OPINION:
On the eve of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, former President George W. Bush reiterated what he said less than a week after those attacks.
“I also made it clear that Islam was a religion of peace, not a religion of war, and that [the 9/11 terrorists] subverted their religion.”
He could not be more wrong. One need only review the Quran and the history of Islam to come to the opposite conclusion.
As “Reliance of the Traveler,” the most-relied-on book of Shariah says, “Jihad means to wage war against non-Muslims.” It is the obligation of the entire Muslim community, the ummah.
“Reliance” goes on to quote the Quran, saying, “Fighting is prescribed for you (Quran 2:216),” “Slay them wherever you find them (Quran 4:89) and “The caliph makes war on Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians,” (“Reliance,” 09.8) and “Fight those who do not believe in Allah or the Last Day and who forbid not what Allah and His messenger have forbidden.” (Quran 9:29)
To understand Islamic history, one needs to absorb not only that but also much more of the Quran. Islam originated in the seventh century of the Christian era in the divine visions of the Prophet Muhammad, which formed the Quran.
Islam has never spread peacefully. For most of its history, Islam has inspired its adherents to invent solutions to the sometimes conflicting demands of warfare, imperial politics and missionary zeal.
Within its first few centuries, Islamic armies had taken over most of the Mediterranean countries and Northern Africa.
Muslim armies spread their religion through southern France, Persia, India and almost as far as China. They conquered with great speed and effectiveness, supplanting Christianity and Judaism along the way.
This continued until Charles “The Hammer” Martel defeated Islamic forces at the Battle of Tours in 732.
Charlemagne, who effectively succeeded Martel, became king of the Franks. His leadership was so effective in resisting Islamic incursions that he became known as the father of Europe.
Islam remained relatively quiet until the 20th century, when enormous wealth, derived from oil, was brought to the Islamic states. Now, Islamic states threaten Christian nations not with armies, but with immigration.
Last year, in its National Security Strategy, the Trump administration predicted “civilizational erasure” and economic decline for Europe. The strategy read, in part: “But this [European] economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”
The National Security Strategy brought heaps of European condemnation, but it rang true. Britain’s and the European Union’s Muslim populations have been growing rapidly. The British Muslim population grew 44% from the 2001 to the 2021 censuses. Islam is the fastest-growing population in the EU, having grown 50% to 60% through immigration and 40% to 50% through natural expansion.
That is just the beginning, because Europe seems unable — and unwilling — to stop the flow of refugees from Muslim countries.
Through their online speech regulations and other laws, Britain and the EU have quashed free speech in favor of Islamic beliefs.
Two years ago, China announced plans to “Sinicize” Islam as a way of crushing the resistance of the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority. China will find that the Islamic ideology is far too strong for that to succeed.
Muslim populations in the U.S. are overly sensitive to any labeling of terrorism as Islamic. The Texas State Board of Education has announced a curriculum for high school history that will make students study the ideology behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
As this newspaper editorialized, the new curriculum requires students to “identify the September 11, 2001 attacks motivated by ’radical Islam’ and learn about the response, including the global war on terrorism.”
The editorial concluded that “Islam is not a force for good in the world. … The war over the new Texas curriculum is not unexpected. Muslims consistently lie about what happened 25 years ago in New York City. If our schools do not tell the truth, who will?”
No one. To be accused of being “Islamophobic” ends too many conversations.
The United States faces its own civilizational erasure. If our schools and colleges are not teaching the Islamic history of terrorism, we will go the way of Europe by the end of this century.
• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and a contributing editor for The American Spectator.
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