‘Islamophobia’ Is as Old as Islam

From American Thinker.com (Mar. 30, 2022):

The United Nations recently named March 15 -- also rather ominously known as the “Ides of March” -- as “the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.”  In doing so, they have accepted and seek to mandate the idea that whatever fear (literally, phobia) non-Muslims have of Islam is unfounded and irrational, and therefore must be “combatted.”

In reality, aversion to Islam is not new or something that “just happened”; nor is it a byproduct of temporal circumstances (say, resentment towards Muslims due to the terror strikes of 9/11).  Instead, it is something that all rational non-Muslims have felt from the very inception of Islam in the seventh century.

Western peoples, for instance, including many of their luminaries, have always portrayed Islam as a hostile and violent force -- often in terms that would make today’s “Islamophobe” blush.  And that wasn’t because Europeans were “recasting the other” to “validate their imperial aspirations” (to use the tired terminology of Edward Said that has long dominated academia’s treatment of Western-Muslim interactions).  Rather, it was because Islam has always treated the “infidel,” the non-Muslim, the same way ISIS treats the infidel: atrociously.

According to Muslim history, in 628 AD, Muhammad summoned the Roman (or “Byzantine”) emperor, Heraclius -- the symbolic head of “the West,” then known as “Christendom” -- to submit to Islam; when the emperor refused, a virulent jihad was unleashed against the Western world.  Less than 100 years later, Islam had conquered more than two-thirds of Christendom, and was raiding deep into France.  While these far-reaching conquests are often allotted a sanitized sentence, if that, in today’s textbooks, the chroniclers of the time make clear that these were cataclysmic events that had a traumatic impact on, and played no small part in forming, Europe proper, that is, the unconquered portion and final bastion of Christendom.

But it wasn’t just what they personally experienced at the hands of Muslims that developed this ancient “phobia” to Islam.  As far back as the eighth century, Islam’s scriptures and histories -- the Koran, hadith, sira and maghazi literature -- became available to those Christian communities living adjacent to, or even under the authority of, the caliphates.  Based solely on these primary sources of Islam, Christians concluded that Muhammad was a (possibly demon possessed) false prophet who had very obviously concocted a creed to justify the worst depravities of man -- for dominion, plunder, cruelty and carnality (see Sword and Scimitar for copious documentation, especially Chapter 2).

This view prevailed for well over a millennium throughout Europe; and it was augmented by the fact that Muslims were still, well over a millennium after Muhammad, invading Christian territories, plundering them, and abducting their women and children.  The United States’ first brush with Islam -- its very first war as a nation, soon after its independence -- came by way of Muslim raids on American ships for booty and slaves in the name of Allah.

A miniscule sampling of what Europeans thought of Islam throughout the centuries follows:

Theophanes, important Eastern Roman chronicler (d.818):

He [Muhammad] taught those who gave ear to him that the one slaying the enemy -- or being slain by the enemy -- entered into paradise [see Koran 9:111].  And he said paradise was carnal and sensual -- orgies of eating, drinking, and women. Also, there was a river of wine… and the women were of another sort [houris], and the duration of sex greatly prolonged and its pleasure long-enduring [e.g., Koran 56: 7-40, 78:31, 55:70-77].  And all sorts of other nonsense.

Thomas Aquinas, one of Christendom’s most influential philosophers (d.1274):

He [Muhamad] seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh urges us… and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine… Muhammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms -- which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants [i.e., his “proof” that God was with him is that he was able to conquer and plunder others]…  Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms.

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