"Violence and Conquest" - Historian on How Nations Became Muslim

Patrick Bet-David (0:00)

When you think about every single Muslim-majority country today, every one of them, whether it's Iran, previous to that was Zoroastrianism, right? Egypt, Crofty Christian, kind of like yourself. Turkey, Christians, Pakistan, Hindu and Buddhism, Bangladesh, same. Afghanistan, same. Iraq, Christian and Zoroastrian. Syria, Christian. Lebanon, Christian. Jordan, Christian. Palestinian territory, majorly Christian. Some of them are in South America. Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Somalia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. These are Muslim-majority countries that they came in and now took over. They were not previously to that. One is why, two is the following.

One has to sit there and say, well, as much as some people fear the Jews, or hey, what's their motive? What are they trying to do? They haven't conquered countries the way the Muslim religion has done, right?

Why are they doing it? And how are they so successful? What's their strategy?

Raymond Ibrahim (0:58)

Well, the main difference between the Muslims and the Jews is just, first of all, sheer number and strength.

The Jews, if they get accused of anything, it's undue influence and behind-the-scenes machinations generally, because how can they look? What are they, 0.01 percent of the world? Islam is a physical force, right? We're talking about and growing, two billion people. So Islam was always seen as a physical, a real tangible threat that can come and conquer through your numbers and take over your land. All those countries that you mentioned were literally conquered by force. I spoke about North Africa and Middle East, but you mentioned the Kazakhstan and East. How did they become Islamic? It was through the same mechanism, just Violence and Conquest. India, people aren't aware of the Conquest of India by the Arabs.

According to one well-known, reputable Indian historian, I think his name is, we can look it up, something, Kaal, but he wrote a very methodical history. And he came up with some insane number, like in five centuries of non-stop jihad, something like a hundred million Hindus were killed, just because they're not Muslim. So that is known.

Patrick Bet-David (2:08)

You have the option to either join us or we're killing you. That's black and white?

Raymond Ibrahim (2:12)

Yeah.

Patrick Bet-David (2:12)

And is that how it was from the beginning?

Raymond Ibrahim (2:14)

Yeah. So from the beginning, according to Islamic teaching, if you're a Hindu or a Pagan, yeah, you're supposed to either convert or die. But if you're a people of the book, a Christian or a Jew, you can actually pay tribute to Jizya and live as a second-class citizen, as I was mentioning earlier, with all these restrictions and you're supposed to be humiliated as part of the ritual.

But then it became elastic and later on, even the Muslims realized rather than keep slaughtering these Hindus, let's get money out of it, and they gave them the same status where they can just pay and maintain their religion.

Patrick Bet-David (2:47)

Did any one of them that converted decide to retaliate against them?

Raymond Ibrahim (2:50)

Well, yeah, there were oftentimes lots of, I'll tell you one interesting story.

Patrick Bet-David (2:56)

Successful retaliations, except from, we'll get to Spain here in a minute. I'm talking about these Muslim majority countries that converted. That are still Muslim. That are still Muslim. Was there any internal generals, leaders, defectors that were like, you know what, I'm sick of what they did, you killed my dad, you killed my mom, you killed my wife, I'm going to retaliate. Was there any successful stories?

Raymond Ibrahim (3:15)

They're not successful, obviously, because they're still Islamic. But there definitely were uprisings, even the cops.

Patrick Bet-David (3:19)

Why did they fail?

Raymond Ibrahim (3:21)

They, well, that question goes hand in hand with why were the Muslims and the Arabs so successful in one century as to conquer that humongous region that I described, all of North Africa, Spain and the Middle East.

That remains a mystery amongst historians. The Muslim answer, of course, is Allah was with them. And the Christian answer, the historic Christian answer is not unlike it, because they said yes, Allah was with them because he was punishing us for our sins.

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