Islamic Imperialism: A History [Paperback]

Efraim Karsh makes a compelling case that the internal history of the Islamic world is one of imperialist conflicts. Despite Muhammad's admonition, Muslim fought Muslim more often than he fought crusader, and the crusades were a parochial event. But the same case of unremitting conflict could be made for Christendom, and most other parts of the world for most of history. Any history of fourteen centuries in 250 pages is going to look like it is nothing but wars. One would need much more social history to give a corrected picture.

The difficulty is to know what we may learn for contemporary policy. This history of the Middle East is most easily applied in continuity to the conflict between Israel and its neighbours. Karsh argues that the surrounding nations merely wish to carve up the spoils both of a defeated Israel and of Palestine; that they in no wise recognise a Palestinian nation, nor have at heart the welfare of the Palestinian people.

Showing that the history of the House of Islam is largely one of internal conflict is quite different from obtaining insight as to Islam's current intentions towards the rest of the world. I am unsure how the former helps us understand the latter. The obvious reading of Karsh's view is that, just as it never was united, so the Dar al-Islam will never unite in confrontation with the West, will never find the internal peace to direct its energies to world domination.

In a perverse inversion of truth, leftwing opinion-makers have in Orwellian fashion tarred those resisting Islamic imperialism, with the brush of 'imperialism' themselves. And thus, instead of the vast Islamic Empire from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, correctly labelled as imperialist, those outposts that resist being forced into Islamic domination, such as the tiny Jewish State of Israel, have themselves been branded falsely and maliciously as 'imperialists' as well as 'fascists', 'colonialists', 'racists' etc and every other leftist catchword of abuse.
Ephraim Karsh challenges head on the notion that has been falsely sewn by left wing academicians and spin doctors that Islamic terror is "an understandable and unavoidable response to American arrogance and self-serving foreign policy."
He refutes the narrow minded and perverted left wing dogma that imperialism can only be a western phenomenon, and that Muslim extremists can only be victims of imperialism.
Karsh , an Israeli, comes from the nation that is today one of the primary victims of Islamic aggression, and of it's howling cheerleaders of the international left.

In fact, Karsh demonstrates that it is the Middle East where the institution of Empire not only originated (eg Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Iran and so on) but that imperialism in the middle east has actually outlived it's European counterpart.
Karsh illustrates how Islam is in inherently imperialist- "In the long history of Islamic empire, the wide gap between delusions of grandeur and centrifugal forces of localism would be bridged time and time gain by force of arms making violence a key element of political Islamic culture to date."

Karsh begins by tracing Mohammed's actions including his elimination of the Jewish presence in Medina and his violent conquest of the Jewish community of Khaibar and their subjection to dhimmi status, thus laying the ground for what would become the common arrangement of domination by Muslims of their non-Muslim neighbours.
The author explains the harsh rule and apartheid of dhimmitude- the indignities and servitude suffered by minorities such as Jews and Christians under this system.

In covering the history of Islamic imperialism from the time of Mohamed until today, Karsh covers the many atrocities visited upon non-Muslim minorities in the Islamic empires. These include the Madahbih al Sitting massacres of Christians in Damascus and Lebanon in 1860 of which the Maronites still speak bitterly of today, the brutal suppression of the Ottomans during the 19th century of their Greek subjects. and the horrific Armenian genocide of 1915-1916 by the Turks in which around 800 000 Armenians were slaughtered and and thousands of Armenian women and girls sold by the Turks into slavery.

The author traces the Arab-Jewish conflict over the Land of Israel to the perception by the Arab rulers that the Jewish National Movement commonly known as Zionism was a threat to the resurgent Arab imperial dream. As Karsh points out "Palestine" was not perceived as distinct and deserving of national self-determination but an integral part of the regional Arab order of which no element should be conceded at any cost."

The author reveals the truth that the conflict is in fact and always has been between Jewish national self-determination and Arab imperialism, "Palestine" being recognized by the local Arabs as Southern Syria in 1948.
The author go's on to trace the roles in Arab/Islamic imperialist ambition of it's historic kingpins such as the Nazi-inspired Hassan Banna Gamel Abdel Nasser, Yasser Arafat, the Ayatollah Kohmeini and the would be Hitler, Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
This book traces the truth of Islamic imperial aggression and the roots of today's conflict of Islam against Israel and the free world.

The so called University student above is incorrect, the authors handling of the Koran is accurate and in keeping with Islamic mainstream teaching throughout Islamic history. This book sobers one from the drunken stupor the West is in concerning the true nature of Islam.