War with Islam

In the last few years I have read several books whose authors claim to have discovered the spark of conflict between Christians and Muslims “that continues to this day.”

Those sparks include Vasco de Gama’s voyages to India; Europe’s reaction to Muslim conquest of Constantinople in 1453; Russia’s wars with Ottoman Turkey; British imperialism into Egypt and the Sudan; and, of course, the various Crusades, 1096-1272.

None of those books mentioned the single fact that led to initial fights between Christian and Muslim – the surge in 633 of Muslim forces from Arabia into Christian lands. In 636 the Eastern Roman army met the Muslim army at Yarmuk. Roman defeat allowed the Muslim army, by 640, to overrun present-day Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. By 700, Muslim forces had conquered North Africa and Persia and were preparing to invade Spain.

http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/muslimwars/articles/yarmuk.aspx

For more than 750 years after the battle at Yarmuk, Muslim armies conquered Christian and pagan lands. Spain was not free of Muslim forces until 1492.

And yet, Muslim conquests do not figure in modern history, or at least not in the evaluation of how we got where we are today.

It is as though all of North Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and the countries on the border of southern Russia have always been Muslim. No TV talking head or politician talks about the Muslim Arab army that burst into Christendom and swept all before it, compelling conversion, giving death to those who refused.

In modern history, it is the Christians who are at fault, and Jews, of course. If we would only let the Muslims do as theoige y wished in their own countries … But that is not the way of Islam. Mohammad made a religion of conquest. Mohammad’s rules demand war against individual unbelievers as well as against nations that refuse Islam. If that is not so, why did Muslims hold the Balkans until forced out in the early 20th century? Why did Muslim armies attack Vienna in 1683?

We non-Muslims are in an almost 1,500-year war. Muslims will not let up. Why should we?