732: Charles the Hammer saves the West from Islam

October 11, 2008
Raymond Ibrahim

Today in History: Charles the Hammer saves the West from Islam at Tours

Precisely 100 years of Islamic conquests after Muhammad's death (632), the Muslims, starting from Arabia, found themselves in Gaul, modern day France, confronting a hitherto little known people—the Christian Franks. There, on October 11th, 732, one of the most decisive battles between Christendom and Islam took place, demarcating the extent of the latter’s conquests, and ensuring the survival of the former.

Prior to this, the Islamic conquerors, drunk with power and plunder, had, for one century been subjugating all peoples and territories standing in their western march—from Arabia to Morocco (al-Maghreb, the “furthest west”). In 711, the Muslims made their fateful crossing of the straits of Gibraltar, landing for the first time on European ground. Upon touching terra firma, the leader of the Muslims, Tariq bin Zayid, ordered all the boats used for the crossing burned, asserting “We have not come here to return. Either we conquer and establish ourselves here, or we perish.” Islam was there to stay.

This famous Tariq anecdote—often reminisced by modern day jihadists—highlights the jihadist nature of the Umayyad caliphate (661-750), the superpower of its day. As most historians have acknowledged, the Umayyad caliphate was the “Jihadi-State” par excellence. Its very existence was closely tied to its conquests; its legitimacy as “viceroy” of Allah based on its jihadi expansion.

Once on European ground, the depredations continued unabated. Writes one Arab chronicler regarding the Muslim northern advance past the Pyrenees: “Full of wrath and pride” the Muslims “went through all places like a desolating storm. Prosperity made those warriors insatiable…everything gave way to their scimitars, the robbers of lives.” Even far off English anchorite, the contemporary Bede, wrote, “A plague of Saracens wrought wretched devastation and slaughter upon Gaul.”

... unbeknownst to the Muslims, the battle-hardened Frankish king Charles, aware of their purport, had begun rallying his liegemen to his standard, in an effort to ward off the Islamic drive. Having risen to power in France in 717, Charles appreciated the significance of the Islamic threat. He therefore intercepted the invaders somewhere between Poitiers and Tours, the latter being the immediate aim of the Muslims. The chroniclers give amazing numbers concerning the Muslims, as many as 300,000. Suffice to say, the Franks were greatly outnumbered, and most historians are content with the figures of 80,000 Muslims against 20-30,000 Franks...

“The men of the north stood as motionless as a wall, they were like a belt of ice frozen together, and not to be dissolved, as they slew the Arab with the sword. The Austrasians [Franks], vast of limb, and iron of hand, hewed on bravely in the thick of the fight; it was they who found and cut down the Saracen’s king [Rahman].”

Hanson writes: “When the sources speak of “a wall,” “a mass of ice,” and “immovable lines” of infantrymen, we should imagine a literal human rampart, nearly invulnerable, with locked shields in front of armored bodies, weapons extended to catch the underbellies of any Islamic horsemen foolish enough to hit the Franks at a gallop.”

As night fell upon them, the Muslims and Christians disengaged and withdrew to their tents. With the coming of dawn, it was discovered that the Muslims, perhaps seized with panic that their emir was dead, had fled south during the night, still looting, burning, and plundering as they went. Hanson offers a realistic picture of the aftermath: “Poitiers [or Tours] was, as all cavalry battles, a gory mess, strewn with thousands of wounded or dying horses, abandoned plunder, and dead and wounded Arabs. Few of the wounded were taken prisoner—given their previous record of murder and pillage at Poitiers.”

In the coming years, Charles, henceforth known as Martel—the Hammer—would continue waging war on the Muslim remnants north of the Pyrenees till they all fled back south. Frankish sovereignty and consolidation were naturally established in Gaul, leading to the creation of the Holy Roman Empire—beginning with Charles’ own grandson, Charlemagne, often described by historians as the “Father of Europe.” As historian Henri Pirenne put it: “Without Islam the Frankish Empire would probably never have existed and Charlemagne, without Mahomet, would be inconceivable.”

Aside from the fact that this battle ushered in an end to the first massive wave of Islamic conquests, there are many indications that it also instrumentally led to the fall of the Umayyad caliphate, which, as mentioned earlier, owed its very existence to jihad, victory, plunder and slavery (ghanima). In 718, the Umayyads, after investing a considerable amount of manpower and resources trying to besiege and conquer, Constantinople, lost horribly. Less than fifteen years later, their western attempt was, as seen, also terribly repulsed at Tours. It is no coincidence that a mere 18 years after Tours, the Umayyad caliphate was overthrown by the Abbasids, and the age of Islam’s great conquests came to an end (until the rise of the Ottoman empire which, like the Umayyads, was also a jihadi state built on territorial conquests).

Thus any number of historians, such as Godefroid Kurth, would go on to say that the Battle of Tours “must ever remain one of the great events in the history of the world, as upon its issue depended whether Christian Civilization should continue or Islam prevail throughout Europe.” ...

At any rate, the facts speak for themselves: after the Battle of Tours, no other massive Muslim invasion would be attempted north of the Pyrenees—until very recently and through very different means. But that is another story.

Andrew Bostom: Muhammad and the Qurayzah tribe

Oct 18, 2005

Alleged to have aided the forces of Muhammad’s enemies in violation of a prior pact, the Qurayzah were subsequently isolated and besieged. Twice the Qurayzah made offers to surrender, and depart from their stronghold, leaving behind their land and property. Initially they requested to take one camel load of possessions per person, but when Muhammad refused this request, the Qurayzah asked to be allowed to depart without any property, taking with them only their families. However, Muhammad insisted that the Qurayzah surrender unconditionally and subject themselves to his judgment. Compelled to surrender, the Qurayzah were lead to Medina. The men with their hands pinioned behind their backs, were put in a court, while the women and children were said to have been put into a separate court. A third (and final) appeal for leniency for the Qurayzah was made to Muhammad by their tribal allies the Aus. Muhammad again declined, and instead he appointed as arbiter Sa’ad Mu’adh from the Aus, who soon rendered his concise verdict: the men were to be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, the spoils to be divided among the Muslims.

Islam: What the West Needs to Know

May, 2007
Documentary which reveals the truth about Islam, the Koran, and Muhammad. This is just the trailer. Watch the full video here.

Jihad in Europe seminar - video

November, 2006
Moderator: Janet Levy (The David Horowitz Freedom Center).
Panelists: Robert Spencer (Jihad Watch), Melanie Philips (journalist and author) and Douglas Murray (author and writer). Parts 2 - 6.

Part 1

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam - Robert Spencer

August 14, 2006
KFI-AM 640's Bill Handel interviews Robert Spencer, the author of (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And The Crusades)

Eternal crusade to discover the truth?

August 7, 2008
Hanifa Deen

Years later I enrolled in a medieval history unit at university and after reading Steven Runciman's three-volume The History Of The Crusades, learnt that economics, as much as religion, guided the emperors and popes who called on younger noble sons and common folk to join in a holy war against "the infidel".

Centuries passed and religious ecstasy faded, but greed and the desire for control of rich provinces, ports and trade routes continued to energise this long series of wars that lasted from the late 11th century until their decline in the 14th.

One day, while toiling over an essay on the early Crusades, I remembered the words of my father who, long ago, had talked about Salah ad-Din's chivalry and sense of honour; how the Kurdish prince tried to negotiate with the Crusaders but had been thwarted by their fanaticism.

My father had never heard of Runciman, but in matters to do with Salah ad-Din he would have found himself in good company. The English historian sided with my father and fixed in my mind, once and for all, who were the aggressors and ultimately the losers in the sorry tale of the Crusades.

I can't quite make sense of Ms Deen, presumably she's just another in the long line of religious commentators who never says anything about Islam the ideology, but Robert Spencer makes it pretty clear ...

Virtually all Westerners have learned to apologize for the Crusades, but less noted is the fact that the Crusades have an Islamic counterpart for which no one is apologizing and of which few are even aware. Over a hundred years ago, Mark Twain spoke for many Westerners in Tom Sawyer Abroad when he has Tom explain to Huck Finn that he wants to go to the Holy Land to liberate it from the Muslims.

“How,” Huck asks, “did we come to let them git holt of it?”

“We didn’t come to let them git hold of it,” Tom explains. “They always had it.”

“Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don’t it?”

“Why of course it does. Who said it didn’t?”

Historical fact says it didn’t...

Islam originated in Arabia in the seventh century. At that time Egypt, Libya, and all of North Africa were Christian, and had been so for hundreds of years. So were Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Asia Minor. The churches that St. Paul addressed in his letters collected in the New Testament are located in Asia Minor, modern Turkey, as well as modern Greece. North of Greece, in a buffer zone between Eastern and Western Europe, were lands that would become the Christian domains of the Slavs. Antioch and Constantinople (Istanbul), in modern Turkey, and Alexandria, in modern Egypt, were three of the most important Christian centers of the first millennium.

But then Muhammad and his Muslim armies arose out of the desert, and — as most modern textbooks would put it — these lands became Muslim. But in fact the transition was cataclysmic. Muslims won these lands by conquest and, in obedience to the words of the Qur’an and the Prophet, put to the sword the infidels therein who refused to submit to the new Islamic regime. Those who remained alive lived in humiliating second-class status. Conversion to Islam became the only way to live a decent life. And lo and behold, the Christian populations of these areas steadily diminished.

Conventional wisdom has it that these Christians welcomed the invaders, preferring the yoke of Islam to that of Byzantium...

Much later, when Muslim armies resumed their expansion in Europe after a period of relative decline (which most notoriously included the loss of Sicily in 1091, the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099, and the steady erosion of their power in Spain), they held true to this pattern of behavior. On May 29, 1453, Constantinople, the jewel of Christendom, finally fell to an overwhelming Muslim force after weeks of resistance by a small band of valiant Greeks. According to the great historian of the Crusades Steven Runciman, the Muslim soldiers “slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women, and children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets from the heights of Petra toward the Golden Horn. But soon the lust for slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that captives and precious objects would bring them greater profit.”

The circumstances of the first Crusade were these: Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land were being molested by Muslims and prevented from reaching the holy places. Some were killed. This was finally the impetus that moved Western Christianity to try to take back just one small portion of the Christian lands that had fallen to the Muslim sword over the last centuries. “The Crusade,” noted historian Bernard Lewis, “was a delayed response to the jihad, the holy war for Islam, and its purpose was to recover by war what had been lost by war — to free the holy places of Christendom and open them once again, without impediment, to Christian pilgrimage.”

Whatever undeniable sins Christians committed during their course, the Crusades were essentially a defensive action: a belated and insufficient attempt by Western Christians to turn back the tide of Islam that had engulfed the Eastern Church. “When accusing the West of imperialism,” says the historian of jihad Paul Fregosi, “Muslims are obsessed with the Christian Crusades but have forgotten their own, much grander Jihad.” The lands in dispute during each Crusade were the ancient lands of Christendom, where Christians had flourished for centuries before Muhammad’s armies called them idolaters and enslaved and killed them. If Westerners had no right to invade these putative Muslim lands, then Muslims had no right to take them in the first place.

Thus if Al-Azhar wants to demand an apology for the Crusades, it should be ready to apologize for the conquest of the Middle East and North Africa.

I presume this is fully explained in Spencer's book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) which Ms Deen would do well to read. "Muslims won these lands by conquest and, in obedience to the words of the Qur’an and the Prophet, put to the sword the infidels therein", and "the Crusades were essentially a defensive action". Not so ambiguous, Ms Deen, if you're prepared to read further. It won't even take an eternity.