The modern West has been trained to believe a comforting lie. The lie, while once ludicrous to the Western world, has been carefully curated into books, classrooms, and media. It has even taken the Christian idea to “love thy neighbor” and twisted it to force people to disbelieve what their eyes see and what history teaches.
Yet, this lie has now lent power to the one force that has been hell-bent on destroying Western Civilization for 1400 years.
I am, of course, speaking of Islam.
And the lie? The lie is that Islam was born as a peaceful spiritual movement. That violence came later. That jihad is a distortion. That history went wrong somewhere after the beginning.
But history tells a very different story.
One of the great assumptions of modern Western thinking is that all peoples and all religions ultimately share the same moral framework. We assume that others value human life, dignity, mercy, and restraint in the same way we do.
We assume that when conflict arises it must be the result of misunderstanding, poverty or political grievance rather than a fundamentally different moral vision.
This assumption is false.
Western moral ethics did not arise naturally or universally. They are the product of Christianity. Like it or not, that is a fact of history.
Ideas such as the inherent dignity of every human being, equality before God, the moral limits of power, and the worth of the weak are not human defaults. They are Christian achievements.
They emerged from a civilization shaped by the teachings of Jesus Christ and refined over centuries of theological reflection and moral struggle.
Other worldviews do not share these assumptions. In this series, we will shatter both the lie and our own assumptions.
In fact, this series will demonstrate that Islam operates from a radically different moral framework. It does not separate religion from law, nor belief from power, nor faith from force.
Where Christianity restrains violence, Islam regulates and sanctifies it. Where Christianity calls rulers to humility, Islam calls believers to dominance. Where Christianity advances through conversion, Islam advances through submission.
In fact, that is what Islam means. Islam (إسلام), literally, means "submission" or "surrender." And Muslim (مسلم) literally means "one who submits.”
This is not an abstract debate. It is an ongoing controversy with real world consequences. Modern institutions, media outlets, and academic elites insist that all religions are morally equivalent and that Islam in particular has been misunderstood or unfairly maligned.
In the aftermath of 9/11, we were told that Islam was, in fact, a “religion of peace.” This series rejects that premise and turns instead to history’s primary texts and documented events to set the record straight.
What follows is not speculation or polemic. It is a historical examination of what Islam has done, what it teaches, and how it has consistently behaved when given power.
With that clarity established we return to the beginning.
Islam did not begin as a persecuted faith clinging to survival. It did not spread primarily through persuasion or martyrdom. Nor was it meant as a way of finding peace, enlightenment, truth, or access to the Divine.
It was born out of a pursuit for political power from a man who would go on to have a child bride and slaughter droves of surrounding peoples. From its earliest days, Islam fused belief, law, and warfare into a single system. The Prophet Muhammed was, in fact, a local warlord, as decisively recorded by the Arabic chroniclers of his time.
To understand anything that follows in the long conflict between Islam and Christendom, we must begin here. Not with modern terrorism. Not with colonialism. Not with immigration. But with the origins of Islam itself.
Christianity began with a crucified Savior and a persecuted church. Islam began with a conquering prophet and a mobilized army. That difference is not incidental. It is foundational and we must understand it in order to replace both the lie and the false assumptions we have made.
Islamic tradition divides the Quran into two periods. The Meccan period and the Medinan period. This distinction is critical and often ignored in modern discussions.
During Muhammad’s early years in Mecca he lacked political power. His followers were few. The Surahs focus largely on the state of his people and coming judgement. Violence was more absent from these, not because it was immoral but because it was impossible.
Everything changed after the Hijra in 622 AD when Muhammad fled to Medina. There he became not only a religious leader but a political ruler, military commander, and judge. From this point forward the revelations of the Quran change in tone and content.
Verses now command fighting. They sanction and encourage plunder. They instruct holy warfare (jihad). They define the treatment of unbelievers and draw a distinction between all who submit (Muslims) and all who do not (infidels).
Quran 9 29 says “ قَـٰتِلُوا۟ ٱلَّذِينَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ بِٱللَّهِ وَلَا بِٱلْيَوْمِ ٱلْـَٔاخِرِ وَلَا يُحَرِّمُونَ مَا حَرَّمَ ٱللَّهُ وَرَسُولُهُۥ وَلَا يَدِينُونَ دِينَ ٱلْحَقِّ مِنَ ٱلَّذِينَ أُوتُوا۟ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ حَتَّىٰ يُعْطُوا۟ ٱلْجِزْيَةَ عَن يَدٍۢ وَهُمْ صَـٰغِرُونَ ٢٩” or “Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, nor comply with what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth from among those who were given the Scripture,1 until they pay the tax,2 willingly submitting, fully humbled.”
In short, it commands Muslims to fight those who do not believe until they submit and pay the jizya (forced tax of infidels as an act of submission) in humiliation.
Quran 8 12 speaks of striking the necks and fingertips of unbelievers. Quran 47 4 commands fighting until the enemy is subdued. This is not the West demonizing or maligning the religion. You can buy a Quran and read it for yourself.
Raymond Ibrahim, a historian and subject matter expert, documents extensively that this shift was not accidental or temporary. It established a permanent doctrinal framework. Later Islamic jurists consistently ruled that the Medinan verses abrogated the earlier peaceful ones. This doctrine of abrogation is widely accepted in classical Islamic theology and law.
In other words the peaceful verses were not the final word. The violent ones were.
Muhammad personally participated in countless raids and battles. Islamic sources record that he ordered assassinations, approved the enslavement of captives and distributed war booty.
The earliest biographies of Muhammad written by Ibn Ishaq and others present him not as a reluctant warrior but as an aggressive one.
The Battle of Badr in 624 AD highlights this. Though outnumbered when fighting against the Meccans, Muhammad’s forces prevailed and this victory was interpreted as divine endorsement of jihad.
Subsequent battles followed.
Tribes were subjugated. Jewish communities in Medina were expelled, enslaved, or executed. The Banu Qurayza men were beheaded and their women and children enslaved according to the most respected Islamic sources.
These events are not disputed by serious scholars. They are recorded in Islam’s own historical tradition. As Ibn Khaldun later wrote, “jihad is a religious duty because of Islam’s universal mission to bring all people under its law.”
Christianity never produced an equivalent figure. Jesus refused political power. He rebuked Peter for drawing the sword. His kingdom was not of this world. The early church grew under persecution without armies, without state backing, and without coercion.
Islam did not follow that path.
Modern apologists often claim that jihad means only inner struggle. But classical Islamic law is unambiguous. Jihad primarily refers to armed struggle against unbelievers to expand Islamic rule.
Victor Davis Hanson, the famed historian, notes in his book Carnage and Culture, that, in Western civilization, war has historically been constrained by moral and civic traditions. In Islamic civilization, war was sacralized. Victory validated truth. Expansion proved divine favor.
Islam divided the world into two realms. “Dar al Islam” which is “the house of Islam.” And “Dar al Harb,” “the house of war.” Peace is temporary. War is normative. The goal is submission.
This worldview produced the most rapid expansion in human history. Within a century, Islamic armies conquered Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, and deep into Asia.
Ancient Christian communities were erased or reduced to permanent subjugation. Churches became mosques. Languages disappeared. Entire civilizations were transformed.
This was not incidental to Islam. It was Islam in motion.
The difference between Christianity and Islam is not merely historical. It is moral and theological.
Christianity teaches that all people are made in the image of God. Islam divides humanity into believers, subjects, and enemies. Christianity commands love of enemies. Islam commands dominance over them. Christianity spread through witness and sacrifice. Islam spread through conquest law and coercion.
This is not a claim that every Muslim is violent. It is a claim that the system itself contains a built in mechanism for expansion through force. And that it is the view embraced by the vast majority of Muslims through the 1400 year history of Islam.
Individuals may reject it. The doctrine does not.
Islamic violence is not a deviation from scripture but rather a fulfillment of it. When modern jihadists quote the Quran they are not inventing a new Islam. They are practicing an old one.
The West forgot this history and has embraced the lie. The lie and the assumption that all others benefit from 2000 years of Christian tradition. Our embrace of relativism has replaced truth which history lays plain.
The result is confusion. When Islamic violence erupts we ask what went wrong instead of what stayed the same.
This series exists to recover memory. Not to incite hatred. Not to excuse injustice. But to tell the truth. Truth is the prerequisite for love, wisdom, and survival.
Because once you understand how Islam began you can no longer pretend that what followed was accidental.
And once you understand that the first jihad shattered half of Christendom you will understand why the next fourteen centuries unfolded as they did.
That is where we go next.
