Why is there so much hostility between the Islamic world and the West, specifically America? According to comedian Dave Smith, it’s because the US is a murderous nation that kills Muslim children.

Recently, Dave Smith sarcastically tweeted:

“Islam is such a violent religion. Every time we murder a bunch of their children, they try to kill some of us. Disgusting.”

Those who know history will immediately see that Smith is ignorant of Islamic doctrine and history. The reality is that Islam has been hostile to the West from the very beginning; no killing Muslims needed.

To begin with, perhaps Smith should study some of Islam’s key sources. The Quran commands Muslims to:

“Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, nor comply with what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth from among those who were given the Scripture, until they pay the tax, willingly submitting, fully humbled.” (9:29)

Other Quran verses tell Muslims not to befriend Christians and Jews (5:51) and call unbelievers the worst of all creatures (98:6). With such verses in Islam’s holy book hostility between the Islamic world and West was bound to occur.

While not all Muslims are terrorists, there are plenty willing to enact these violent commands; a dangerous fact that has played out through history.

After Muhammad’s death in 632, Abu Bakr became caliph (leader of the Muslim community) and led wars against other Muslims who refused to pay the saqada (charity money), and through bloodshed unified Arabia (p. 106, Kindle). The second caliph, Umar, then began Islam’s mass expansion through conquest, which resulted in 3/4ths of the Christian world being conquered (North Africa and the Middle East). The jihadis even managed to conquer Spain and launch raids into France, until they were driven back by Charles Martel’s army of Franks at Tours in 732.

Such conquests contained many atrocities. For example, the early Muslim historian Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam (b. 803) records this episode during the Islamic conquest of Spain:

“When the Moslems settled in the island, they found no other inhabitants there than vinedressers. They made them prisoners. After that they took one of the vinedressers, slaughtered him, cut him into pieces, and boiled him, while the rest of his companions looked on. They also boiled meat in other cauldrons. When the meat was cooked, they threw away the flesh of the man which they had boiled; no one knowing that it was thrown away: and they ate the meat which they had boiled, while the rest of the vinedressers were spectators. These did not doubt but that the Moslems ate the flesh of their companion.” (pp. 19-20)

More atrocities were committed centuries later by the jihadis of the Ottoman Empire. When Constantinople fell to the jihad in 1453, the Turkish jihad warriors massacred innocents (pp. 242-243) and committed mass rape (p. 243), even sexually assaulting women in the holy Church of Hagia Sophia (Loc. 5253, Kindle; p. 131).

Here’s what one early source on Constantinople’s fall says:

“Afterwards, the Turks ran to the Hagia Sophia, and all those whom they had imprisoned there, they killed in the first heat of rage. Those whom they found later, the[y] bound with a cord around their neck and their hands tied behind their backs and led them out of the city. When the Turk learned that the emperor had been killed in Constantinople, he captured the Grand Duke who was governing in the emperor’s stead and had the Grand Duke’s son beheaded and then the Grand Duke himself. Then he seized one of the Grand Duke’s daughters who was quite beautiful and made her lie on the great altar of Hagia Sophia with a crucifix under her head and then raped her. Then the most brutish of the Turks seized the finest noble women, virgins, and nuns of the city and violated them in the presence of the Greeks and in sacrilege of Christianity…they took prisoner those who fell into their hands, tied them with a rope around the neck and calculated the value of each one. Women had to redeem themselves with their own bodies, men by fornicating with their hands or some other means.” (p. 3 in pdf)

There was no America launching wars in the Middle East then to prompt such massacres. The Islamic conquests were rooted in Quranic commands to subjugate the unbeliever (9:29) and the conquest of Constantinople was motivated by Muhammad’s promise that the Muslims who conquered the city would enjoy forgiveness of sins (p. 45).

Further, when the US was established, it had its first war with jihadis, the Barbary Wars. It all started in 1785, when Muslim pirates from North Africa (Barbary) captured two American ships (p. 283). The American captives were paraded through the streets to the sounds of Muslims celebrating.

The captain of a US ship, Captain O’Brian, later wrote to Thomas Jefferson:

“our sufferings are beyond our expression or you conception.” (p. 283)

The jihadis demanded America pay tribute for the release of American captives, costing the US much money. Take for example, the fact that in 1795, payment to Algiers which equaled almost $1 million, compromised 16% of federal revenue that year (p. 270).

Why would North African Muslims attack American ships unprovoked? The answer is found in a letter to Congress describing the encounter between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and Abdul Rahman Adja, Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain.

“We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their [Barbary’s] pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise [dated March 28, 1786].”

America had not launched any devastating wars in Afghanistan or Iraq then; it was a newborn nation. But, according to Tripoli’s own ambassador, North African jihadis launched a war of aggression against Americans because of the Islamic imperative to do so.

The teachings found in Islamic sources and the history of Islamic-Western conflict reveal Smith’s shocking ignorance on the subject. Unfortunately, despite the importance of these historic truths, all too many people remain ignorant of them, leading many to fall prey to foolish lies like Smith.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)