History of the Jihad against Byzantine Christians of Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey (634-1453)
This site brings you the history of the Islamic Jihad from its beginnings at Mecca in 620 C.E. up to 9/11, and the lessons it has for us in today’s challenging times. If we are to understand Islam, we need to understand the temperament of its founder Mohammed (PBUH*), the way victorious Muslims have treated the subject people, and above all the reasons for the victory of Islam.
This site is dedicated to frank and fearless reporting and commenting on the Islamic Jihad.
NEW Movie script on Mohammed PBUH* - the founder of Islam
View “Fitna”- an online movie by Geert Wilders, and get to know the soul of Islam
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The History of Jihad site is brought to you by a panel of contributors. This site is co-ordinated by Robin MacArthur with Mahomet Mostapha and Naim al Khoury, New Jersey.
Other contributors to this site include professors and members of the faculty from the Universities of Stanford and Michigan (Ann Arbor), Kansas State University, Ohio State University, and the London School of Economics. We strongly suggest that this site be recommended as additional reading for students of Islamic History.
We also invite students and professors of this subject to mirror this site on your University or private servers, link it up from your sites, to print it as a non-profit publication and refer it to students, journalists, cinematographers, military personnel, members of both houses of Congress, and Parliamentarians from your countries, members of the judiciary and most importantly to officers of the FBI, CIA, Scotland Yard, MI5, Mossad, FSB (Russian Secret Police) Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) and to all other stakeholders in the subjects of the Islam and the Jihad.
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How the Jihad ravaged Christian Byzantium for 800 years, and how valiantly the Byzantine Christians held back the Arab and Turkish hordes, saving Europe from Islam
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Al-Mawardi (d. 1058), a renowned jurist of Baghdad, in The Laws of Islamic Governance states the critical connection between jihad and payment of the jizya. He notes that “The enemy makes a payment in return for temporary peace and reconciliation.” Al-Mawardi then distinguishes two cases: Primarily, payment is made immediately and is treated like booty. Secondly, payment is made yearly and will “constitute an ongoing tribute by which their security is established". If the payment ceases, then the jihad resumes. He adds “it does, however, not prevent a jihad being carried out against the infidels in the future for converting them to Islam, in spite of their having paid the jizya.”
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While the Zoroastrian Persians were defeated and were being subjugated, the Muslim hordes turned on their other neighbor the Christian Byzantines. The two armies met at the battlefield of Heiromyak.
Lessons from the Battle of Heiromyak (Al Yarmuk)
At the Battle of the Yarmuk (river), between the Muslim Arabs and the Byzantines, the Muslim Arabs were losing the battle in the initial stages. When the victory seemed certain for the Byzantines, the Muslims took recourse to subterfuge, when they realized that victory could not come to them through straight warfare, they used a contingent of women to attack the Byzantine troops who charged at the Byzantine army shrieking and hollering. This contingent was led by Hind Bint Utbah, the wife of Abu Sufyan, who was the chieftain of Mecca. Not used to facing ladies as an adversary, the Byzantines were at a loss to respond and the confused Byzantine generals ordered their troops not to molest the women and to withdraw.
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The Muslims have used subterfuge and ruthless cruelty to win wars against all adversaries. At the battle of Yarmuk (Heiromyak) when the warriors of the Holy Cross began prevailing over those of the Crescent, the Muslims resorted to subterfuge. One of the Arab-Muslim generals Khalid-ibn-Walid disguised himself as a woman in a hijab, embraced the Byzantine General Harbees and crushed his ribs, thus murdering him using deceit. With their General dead, the Byzantine army became leaderless, and the fortunes of the battle started going in favor of the Muslim Arabs. So much for allah giving the Muslims victory in war!
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When the Arab Muslims saw that this tactic using women as a deceptive front was working, they sent in the main contingent of Arab men dressed as women in hijabs (the black tent like gown worn by Muslim women) to charge at the Byzantines, and in the process one of the Arab generals Khalid-ibn-Walid disguised as a woman in a hijab, embraced the Byzantine General Harbees and crushed his ribs, thus killing him. With their general dead, the Byzantine army became leaderless, and the fortunes of the battle started going in favor of the Muslim Arabs. This is how the tricky and insidious Muslims won the battle of Yarmuk. Another example of Allah intervening to give the Muslims victory in war (sic)!
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The Byzantine Christian city of Caesarea had walls that were sixteen feet high with many turrets and had withstood the Arab Muslim siege of more than eight months, so the Muslims used this devious way to infiltrate the city and once inside they ruthlessly slaughtered its determined inhabitants to the last man, except for a few who managed to reach the port and board the ships and flee to safety. So much for allah giving them victory. This proves that Arab Muslims can stoop to any depth to gain a victory which they allege some allah helps them.
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With their guileful victory at Heiromyak, the Muslims wasted no time in fanning out in to the now defenseless Syria, and started storming one town after another making their way first to Jerusalem and then onwards to Bethlehem, Nazareth, Tiberias, Cana, Tyre, Sidon Damascus to the Byzantine mercantile capital in the Levant – the metropolis of Caesarea. In those days Caesarea was a strongly fortified by twins tier of walls with innumerable turrets. These had been built to stave of the repeated Persian (Sassanid) assaults that were launched at it. Because of the strong battlements, the Sassanids failed to take Caesarea, but that could not prevent the lustful eyes of the Muslims from falling on this prosperous city.
Lessons from the Battles of Caesarea, Babylon (a city in Byzantine Egypt), and Alexandria
When the Muslims reached Caesarea, they tried to take the city by storm, but were repulsed. They set down to a lengthy siege, but that too proved ineffective. Caesarea, which was then a bustling city of more than 300 busy streets. It was a port city and so the siege could not be complete on the sea facing side of the city, which continued to receive supplies and reinforcements from Constantinople. Here the Arab Muslims who had besieged the city had observed that some men furtively made their way from the city walls during some nights. The Muslims waylaid these men and to their delight they turned out to be Bedouins who although non-Muslims were of the same ethnic stock as the Muslim Arabs.
These Bedouins were in the employ of the Byzantines as sweepers at Caesarea. Now as captives in the hands of their Arab compatriots, they did not take long to crack and fall prey to the threats and bribes of their Arab compatriots. These sweepers decided to betray their Byzantine masters and showed the Arab Muslim besiegers the way to infiltrate into Caesarea through its sewers.
The Byzantine Christian city of Caesarea had walls that were sixteen feet high with many turrets and had withstood the Arab Muslim siege for more than eight months, so the Muslims used this devious way to infiltrate the city and once inside they ruthlessly slaughtered its determined inhabitants to the last man, except for a few who managed to reach the port and board the ships and flee to safety. So much for allah giving them victory. This proves that Arab Muslims can stoop to any depth to gain a victory which they allege some allah helps them.

The Muslim hordes stormed the city of Caesarea, they not just slaughtered all soldiers on whom they could lay their hands, but decapitated all the males and to instill terror in the minds of the womenfolk, the Muslims tore open the abdomens of the Byzantine soldiers and ripped out their hearts, and other victuals and paraded them through the streets that had been a few days before being so brutalized - a panorama of wealth and prosperity.
This savagery so horrified the Byzantine Christians that it came to haunt Christendom for many centuries, and was ossified in to our memory that ultimately led to the Crusades to repay the Muslims in their own coin and to regain the Holy Land that was lost to the first and unprovoked Muslim aggression against Christendom in 637.
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And once the Muslim hordes stormed the city of Caesarea, they not just slaughtered all soldiers on whom they could lay their hands, but decapitated all the males and to instill terror in the minds of the womenfolk, the Muslims tore open the abdomens of the Byzantine soldiers and ripped out their hearts, and other victuals and paraded them through the streets that had been a few days before being so brutalized - a panorama of wealth and prosperity.
This savagery so horrified the Byzantine Christians that it came to haunt Christendom for many centuries, and was ossified in to our memory. When the Crusader counterattack rolled back the Muslim invaders from the eleventh century (1096- 1291 C.E.), the crusaders paid back the Muslims in their own coin and perhaps more so when they roasted the captured Muslims and devoured them whenever the crusader army ran short of food supplies.
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Horrendous cruelty and deceit is what got the Muslim their victories. To win against the Jihadis, one should never forget what the Jihadis have done, neither should one forgive them for what they have done as they will do precisely this even today in the 21st century, whenever they get an opportunity (as they did on 9/11, and 7/7).
Whether one is a statesman, or a private citizen, one needs to remember always while interacting with the Muslims (all of whom are Jihadis at heart, as their Quran asks them to be so), never open your mind to them, never discuss controversial issues with them, never enter into an argument with them and reveal what you have in mind. Nurse a grudge against them, get to know their minds, let them do the talking, you do the listening and gauge the kind of beasts they are. And above all let this recognition of the true nature and intentions of the Jihadis, build in ourselves an urge and will to destroy the Jihadis utterly and lead us to take preemptive military action to act on our deepest desires against the beastlike Muslims. It is either them or us - the choice is ours!
Only with the crusades, did the pigeons of Muslim barbarity come home to roost, as they would once again when the Mongols sacked and slaughtered the entire city of Baghdad, and as it would once again as today’s war on terror reaches its predictable zenith when we will see the wholesale vaporization of the Muslim population across the Middle East and the Muslim world. A scenario too horrendous to contemplate today, but which will soon come to pass, within one generation as our final response, after the Jihadis launch their first (and hopefully their last) nuclear terror attack against us in the West.
Why and how Christian Byzantine survived for eight centuries, while Zoroastrian Persia fell to the Muslims in seventeen years
These initial Muslim attacks against Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Tiberias, Cana, Tyre, Sidon Damascus and Caesarea were fierce and bloodied, but even they could not overwhelm Constantinople, although the city was besieged by the Muslims twice in the 7th century. But the empire held its own by locking the Muslims at the Cilician gates in South Eastern Turkey.