Raymond Ibrahim joins us to talk about his new book, The Two Swords of Christ, a trilogy that traces the history of conflict between Islam and the West, starting with the early days of the Crusades and the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
00:03:02.520And I start really from the beginning with the first, you know, couple of years after Muhammad's lifetime with the first battle in 636.
00:03:09.560And we fast forward all the way until America's first war as a nation, the Barbary Wars with Muslims.
00:03:14.440And I highlight, you know, the decisive battles and how they really had a tremendous impact on the shaping of the world so that very few people, you know, know.
00:03:23.640There's a European, an older European historian.
00:03:27.520And he said very memorably that Islam was a violent midwife to Europe because so much of what Europe really became was a byproduct of continuous aggression from surrounding Islam.
00:03:41.180And we and the book also shows Sword and Scimitar that, you know, a lot of the countries or nations or regions that we think or a lot of people think today are have always been Muslim.
00:03:50.020The Muslim world, especially the Arab world, all of that was actually the was not just Christian.
00:03:56.280It was actually the greater part of Christendom.
00:03:58.440And so Islam, I show in that book in the first few chapters, how Islam just completely in one century conquered all that region from Egypt and greater Syria, the Middle East, all the way to Morocco and then even got into Spain.
00:04:11.300So a lot of people are not aware of that so much of what was once Christendom, about 66 or 70 percent, if you look at a map, was actually permanently swallowed up by Islam and later by the Turks, Asia Minor, what we call Turkey today was one of the oldest, you know, Christian regions.
00:04:27.560Epistles are in their book of Revelation, talks about its cities.
00:04:31.720So anyway, that's that's Sword and Scimitar.
00:04:34.280Defenders of the West was sort of similar, but it was more of biographies.
00:04:38.040I chose eight biographies of eight men who I identify as defenders of Christendom vis-a-vis Islam.
00:04:48.500And I know I know a lot of people find that very inspiring.
00:04:51.020And that's partially why I also wanted to write it.
00:04:53.200It's sort of a it's the same it's the same theme.
00:04:55.660But now I'm really like zooming in on the lives of specific men, kings and warriors and emperors who, you know, took the cause.
00:05:03.320And the newest book now, The Two Swords of Christ, is I originally conceived it as a book about the military orders.
00:05:11.460And but eventually it just became about the two primary ones, really, who spearheaded the defense of Christendom, which would be the Knights of the Temple and the Knights of the Hospital or the Templars and Hospitallers, respectively.
00:05:22.720And that I think, you know, the relevance of that book.
00:05:26.640Well, what it is, is just it's a history.
00:05:28.440Again, it's a history of those how they came into being, how the military orders came into being, the rationale behind them.
00:05:49.400Now, even though that verse has been allegorized into absolute meaninglessness today, it actually meant something to pre-modern and especially medieval Christians.
00:05:58.440And what it meant is you there's two sorts of evil and you have two kinds of swords to fight against them.
00:06:03.220You have a secular sword against physical evil and you have a spiritual sword against spiritual evil.
00:06:09.300So modern day Christians only believe in the latter one, apparently, and they've completely lost focus on the on the former, which is a physical sword.
00:06:16.440So we get into the theology of how they came to be how they came to rise to power.
00:06:21.680And you find it amazing again today in our modern Christian Western climate to be a Christian is, you know, to be passive and to be tolerant and, you know, to be a doormat in many ways.
00:06:33.600But these guys who were essentially monks and really lived very pious lives were also very violent men.
00:06:41.760And so, you know, reconciling the twain seems to be odd.
00:06:45.960And I think it's very fascinating when you understand the sort of theological understanding that they had.
00:06:52.260You know, another thing that medieval Christians did that modern day, you know, we go ahead.
00:06:58.700So sorry, Raymond, I want to go into this because we have a few minutes to break this down in a few more deep in a bit more detail as we go on in the show.
00:07:08.080But first of all, I want to ask you, is it your thesis then that from when Muhammad first appeared in the in the sixth century, right, in the later, the late, late fifth century, sixth century, is it your thesis that there has basically been a continuous physical battle?
00:07:31.100And you can you can also argue a spiritual battle vis-a-vis Christianity and Islam all throughout this period and that battle is still taking place in the present day?
00:07:43.100Or is it your thesis that talking about the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller, these things are really these these are historically battles that belonged in the past?
00:07:54.600No, it's the former. It's it's it's it's a continuous war.
00:07:59.840So historically, again, Sword and Scimitar is the book that does this.
00:08:04.060It historically shows you that the war was nonstop.
00:08:06.860Of course, I mean, we're talking 14 centuries.
00:08:09.320There's there's going to be times of peace because of whatever reason and there's truces, et cetera, et cetera.
00:08:14.500But the general hostility was constant overall.
00:08:18.600You remember, you know, Islam, Muhammad is seventh century, dies at 632.
00:08:22.720And in the 16th century, in the 1500s, you have Muslims going to Iceland and Denmark to raid and England to raid slaves under the same exact logic that the Koran tells us it's you're an infidel, a kafir, et cetera.
00:08:34.940However, having said that, what I would contend is that what's happening is the same hostility has gone on, except it's taken different manifestations and different guises.
00:08:46.420The continuum from the Muslim side is unwavering.
00:08:49.260The problem is the discontinuity of the West, in other words.
00:08:52.720And this is why it's good and timely to read about men like this, these knights and how they perceive that this war, which was both physical and spiritual in their mind, hence the two swords.
00:09:05.500Islam is so weak and, you know, the forebearers of Europe and Western, you know, the Western Christians would be turning in their graves to see that finally, you know, the West is supreme, more powerful technologically, economically, you know, militarily.
00:09:18.780And it's still suffering worse than when you keep in mind during these centuries of the long war between Islam and the West, Europe was the underdog.
00:10:01.980And so to me, it's a pattern of unwavering hostility that goes all the way back to the 7th century.
00:10:07.160But because the West has kind of distanced itself from its own heritage and, you know, broken away from Christendom and that idea, it doesn't see it.
00:10:17.820It's working under this guise of multiculturalism and, you know, any problem that goes on.
00:10:21.960It has to do with, you know, economics or grievances.
00:10:25.960And so they don't understand the sort of existential hostility that has been just unwavering.
00:10:30.000And well, as I document in my books, it's not hasn't stopped and it's still going on.
00:10:34.720What about this thesis that you'll find pretty much in most of the media and modern academia, that here were these peaceable Muslims just getting on with their life.
00:10:46.840And you have the brutality of Christians and the Crusades going in and for no reason whatsoever attacking because the Christians, the bad guys, the Muslims are the good guys.
00:10:59.640That's basically the modern perception, the narrative that you'll pick up here in the West.
00:11:05.620Well, what's your what's your reading on that?
00:11:07.900And is your book in some ways a corrective to that that alternative history, that fake history?
00:11:26.580And as I often say, fake history is much more dangerous than fake news because it creates overarching narratives and paradigms that people sift current events through.
00:11:34.780So if you believe what you just said, not you, but people in general, and they do that, you know, medieval Christians and Crusaders were the aggressors.
00:11:42.000Muslims were peaceful, tolerant victims.
00:11:44.280Muslims, if you believe that, of course, then you fast forward and you look at events today.
00:11:49.080And I mean, you know, a few years ago, I think like thousands of Germans did a march to the Holy Land wearing shirts with Arabic.
00:11:59.940OK, so it puts you in this position where you feel like you have to make concessions because you're the bad guy.
00:12:05.560Let's make up for what our ancestors did.
00:12:07.520Let's not let's now like turn a new leaf and let's give Muslims the benefit of the doubt, et cetera, et cetera.
00:12:12.460But if you actually, you know, and it's so diabolical the way that this fake history, because I've really read a lot of books written by secondary historians who are supposed to be well renowned.
00:12:22.940And the things they say, it's just, you know, I'll give you one example of, you know, well-known professor, John Esposito from Georgetown University, which is where I attended for a while.
00:12:33.440And, you know, he's the editor in chief of Oxford Books on Islam, and he's written so many books published by the Oxford University Press.
00:12:40.800And he literally says in one in one of his books, I think it's called Islam, the straight path.
00:12:45.700He says five centuries of peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians elapsed before an imperial papal power play led to series of so-called holy wars that have left an enduring legacy of mistrust.
00:12:58.280In other words, Muslims and Christians just got along hunky-dory for five centuries until the first crusade in 1095, when these evil imperialistic, you know, papal power play popes and Catholics decided to go and attack innocent Muslims.
00:13:13.440The reality, as I sort of alluded earlier, is the complete opposite.
00:13:17.400In those five centuries, Islam destroyed and wreaked havoc all throughout Christendom.
00:13:21.440In one year alone, according to a Muslim historian, in the year 1009, the caliph, the Fatibid caliph in Egypt, Hakim al-Amrullah, according to Muslim historian al-Makrizi, destroyed 30,000 churches in greater Syria and Egypt, including the holy sepulcher, which he razed to the ground.
00:13:36.840So, and this is during the five centuries of peaceful coexistence.
00:13:41.060So, even leading up to the first crusade, the mass havoc and the massacres that the Turks were causing in Asia Minor and attacks and rapes on nuns who were going on pilgrimage, that's exactly what the Christians spoke about at Clermont, at the Council of Clermont with Pope Urban II.
00:13:58.500It was to redress and defend Christendom from what was happening.
00:14:02.700But that has been so expunged today, and, you know, it starts off, like I just told you, with that quote.
00:14:08.200And the same page that John Esposito, where he says five centuries of peace, you know, he also says he mockingly dismisses the fact that when the crusaders said deus vult, God wills it, he writes, yeah, God may have willed it, but there's no evidence that the Christians in the Holy Land willed it.
00:14:24.240And, well, all contraire, and as I showed in a recent article and video, there's copious evidence of Middle Eastern Christians, Syriac, Armenian, who when the crusaders came, they just threw themselves and kissed their feet because they helped alleviate what was happening to them, which was mass persecution by Muslims.
00:14:42.580So, yeah, this is a very potent fake history that's meant to demonize Christians and demonize especially medieval Christianity.
00:14:50.560I think there is a force out there that is very scared that Western Christian men might start sort of gravitating and find appealing medieval Christian men, specifically the two knight groups that I spoke about in the Two Swords of Christ, the Knights of the Temple and the Hospital.
00:15:05.860Tell me something, Raymond, what do you think about the Catholic Church in the decades following the Second Vatican Council?
00:15:16.180Has it had a role to play in trying to present the truth behind the defence of Christians in the Middle East under Islamic conquest?
00:15:28.600Or has it, do you think, rather somewhat sold the pass behind a deceptively dialogue-based interaction with Islam?
00:15:42.020Could it have done more? And are you looking towards the new Pope, Leo XIV, to change the position somewhat from the position of Pope Francis and his numerous declarations, like I think it was Abu Dhabi, his declaration with regards to Islam?
00:16:04.760So there's two questions there. Do you think the Catholic Church has done enough in presenting to Catholics the truth about the Islamic conquest of Christendom in the previous centuries?
00:16:18.780And are you looking and hoping for a change under the new Pope?
00:16:22.920Yeah, as far as the first question, no, it has not done enough, especially under Pope Francis.
00:16:29.780You know, he was much more, it seems, interested in just dialogue and trying to show, you know, some fraternal, peaceful overtures towards the Islamic world.
00:16:39.440And he did a lot of these meetings with the grand imam of Egypt, Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayyib.
00:16:44.600And it's just, you know, as a person like me who watches and reads in Arabic, and I get to watch the Sheikh.
00:16:51.640So I would watch Pope Francis and the Sheikh talking and hugging each other and kissing each other and talking about peace and love and how Muslims and Christians are, you know, brother religions and should help each other.
00:17:02.120And then I would watch the Sheikh speaking in Arabic saying the exact opposite and sounding not unlike ISIS, you know, when it comes to the Christian is the kefir, the infidel, we can't have churches and all that sort of thing.
00:17:14.740But of course, he doesn't speak it the way ISIS does. He tries to be a little more diplomatic, but it's the same mentality.
00:17:20.180And al-Azhar, which is, you know, almost like the equivalent of the Vatican, people will say, of the Islamic world, is notorious for publishing books that what we would call radical Islam.
00:17:32.660And they have no choice because those are the books of Islam, the Hadith and, you know, the Sira, the biography of Muhammad and all the special studies.
00:17:40.400So it's a one-sided thing. And, you know, and a lot of the Muslims and when Christians from the Middle East watch this, they just they can't believe it because he's being so hoodwinked, Pope Francis, unless, of course, he knew that.
00:17:53.440And it doesn't matter because he just wants to put a show of, hey, we're signing all these.
00:17:58.160Excuse me. Let me just stop you there. What's your reading of the situation?
00:18:02.700Because no one follows these things more attentively than you. Do you think he was acting?
00:18:06.380Do you think Bergoglio was acting in good faith or do you think he was actually acting in bad faith with his presentation to Catholics that Islam is a peaceful religion?
00:18:19.600You know, the only way to answer that question is, you know, how what's his intelligence level?
00:18:24.760You know, does he did he really believe what he was saying or, you know, is he that naive or does or was this wishful thinking or is this just like I said, kind of a show?
00:18:34.220I think it's a little bit of all, you know, it's a combination.
00:18:37.060He's hoping, but he also knows probably not, especially when people like me would expose what, you know, his counterpart would say and do soon thereafter, after these meetings.
00:18:47.340But as far as, you know, and he would, for example, write encyclicals about the environment.
00:18:52.960But it's like you could have written an encyclical about the fact that something like I think the latest estimate published by the human rights group Open Doors on their world watch list is, I don't know, like 400 million Christians around the world are being persecuted.
00:19:06.520And some of them really graphically in Nigeria, you have two Christians being killed every hour, OK, for their faith.
00:19:14.780So you would think as the pope and here's the irony when you go back and you study the history.
00:19:19.460And as I show in these books, the the men who spearheaded the crusades were the popes.
00:19:23.960These were the guys who were the most, you know, stalwart resistors against Islamic violence and the spread of Islam.
00:19:31.260And so it's funny now when you fast forward to a Pope Francis and they come off, you know, so wishy washy.
00:19:37.780As far as the new pope, you know, I think one can have some hope.
00:19:41.220But in the end, I just feel a lot of these these institutions are just being such big, vast institutions.
00:19:46.820They can't help but have to be diplomatic.
00:19:49.060So there's probably only so much he will say or do, though.
00:19:52.880I think he understands the situation better.
00:19:54.920He's already talked about, you know, I don't remember the exact details, but he's already referenced that Christians are being persecuted.
00:20:03.300And we just need it would be nice for popes to go back to how they used to be in a way when they were the chief defenders of the faith.
00:20:11.400It would indeed be nice to go back to the way things used to be when popes were Catholic.
00:20:19.120Look, we've got a break coming up in five minutes.
00:20:21.660There is a story that I wanted to quickly hit with you, but I think we'll hold it over now until after the break.
00:20:27.820One thing I did want to ask you, however, listening to you talk, is that it's conscious to me that that guys, men, males, if you will, are having a moment.
00:20:42.600You've got this whole thing in social media about the manosphere.
00:20:46.100And as I was sort of listening to you talking about this muscular form of Christianity that we saw in the past, and I know you elsewhere, you've described Templars and Hospitallers as not as soldiers and not as cloistered monks, but both together at the same time.
00:21:03.980Given that chaps have really had a backseat in the Catholic Church following the Second Vatican Council, and there is a moment taking place now within this wider manosphere concept, just tell me something about your reading of this situation.
00:21:23.880Is there anything that is going in the books, these three books, but specifically the Two Swords of Christ, that speaks to this contemporary dynamic, specifically about men leading up and taking leadership roles within the church once again?
00:21:40.280Yeah, I think that's one of the key points that comes out in this history, the Two Swords of Christ about the Knights, is again, it's this fusion of piety and militancy, which is so alien, you know, to your modern day Christian who has just been bred into becoming a doormat.
00:21:57.500You know, they've taken, you know, the whole idea, you know, this turn the other cheek has been so, I think, weaponized by people who actually hate Christianity, and at the same time, I often wonder to myself, you know, are people, men especially, are they overly fond of boasting that they're turning the other cheek because Jesus commanded them to, or is the first premise that they're really cowards, and they found a pious pretext to hide behind, which is, you know, I don't want to be confrontational, I don't want to be judgmental, I don't want to be judgmental, I don't want to be
00:22:27.500want to do anything, and oh yeah, because Jesus told me to. I'm starting to think that's really what's going on, and that they've been bred to become so passive, so cowardly, a lot of men in the West, and obviously I'm generalizing that a lot of men are not like that in the West, obviously, but I think it's been weaponized, this passive side of, if you go back in pre-modern time, you know, even though it seems so taken for granted today that Christianity is passive and peaceful and does nothing, no one thought that way, you know, so this is a new idea,
00:22:57.400that has really been, it's a classic heresy, right, a heresy is you take one aspect of religion and you, you know, blow it out of proportion and you ignore all the rest. Where's the aspect of, you know, overturning tables and a whip of cords and driving people out due to righteous indignation? You know, where do you get that? It's missing, and it wasn't missing for pre-modern men, for medieval men, it was very much, there was no conflict whatsoever between loving your neighbor and fighting and defending them and killing.
00:23:26.280You know, when you think about it, both the Knights of the Temple and the Knights of the Hospital, they began in their origin of just wanting to help their fellow man. They were working on the verse, you know, loving your fellow man as you love yourself, and loving God, that's what led to the Crusades, but, so the Templars, because when Christians would go on pilgrimages after the First Crusade, and now Jerusalem's under Crusader control, they were still being killed and attacked by Muslims.
00:23:50.400So, in their origin, the Templars were just basically a vanguard to protect pilgrims, and then the hospitalers is even more telling, because these were actually the men who were like a care worker, you know, they would, people who would come, and it was a hospice, and they would care for them, and they would wash them, and feed them, and clothe them, and, you know, and these are the guys who became militant and violent, because to them, in the end, it was, why am I going to sit in the hospital and wait until you get attacked by Muslims,
00:24:18.420and then try to resuscitate you? Why don't I actually go and prevent it, preemptive strike, by protecting you?
00:24:26.360So, it's amazing that, but for us today, and this is why you don't hear about these knights, and the Templars have been so demonized, and they've been turned into something that doesn't even exist,
00:24:34.640it's called pure mythology, and I think it's because if you really study them, they are appealing to Christian masculinity, and that's why there's a concerted effort to keep them suppressed,
00:24:43.660or to demonize them, or to turn them into all the nonsense that they've been turned into.
00:24:47.340Which, ironically, isn't a problem that exists within the Islamic world. Far from it, ironically.
00:24:58.300It's interesting that what you mentioned, and I hadn't considered that before, that basically the beta male mentality can hide behind the precepts of our Lord,
00:25:10.140and present themselves as sort of a prudential form of interior spirituality, when in fact it's just plain up, in your face, cowardice, right?
00:25:23.900Yeah. They're making a virtue out of a vice, okay? It's cowardice, and they hide behind, because think about it, you know,
00:25:31.140non-confrontationalism, non-judgmentalism, non, you know, being tolerant of everything. Well, that's the easy route.
00:25:38.900That's the easy thing to do, because you never get in anyone's face, you never resist.
00:25:42.480And, you know, so I think a lot of people have adopted that, and that comes first. That's the first premise.
00:25:49.220And then, you know, the second premise is what Jesus said. So, it's being, instead of, what it should be is that you want to do right,
00:25:57.260and, you know, if someone strikes you, you want to actually kill them, but you don't. You control yourself.
00:26:02.460That's how it should be, all right? And that's what Jesus, I believe, was.
00:26:05.020And keep in mind, you know, everyone knows this, turn the other cheek business. The one verse, Jesus actually gets slapped in the Gospels,
00:26:13.280and he didn't turn his other cheek. He actually challenged the man. So, clearly, this is a very symbolic thing to say,
00:26:18.900and it should never, in any way, shape, or form, be actually practiced. And no one did, because they had just war.
00:26:24.920Okay. Raymond, Ibrahim, hold on to that. We're going to come back after the break.
00:26:29.700I'm going to come back with Frank Walker, actually, in just a couple of minutes,
00:26:34.520because I want his take on what you were just saying about this aspect of cowardice masquerading itself as piety,
00:26:42.800because I think we find that, before anything else, within our Catholic hierarchy.
00:26:48.180Folks, stand by. We're back with a story that I think follows directly on from that,
00:26:53.720in happenings in France and Chartres. Back in two minutes.
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