Over the years, a variety of people have independently compared Islam to the mafia. During a 2014 debate on HBO’s Real Time, Bill Maher famously called Islam “the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will f***ing kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book.”

In 2021, Britain’s Grace Baptist Mission, referring specifically to the dangers facing Muslim converts to Christianity, offered an even more concise formulation: “Islam is like the mafia—you can go in, but you can’t come out.”

In 2022, Bangladeshi ex-Muslim activist Arifur Rahman described Muslim communities as “autonomous systems” whose internal abuses remain hidden from surrounding societies: “We don’t know what goes on inside,” he said. “It is almost like the mafia.”

Perhaps most revealingly, Muslims themselves used the comparison while threatening an Egyptian apostate interviewed for the 2024 academic study Leaving Islam: Ex-Muslims and Zemiology. “Do you know what mafia is?” they asked him. “You just exist now; after ten minutes you don’t exist and nobody knows what happened to you!” He and his daughter were subsequently forced to flee Egypt.

Most of those who compare Islam to the mafia cite the same one or two parallels—murdering critics or punishing defectors. In reality, there are at least ten parallels—and some of the most revealing are rarely, if ever, noticed.

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As we saw, a few days ago, a crusader army launched a decisive assault that captured the Tower of Damietta, breaking the Muslim defenses across the Nile and opening the way for the Fifth Crusade’s advance into Egypt.

Taking Damietta itself would, however, prove an arduous task; a lengthy siege commenced, with occasional, and ever increasing, assaults—often led by the Templars.

Sultan al-Kamil eventually fled his own camp near the city wall, which was quickly appropriated by the Christians—with the knights of the Temple, once again, in the van:

The Templars, leaders in the ascent of the horses, having put up their banners, hurried to the city in a swift march, throwing down the wicked ones who came boldly from the gates to resist those who were advancing.

The sultan, terrified by their audacious advance, proceeded to offer generous terms to the crusaders. In exchange for their withdrawal from Egypt, he would restore Jerusalem to the Christians, establish a thirty-year truce, return all castles captured west of the Jordan River, and pay a tribute of between 15,000–30,000 gold bezants (sources differ).

John of Brienne, titular king of Jerusalem, was eager to accept this ostensibly handsome offer, but the papal legate, Cardinal Pelagius, who by now shared leadership of the army with John, rejected it.

In fact,

Pelagius might have consented had it not been for the opposition of the military orders. They claimed that it would be dishonorable to accept such a peace when all Egypt could be won by a little further effort, and they represented that the making of the proposal was a proof that al-Kamil feared the Christian might. Pelagius was convinced and he rejected the Sultan’s offer.

The military orders’ reasoning was sound. Why would al-Kamil be so willing to relinquish what for a century had been the chief source of contention between Muslims and Christians—Jerusalem—if not because he believed that he was on the verge of defeat?

But there was another reason why those crusaders who had long lived with, and intimately knew, the enemy rejected this Muslim olive branch. In the words of James of Vitry,

Many of our pilgrims judged these offers [by al-Kamil] important and proper to satisfy us, but those who knew by experience the fraud of these men [Muslims] who change unceasingly, and principally the Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Teutonic Knights, the legate, the Patriarch, the archbishops, the bishops, all the clergy and some of the pilgrims, made nothing of their false words, thinking that the Saracens had no other intention than, under the veil of a simulated peace, to disperse the army of Christ as soon as the pilgrims had retired.

It is interesting to note that all those who mistrusted the Muslim offer as a ruse were of a distinctly Christian station—either brothers of an order or clergymen—whereas those who took the offer at face value, such as John of Brienne, were seculars. (Clearly, if Christians today are as “innocent as doves,” their medieval counterparts were as “wise as snakes,” Matt. 10:16.)

So, the crusade continued, though the Christians made little head way even as disease and dysentery, which had plagued their ranks from the start, continued to harry and reduce their numbers.

It was during this downtime that one of history’s most memorable “interfaith dialogues” took place: Francis of Assisi, a mystic, ascetic, and itinerant preacher, whose pious exploits would go on to earn him sainthood, had arrived at crusader-held Damietta in early August 1219 with the express purpose of converting the Muslims to Christ, both to save their souls and end the war: “Francis, like the crusaders,” writes Christoph Maier, an expert on the saint, “wanted to liberate the holy places in Palestine from Muslim rule. What was different was his strategy.… He wanted their total submission to the Christian faith.”

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Is it time to call for a new crusade?

Not long ago, merely uttering the word “crusade” in connection with Islam was enough to provoke outrage. When George W. Bush casually referred to the coming war on terrorism as a “crusade” in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the backlash was swift enough that the administration distanced itself from the word. Considering the countless apologies, condemnations, and mea culpas concerning the crusades that Westerners have been subjected to ever since, one might have assumed that “crusade” had been permanently banished from public discourse.

Yet, today, amid mounting anger over Islam and mass Muslim immigration, Westerners are once again openly invoking the crusades—and some appear to mean it quite literally.

Last week, for example, Jake Lang led what was explicitly billed as a “Christian Crusader” march in Dearborn, Michigan, home to one of America’s largest Muslim populations. Its stated purpose was to oppose the “Islamification of America,” and Lang was hardly coy about what he thought was happening.

“The Muslims have not come here to assimilate,” he said. “They have come here to steal the wealth of this land to rape our women… The crusade has begun,” he declared, adding to Muslims, “Your time in this country is running short… Muslims go home before we send you home.”

Nor are these sentiments confined to America. In Britain, Katie Hopkins has declared that her nation has been “overrun in every way” by Islam; therefore, “the time of the crusades will need to come again.”

Even Deus vult—“God wills it,” the famous cry associated with the First Crusade—is making a mighty comeback.

It is hardly difficult to understand the sentiment behind all this. Millions of Westerners look around their cities and scarcely recognize them. They see Muslim enclaves and parallel societies, mosques and preachers promoting doctrines diametrically opposed to Western norms, demands for ever greater Islamic accommodation, elements of sharia appearing in Western life, and the targeting and killing of apostates and critics of Islam. They have also witnessed sexual-abuse scandals, attacks on Christians and Jews and their holy sites, and a seemingly endless succession of jihadist atrocities.

To many, especially in parts of Western Europe, all of this looks suspiciously like an Islamic conquest unfolding before their eyes. Hence the appeal of an old and once-forbidden word: Crusade.

There is, however, a fundamental problem with this diagnosis. Against whom, exactly, is this new crusade supposed to be fought—Muslims in the West?

The historical crusades arose in circumstances dramatically different from those confronting the modern West. For centuries before the First Crusade, Muslim armies had conquered enormous swaths of previously Christian territory, including Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and most of Spain. The crusading movement eventually became equally important in the defense of Europe against Ottoman expansion, from Nicopolis and Varna to the Holy Leagues associated with Lepanto and the wars surrounding Vienna. The logic of crusading was perfectly intelligible to contemporaries: Muslim powers were conquering Christian lands, and Christian rulers were responding with armed resistance.

But what Muslim army conquered Dearborn? Who stormed Birmingham, Paris, Brussels, or Berlin? No Muslim armies battered down their gates. Rather, the gates were opened for them—and by the Western authorities themselves.

Put differently, it was the leaders of Europe—the pope, emperors, kings, and nobles—who called for and spearheaded the crusades in defense of Christendom and for the liberation of Christian peoples. Yet it is their very counterparts—the pope, presidents, prime ministers, politicians (and certain kings, such as Charles III)—who are now responsible for the exact opposite: importing and empowering Islam in the West, to the detriment of Western people.

Nothing will be accomplished until this ironclad fact is understood.

It was Western politicians who created the immigration policies that brought millions of Muslims into Europe and America; Western governments that permitted temporary migration to become permanent settlement and facilitated family reunification; Western institutions that abandoned assimilation in favor of multiculturalism; Western bureaucracies that funded the resulting programs; and Western political, academic, and media establishments that stigmatized opposition to these policies as racist, xenophobic, or “Islamophobic.”

In other words, whatever one thinks of Islam, to call for a crusade against Muslims already living in the West is to mistake the most visible symptom for the underlying disease.

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On August 26, 1071, one of the most decisive battles in all world history took place—that of Manzikert. It paved the way for the First Crusade, the subsequent Ottoman invasions of Europe, and creation of the modern state of Turkey atop formerly Christian Asia Minor.

It all began half a century earlier, in 1019, when “the first appearance of the bloodthirsty beasts … the savage nation of infidels called Turks entered Armenia … and mercilessly slaughtered the Christian faithful with the sword,” writes the chronicler, Mathew of Edessa.

In the ensuing years and decades, virtually the whole of Armenia was decimated: hundreds of thousands were slaughtered or enslaved, and thousands of churches torched or desecrated, including by being turned into mosques:

Everything was covered with blood. . . . Because of the great number of corpses, the land stank, and all of Persia was filled with innumerable captives; thus this whole nation of beasts became drunk with blood. All human beings of Christian faith were in tears and in sorrowful affliction.

Nor was there much doubt concerning what fueled the Turks’ animus: “This nation of infidels,” a military leader explained, “comes against us because of our Christian faith and they are intent on destroying the ordinances of the worshippers of the cross and on exterminating the Christian faithful.” Therefore, “it is fitting and right for all the faithful to go forth with their swords and to die for the Christian faith.”

Many were of the same mind; records tell of monks and priests, fathers, wives, and children, all shabbily armed but zealous to protect their way of life, coming out to face the invaders—only to be butchered or enslaved.

Nor were the Turkish hordes, under the authority of the ascendant Seljuk tribe, content with ravaging Armenia. They continued riding westward across the Anatolian plain, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire (“Byzantium”), leaving a trail of smoke and destruction in their wake.

On becoming emperor in 1068, Romanus Diogenes made it his priority to act. By 1069 he had amassed and marched a massive army deep into Asia Minor, liberating numerous cities from the Turks.

The two forces eventually met near the city of Manzikert, just north of Lake Van. The Turkic sultan, Muhammad bin Dawud—better known to posterity as “Alp Arslan,” or, “Heroic Lion”—sent a delegation to parley with Romanus on “the pretext of peace,” though in reality “stalling for time,” explained Michael Attaleiates, who was present. This only “roused the emperor to war.”

Romanus spurned the Muslim emissaries and commanded them to tell their sultan that “there will be no treaty . . . and no going home except after I have done in the lands of Islam the like of what has been done in the lands of Rome [Byzantium].” Then, having “dismissed the ambassador with the greatest contempt,” Romanus incited his men to war with “words of extraordinary violence.”

For his part, Muhammad exhorted his men to jihad and reminded them of its win-win scenario: “If we are given victory over them, [well and good]. If not, we will go as martyrs to the Garden [Islamic paradise].”

“We are with you!” cried the men in unison when he finished his harangue, followed by a barrage of “Allah Akbars” that reportedly “shook the mountains.”

Thus, as “martial music resounded from both sides and the dust of the battlefield billowed up like clouds in the sky,” the two armies met on that fateful Friday, August 26, 1071.

The battle ensued in the usual way: Turkic horseman, in a crescent formation that hid their fewer numbers, sped forward and unleashed volleys of arrows, before swiftly retreating. Throngs of Christian fighters and horses fell; some—especially mercenaries and other “vacillating” elements—broke rank and fled.

Undaunted, Romanus maintained the line and marched his forces forward; but because the Turks had unlimited terrain to fall back on, the Christian army never managed to corner and finish them off, even as the Muslims continued to engage in effective hit and runs tactics.

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On July 30, more than 72,000 Muslims surged from Morocco into Ceuta, leaving at least 96 dead, and prompting Italy to impose targeted border controls on arrivals from Spain.

But just as Italy tries to protect itself, Italians continue to be bombarded with a very different story about their past: mass migration and multiculturalism, they are told—particularly from the Islamic world—are part of the very essence of Italy, especially Sicily.

Consider one National Geographic article, “From Kasbahs to Couscous—How Sicily Has Celebrated Its Diversity Through the Centuries.”

Sicily, we are told, is the “Gates of Europe,” an island whose identity has always been shaped by foreigners: “immigration is not a footnote to Sicilian history; it’s part of the essence of an island shaped by outsiders.”

There is, however, one problem with this narrative: it treats jihadist conquests as mere episodes of “immigration.”

Thus, while discussing Mazara del Vallo, now home to Italy’s largest Arab community, the magazine asserts that modern Tunisian migration represents merely “the latest wave in a history of immigration from North Africa that goes back to the 9th century CE.”

And what sort of “immigration” occurred in the ninth century?

In National Geographic’s very next words, “a Tunisian-led army invaded Sicily, turning it into an Islamic emirate for the next 200 years.”

Read that again, in full context:

But this [modern Tunisian migration into Sicily] was just the latest wave in a history of immigration from North Africa that goes back to the 9th century CE, when a Tunisian-led army invaded Sicily, turning it into an Islamic emirate for the next 200 years. Mazara’s kasbah was built then, and it was later sacked by subsequent Christian rulers. Today, it’s been restored and is once again home to a majority Tunisian population.

An Islamic army invaded Sicily, brutally conquered its Christian inhabitants, and incorporated the island into the Islamic world—and this is now presented as an earlier “wave” in Sicily’s multicultural “history of immigration.”

Indeed, the only “bad guys” in this narrative are the “subsequent Christian rulers” who “sacked” Muslim-occupied Mazara. This wrong has apparently been righted as Mazara is “once again home to a majority Tunisian population.”

So now military conquests are being recast as “immigration.”

This semantic sleight of hand is significant, particularly because the article explicitly places this historical narrative alongside today’s migrant crisis. Modern Sicily, it notes, stands “at the vanguard of the modern European migrant crisis,” receiving migrants arriving from Africa. From there, the reader is taken on a tour of Muslim influences, Tunisian communities, mosques, couscous, Arabic words, and organizations assisting contemporary African migrants.

The message culminates in the words of a Sicilian guide: “In many places, people say, ‘You’re different — go away!’”

But Sicily, the guide continues, has another response: “You’re different. What can we learn from you?”

In other words, the past supplies a lesson for the present: Sicily was multicultural then; Sicily is multicultural now; and welcoming newcomers is simply an expression of Sicily’s authentic historical identity.

This interpretation is not confined to a travel magazine; academic and scholarly publications make the same claims.

There is only one problem with this utopic picture of diversity meant to shape modern opinions on Muslim migration.

It is completely ahistorical.

The Islamic presence in Sicily was not inaugurated by refugees peacefully arriving with couscous recipes and irrigation techniques. It began with invasion, massacre, rape, and enslavement—in a word, jihad.

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Today in history, on August 24, 1218, a crusader army launched a decisive assault that captured the Tower of Damietta, breaking the Muslim defenses across the Nile and opening the way for the Fifth Crusade’s advance into Egypt.

Not only was this a major breakthrough, but surviving accounts underscore the mighty travails that were always part and parcel of crusading. A summary follows:

Around AD 1200, Saladin’s brother Saphadin emerged victorious from the internecine struggles among Saladin’s heirs, displaced his nephews, and became sultan. Saphadin wasted no time in living up to the meaning of his name (“sword of the religion/Islam”).

In 1202, Philip of Plessis, the master of the Temple, wrote a letter describing how the new sultan was “most cruelly” persecuting Christians “with all his troops from Egypt, Jerusalem and Damascus and even with a horde of pagans from beyond the Euphrates.” The Christians were so surrounded by encroaching Muslims that, “if the enemies of the Christian cross left their castles in the evening they would be visible in front of our castles at the break of dawn.”

For their part, the Knights of the Temple responded by building the imposing castle of Atlit—also known as Pilgrim Castle (Château Pèlerin)—which jutted out into the sea, just south of Haifa. It served its purpose: “From this new castle the infidels suffer considerable damage, and they are forced to abandon their cultivated lands as they flee in terror of God.”

The depredations of Saphadin helped give rise to what would be known as the Fifth Crusade. The longtime belief championed by the military orders and other veterans that Egypt must first be conquered before Jerusalem can be secured was finally put into action.

A large crusading force of as many as thirty thousand men, including many newly arrived European pilgrims, assembled in Acre under the general leadership of John of Brienne (titular king of Jerusalem) and set sail for Egypt. On May 27, 1218, the first ships reached the Nile Delta, and the Crusaders soon established a fortified camp opposite Damietta.

Long known among the Crusaders as “the key to all Egypt,” Damietta was also immensely fortified, with three rings of walls, a moat between the first two walls, and twenty-eight strong towers.

The first task confronting the Crusaders was the massive chain stretched between the city walls and a fortified tower on an island in the Nile Delta garrisoned with three hundred Muslim fighters; it prevented access to the city’s harbor.

The assault began on June 24, when the Knights of the Hospital led a fierce charge against this chain tower. They sailed to the tower and, from their boats, set up ladders against its side, which they ascended one after the other. The attempt failed; the Muslims destroyed the ladders, thereby sending “to heaven soldiers who were vigorous and well-armed, wounded in body to the advantage of their souls, crowned with a glorious martyrdom,” to quote an eyewitness. “The overjoyed Egyptians, mocking us violently, raised their voices, beating drums and sounding sackbuts; gloom and sadness invaded the Christians.”

It is the Templars, however, whose martial exploits are repeatedly praised in the chronicles of eyewitness sources. For example, the bishop of Acre, James of Vitry, who accompanied the warrior monks on this expedition, “pays many tributes to the valor of the Templars at Damietta.” He likens them to those whom God “will encircle my house with” to “serve me in war.” (Zechariah 9:8).

Oliver of Paderborn, an eyewitness, especially singles them out for praise. During an early and especially fierce Muslim sortie on the Crusader camp, Oliver reports that the Christians were overwhelmed and nearly routed—if not for “the courage of the Templars.”

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Riddle me this: Why does the Western world only make movies dedicated to demonizing its Christian past, while the Muslim world makes movies glorifying its jihadist past?

Take Barbaros: Sword of the Mediterranean, a 2021 television series written and produced in Turkey. The highly fictionalized series revolves around four real Muslim brothers, and their naval exploits and battles against the Christian maritime states of the Mediterranean.

While the series portrays the brothers as great and noble heroes who sacrificed much to “defend” the Ottoman Empire against Christian Europe, history — real, actual, recorded history — has a completely different tale to tell.

The brothers were born of an unholy union between a Muslim Turk and a Christian slave woman on the conquered Greek island of Lesbos. They exhibited an extreme hatred for Christians and engaged in vile and wanton behavior—shocking even for those times.

The eldest brother, Aruj, was notorious for such obscenities as biting into and tearing open the throats of his Christian captives—before devouring their tongues. He also once tied and twisted a rope around a Knight of St. John until his eyes popped out of their sockets.

The even more successful and sadistic slave raids launched by Aruj’s younger and much longer-lived brother, Khizr (1478–1546) were such that he was known among Christians as the “king of evil” and, by corollary, among Muslims as the “goodness of Islam”—“Khair al-Din, the sobriquet history remembers him by. He had vowed never to cease his raids on Christendom “until I have killed the last one of you and enslaved your women, your daughters, and your children.” Considering his long career, this vow naturally resulted in the capture of countless Christians over the years.

For example, from just the two hundred–mile coastline between Valencia and Barcelona, he seized and enslaved ten thousand Christians. In another devastating raid, he carried off three hundred children and nuns. Suleiman “the Magnificent” was so impressed by Khair al-Din’s raids—it was the sultan who first dubbed him the “goodness of Islam/khair al-din”— that he elevated this former pirate to the rank of grand admiral of the Ottoman navy in 1533.

Now, with the full might of the Turks’ navy, the terror he visited upon Christendom skyrocketed.

It may be hard to imagine how devastating these slave raids were, especially in the current climate, when slavery is often seen as an exclusively European enterprise. Suffice it to say, in the sixteenth century, the average number of Africans sold by other Africans to Europeans in one year (3,200) was about how many Europeans were enslaved by Muslims during just a few raids.

The surviving record of the Frenchman Du Chastelet reflects the terror and trauma Christians experienced when being enslaved by the denizens of Barbary: “As to me,” he wrote of the moment when he was captured, “I noticed a great Moor approaching me, his sleeves rolled up to his shoulders, holding a sabre in his large hand of four fingers; I was left without words.” He goes on to explain how his abductor’s foreign visage and demeanor “terrified me a good deal more than were frightened the first humans at the sight of the flaming sword at the door of Eden.”

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Today in history, on August 20, 636, arguably the single most consequential battle in world history took place alongside the Yarmuk river in Syria.

Occurring just four years after Muslim prophet Muhammad had died, not only did the military engagement decide whether the Arabian creed thrives or dies; it became a chief source of inspiration and instruction for jihadists throughout the centuries—right down to the present.

And yet, very few in the West are even aware of the Battle of Yarmuk’s existence—much less how it motivates contemporary Islamic terrorists.

We fill this lacuna below:

The contestants were the Eastern Roman (“Byzantine”) Empire, under Emperor Heraclius, and the newly born Arabian caliphate, under the second caliph, Omar. After a couple years of Muslim depredations in then Christian/Roman Syria, the two forces met along the Yarmuk River. The pre-battle exchange between the two generals, the Roman-Armenian Vahan and Khalid bin al-Walid—Islam’s much revered “Sword of Allah”—is instructive:

The Christian commander began by diplomatically blaming Arabia’s harsh conditions and impoverished economy for giving the Arabs no choice but to raid Roman lands. Accordingly, the empire was pleased to provide them with food and coin on condition that they return home.

“It was not hunger that brought us here,” Khalid cooly responded, “but we Arabs are in the habit of drinking blood, and we are told the blood of the Romans is the sweetest of its kind, so we came to shed your blood and drink it.

Vahan’s diplomatic mask instantly dropped, and he launched into a tirade against the insolent Arab: “So, we thought you came seeking what your brethren always sought” — plunder, extortion, or mercenary work. “But, alas, we were wrong. You came killing men, enslaving women, plundering wealth, destroying buildings, and seeking to drive us from our own lands.” Better people had tried to do the same but always ended up defeated, added Vahan in reference to the recent Persian Wars, before continuing:

As for you, there is no lower and more despicable people — wretched, impoverished Bedouins. . . . You commit injustices in your own nation and now ours. . . . What havoc you have created! You ride horses not your own and wear clothes not your own. You pleasure yourselves with the young white girls of Rome and enslave them. You eat food not your own, and fill your hands with gold, silver, and valuable goods. Now we find you with all our possessions and the plunder you took from our coreligionists — and we leave it all to you, neither asking for its return nor rebuking you. All we ask is that you leave our lands. But if you refuse, we will annihilate you!

The Sword of Allah was not impressed. He began reciting the Koran and talking about one “Prophet Muhammad.” Vahan listened in quiet exasperation. Khalid proceeded to call on the Christian general to proclaim the shahada—that “there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger”—and thereby embrace Islam, in exchange for peace, adding, “You must also pray, pay zakat, perform hajj at the sacred house [in Mecca], wage jihad against those who refuse Allah, … and befriend those who befriend Allah and oppose those who oppose Allah,” a reference to the divisive doctrine of al-wala’ wa al-bara’. “If you refuse, there can only be war between us. . . . And you will face men who love death as you love life.”

“Do what you like,” responded Vahan. “We will never forsake our [Christian] religion or pay you jizya.” Negotiations were over.

Things came to a head—quite literally—when 8,000 marching Muslims appeared before the Roman camp carrying the severed heads of 4,000 Christians atop their spears. These were the remains of 5,000 reinforcements who had come from Amman to join the Roman army at Yarmuk. The Muslims had ambushed and slaughtered them.

Then, as resounding cries of “Allahu akbar” filled the Muslim camp, those Muslims standing behind the remaining 1,000 Christian captives shoved them down and proceeded to carve off their heads before the eyes of their co-religionists, whom Arabic sources describe as looking on in “utter bewilderment.”

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At a time when Western media warn that “Deus vult” memes—pictures of Crusader knights accompanied by the words “God wills it”—are alarming, “far-right” indicators of “Christian extremism,” consider the rather different martial imagery currently being marketed to Muslims in Egypt.

This shirt depicts an armed jihadist, sword prominently displayed, with the words: “Either you submit [to Islam] or the jizya...”

Jizya is the tribute imposed on non-Muslims living under Islamic rule (in keeping with Koran 9:29). More importantly, the slogan evokes the standard jurisprudence of jihad—the kind Muslim apologists insist is a figment of our imagination: before fighting non-Muslims, the “infidels” are to be invited to embrace Islam; if they refuse, where applicable, they are offered submission under Muslim rule and payment of the jizya; if they refuse that, they are to be fought to the death.

The shirt below is even more explicit: it reads “Either you submit [to Islam], or the jizya, or war.”

The shirt below depicts the same imagery and declares: “We love death as you love life.”

This, of course, is an old adage widely attributed to some of Islam’s earliest heroes. They would try to demoralize their opponents by boasting that they, as self-sacrificing Muslims, “love death,” whereas their non-Muslim counterparts—regularly depicted in Islamic sources as worldly hedonists—“love life.”

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The one below is of the celebrated jihadist, Khalid bin al-Walid—whom Muhammad dubbed the “Sword of Allah” for his savagery in warfare.

Prior to the battle of Yarmuk, Khalid boasted before the Christians that “we Arabs are in the habit of drinking blood, and we are told the blood of the Romans is the sweetest of its kind, so we came to shed your blood and drink it.”

He also accused a fellow Muslim of apostasy, apparently to “marry”—that is rape—his attractive wife, and afterwards cooked his dinner atop of the apostate’s severed head.

Such are Islam’s “heroes.”

At any rate, compare these jihadist slogans with the supposedly terrifying “Deus vult.”

The phrase simply means “God wills it.” It became associated with the First Crusade and today sometimes accompanies memes depicting Crusader knights. Because of those historical associations, such imagery is routinely condemned in the West as extremist, hateful, or threatening.

But notice the difference.

“Deus vult” does not say convert, submit, or die. It does not prescribe a subordinate status for unbelievers. It does not proclaim a love of death.

Not to mention that the Crusades themselves arose in the context of centuries of Muslim conquest of formerly Christian territories and the ongoing persecution of Christians and destruction of their churches.

The Muslim shirts require considerably less context. Their message is printed right on them:

Islam or jizya. We love death as you love life. Atrocity committing Muslims are our heroes.

Such are the differences, spelled out for the world to see, between Crusades and Jihads.

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British politician Jacob William Rees-Mogg recently made some outlandish remarks that in many ways betray why formerly “great” Britain has fallen prey to Islam—that is, because its “bright men” believe in and promote fairy tales disguised as “history.”

Mogg appeared in an Oxford Union Debate on Islam, where he argued on the “pro-Islam” side, saying that the West has no right to be suspicious of Islam, or see it as different than any other religion.

As proof of this, Mogg pretended to be a historian—including by making “historical comparisons,” because “they matter,” because “we learn from our history,” he insisted.

He then offered the following comparison (click here to watch rather than read him):

The Christians, in 1204, sacked, pillaged, and destroyed Constantinople. They stole things, they took things; some of them you can still see in Venice today. But in 1453, the 21-year-old Mehmet II took Constantinople—do you know what he did? He wrote down some of the great works of Western literature, scholarship, and philosophy, so they were preserved. He had ancient manuscripts copied for preservation. These are documents that might otherwise have been lost to us, and to Western civilization.

Mogg’s point was that, if Muslims were historically more advanced, civilized, and tolerant than Medieval Christians, then clearly Islam is not inherently backwards, savage, and intolerant. Clearly shifting circumstances—which currently seem favorable to the West, and not to Muslims—explain modern day Muslim angst and frustration. In short, it’s not Islam itself, but all sorts of other factors surrounding it—factors which would no doubt cause modern Western people to behave just like the worst of modern-day Muslims if the former experienced them.

Of course, this entire point crumbles if Mogg’s historical example is false or misleading in any way.

And as it happens, it most certainly is—and not just in one but two ways: 1) it’s engaged in what is known as “lies by omission,” and 2) it is built on a false but widely believed assumption.

In this article, we will deal with the first deception—the many lies by omission.

*****

Mogg’s claims about the Crusader sack of Constantinople in 1204 are accurate.

Note, however, how the transition to Mehmet begins with a “but”—implying that the Muslims behaved more nobly than the crusaders.

Note, too, how, whereas Mogg forthrightly declares that the crusaders “sacked, pillaged, and destroyed Constantinople,” Mehmet merely “took” it.

Here’s Mogg’s assertion again, in all its glory:

The Christians, in 1204, sacked, pillaged, and destroyed Constantinople… But in 1453, the 21-year-old Mehmet II took Constantinople—do you know what he did?

Actually, we do know what Mehmet did, thanks to numerous contemporary and eyewitness accounts—and it wasn’t to write down “some of the great works of Western literature, scholarship, and philosophy, so they were preserved,” as Mogg would mog us into believing.

What follows is a more complete account of Ottoman sultan Mehmet (aka Muhammad) and his relationship with Constantinople. (All quotes are sourced in Chapter 7 of my book, Sword and Scimitar, which centers around Mehmet’s sack of Constantinople in 1453.)

First, the crusades were always about defending Christendom—not attacking Orthodox Christians. As such, the sack of 1204 was an aberration—and treated as such.

Pope Innocent III, far from ordering or applauding the crusaders’ attack on Constantinople, had forbidden them to wage war against Christians, excommunicated them when they first violated that prohibition in Zagrab, and categorically condemned their subsequent sack of the Byzantine capital.

Compare this with Mehmet II: why did he attack Constantinople in the first place? What made it an enemy to the Turks?

The same thing that had made every non-Muslim nation an enemy to Islam: It was an “infidel”—in this case, Christian—kingdom, and therefore in need of subjugating.

That was the sole justification and pretext—the sole “grievance”—that propelled the Turks to besiege it (as their Arab counterparts did eight centuries earlier): the kingdom of Constantinople was peopled by non-Muslims who refused to submit to Islam.

This “comparison”—that, unlike the crusaders, Mehmet attacked Constantinople because his religion commanded him—didn’t seem to interest Mogg.

Nor did Mehmet’s well documented treacherous nature. For example, when he first became sultan, Mehmet “swore by the god of their false prophet, by the prophet whose name he bore,” a bitter Christian contemporary wrote, that “he was their [the Christians’] friend, and would remain for the whole of his life a friend and ally of Constantinople.”

Although the Christians believed him, Mehmet was taking advantage of “the basest arts of dissimulation and deceit,” wrote Edward Gibbon. “Peace was on his lips while war was in his heart.”

No doubt, the Muslims surrounding and manipulating Mogg are engaged in the same tactics.

Mehmet also exhorted his Muslim army with jihadist ideology prior to besieging Constantinople, including by unleashing throngs of preachers who cried throughout the Muslim camp surrounding the Christian kingdom:

Children of Muhammad, be of good heart, for tomorrow we shall have so many Christians in our hands that we will sell them, two slaves for a ducat, and will have such riches that we will all be of gold, and from the beards of the Greeks we will make leads for our dogs, and their families will be our slaves. So be of good heart and be ready to die cheerfully for the love of our [past and present] Muhammad.

“Recall the promises of our Prophet concerning fallen warriors in the Koran,” Mehmet himself exhorted his army: “the man who dies in combat shall be transported bodily to paradise and shall dine with Muhammad in the presence of women, handsome boys, and virgins.”

The mention of “handsome boys” was not just an accurate reference to the Koran’s promise (e.g., 52:24, 56:17, and 76:19); Mehmet II was a notorious pedophile. His enslavement and rape of Jacob Notaras—a 14-year-old nobleman’s son in Constantinople, whom Mehmet forced into becoming his personal catamite until he escaped—was only one of the most infamous. Many other Christian boys were forced into sexual relations with Mehmet, some tortured to death for resisting. Even Vlad III Dracula’s younger brother, “Radu the Fair,” was turned into Mehmet’s sex slave.

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On August 15, 718, Constantinople prevailed over the forces of Islam—and in so doing, saved all of Western civilization.

That story is worth recounting:

After several failed sieges against the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire, in the year 715, the Umayyad caliphate concluded that enough was enough: it would vomit forth all it had in one final, all-out effort to conquer the ancient Christian capital.

Caliph Suleiman summoned his younger brother, Maslama, and commanded him to lead Islam’s combined forces to Constantinople and “stay there until you conquer it or I recall you.” The young emir embraced the honor: “I [will] enter this city,” proclaimed he, “knowing that it is the capital of Christianity and its glory; my only purpose in entering it is to uphold Islam and humiliate unbelief.”

At the head of 120,000 Muslim fighters, Maslama crossed into Christian territory and, with “both sword and fire, he put an end to Asia Minor,” wrote a near contemporary chronicler. On August 15, 717, he began bombarding the city, which was defended by Leo III, formerly a general. Just weeks earlier, and because he was deemed the ablest man, Leo had been consecrated in the Hagia Sophia Cathedral as new emperor.

Unable to breach the cyclopean walls of Constantinople, Maslama waited for 1,800 vessels containing an additional 80,000 fighting men to approach through the Bosporus and completely blockade—and thus starve—the city.

Suddenly Leo ordered the ponderous chain that normally guarded the harbor cast aside. Then, “while they [Muslim fleets] hesitated whether they should seize the opportunity . . . the ministers of destruction were at hand.”

Leo had sent forth the “fire-bearing ships” against the Islamic fleet, which was quickly set “on fire,” writes Theophanes the chronicler: “some of them were cast up burning by the sea walls, others sank to the bottom with their crews, and others were swept down flaming.”

Matters worsened when Maslama received word that the caliph, his brother Suleiman, had died of “indigestion” (by reportedly devouring two baskets of eggs and figs, followed by marrow and sugar for dessert). The new caliph, Omar II, was initially inattentive to the Muslim army’s needs. Maslama stayed and wintered in.

Unfortunately for the Arabs, “one of the cruelest winters that anyone could remember” arrived, and, “for one hundred days, snow covered the earth.” All Maslama could do was assure his emaciated, half-frozen men that “Soon—soon supplies will be here!”

But they did not come. Worse, warlike nomadic tribesmen known as Bulgars—whence the nation of Bulgaria—accustomed to the terrain and climate, began to harry any Muslim detachment that left the starving camp in search of food.

By spring, Muslim reinforcements and provisions finally arrived by land and sea. But the damage was done; frost and famine had taken their toll on the Muslims encamped outside the walls of Constantinople.

“Since the Arabs were extremely hungry,” writes Theophanes, “they ate all their dead animals: horses, asses, and camels. Some even say they put dead men and their own dung in pans, kneaded this, and ate it. A plague-like disease descended on them, and destroyed a countless throng.”

Even so, knowing that such a massive force—which had taken years to assemble and had severely taxed the caliphate’s resources—was already at the walls of Islam’s archrival was too much of a temptation for Omar to order a withdrawal. The new caliph also knew that nothing could bolster his credentials as the conquest of that one Christian kingdom that remained a thorn in Islam’s side.

Thus, while the Muslim land force recuperated, a new navy, composed of eight hundred ships, was outfitted in the ports of Alexandria and Libya. The fleet arrived under the cover of night and managed to blockade the Bosporus. Having learned the lesson of Greek Fire, the prudent ships kept their distance.

Just as the beginning of the end seemed to have arrived for Constantinople, sudden delivery—and from the least expected corner—came: the crews manning the caliphate’s new ships were not Arab Muslims but Egyptian Christians (Copts).

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Note: Much of this article was excerpted and adapted from chapter 7 of my 2018 book, Sword and Scimitar.

A little-remembered event that occurred 546 years ago today—the ritual beheading of some 800 Christians who refused to convert to Islam—casts an unexpectedly revealing light on questions still confronting the West today.

The story begins with one of history’s most celebrated conquerors.

When Ottoman Sultan Muhammad II seized Constantinople in 1453, he was only twenty-one years old. The conquest that earned him the title “the Conqueror” was not, however, the culmination of his ambitions. It was just the beginning.

For the next three decades, Muhammad drove Ottoman armies deeper into Christian territory, particularly the Balkans. And beyond the Balkans stood the greatest prize of all: Rome.

According to a famous Islamic tradition, Constantinople and Rome were both destined for Muslim conquest. Muhammad had already taken the first. In 1480, his armies crossed the Adriatic and landed in southern Italy.

Their target was Otranto.

The city fell after a brutal two-week siege. Of Otranto’s roughly 22,000 inhabitants, thousands were slaughtered and thousands more—men, women, and children—were carried away in chains to be sold into slavery.

Churches were desecrated and the cathedral was converted into a mosque.

But the episode for which Otranto would become famous was yet to come.

Some 800 Christian men (the number 813 is sometimes given) who survived the initial slaughter were taken captive. They were offered a simple bargain: embrace Islam and live.

They all refused.

One of the captives, Antonio Primaldo, a tailor, rallied the others:

My brothers, we have fought to save our city; now it is time to battle for our souls!

He urged them to remain faithful to Christ even at the cost of their lives. The others agreed. The offer of life through conversion was rejected.

And so, on August 14, 1480, the captives were marched outside the city to the nearby Hill of Minerva. There they were systematically beheaded—one after another—for refusing to abandon Christianity. The site would thereafter be remembered as Martyrs’ Hill.

According to the traditional account, Primaldo was the first to be decapitated. His headless body then miraculously remained standing and could not be moved until the last of his companions had been killed. One Muslim executioner, supposedly so shaken by what he witnessed that he professed Christianity on the spot, was himself executed.

Otranto’s elderly archbishop, Stefano Agricolo, had already met an even more gruesome fate. The Turks found him inside his cathedral, still dressed in his episcopal vestments. After refusing to renounce Christianity, he too was slaughtered, by being slowly sawn in half—to triumphant jeers of “Allahu akbar!”

Otranto was not intended to be the end of the Ottoman advance. The invasion established a bridgehead on Italian soil, and Muhammad II intended further campaigning in Italy. Rome itself feared what might follow. Only the sultan’s sudden death in May 1481 and the resulting struggle for the Ottoman throne helped bring the enterprise to an end. Christian forces retook Otranto later that year.

The memory of those who refused conversion, however, survived for more than five centuries.

Their bones remain visible today, behind glass in the Cathedral of Otranto—a physical reminder of what happened there in August 1480.

In 2013, Pope Francis canonized Antonio Primaldo and his companions as the “Martyrs of Otranto.”

More than five centuries later, their deaths raise an uncomfortable question:

How much has really changed?

Consider first the strange ritual that follows almost every modern act of jihadist violence.

A Muslim terrorist invokes Islam. He quotes Islamic scripture. He shouts Allahu Akbar. He identifies his victims as infidels. He announces that he is acting in the name of jihad. He slaughters them—including through beheading.

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In a recent Substack, we looked at the return of, and explained the doctrinal and historic roots of, jizya.

In this one, we look at how and why Western academics and other elements have completely dissembled the meaning of jizya, causing the people of the West to be oblivious to the sufferings caused by the return of this Islamic institution.

But first, a quick recap: The Arabic word jizya is derived from Koran 9:29:

Fight those among the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and his Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth [Islam], until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.

In other words, conquered Christians and Jews were to purchase their lives, which were otherwise forfeit to their Muslim conquerors, with money. As one medieval jurist succinctly put it, “their lives and their possessions are only protected by reason of payment of jizya.”

Incidentally, the Koran’s call for infidels to pay jizya while “feel[ing] themselves subdued” is precisely why one Islamic State editorial urges the Christians of the Congo “to pay the jizyah and remain submissive.”

Payment of jizya was never limited to extorting money from “infidels”; it was also a reminder for them to “know their place.” Some of Islam’s jurists mandated several humiliating rituals at the time of jizya payment. The presiding Muslim official could slap, choke, and/or pull the beard of the paying Christian or Jew — who might also be made to approach the official on all fours.

Although direct European intervention in the nineteenth century brought an end to jizya exactions, today — whether institutionalized as under the Islamic State and its offshoots, or as a “vigilante” rationale to plunder infidels, as in Mali — jizya is back.

That said, there is a reason the perennial institution of shaking down infidels for money is so completely unknown or misunderstood in the West. In keeping with an important theme — how Fake History of Islam undermines the West’s ability to comprehend the dangers of Muhammad’s creed — academics have utterly warped the meaning of jizya.

Consider the words of John Esposito, the late founder of the Prince Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University:

In many ways, local populations [Christians, Jews, and others] found Muslim rule more flexible and tolerant than that of [Christian] Byzantium and [Zoroastrian] Persia. Religious communities were free to practice their faith to worship and be governed by their religious leaders and laws in such areas as marriage, divorce, and inheritance. In exchange, they were required to pay tribute, a poll tax (jizya) that entitled them to Muslim protection from outside aggression and exempted them from military service. Thus, they were called the “protected ones” (dhimmi). In effect, this often meant lower taxes, greater local autonomy (emphasis added)

Despite the almost gushing tone related to Muslim rule, the idea that jizya was exacted in order to buy “Muslim protection from outside aggression” is an outright lie, as is Esposito’s assertion that jizya was paid to “exempt them [non-Muslims] from military service.”

Even so, these two myths are now widely accepted. In “Nothing ‘Islamic’ About ISIS, Part Two: What the ‘Jizya’ Really Means,” Hesham A. Hassaballa recycles these fabrications on BeliefNet including by quoting Princeton University’s Muslim chaplain, Sohaib Sultan, who concludes: “Thus, jizyah is no more and no less than an exemption tax in lieu of military service and in compensation for the ‘covenant of protection’ (dhimmah) accorded to such citizens by the Islamic state.”

In reality, and as seen via the words of a variety of authoritative Muslims, past and present, jizya was and remains protection money — not from outsiders, as Esposito and others claim, but from surrounding Muslims themselves. Whether it is the first caliphate from over a millennium ago or the latest, the Islamic State, Muslim overlords deem the lives of their “infidel” subjects forfeit unless they ransom it with money. The subjugated infidel is a beast to be milked “until it gives no more milk and until it milks blood,” to quote the memorable words of an early caliph, Suleiman Abdul Malik.

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I’ve been watching the recent Oxford Union debate on whether the West has the right to be “suspicious of Islam.”

Amidst all the bickering, it is interesting to note that no one has taken the time to methodically answer the ultimate question: How does one determine what is—and is not—Islamic?

Once this all-important question is answered, it becomes clear that “debating”—including by quoting this or that Koran verse, in a positive or negative context—is a fool’s errand. For the question on what is and isn’t Islamic has already been settled, and it isn’t connected to the opinions of this or that person, be they pro- or anti-Islamic.

Here, then, is the traditional answer—the Islamic answer—on how one determines what is and is not Islamic:

What do the core texts and scriptures of Islam say about the thing in question, let’s call it x? Does the Koran, believed by Muslims to contain the literal commands of Allah, call for or justify x? Do the hadith and sira texts—which purport to record the sayings and deeds of Allah’s prophet, whom the Koran (e.g., 33:21) exhorts Muslims to emulate in all ways—call for or justify x?

If any ambiguity remains, the next question becomes: what is the consensus (ijma) of the Islamic world’s leading authorities concerning x? Here one must turn to the tafsirs, or exegeses of Islam’s most learned men—the ulema—and consider their conclusions. Muhammad himself reportedly said that “My umma [Islamic nation] will never be in agreement over an error.”

For example, the Koran commands believers to uphold prayers; accordingly, all are agreed that Muslims need to pray.

Yet the Koran does not specify how many times a day Muslims are to pray. In the hadith and sira, however, Muhammad makes clear believers should pray five times. And the ulema, having considered all these texts, concluded that Muslims are to pray five times a day.

Thus, it is most certainly Islamic for Muslims to pray five times a day.

Interestingly, however, whereas Western academics and Muslim apologists readily accept such methodology in determining what is Islamic—prayer is in the Koran, Muhammad clarified its implementation in the hadith, and the ulema are agreed to it—whenever the thing in question deals with anything that makes Islam “look bad,” then this standard approach to ascertaining what is Islamic is wholly ignored.

That is precisely what happened at the Oxford Union debate. The “pro-Muslim” side often tripped up the “anti-Muslim” side by asking them to “show me where in the Koran it says that?”

Of course, the thing in question need not be fully spelled out in the Koran—the way prayer and so many other Islamic things are not fully spelled out—for it to be a part of Islam.

For example, let us consider some of the most extreme acts committed by the Islamic State—an organization which the pro-Islam side of the debate insisted is not Islamic. Let us examine, one by one, things like beheadings, crucifixions, enslavements, sexual predations, massacres, and the persecution of religious minorities, and see if they pass the test, see if they meet the criteria to be considered part of Islam.

Beheadings

The Islamic State beheads “infidels,” including women and children. This aspect of the Islamic State has provoked horror around the world.

Is it Islamic?

The Koran calls for the beheading of Islam’s enemies, especially in the context of war, or jihad: “When you encounter infidels on the battlefield, strike off their heads until you have crushed them completely” (47:4). Another verse states: “I will cast terror into the hearts of infidels—so strike off their heads and strike off all of their fingertips [i.e., mutilate them]” (8:12).

As for the other criteria—the example or Sunna of the prophet and the consensus of the umma—Timothy Furnish, author of the 2005 essay, “Beheading in the Name of Islam,” writes:

The practice of beheading non-Muslim captives extends back to the Prophet himself. Ibn Ishaq (d. 768), the earliest biographer of Muhammad, is recorded as saying that the Prophet ordered the execution by decapitation of 700 men of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe in Medina for allegedly plotting against him. Islamic leaders from Muhammad’s time until today have followed his model. Examples of decapitation, of both the living and the dead, in Islamic history are myriad…. For centuries, leading Islamic scholars have interpreted this verse [decapitation verse, 47:4] literally…. Many recent interpretations remain consistent with those of a millennium ago.

Crucifixions

As for crucifying people, which the Islamic State has been doing regularly, Koran 5:33 asserts that “the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land.”

Accordingly, crucifixions are common throughout Islamic history.

After Islam’s prophet died in 632, many Arabs were accused of apostasy. The first caliph, Abu Bakr, launched a jihad campaign on them, and many “apostates” were crucified as an example to the rest. In the book Witnesses For Christ: Orthodox Christian Neomartyrs of the Ottoman Period 1437-1860, crucifixion is listed as one of the many ways thousands of Christians were executed by the Muslim Turks.

More dramatically, in her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora Mardiganian described how in the early twentieth century she saw 16 girls crucified, vultures eating their corpses: “Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands,” wrote the Armenian survivor. “Only their hair blown by the wind covered their bodies.”

Slavery and Rape

What of slavery—especially the enslavement of non-Muslim women for sexual purposes—which the Islamic State and other jihadist organizations engage in?

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I was recently reminded while going through some files that on February 12, 2009, I testified before the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee. The hearing was titled “Strategies for Countering Violent Extremist Ideologies.”

Click here for complete transcript (originally here).

Looking back on this, what strikes me most is not simply the topic of the hearing, but the fact that such a discussion could openly occur in Washington.

At the time, America was less than eight years removed from September 11, 2001; U.S. troops were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan; al-Qaeda was at the height of its notoriety; and yet even then—Obama had only been in the White House for three weeks—the political and media establishment was already moving toward a vocabulary designed to obscure the religious nature of the conflict.

The hearing captured that transition in real time.

What unfolded was a remarkably candid debate over a question that too many ignore to this day: To what extent does modern jihad derive from authentic Islamic teachings, doctrines, and historical precedent?

The transcript remains publicly available through Congress. Rereading it today is illuminating precisely because the discussion was so direct. Members of Congress openly wrestled with issues that many institutions now treat as verboten—not least following the rise of “wokeism.”

Some background: By early 2009, I had already spent over a decade immersed in this subject—including as a linguistic and area specialist at the Library of Congress and author of The Al Qaeda Reader, a compilation and translation of primary al-Qaeda texts that laid bare the group’s own justifications for its actions.

My work involved not abstract theory but direct engagement with Islamic theology, history, and the words of jihadists themselves. Testifying before Congress was, in many ways, a natural extension of that effort: an attempt to bring clarity to policymakers at a time when conceptual confusion was already taking root.

In my opening statement, I highlighted a fundamental problem that has only grown worse in the intervening years:

The fact is, it is necessary, I think, to go back and recognize the abysmal failure that has permeated, more or less, all approaches, both, I think, governmental and otherwise. And that, I think, [roots] back to the academic world and academia... the academic world has tended to all but ignore Islamic theology, Islamic doctrine, Islamic history, or to minimize it and overlook it and, instead, presents what is more intelligible to the Western world view... They end up projecting what they believe are norms to other peoples.

This projection—the assumption that Muslims think and act according to secular Western categories of grievance, economics, and politics—remains the cardinal error in Western analysis. Jihadists themselves exploit it masterfully, speaking the language of victimhood to Western audiences while preaching doctrinal action to their own.

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During the 2026 FIFA World Cup—a global celebration of competition, excellence, and the will to win—millions of viewers were told that the truly Christian thing to do is... lose. Intentionally.

That was the message of yet another He Gets Us commercial literally titled, Lose.

Its general theme is that there are more important things than winning. This, of course, is true, but viewers were also encouraged to do things like “lose the argument, intentionally.”

Such messaging is, of course, in keeping with previous He Gets Us commercials.

During the 2024 Super Bowl, He Gets Us aired another commercial titled “Foot Washing.” It consisted of several consecutive images of people washing the feet of other people.

Again, the imagery seemed innocuous—until the pattern became unmistakable. A great many of those washing feet appeared to fit a traditional “American” profile, while most of those getting their feet washed did not. Images included a white woman washing the feet of an illegal—and rather annoyed looking—Hispanic migrant; a white woman washing the feet of a Muslim woman in hijab; a white man washing the feet of an American Indian; and a white Christian clergyman washing the feet of a black “trans” man/woman.

At the very end, the supposedly “profound” point of the commercial is made: “Jesus Didn’t Teach Hate. He Washed Feet.”

So he did. But he also taught a great many other things—including that people must repent of their sins or face the fires of Gehenna—and even engaged in violence, flipping tables over and whipping money changers out of the temple.

Despite this, why is it that Christians are always and only reminded of feet washing and cheek turning?

Could it be because those sponsoring such messages actually dislike and seek to paralyze Christians and their impact on society?

At any rate, from urging Christians to wash feet, Christians are now urged to intentionally lose.

To be sure, Christianity does command Christians to lose—lose their pride, their greed, their lusts, even their very lives (Matt. 16:25).

Yet Scripture never commands Christians to lose—that is, intentionally forfeit—the truth, which is what arguments revolve around.

On the contrary, Jesus repeatedly challenged and won arguments against the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes—even against Satan himself. Never once did Christ intentionally lose an argument for the sake of appearing “gracious.”

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Jizya is back in the news, driving Muslims to murder.

According to reports, jihadist groups are actively imposing jizya (monetary exploitation via Koran 9:29) on Christians in Africa and elsewhere.

Numerous examples come from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the Islamic State has been presenting Christians with — and slaughtering them if they refuse —submission: “If the Christians of Africa want to feel safe,” IS has announced, “our true Islam provides them the freedom to choose between three options, Islam, jizya paid humiliated and subdued, or death and displacement.”

IS has claimed thousands of Christian lives over the years.

In one instance, after announcing the massacre of “21 Christians … praise be to Allah,” IS added, “Let the Christians of Africa know there is no security for you except by Islam or jizya.”

In an editorial titled “Jihad in Congo,” IS wrote:

To the Christians, their institutions, and their community organizations [that] search for long-term solutions that will rid them of a life surrounded by death in every direction we give them the good news that the only solution is for them is to convert to Islam or to pay the jizyah and remain submissive. Otherwise, the invasions will continue against them, as will the killings, burning their homes and shops, and seizing their money.

The same “good news” has reached other regions of Africa. In Mali’s Sahel region, an al-Qaeda affiliate has stipulated that Christians over 18 must pay 25,000 CFA francs monthly or suffer the consequences.

In Pakistan’s tribal border areas, other jihadist groups have forced Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs to pay jizya where state authority is weak.

In Mozambique, jihadists attacked a passenger bus, slaughtered the driver, and left the following note:

We declare war on all Christians in the world for three things: either to be a Muslim or pay Jizya. If you haven’t pay Jizya it’s a war until final earth, Qiyama. [In other words, war to the ends of the earth until Resurrection Day.] To Muslims we announce peace to all the world. Let’s work together to defend the religion of Allah together. If you [Christians] refuse [to convert to Islam] then you will pay Jizya and if you refuse to pay Jizya you will be killed.

The Islamic State and other jihadist organizations are not alone in calling for jizya from Christian “infidels.” In 2002, Saudi Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Rahman, discussing the Muslim prophet’s prediction that Islam will eventually conquer Rome, said, “We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. Yes, the Christians . . . will yet pay us the jizya, in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam.”

And in a video, Sheik ‘Issam Amira appears giving a sermon in Al Aqsa Mosque where he laments that too many Muslims think jihad is only for defense against aggressors, when in fact Muslims are also obligated to wage offensive jihad against non-Muslims:

When you face your pagan enemy, call them—either to Islam, jizya, or seek Allah’s help and fight them. Even if they do not fight [or initiate hostilities], fight them!... Fight them! When? When they fight you? No, when they refuse to convert to Islam or refuse to pay jizya…. Whether they like it or not, we will subjugate them to Allah’s authority.

In short, if the Islamic State is enforcing jizya on “infidels,” demands for its return are on the increase all around the Muslim world. Put differently, if Abu Shadi, an Egyptian Salfi leader, once declared that Egypt’s Christians “must either convert to Islam, pay jizya, or prepare for war,” Dr. Amani Tawfiq, a female professor at Egypt’s Mansoura University, once said that “If Egypt wants to slowly but surely get out of its economic situation and address poverty in the country, the jizya has to be imposed on the Copts.”

So what, exactly, is jizya?

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Just days ago, Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta—the same strategic gateway whence the original Muslim conquest of Spain began in A.D. 711—was once again overrun by Muslim masses arriving from Africa.

Over the course of several days, over 50,000 migrants breached the city’s borders, overwhelming local authorities and forcing Madrid to deploy emergency measures.

The images are striking: endless columns of young Muslim men streaming into European territory by land and sea—through the very corridor that, more than thirteen centuries earlier, served as the launching point for one of the most consequential invasions in Western history.

Nor is any of this new or shocking. As one of many examples, in 2021, 6,000 Muslims invaded Ceuta. They came “by sea, either swimming or with inflatables, all in a bid to eventually get to mainland Europe.”

Nor is Ceuta an isolated episode. Spain has for years experienced a steady surge of illegal Muslim migration from Africa. In 2020 alone, some 23,000 migrants reached the Canary Islands—a 234 percent increase over the previous year. The numbers continued climbing, with more than 1,600 arriving over just three days in October 2023. As one report noted:

Of the boats that arrived over the weekend, one on Saturday was carrying 320 migrants. The state news agency EFE said it was the largest number in a single boat since human traffickers began to regularly use the Canary Island route in 1994. The previous record of 280 was recorded earlier this month.

Once arriving on Spanish territory, such migrants invariably engage in unsavory and downright criminal behavior—including gang-rape, murder, church desecrations and slaughter of Christians; and they create enclaves, or ribats, where police fear to tread.

Indeed, just a few days ago, we learned that “Spain reports highest number of arrests for Islamist extremism in EU.” This is certainly saying something considering that the EU itself is a hotbed of jihadist activity.

At any rate, to understand why Ceuta matters—and why today’s events are so historically significant—we need to return to the year 711 AD.

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In a feat of heroism that even Hollywood fiction cannot match, today in history witnessed Richard Lionheart and a few thousand Christian knights put to flight a massive Muslim army that, moments earlier, had been torturing and murdering Christian civilians.

On July 27, 1192, Saladin, the great sultan-hero of Islam, besieged the tiny Christian-held town of Jaffa. According to contemporary chronicles, the Muslims numbered as many as 20,000 and “covered the face of the earth like locusts.”

Messengers were instantly dispatched to King Richard I, then in Acre preparing to sail for England. Before the battered envoys had even finished recounting Jaffa’s plight, Richard declared, “With God as my guide, I will set out to do what I can,” and immediately boarded his fleet with just over 2,000 fighting men.

Jaffa, meanwhile, was fighting for its life. According to Saladin’s court historian, Baha’ al-Din, who witnessed the siege, after one of its walls collapsed, all the Muslims rushed into the city, “and there was not an enemy heart that did not tremble and shake.” Even so, the Christians “were more fierce and determined in the fight and more eager for and devoted to death.”

Moments before the Muslims flooded into Jaffa, when its main gate finally gave way and brought part of the wall crashing down with it, a “cloud of dust and smoke went up and darkened the sky.” Once it cleared, the Muslims saw that “spear-points had replaced the walls and lances had blocked the breach.” Only death would release the Crusaders from their charge.

Eventually, however, sheer numbers drove the defenders back into the citadel, while the attackers turned their attention to Jaffa’s civilian population. “Alas for the pitiful slaughter of the sick!” recalls a chronicler. “They lay weakly on couches everywhere in the houses of the city; the Turks tortured them to death in horrible ways.”

Richard’s fleet finally arrived off Jaffa on the evening of July 31 but did not attempt an immediate landing. As Baha’ al-Din explains, the newly arrived Crusaders “saw the town crammed with the Muslims’ banners and men and they feared that the citadel might have already been taken. The sea prevented their hearing the shouts that came from everywhere and the great commotion and cries of ‘There is no god but Allah’ and ‘Allahu Akbar.’”

To make matters worse, “When the Turks saw the king’s galleys and ships approaching, masses of them ran on to the shore,” writes a chronicler, “raining down spears, javelins, darts and arrows densely so that they would have nowhere free to land. The shore was seething, so covered with crowds of the enemy that there was no empty space left.”

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In a recent article (followed by a livestream), we witnessed the head coach of Egypt’s soccer team engage in grand irony: after losing to Argentina, Hossam Hassan complained that the game was rigged, and expressed dismay that there is international discrimination “even in soccer, even in sports?”

Meanwhile, as Coptic Solidarity has repeatedly reported (here, here, and here), and as Aid to the Church in Need noted in a February 2022 report,

Christians make up around 15 percent of the population of Egypt and are as football-crazy as their Muslim neighbours, but there is not a single Copt in the national team….There are no official statistics on the number of Copts in Egypt, but estimates vary between 10 percent and 20 percent. … The fact that no Copts, of any denomination, are represented in top-level football, and therefore in the national team, stings.

But it gets worse: the discrimination Egypt’s Christians face in soccer is the mere tip of an ugly iceberg of discrimination they face all throughout society.

The best way to demonstrate this is by comparing Coptic Christian experiences in Egypt with African American experiences in the United States. After all, Egypt’s Christians and America’s blacks have something in common: both groups account for roughly 15 percent of their nations’ populations.

And that is where their similarities end.

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