Islamic Imperialism (2006) is the title of Efraim Karsh’s illuminating book on Islam’s relentless, global ambition.

Islamic imperialism links mosque and state

One doesn’t have to read very far into Professor Karsh’s book to see the validity of his thesis. The Introduction begins with these quotes:

I was ordered to fight all men until they say “There is no god but Allah.” – Prophet Muhammad’s farewell address, March 632

I shall cross this sea to their islands to pursue them until there remains no one on the face of the earth who does not acknowledge Allah. – Saladin, January 1189

We shall export our revolution throughout the world … until the calls “there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” are echoed all over the world. – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, 1979

I was ordered to fight people until they say, “There is no god but Allah, and his prophet Muhammad.” – Osama bin Laden. November 2001

Of course, Karsh is only one of the latest of many historians that have written of Islam’s imperialistic ambition. But he shows, moreover, that in contrast to the gradual development of Christianity and its doctrine of separating church and state, the birth of Islam was inextricably linked with the creation of a world power that precluded this dichotomy by rejecting the concept of the church as well as the concept of the state! There is only the Arab nation, the umma, and it has no borders.

Moreover, whereas European imperialism maintained political and cultural separation between Europe and its African or Middle Eastern or Asian colonies, Islamic imperialism spread throughout these continents by converting its inhabitants to the creed of Muhammad. And insofar as Islam tolerated, when it did not slaughter, Christians and Jews—the “People of the Book”—its forces reduced the surviving victims to a condition of “dhimmitude,” which, according to Bat Ye’or, was often worse than slavery.

Some emphasized territorial gain

On the other hand, and as Karsh explains, some Muslim rulers

were less interested in the mass conversion of the conquered populations than in enjoying the material fruits of their subjugation. For them the triumph of Islam was not so much a cultural issue, as it was a territorial and political matter. The lands they occupied became an integral part of the House of Islam, whether or not most of their inhabitants became Muslims.

Islamic imperialism, never simply political, remains the driving force of the Middle East. Even a “secular” Arab leader like Saddam Hussein had to brandish his religious credentials to justify his invasion Kuwait. Karsh writes: “For all its professed secularism … pan-Arabism has not only been forced to claim allegiance to the religious beliefs … to which most Arabs remain attached to date, but has effectively been Muslim in its ethos.” Even Christian Arabs have been urged to preserve Islam as “the most precious element in their Arabism.”

“Palestine” another part of the House of Islam

The glory and logic of Islamic imperialism is the ineluctable reason why no Arab or Muslim ruler has ever recognized, except for tactical reasons, the land called “Palestine” as separate from the House of Islam. Arab rhetoric about a “Palestinian” state is intended solely for Western consumption—and it also prompts the US and the EU to bankroll the Palestinians and their supremely cunning terrorist leaders.

Karsh quotes the eminent Arab-American historian Philip Hitti, who in 1946 described the common Arab view: “There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not.”

It was never “perceived as a distinct entity deserving national self-determination but as an integral part of a unified regional Arab order, no element of which should be conceded at any cost.”

As late as 1974, ten years after the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Syrian president Hafez Assad still referred to Palestine not only as part of the Arab homeland but as a basic part of southern Syria. There is no evidence that his son and successor, Bashar Assad, has renounced the power-lust of Islamic imperialism.

The special case of Syria

Syria is particularly revealing. Its multi-ethnic and multi-religious character facilitates the presence in Damascus of a variety of terrorist organizations linked to diverse Arab or Muslims regimes. This linkage confirms that Middle Eastern leaders and ideologues have remained under “the spell of the imperial dream.” These would-be Saladins may have delusions of grandeur; but they now have within their reach weapons of mass destruction. This makes the world-conquering glory of Islam in the past Islam’s vision of the future.

Danger to Europe, England and America

Even now Muslims have in sight the conquest of England and Europe where, in a few decades, they may outnumber the native populations. Even now, with more than a thousand mosques in the United States, imams are preaching anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and Islamic imperialism.

Even now, with all this in front of their noses, Western leaders insist on the establishment of a Palestinian state along side Israel. What is more, not only has Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ostensibly embraced this fantasy, but there is not a single party in the Knesset that stands up and calls for an end to this appeasement of Islam—nay, an end to political cowardice.

No statesman has the courage to call upon his country to go on the offensive against Islam—a “culture of hate” now spreading throughout the world. Islamic imperialism is animated by a political religion that denies the sanctity of human life, the foundation of Judeo-Christian civilization. This is why most Muslims cheered and chanted “Allahu Akbar” when Muslim kamikazes murdered 3,000 innocents on 9/11.

Infinitely more is needed of America – hence of the Trump administration – than an attack on ISIS and negation of the U.S. nuclear weapons agreement with Iran. Islam has declared war against America as well as against Israel. Yet neither country has unqualifiedly and emphatically identified the enemy, let alone developed a strategy for defeating this deadly foe – the challenge of our century.◙