioned venice to build a lot ships for them but when the time came only one third of the crusaders actually showed up the rest came to the holy land i think they were going to egypt again that was the target but they went through different routes and they couldn't pay and the you know the venetians just insisted so the venetians kind of said all right you know we'll forgive the dead but come help us conquer these guys um fellow christians who were creating problems for venice um the long story short though is the pope was completely against all this you know and if you're if you're gonna judge an institution you have to look at its head not the individuals who go off you know go off on their own thing and a lot of the Christians even when they made this pact left so it was a small corps that went and sacked this I think it's Zora you know on behalf of Venice and then long story short you know they still were trying to go and they ended up you know making an alliance with some ousted Byzantine prince and uh you know and they helped him and this goes on for two years but But then they don't get what he said they should get, the reward or whatever.

1:01:02And finally, they just ran amok and conquered it. And they all got excommunicated. Pope Innocent III was just completely disgusted with the whole affair. So my point is, you know, of course, things go off the rail. But officially, the representatives of the crusading venture were completely against it. You know, so these individuals did what they did. But anyway, and then the Fifth Crusade comes, and that goes again to Egypt, and that almost won. They almost were victorious, because before long they realized you can't hold Jerusalem without conquering Egypt. And so a lot of them, that became the focal point, but that also failed.

1:01:43And the Sixth Crusade isn't really a crusade, it's the Emperor Frederick. I forget which number, but he actually reclaims Jerusalem. and without war. And he's hated because the way he did it is seen very cynical. And he, in fact, is kind of a cynical guy. He's a very interesting character. I talk about him in that book, actually. But he kind of, you know, he just mocks Christians and Jews and Muslims and thinks they're all, you know, but he'll give lip service to whoever. Anyway, it was seen as a cynical deal that was not good or advantageous. And before long, it all does unravel again. And one of the worst attacks comes soon after, which prompts the Seventh Crusade.

1:02:22in 1244 the attack by this kind of Muslim Egyptian Tatar or or they're all they're both Muslims with some savage group the quarry seems who come from the east and they engage in some of the most obscene atrocities against the Christians of the Holy Land or already quickly dwindling and then you get the seventh crusade King Louis st. Louis another abysmal failure you know but the guy meant very well. That's why he became sainted. And then the Eighth Crusade is him again. And then he finally dies, and that fails. And then you have the Ninth Crusade, which is very, very small scale. And it's Prince Edward who becomes King Edward.

1:03:01Longshanks. He's the bad guy in Braveheart. He seems like a good guy, though, when you read the actual sources. And the Longshanks apparently was very tall. So anyway, yeah, ultimately the Crusades were a failed venture, but When you really look at, you know, the whys, if anything, they're actually more impressive because of how long they managed to last against the odds that they were in. Remember, this is a small group of European Christians traveling to the heart of the lion's den and trying to hold on to it. You know, the differences between the Crusades and the Islamic conquests is the Islamic conquests were basically, we're going to conquer anyone who's an infidel.

1:03:45And so what that meant is my immediate neighbor, which also meant I got all the resources. I'm not deep into enemy territory. Behind me are all my whole world, right? Right. I have an endless supply, so I'm here and I conquer here and then I consolidate. Then I go here and I conquer and that's exactly what they did. But the crusaders, for ideological Christian purposes, went all the way into the heart of it and became a tiny group that was continuously dwindling. okay this is what gave rise to the military orders who really became the heart of it these guys who were just so utterly committed but and especially as europe became more and more secularized the numbers became ridiculous so habitually in these battles you would get a guy like saladin or baybars they would show up with just ridiculous amounts of numbers which makes sense because this is their homeland they can raise any number of armies and the crusaders are always limited to a few hundred thousand guys so if anything it's actually remarkable that they were able to hold out that long.

1:04:44So we've been focusing a lot on the Christian and Muslims. So where were the Jews in this? Because obviously they were in the Holy Land. And I mean, we can see what happened to Jewish people,

1:04:59Francis Foster:particularly with Israel and so on and so forth. But what role did they play in all of this? Were they seen as part of it or were they just marginalized and very much a secondary player? Well, I mean, it depends on which era in which country, in which region. So, you know, the Jews are especially prominent in Spain. That's often where you hear about them because you had, of course, Muslim control in the south, and then you had the small Christians in the north who began the Reconquista from the north and spread downwards, and then you had the Jews mostly in the south where also other Christians as Dimmis lived.

1:05:33And it really depends. Oftentimes they were actually seen as working and siding with the Muslims. And in fact, so for example, when it came to, you know, the famous expelling of Muslims, it was Muslims and Jews who were expelled in 1492 out of Spain. And it was kind of for the same reason, because they were, and this is another very complex topic, but, you know, when, so we have to, I guess we should talk about Spain, because it's really a microcosm of everything we're talking about. And a lot of things are very clear when you look there. But so, as I said, Spain gets conquered in the year 711.

1:06:09And before that, it's Christian. Okay. It was ruled by the Visigoths. And anyway, a small remnant survives of these Visigoths. And they get holed up in the north and some in the mountains of Astoria in the northwest. And even the Muslim sources kind of say, what are they going to do? Who cares? Let them live in like live up in that crag. You know, like a bunch of bums. They're like, it literally calls them like 12 people living on honey. Anyway, before long, they persevere, the Christians, and they start what's called the Reconquista, slowly kind of coming southwards and fighting. But before that, the Muslims in El Andalus, as it's known, okay, Spain, and that name, by the way, is, you know, the Vandals, like the Visigoths.

1:06:51The Vandals were another kind of dramatic tribe, but they entered into North Africa, so they were familiar to Muslims. And so when they came to Spain, Visigoth, Vandal, same thing, but they just knew the word Vandal, so Vandal, El Andalus. became the name that's why it's called that um so muslim-controlled spain you had what we were discussing which is this the me system if you're a christian or a jew you live second class right and they lived in their own communities at this time um they didn't really consort with each other to a large extent and then up in the north you got the free christians who are making a comeback Okay.

1:07:27And so that's the context. And this goes on literally for centuries until, you know, Spain, it was known as the Spains because it was really just various kingdoms, Aragon, Castile, Leon, Portugal became its own. But when it gets unified with Ferdinand and Isabella, right, in the 1400s, they finally managed to get the last Islamic stronghold, which is Granada. And it's had like half a million Muslims. And what happened is they let them live. They said, okay, fine, you guys can stay here. You can even have your own Islamic culture and your own law and whatever. But what happened is the Muslims were always seeking to subvert.

1:08:10So on the one hand, they acted like they were friends or being docile. On the other hand, they were conniving with the Ottomans and the Barbary Muslims to help try to bring Spain back to Islamic rule. And so in this context, this is why, so for example, you hear these crazy things and the medieval Christians just look so intolerant and just evil, but here's the backdrop. So you hear how the Christians said, oh, you have to become Christian or get out. Well, that was because before that, they gave them the right to do their thing. So the idea of Christianizing someone was not because I'm a fanatic and I don't believe in you having your own faith.

1:08:50It was that you're never going to stop trying to kill me until you become like me. As long as you maintain that tribalistic Islam, which they understood, you're going to be, you're going to obviously work against me. So they came up with a decree, which is basically become Christian or leave, go back to North Africa. And then a fatwa appeared. Fatwa is a decree by a learned Islamic sheikh, which promoted the concept of taqeya. And taqeya in Islam is basically, if you're under duress or being threatened by the infidel, you can lie. You can say anything. You can even engage. You can get baptized.

1:09:25You can engage in communion. You can do all these things. As long as in your heart you're still working, you're still striving for Islam. and then also overnight like half a million Muslims from Granada became Christian and the the crown thought okay you know and but then what happened is generation after generation and you have the Christian saying these guys were acting like they were better Christians than us they literally just everything about them was more Christian they went every Sunday but then they found out they were still Muslim at heart and still actually clandestinely working to somehow subvert Spain to Islamic rule and so that's when it finally came to okay even if you convert it doesn't work so you have to leave okay now the Jews are also alum and so the Inquisition that's that was the the initial Inquisition start in this context because you're saying I'm a Christian but you're really a Muslim all right and they had their dad words for them both for the Jews that were doing this and the Muslims who were doing the Marisco is the Muslim and And I forget the Jewish word or the word for the Jews that were morenos.

1:10:29Anyway, and so the Jews, you know, despite how things are today, the Jews were often actually conflated with Muslims. Okay. And oftentimes they did work and help them. Not always. And sometimes the Muslims turned and attacked on the Jews as well. I mean, so it's kind of complicated. You can't say, you know, it was always this way or always that way. um but for example when you know another famous instance where people attack the crusaders is during the first crusade the people's crusades or the peasant crusade went off track again and attacked jews okay and again the church and the nobles were against that because that's not but the logic was why are we traveling and suffering and going all the way there to fight these christ enemies when they're right here amongst us so yeah the you know the the jews in during this time sort of, I think maybe they had a survival instinct.

1:11:25And whoever, whether it was a Christian or the Muslim, was doing better, they probably would ally with or try to be on their good side, which kind of makes sense from a survivalist point of view.

1:11:36Francis Foster:So, Raymond, we've got to the point where we've got peak Islam. Islam is at its strongest. It is dominant across Southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East. We actually haven't, though, just so you know, because I didn't even get into the Ottomans who conquer Southeastern Europe. We can talk about it or not, but, I mean, that still isn't even the peak yet. Right. I guess what I want to take this bit of the conversation now is Islam is dominant and remains dominant for many, many centuries. And as you say, all the way through to the Ottoman Empire, it gets as far as India. The Mongols at some point, right?

1:12:13Francis Foster:You know, I was just in Uzbekistan a few. The great warlord. Timorland. Yeah, well, they don't like it when you call them that. Tumor the Great. Not the lame. Yeah, they don't like you calling him lame. Tumor the Great. As far as the north of Russia, this guy conquered. One as far as Byzantium in the west, as far as China in the east. The Mongols are the same. Right? And then we arrive today. if you're born today, your instinctive understanding of the Muslim world is it's in the Middle East, objectively speaking, technologically quite backward, militarily quite weak, not dominant around the world, and is, at least on the surface, this is just how you would think if you were born today, engaged in some sort of guerrilla warfare against a much more powerful Western force.

1:13:12Francis Foster:That would be, not putting my own perspective on it, but that would be the impression you'd get. And you mentioned Bernard Lewis. He's obviously, you wrote a whole book about this, What Went Wrong. How do you get from, bam, massive Islamic expansion, conquering all the bits of the world that really matter at that point, at least from a Western perspective, to the complete collapse of that dominance and where we are today. Chances are, if you're a trigonometry fan, you understand the importance of free speech and privacy. And you'll also probably know the founder of Unplugged, Eric Prince, because he's been a guest on our show.

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1:14:32All right. So let's go back a little to the colonial era, because this is really what you're describing. Islam stays dominant. And you're right. People forget that Islam, especially the Ottoman Empire, was the powerhouse. You know, it's ingrained in people's mind as if Europe was always super powerful and everyone else. all these brown people were just being abused and scared of Europe. It was the opposite, okay, as we discussed, but especially with the rise of the Ottomans. And these guys last from, you know, 1300s to the 1900s. And in 1683, they're in Vienna, okay, with two to 300 ,000 fighters surrounding it.

1:15:09So I mean, so keep that in mind, we started off in the 600s with Muhammad and the first attack on Christian territory in 636. 1683, now we're talking 1000 years later, They're around Vienna, and they're using the same logic and rationale, and they're talking about Islam and jihad, and you have three choices, etc., etc. And it's not even just at 1683 to bring it to this country, the United States. Its very first war as a nation, meaning after independence from Britain.

1:15:41Francis Foster:No need to rub it in. Yeah, I was trying to word it correctly here. But after that, and now it's its own country, its first war is with Muslims, the Barbary Wars. And again, they're acting exactly on the same logic. And Thomas Jefferson, this great paragon of enlightened thinking, didn't know Islam as well as he should have, because when he met with what the Barbary pirates are doing is actually attack. So this is very interesting, because it goes back to the idea of Jizya. So a lot of these European powers, and I'll get to your point, but I'm just trying to build it up to show you what happened.

1:16:12But a lot of these European powers, instead of fighting with the Barbary Muslim pirates of North Africa, whose entire economy consisted of slave raids on Europeans, as far as Iceland, they would go and enslave them, started just paying them off, which the Muslims took as jizya tribute. Okay. Now, when the US, the United States, America broke away from Britain, it was no longer covered by Britain's jizya payments. And once the Muslims found that out, they started attacking American vessels in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean and enslaving them and engaging all sorts of horrific abuses against them.

1:16:50I talk a lot about that in one of my books, Sword and Scimitar. Actually, I have a whole chapter about it. Because if you really read about what was happening to European slaves, including these American ones, it was really sick stuff. Anyway, so that's what provoked the first war of America with the Barbary. But when Jefferson and John Adams met, they tried to find a diplomatic solution. So they met with one of the ambassadors from Barbary, Abdul something. And they say to him, hey, why can't we just have peaceful trade and work together, et cetera? Typical Americans. And he basically, he sounds like an ISIS guy.

1:17:23He goes, our prophet and our holy book says you are the infidel, you're the enemy, and it's our right to plunder, kill, and enslave you until you acknowledge Allah alone. Okay? So my point is, just to give you a sort of totality, we started in the 600s. This is now 1800. First war of America, same mentality, same logic. Now, what's interesting also about the 1800s is that same year, the first Barbary War is around, I think, 18 or 1801 it starts. But in 1800, Napoleon enters Egypt, or I'm sorry, 1798, and he easily conquers Egypt, okay? And this is known also as kind of the beginning of the colonial era.

1:18:01So the colonial era, you see Islam go from this super powerful thing, and it starts now, it becomes, now Europe is super powerful, technologically, militarily, economically, and it starts spreading out and conquering its former foe. People don't realize this, but to the colonial powers, a lot of them saw themselves as crusaders. They were continuing the war. I forget his name, is it Allenby? But some guy came and, you know, when they entered and conquered Syria, went up to Saladin's tomb, supposedly, and kicked it and said, we're back. meaning you know the franks or the crusaders are back so so a lot of these europeans they still understood it that way but why it happened i think because is the islamic world as i was kind of telling you its entire economy was based on war and plunder and slave and the slave system okay they never produced anything the way europe eventually went to especially technologically and militarily.

1:18:58So I think once any Muslim region power is unable to conquer and plunder, it has no economy, and it starts falling apart. And this happened before. So the Ottoman Empire still persists. And why does it persist? Because it westernizes, whereas the rest of the Middle East, you know, Egypt, which was by then sort of run by the Mamluks, and all these other areas are completely now just spent. There's nothing to plunder. There's no economy. Everything's falling apart. It's very easily taken over. But the Ottomans, they westernize, which is ironic because the Ottomans were the chief standard bearers of jihad.

1:19:38They actually took to jihad and articulated it more than the Arabs. There were forebearers did. That was their thing. And under Ataturk, they actually got rid of the Arabic script, took the Roman alphabet, dressed in Roman attire I'm sorry not Roman Western attire shave the beards etc etc so there everyone became westward looking including you know the Muslims who could because that was the way to you know win and the Islamic way now that it is it they kind of spent it became a spent force at this point and it was kind of an anachronism really didn't have much kind of the way did things was no longer gonna work in this new world with Europe the way it was and so that's So the colonial era is a very important thing to keep in mind because, you know, it's funny to, again, here we go, the colonial era and what happened nowadays is presented so horrible.

1:20:32You know, these evil European white guys going into, you know, these countries, not just Muslim countries, India and colonizing. But what's funny is if you read the writings of natives from the colonial era, they talk about it as the greatest time. this is the time when we had learning when we had medicine when we had science and technology because the europeans also brought this stuff with them they did right um whereas you know if you look at places that islam conquered there's places in spain where they had that constant war in the middle you know you had the christians in the north and that are just until now like infertile and just totally devastated because um so at least you know the europeans brought all this stuff and a lot of this is the time when so here's an irony you know when I think of when I think of a religion or whatever someone becoming conservative and clinging to the old ways I just can't help but think that through time things become more liberal what's happening is actually the opposite in the Islamic world if you go to the Middle East in the 1930s way way more liberal and Western looking than anything today the people weren't resentful they were actually trying to westernized they dressed like westerners they uh the women didn't have the hijab they dressed they were decent and i don't mean in a promiscuous way but they dressed in dresses and they looked good men were in suits and ties and they shaved so islam was sort of uh islam's appeal was it's the strong horse and if you join us you get all these benefits that we were talking about and once muslims start seeing that that wasn't the case it's really fell by the wayside and so that's why I find it ironic if you look at you would think that you know in 2025 Muslims are going to be more liberal than in 1925 it's the exact opposite and I find that very interesting and I think it starts going to where we're headed talking the bigger talk about you know the modern era and I believe a lot of that actually has to do with this that in as much as the West exuded power and confidence Muslims followed it and which is human nature whoever you know whoever's strong you're smarter than you or whatever you can learn from you're gonna try to emulate and but once the West sort of started hating itself and promoting everyone else so let's say in the whatever 1960s just to give a rough date where all of a sudden now you know it was all how we're it's the narrative became Europeans are the horrible people everyone is great and in fact Islam is even better and Islam Islam is what a wonderful religion.

1:23:06I think that actually pushed Muslims back. So on the one hand, it actually made them disrespect the West, naturally so. It's very easy to have contempt and disdain for someone who just disrespects themselves and fawns over you. That's just human nature. And it also sort of made them go back. They basically said, yeah, you're right. You're just a bunch of dirty infidels. So the theory became, and it was very well articulated by an Egyptian theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid al-Qutq, who came to America. And he was kind of a moderate Muslim. Then he came to America, I think, in the 50s.

1:23:42And he was just scandalized by how liberal Americans were. And, you know, men and women were consorting together, et cetera, et cetera. So he developed this idea, which became very prominent, which is, you know, these infidels in the West, you can appropriate and learn from them technology or science, things of this nature. But when it comes to the greater metaphysical issues, religion certainly, we have to stick to Islam. And that was really, this is one of the chief return to Islam. So the idea is, yeah, we can learn from them secular materialistic things, but as far as how a society is governed or structured or how individuals should live their lives or even as collectives, this is of course Islam.

1:24:20And all the while the West further promotes that and sponsors that kind of thinking and stifles its own heritage. And this is what my point is, you see how that's very different than their forebearers, the colonial, the colonizers. The colonizers were unabashedly proud. There's this famous story, I forget his name, but some general in India during the colonial era where they, you know, he just saw some ruckus and a bunch of Indians, Indians who were going to burn a woman alive. Sati, I think it's called, where if a man dies and his woman is still alive, they burn her on his pyre. And he found out what's going on and he tried to ban it.

1:24:56And they said, well, this is our custom and et cetera. And he said, okay, you do your custom, we'll do ours. And our custom is when men burn women alive, we hang them all. Okay. So that kind of perspective, the West had, which was respectable from even from the adversary, whereas now it's completely gone. Now it's, oh yeah, you do whatever you want. You're right. Your culture is superior, et cetera, et cetera. And this of course continues till this day. And I believe that's what exacerbates and brings out the worst of Muslims. This is why it's ironic when you look in the West and in Europe, oftentimes the Muslims who are the most radical are the second, third generation Muslims.

1:25:32And I think a lot of it has to do with this sort of symbiotic relationship with sort of Western self-degradation, which only provokes them to fall back more on their own Islamic heritage and have even more contempt for Westerners, even as Westerners fall over themselves thinking, oh, I need to appease him some more. That's how he'll like me when it's, of course, doing the exact opposite.

1:25:54Francis Foster:Well, just on that, sorry, France, just to finish on this. Just on that, actually, we were talking, France and I were talking the other day, and we talked about one of the reasons that there does seem to be a difference in integration in America versus Europe. And one of the reasons is the first thing a first-generation American does is teach his kids to love America. At least historically speaking, that was the trend. In Europe, that sort of cohesive idea of like, well, you're one of us now, but like, you better be one of us now, doesn't really exist in the same way. And I guess that's what you're saying.

1:26:28Yeah. And it doesn't exist because instead of being proud of European or an American and saying, hey, join us, be one of us, I would never do that. Please stay your way. I mean, here in America, for example, this is the same logic behind wherever I go, I don't just see English. I see Spanish and I see Arabic and I see, you know, Hindi. It's kind of like, well, most countries, it's actually perceived as a sort of weakness. And it's not something that makes these immigrant people respect you because that's not how they would be ever. If you come to their country, you will you will you're the one who's going to assimilate.

1:27:02That's the logic. And that makes sense, of course. So a lot of that is why the and it's even worse, I think, in Europe and in America. one of the the issues it's not just what you were saying another thing is that especially if it comes to muslims uh the numbers are so much smaller and what's happening in europe is they're just they're they're ghettoized there's so many and they just literally they live amongst each other they they don't even speak english or whatever the language let's say it's in in the uk english they may go whole days and weeks without needing to speak because everyone around them just speaks their language so they never assimilate and then they become sort of like a little enclave or a little ghetto.

1:27:39And it's funny because there's actually a historical precedent to this. And it's an Arabic word, which is called rabat. It's a military term. And rabat is basically, remember how I was telling you Muslim conquests, they go as far as they can until they're stopped. Now, wherever they're stopped, they would form fortresses and barriers known as rabat. Rabat is actually like a word connected to the idea of a rope or a tight chain. So they would form these fortresses. And from there they would continue harassing the infidel whenever they can and just engaging in terror tactics or raiding them etc etc and their goal was to eventually conquer more land what i find interesting is a lot of these muslims in the european cities they they see themselves actually as and i've seen them talk of themselves as we are robotists okay we are the jihadists who are forming a chain and now it's not it's not just on the border with infidel countries it's right smack in the middle of their cities because they've been allowed to come in.

1:28:36So they see themselves as actually jihadists. And we're here where you see it all the time where they just throw it in the face of the natives of Europe. You know, your country is going to be Muslim in a few years. You know, you guys, it's and it probably will due to demographic changes and birth rates and whatnot. It makes sense. And on that uplifting note, let's talk about the West as it is, because you've identified the key points, you know, the confidence is in decline. Birth rates are in decline. Demographics are going to change. So looking forward and looking at the immigration that's come in, but also Muslim birth rates in the UK and the West more generally, what can we see through this trajectory?

1:29:23And where do you think is going to be the final destination, as it were? Again, that's going to, I guess, depend on the nation and the region we're talking about because and here's the thing i guess the first thing i'd like to say is what's happening here's the difference between islam historically and islam today the continuity is that muslims are creating problems okay they did it historically the violence and the intolerance and the supremacism okay and it's happening now in the present the difference is historically like i said it was the jihad of force right they had they had no choice no one was going to let them in so europeans fought tooth and nail, you know, fighting to the death.

1:30:00Now, the problem is, I think you mentioned it earlier, or I don't know if it was you, Francis, but you're talking about Muslims, how they're very weak right now. And, you know, they're a weak force. Why are they a problem? And the answer is because the West makes them a problem, or the specific country in the West, let's say the UK, okay? All the problems that the UK is going through, for example, and not just UK, much of Western Europe. It's all self-made. Okay. And you know that because I can look at an Eastern country like Hungary and it has none of these problems. Is that because Muslims tried to invade Hungary by force and somehow the Hungarians resurrected John Hunyadi and they beat them back?

1:30:40No, they just said, no immigration. We don't want it. And guess what? No problem. So this is, I think, and this is why a lot of people get upset. I remember I once wrote an article because a lot of people in the UK were complaining about, you know, there's an Islamic invasion, Muslims are invasion. And I basically said, no, get your terms right. This is not an invasion. An invasion is when people come by force and they're trying to take it. This is an invitation. OK, this is an enablement from your leaders. So I think it's very important. My point is to I like to when I look at a problem, you know, not not veer off kind of in tangents, but get to the heart of it.

1:31:16And the heart of the problem today with Europe and Islam, it's really not the Muslims. I often give this analogy where like I say, imagine an enclosure of zebras and I all of a sudden decide to put a lion in and lo and behold, the lion starts killing the zebras. Who's really at fault, me or the lion? I think it's me. The lion's a lion. OK, the lion's going to do what the lion's going to do. Muslim's a Muslim. He's going to have the anti-infidel thing going on, the tribalism that I mentioned. OK, but why are they being brought in with all these massive numbers? Why are the native Brits, let's say, or Europeans in general, being their heritage and their religion and their cultures being suppressed to make room for these people in the name of some sort of amorphous tolerance or multiculturalism, which is obviously not working?

1:32:03So my point is the ultimate, if you want to talk about trajectories, it depends really on the countries. And it's actually in a way easily fixed if the actual supposedly elected representatives of these various nations do the will of the people. But they're not. And that's really the issue. So I would tell people, you know, your Islam problem is less about Muslims. And it's more about the people who are enabling and empowering them and bringing them in against your will. These are the people who have the same names like you and they look like you and they are apparently, you know, ruling in your name.

1:32:37But they're obviously not. And, you know, it's become very obvious right now. So I think people should look at the ultimate source of the problem. Islam is a problem intrinsically. You can say that. But now there's an instrumental there's an instrumental force empowering it, which is, like I said, why in other countries, Poland and Hungary, it's not an issue. And, you know, it can be fixed. I mean, it's not going to be easy now, obviously, but something can be done if the actual elected officials care to do it, but they don't. So you've used the example of Poland or Hungary, and they're relevant.

1:33:10But don't you think part of it as well, Raymond, is, for want of a better term, white guilt? You know, we went, the British went out, we colonized, we colonized a lot of these countries. and a lot of the Islamic immigration into the UK is from Pakistan and Bangladesh, both former colonies. So that must play its own role as well. Oh, yeah, the white guilt. But I mean, that is to me the most contemptible of all factors that really needs to go away. This is white guilt. I never understand it. You know, I did a recent study about, because we have Columbus Day here, and all these people get up and all, you know, hemming and hawing, all horrible Columbus and what he did to the natives, et cetera.

1:33:47In fact, and Muslims are doing this too. And my point is, like, talking about living in glass houses, all their heroes did far worse than Christopher Columbus. So my point is, whatever the white man's guilt, the same thing's been done to him and to everyone else, okay? Whites were enslaved by blacks. Whites were, you know, conquered. And I told you, Muslims, Moors, as they were known from North Africa because of their dark skin, went all the way to Iceland, very fair people, and enslaved them in the 1500s. And by England, there was a little island, maybe no, called Lundy, which actually was a haven of Barbary pirates who would actually raid and enslave British people.

1:34:27So my point is this white gilt is really manufactured and it needs to be seen for what it is. If anything, I mean, being objective, I was just telling you that the colonial era, which is the white man, they actually, okay, you can say they conquered whatever, the Muslim world, India, deep into Africa, but they actually brought good stuff with them. Okay. This is, which is why the native population speaks well about that time. Like they brought science and technology and literacy, medicine, et cetera. Okay. What did now the other people were talking about that conquered, including conquered Europeans brought nothing but death, destruction and slavery.

1:35:03Okay. So when it's all said and done, I don't think there's much for the white man to really feel guilty about. And I say this as a guy, as a guy who doesn't think of himself as white, by the way. Okay. So I'm just trying to be as objective as possible. And, uh, and, but see the fact that this exists and I'm glad you brought it up just shows you how far gone so many white people are, that they're so caught up in something so silly that all these other peoples who are not white would never even think and shouldn't think of something like that to actually govern how they see the world that, Oh, my forefathers did something.

1:35:33So England is bringing Pakistanis in because they feel bad because they colonize Pakistan. I mean, that is just such silly and stupid thinking. Raymond, and you use the example. And I mean, it was a provocative example of zebras and a lion. And then there'll be people who are listening to this or watching this going, yeah, but I've got a Muslim mate. He's a nice guy. He's not like that. You know, isn't that just a bit reductive and unfair? Yeah. No, I'm not saying that every Muslim is a lion who's trying to kill you. What I'm saying is, though, let's go with, okay, the most conservative estimate I've ever heard.

1:36:11I often hear like 10 % of Muslims are radical. I mean, I think, and I've heard a lot of people say it's more than that. Okay. But let's say 10. I think that's fair. And I think it's important to delineate what does actually radical mean? Okay. Well, now we're going to go down another rabbit hole. But so radical, what it means, what people mean by that is this is the weird, crazy Muslim who's not practicing true Islam. He's doing this crazy, violent Islam. To me, radical Muslim is just a fundamentalist Muslim who's following his religion to a T, okay? And the moderate Muslim in this parlance, which is not accurate, is supposedly the Muslim who's practicing good, true Islam.

1:36:47To me, the moderate Muslim who exists is actually the nonchalant Muslim who's not taking his religion all that seriously. So they exist. I do believe that these two distinctions exist. I just think the words are inaccurate, okay? It shouldn't be a moderate and a radical. it should be a purist and an observant Muslim, which is the radical, and the nonchalant secular cultural Muslim, okay, which is the moderate, and they exist. So now let's say these, let's say 10 % are the observant radicals, right? And I give you that number because that's the smallest number I've heard from people who are serious, okay?

1:37:20So my point is, yeah, but when you bring in millions of Muslims, okay, what's 10 % of that? I don't know what the population, let's say England is, but I know it's 4 million Muslims. Okay. So you have 400 ,000 radicals, right? So you have 400 ,000 who might act like a lion. And, um, so does, what does that mean? I'm, I, I agree. The other ones don't, right. But you're taking a chance. It's kind of like saying, um, it's kind of like saying, you know, I'm going to give you a jar of candy and only 10, 10 out of 110 are poisonous. Big deal. Take a chance. They taste good. Right now, again, all of us, these are, like you said, reductive analogies and i understand and i do believe a lot of muslims who come especially a lot of them like i said come from they come from an islamic background but they're not observant okay yeah i do believe a lot of these people come to europe looking just for a good life um and whatnot and are not necessarily dedicated to conquering and and what i've been discussing i get all that but it's it's the numbers and it's the fact that they don't assimilate and the fact that if it's ten percent ten percent is still a humongous number if you said it's four million we're talking 400 ,000.

1:38:27And again, I'm giving you the 10%. I'm trying to be kind of lenient here, but I think it's more, you know, maybe it's 20, 25%. And you know this because if you listen to what comes out of these mosques, including in the UK, it's the radical variety, that is to say, the accurate variety. So yeah, so this is what makes this kind of a quagmire and not an easy thing, especially from the Western liberal mentality, which wants to help the underdog. and in fact there is some a lot of them are underdogs but it comes with a risk and the risk is what you see happening in the UK which is once in a while a Muslim man gets up and stabs children and people and just drives his truck into some people why does he do that well one of one of the reasons that most people don't realize is that the Islamic State in fact always issues these kind of calls telling them to do precisely that it tells Muslims that if you're living in the West, terrorize them.

1:39:23Don't forget, you're a member of the Islamic state and drive your trucks into them, drive your cars into them, go stab them, attack civilians, don't attack military. In other words, attack whatever is easy and soft targets. So one of the reasons that they're instructed to by these Islamic radicals and the other is where are these Islamic radicals?

1:39:42Francis Foster:Where are they? Yeah. Everywhere. You mean ISIS? Where are they? Well, I don't know. I mean, And the one, there's a, they issue a magazine that comes out every couple of weeks and, you know, comes online in the dark net. And, but, and that's another term, you know, when you, a lot of people get caught up. Okay. I understand there's bad guys. It's ISIS. It's Al Qaeda. It's et cetera, et cetera. I don't get caught up in these, these kind of terms because the issue we're talking about is ideological and it transcends these finite organizations that come and go. What about the Muslim Brotherhood? Well, they're known as the sort of granddaddy of all these organizations.

1:40:21Al-Qaeda was, you know, Eamon Zawahiri. I was telling you about Sayyid Qutb of Muslim Brotherhood. He's one of the earliest Eamon Zawahiri who was also who became the leader of Al-Qaeda, was formerly the Muslim Brotherhood. And the difference that the Muslim Brotherhood and these groups have, so for example, in the writings of Ayman al-Zawahiri, which I translated from Arabic way, way back, almost two decades ago, he complained about the Muslim Brotherhood because they're too patient and they take a sort of incremental approach and they don't want to do jihad, which is in fact what makes them more dangerous.

1:40:50So he was more representative of the sort of ISIS thing, which is, I want to do jihad now. You know, I want to go kill the infidel. Whereas the Muslim Brotherhood is sort of, it's just a subversive kind of power. And I don't know if you know, but the FBI actually caught some documents back in 2009 that actually are from the Muslim Brotherhood talking about how they're waging a civilizational jihad in America, trying to subvert, et cetera, et cetera. and all these organizations that are branches from it, like CARE, the Council on American Islamic Relations. So these are the groups that are engaged in what I told you, the jihad of the tongue, the jihad of the pen, the jihad of, you know, the money.

1:41:26They're all working for the same purpose that ISIS is, but through legal measures, you know, through propaganda and whatnot.

1:41:33Francis Foster:And I know that to someone who is as in depth with all this stuff as you, these questions may sound kind of naive, but what do they want exactly? Like, if they keep stabbing, we just had several terrorist attacks, actually, in the UK. Just a guy goes up to somebody in the street, stabs him, no provocation, nothing. What is that designed to achieve? What's the point of that? That's actually a good question. So on the one hand, and this is actually really interesting because there is a school of thought. So I told you about ISIS issuing these directives. a lot of Muslims in the Muslim world tell you ISIS isn't an Islamic organization.

1:42:12It's actually working for Western elements to make people hate Muslims. And honestly, when I see, because you asked a good question, what is the point in telling Muslims go and stab people? What does that do? Does that somehow have a strategic purpose? All it does is make people hate Muslims, right? I mean, that's the logic. And I'm only, I'm not telling you this is what I believe, but I've never, I've, the civilizational jihad via the Muslim Brotherhood, that makes more sense to me than these organizations who just say, hey, all, they literally, the Islamic State once said, they issued a kind of one of their declarations at the peak of, you know, I think it was the beginning of the, when the Israeli-Palestinian stuff a couple years ago.

1:42:55and they told Muslims don't attack Israel because if you do you're gonna only empower Hamas and they're not true Muslims and the PLO okay and instead we want you and then they attacked Iran it was in the context of they killed like a hundred people in Kermat and so they said this is we're attacking Iran because Iran's evil stupid Shias you know Sunni Shia and why would you want to fight Israel and help these other guys like the PLO who are not true Muslims instead go to Europe and do that crash into them decapitate them and throw terror in our hearts and everyone in the Arab world said see this is not real Isis but on the other hand what they are teaching is in the Quran so when they so Quran 9 5 famously it's known as a sword verse and it tells Muslims it's actually remember I was telling about Jefferson talking with an ambassador he basically paraphrased it that verse says when you know the forbidden months are passed wait slay the idolaters wherever you find them, the pagans, who lay in wait for them, ambush them, terrorize them.

1:43:58Okay.

1:43:58Francis Foster:So what you're saying is, and correct me if I'm misunderstanding, this is not strategic, this is doctrinal. Yeah. From the Islamic State, that's what I would argue. And this is why a lot of other Muslim groups who have the same goal, they'd like to see Islamic hegemony around the world, don't take that route. Because to them, even Al-Qaeda, for example, which is ISIS, when I translated the writing. So what they said to the West was, we're doing this because you attacked us. We're doing this because you supported Israel. We're doing this because you didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol. It was always a grievance.

1:44:32Seriously, it was a grievance after grievance. And it had nothing to do with doctrine. Then the writings I came across, this is my first book, The Al-Qaeda Reader, which came out in 2007. And the reason it was kind of a big deal at the time, I was working in the Library of Congress and I came across these Arabic writings by Osama bin Laden and Eamon Zawahiri. And now they sounded like ISIS. And it was where we hate them, not because of what they do. It's because they're infidels and we have to hate the infidels and we have to fight them and we have to do jihad. OK, so even Al Qaeda was smart enough to, you know, play the double game and say, hey, we're only doing this to you because you hit us first.

1:45:07But ISIS is so to me, I always say the refreshingly honest, but in a way that doesn't really help the cause. As a lot of Muslims point out, because what you're doing is you're sort of exposing us. And yeah, when you go and you stab toddlers in the UK or whatever, what is that? How's that helping from a strategic point? So it's a good question.

1:45:28Francis Foster:I suppose the interesting question for me is how do we move forward with given the realities that we have? And one thing that I have some hope for, but I want to run it by you and get your perspective is we do see that in some Middle Eastern countries like the UAE, like Saudi Arabia, also in Central Asia. like I mentioned, I was in Uzbekistan, they don't tolerate the, you might not agree about the terminology, but they do not tolerate violent jihadis. They themselves know that they are the first target of these jihadis, and they actually deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, they deal with all of these terrorist adjacent or actual terrorist organizations.

1:46:11Francis Foster:They don't allow preaching extremist versions of Islam in mosques. In Uzbekistan, if you want to work for the government, you can't have a beard. You can't wear not just a hijab. You can't even wear a headscarf of any kind if you're a woman. So do you think that there is some hope that because of this kind of thing, the Muslim world, the center of gravity in the Muslim world, will move towards a less extreme and more moderate version of the faith? You mean if more Muslim nations act more like Central Asian Asians? Yeah, or like the UAE or like Saudi Arabia increasingly, right? Do you think that that will move the center of gravity towards a different kind of Islam and therefore a different kind of relationship between Islam and Christianity?

1:47:00Yeah, if Islam can be changed, okay, and immediately I'm struck with a quote from the Encyclopedia of Islam, which was written by a jurist, and he said, Islam needs to be completely made over for the doctrine of jihad, which it defined as what I defined, which is unprovoked warfare to conquer the world. He said it had to be remade over. Can that be done? I suppose. But it would no longer really be Islam. And I think, I mean, if you look around at certain versions of Christianity, I mean, that's the case. That's not historic Christianity. So I suppose that can be done. The examples you gave of these Central Asian countries, It's very interesting because, you know, they are nominal Muslims.

1:47:41But like you said, they're the first ones who clamp down on that stuff because they will be the first victims. It's even the Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in Egypt where it was born. Right. But at the same time, Sisi and his government pays a lot of lip service and is engaged in Islamizing Egypt. And he will ally with the Salafis who are actually more ideologically draconian than Muslim Brotherhood. So there's a lot of kind of like shifting back and forth with how this works. but you know the bottom line is islam is what islam is okay and unlike other religions it's very black and white you know the the whole concept the problem with western people is they project their own religion kind of and then they're convinced that for example christianity is you know separation of secular and spiritual you know caesar and the coin and whatnot but that's not islam islam is not us it's not about the condition of your heart and relationship you have with God.

1:48:32It's actually all about the law. It's legalistic. And in fact, everything in Islam is, there's five, you know, either it's forbidden, you can't do, it's disliked, you shouldn't do, but you can technically, it's neutral, you can or don't have to do, it's recommended, you should do, but you don't have to, or it's obligatory. Everything in life. So Islam really permeates. So can it change? Can they re-articulate it? I suppose, but you're always going to have the hardliners who say, hey, that's not what our book says. That's not what the Quran says. That's not what Muhammad said in the Hadith. So I think it would actually be easier to just snuff it out altogether from Muslims themselves.

1:49:10In other words, I always find the apostate more honest with himself or herself than the moderate Muslim. And because the apostate is kind of like, look, I'm not going to kid myself. It is what it is. And I don't want to be like that. Whereas the moderate you know they engage in so all these um sort of uh intellectual gymnastics in their head to get by i mean if muhammad himself in a canonical hadith says whoever the apostate kill him okay or you know uh or in the quran itself you are allowed to you're it's permissible for man to have sex slaves infidel female sex slaves as many as your right hand possess okay these sorts of things if if i'm a muslim and i don't want to accept that for example you know what do you do with those verses.

1:49:55And I often watch in Arabic, these clerics, and that's what they say. Remember, I was telling you about the one guy who was basically saying, yeah, if you're married to a Christian, you can, but you have to hate her. And lo and behold, a lot of the people sitting there were kind of questioning, like, are you serious? And he finally gets frustrated. He goes, well, it's written. What do you do with the verses that I just quoted, including, you know, you've got to hate and Abraham and whatnot. So the crux of the matter is the religion itself, which is so easily identified and clear-cut, teaches what we call radical things, okay?

1:50:25They're only radical from our perspective, subjective perspective. They're not radical from a Muslim point of view.

1:50:30Francis Foster:Well, but that's exactly the point I'm putting to you, which is it clearly is radical from the perspective of the rulers of the UAE, from the rulers of Saudi Arabia. Right, right, right. It's radical to them because they can suffer from it because they're not seen as legitimate Muslim rulers. Right. And at the same time, they have to pay lip service to Islam. So they're not. In other words, a lot of these rulers are just not Muslim at heart, obviously, and they're but they govern Muslims. So they want to create the most, you know, on the one hand, they want to be legitimate and show their legitimacy as, hey, I can be your ruler.

1:51:03And which means they have to kind of let, you know, let the pot kind of steam come out a little bit so the Muslims can feel this is actual Islam. And on the other hand, they've got to kind of clamp down on certain teachings. So that's why a lot of these rulers are often just denounced as puppets of the West and not true Muslims, including the ones in Saudi Arabia who are actually nominal Wahhabis, which is as radical as you can get. And in fact, they do disseminate and play a huge role in sort of disseminating jihadist literature. And they're still hated and seen as pawns of the West. Roman, I'm going to ask a provocative question, but I think it's an important one.

1:51:40do you think the religion of Islam is compatible with the West? No, it's not. And if you mean by the West, the sort of secular liberal West, it's certainly not. If the West believes in freedom of religion and gender equality and everything that the West prizes, well, in Islam, it's not that there's a radical interpretation. Honestly, it's not. Like I told you, that's the observant interpretation, which is that. So, for example, you have to, okay, you have to hate the non-Muslim. Is that something that, you know, if you're living in a liberal Western secular society, you really want a group of people who are bound to feel that way towards you?

1:52:23How's that going to work out? Oh, I know how it works out. Just look at the UK, right? So there are built-in teachings in Islam, inherently, not a lot, I'm not saying the whole religion, there's a lot of it that's actually neutral, maybe some of it that's admirable, but there are just enough that bring it at odds with the things that the West actually prizes. Okay, killing blasphemers or attacking them. So in the West, freedom of expression and art and whatnot. And then, what was his name, Van Gogh, that guy gets killed. Because in the Muslim world, everyone would agree with that, and they would pat him on the back because that's what you do.

1:53:04So the religion itself has built-in mechanisms that does make it antithetical to a lot of the things that the West prizes. And so I guess the next question is, if it's completely antithetical, is it therefore an existential threat to the West? Yeah. Again, but again, it gets murky when you realize, so what are we talking about? Islam, you know, I'm almost, it's kind of like I'm anthropomorphizing it as if Islam's a man. Islam is made up of Muslims. And I already readily agree. A lot of Muslims are not real Muslims, are not observant Muslims, are cultural Muslims, are secular Muslims. You have a lot of that.

1:53:42I get that. And they, you know, presumably can assimilate. I'm sure a lot of them do. But the problem is you have the teachings exist. And though the teachings themselves are the existential threat, because there will be people who do adhere to those teachings. And once they do, they become the bad guys. Okay, which, which and nobody wants to see. It's funny. Every time I read, I look at Muslims attacking someone randomly in Europe, for example, and all of a sudden it's dismissed as oh, he had mental problems. Oh, he had psychological issues. No, he was actually, I mean, that's how we see it. But no, he was actually following a directive and something that breeds a certain contempt and hatred for precisely the kind of person he attacked.

1:54:23Okay, so again, I'm not trying to say, that would be scaremongering if I was sitting here to tell you every single Muslim wants to kill you. No, they don't, I get that. You know how many Muslims that you can look at today and you might be like, oh, is this guy dangerous? And then tomorrow that guy converts to Christianity. But for 10 years, and I've known them, this guy has been conflicted. And for those 10 years, he was not even a Muslim. And he was almost a Christian. So my point is, you don't know. There's a lot of these people. There's so much gray, and a lot of them are not a threat. A lot of them are great people, okay?

1:54:56But again, you know, it's how do you differentiate and how do you know? And this is why, you know, it's nice and it's good for the West to not discriminate, okay? But on the other hand, by not discriminating or just being intelligent, We're going back to the analogy of, you know, 100 candies and one even is poisonous. And you know it is. And so, OK, the 99 didn't cause the problem, but the one will. And that's why you continuously have the attacks that you continue having. Because in as much as you keep taking these numbers, there's a percentage that's going to come with the violence. And those things are antithetical to Western culture.

1:55:30So that being the case, the UK is in the situation it's in. if you were advising the UK on this particular issue, what policies would you put in place? What advice would you give the government? Yeah, well, that's not that easy because the UK has really dug itself deep already. It's one thing to say, hey, we don't want to bring in too many Muslims, like these other countries we were mentioning. But when you already have, what is it? You said 4 million? You know, well, first of all, anyone who's illegal, I would say, has to go immediately. I mean, if you're there illegally, buy. no more coming in um i would i don't know how they do this but i would really be monitoring mosques and the islamic kind of uh programming and what muslims are being exposed to including on the internet which i'm sure is not so easy so yeah and this is you know and it's and you at one point you start wondering is it worth all this like what does a western nation get from having to live constantly on its toes um just to be able to live side by side with muslims But I guess, again, in this case, I get it because they're already there.

1:56:33Right. But I would have no I would have no compunction or sympathy for any sort of radical preaching. I mean, I see in the UK radical Muslims screaming, you know, like actual Islamic jihadist stuff and they don't get in trouble. But then when a British person fights back, they get arrested. OK, so this is what I'm telling you. This is the real problem right now. And, you know, so when you tell me what advice I could give, how about start off by just being objective and without this two tier system where you're actually oppressing the natives and empowering those who are actually, you know, pushing for this sort of thing, the jihadist mentality.

1:57:09Would you would you do more hardline approaches, for instance, something like banning halal, banning facial coverings, banning burqas? it's okay the the facial covering is there's that's a security reason in fact in some in muslim countries it's sometimes the case women can't wear the hijab because it's sometimes you get a

1:57:28Francis Foster:terrorist like i said in uzbekistan you can't wear you can't wear a full face cover so that yeah for sure there's no problem with that um and and you know if there's a way to stop the sort of de-getto wise them so they're they do possibly assimilate instead of always kind of living and closely knit and it's like I said, a small rebought or Islamic fortification. It's not very easy. I mean, I think, and especially for the mentality that prevails right now in the UK and its leadership. Like I said, you're asking me, let's say this is neutral. You're asking me the measures they can take. They're still here, you know, where they're attacking their own.

1:58:06And you can't, what country tells its citizens you can't, you know, wave your flag? I mean, you know, this is one of the things that I often point out. If you want to know how insane it is in Europe, always look at it by analogy, other non-Western regions. And guess what? You know, like I made this argument recently. You know, I don't know if you use the same terminology, but in America, the ultra right is like the bad guy. This is like the racist, xenophobe, you know, crazy patriot. And to me, the ultra right is actually how everyone outside the West thinks and acts. They're all, if you go to any country, non-Western, sub-Saharan, Asian, Latin American, what we call ultra-right, traditional, you like your country, you like your flag, that's normative there.

1:58:50And the ones who support it most are their own governments. That's what they want you to be like. It's very weird to go to a nation like the UK where, oh, you're the bad guy because you're waving your nation's flag, but then these people are coming in waving their flags, including ISIS, and that's okay. I mean, so the UK's problems, man, they're just kind of mind-boggling. I don't even know where to begin. It's just, it's really warped.

1:59:15Francis Foster:Raymond, on that happy note, we're going to ask you our final question. Before that, tell us about your latest book. Yeah, The Two Swords of Christ. Thanks. The subtitle is The Five Centuries of War Between Islam and the Warrior Monks of Christendom, which comes out, it can be pre-ordered now, comes out later in November. So this book is basically a third of, it's my trilogy. I've been writing books that deal with the history of Christendom and Islam. And the first one was sword and scimitar, which looked at the general kind of what we talked about. The second one was defenders of the West, which looked at men.

1:59:44So the first one looks at decisive battles between Islam and the West, like Yarmouk and Manzikr, which I mentioned. The other one looks at decisive Christian men. And a lot of people like that second book because they're just shocked that Western Christians can act this way. But this book is even more so because this book deals with the warrior monks, the Templars and the Hospitallers, and what their rationale was. And I think what people will find interesting is, you know, on the one hand, these guys were very militant. On the other hand, they were very Christian, more Christian than your average guy.

2:00:17And to your average Christian today, of course, the two don't mix. You know, there's what I call doormat Christianity, which is what kind of is very prominent in the West. To be a good Christian is essentially to be a doormat. And it's easy to be a doormat too, you know, non-confrontational. So a lot of people make a virtue of advice. you know, and they're non-confrontational and they're cowardly and they pat themselves on the back saying, I'm just being a good Christian. Not so these guys. Okay, so these guys were immensely militant and they really took the war to Islam. And talk about, I kind of alluded to it earlier when we were talking why the crusades failed because of numbers.

2:00:53It really came down in the end, it was just these guys. And these were monks and warrior, you know, holy warrior monks, essentially types. And so I think people will be fascinated at their theological underpinnings and one of them which i get into because and that's the title of the books the two swords of christ um is are you familiar with the verse there's a biblical verse where jesus tells his disciples so you know sell your cloak and buy a buy a sword and they say look lord here are two swords and you say that's enough so to your average modern day christian that has absolutely no meaning today it has nothing to do with real swords okay to medieval christians especially, and a lot of pre-modern Christians in general, what that verse meant is you have two, we're facing two battles as Christians, one against spiritual forces, and you need a spiritual sword, and one against physical, secular forces, and you need a physical, secular sword.

2:01:43So that was understood by a lot of theologians, and that's what gave rise to these sorts of military orders, and it was, of course, also fused in the concept of just war. But anyway, yeah, I think it's going to be an interesting book to a lot of people, and it's going to be eye-opening at how Christians used to behave in the face of these sorts of existential threats.

2:02:03Francis Foster:Well, with that, we're about to go to triggerpod.co.uk where our audience get to ask you their questions. But before we do, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Before Raymond answers a final question, at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our sub stack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. Is there a sect of Islam that is nonviolent, does not believe in jihad, and does not want violence and to topple Western powers? What I don't see very much of is Christians in the West being concerned about the mass slaughter of Christians in Africa and the Middle East.

2:02:38Do you have an explanation of why that's happening and not happening?

2:02:42Francis Foster:What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Oh boy. You know, I think we've talked about a lot of things, but it's something I brought up, which I think is the most important thing never to forget, which is again, you know, don't lose sight of the real source of the problem and in the the islam problem in the west it's not the muslims okay it's the policies it's the policies that actually enable um empower uh muslims and bring them in by the millions okay and that's actually supposedly something you can do about assuming you know you live under some sort of democratic rule or you have representatives that that you supposedly elected um okay and if if it doesn't work then there's something else going on and the problem um needs to really be be looked at a little closer but the point is a lot of you know this isn't about hating muslims that's not what i'm trying to say i'm trying to say historically there was always a clash you know the people that i'm talking about in this book or just historically if they if they thought their descendants are bringing islam in they just i mean i'm sure they're spinning in their grave right now because it just wouldn't make any sense to them OK, so a lot of it, a lot of the problems are just self-made by the West.

2:03:54OK, Islam is weak, as you pointed out earlier. Islam is inherently weak right now, physically, economically, militarily. It can't do what it does. But why is it doing it? It's because Western elements are making it, are empowering and allowing it. So like I said, I like to get to the heart of matters. And in this current case, it's not Islam itself. It's the West.

2:04:15Francis Foster:Head on over to Substack where Raymond's going to answer your questions. There seems to be a belief, particularly in left-wing circles, that Islam spread to billions of people with flowers and chocolate. My question is, in Islamic schools and universities, is this how Muslims understand their own history?

2:04:42Thank you.