Primer on Islamic Imperialism

By Greg Richards - American Thinker

One of the alleged sins held against the West by Islamic radicalism - which has declared war on us through Osama bin Laden's fatwa issued in 1998 in London - is imperialism: the imperialism of the Dutch, the British and the French from the 17th to the 20th centuries. (For some reason, Russian imperialism in Central Asia gets a pass - so far.) Israel is allegedly an outpost of European imperialism.

The original western imperial enterprise in the radical Islamic narrative was the Crusades. The First Crusade began in 1095. The Crusades were undertaken to reclaim the Holy Land for Christendom. Reclaim it from whom? From the Muslims.

But Mohammed died in Medina in 632 as ruler of the Hijaz, the northwest section of Arabia along the Red Sea which includes the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. But if they controlled the Hijaz in 632, what were the Muslims doing in Jerusalem in 1100?

Of course, they were there by conquest! They were they by virtue of Islamic imperialism - the extension of the Land of Islam (Dar al-Islam) by holy war: jihad (notwithstanding the other meanings of this term).

Let's review. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was a warrior and ruler who conquered Mecca and the Hijaz from his base in Medina. Following The Prophet's death in 632, Islam was spread by Arab and Muslim conquest. There are Muslims who are not Arabs, but the first phase of expansion was Arab expansion. The ruler of the Muslim world, the successor to Muhammad, was the Caliph - "the shadow of God on earth."

The Caliph was both the religious and political head of the Muslim world which, unlike the Christian world, draws no distinction between the two. In North Africa and the Middle East, the lands that the Arab Muslim world expanded into were controlled by the Byzantine Empire, the successor to the Roman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople. These were Christian lands. To the East, between the Middle East and India, was the Persian Empire with a different religious tradition.

At the death of Muhammad in 632, the realm of Islam consisted of northwest Arabia. To the north and west is Christian Byzantium, to the east is Persia. Neither of these are Arab; neither of them are Muslim. But within 100 years, the territory from Persia to Spain is controlled by Muslim Arabs. How did this happen? Egypt, for instance, was not in 632 an Arab country. It was of a different ethnic stock and had been in existence for 3600 years!

What happened was conquest, one of the most impressive in history.

Here's a Brief Timeline...