August 1, 2023 Show with Raymond Ibrahim on “Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this very first day of August 2023.

I'm very intrigued to interview a first-time guest today. His publisher, Bombardier Books, contacted me and asked me if I would like to interview Raymond Ibrahim, who is a translator, an author, a columnist, a widely published expert on the Middle East and Islam, and distinguished senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute of the Judith Friedman Rosen and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

They wanted me to interview Raymond on his new book, Defenders of the West, the Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam. And when I saw Victor Davis Hanson's foreword to this book, I was even more intrigued because I have such an extremely high regard for Victor David Hanson from his appearances on Fox News.

He is by far one of my very favorite guests that is interviewed fairly regularly on Fox News. And Victor Davis Hanson, who is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, says of this book, Defenders of the West is engaging storytelling of fascinating people and forgotten events at its best.

Reads and flows like an adroitly crafted novel buttressed by a scholarship that allows those of the past to speak for the past. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Raymond Ibrahim.

Hello, Chris. Thank you very much for having me. I'm very happy to be with you today. And am I pronouncing your last name correctly?

Yes, Ibrahim. It's basically an Arabic transliteration of the Hebrew Abraham. Right. So, yeah, Ibrahim.

And I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Raymond Ibrahim, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. One of the reasons I am interested in conducting this interview today is that I have never done an interview on the Crusades.

I have, to my knowledge, rarely has it been mentioned on the program. Although we have done a number of programs on Islam, and as everybody who listens to this show regularly knows that I'm not an ecumenist with Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox or those who espouse a different gospel than the one I embrace, the gospel of the Protestant Reformation, which I believe is the biblical gospel.

But at the same time, I enjoy interviewing folks that might not see eye to eye with me on occasion on certain areas, even if they're important, if I believe they have something important to say to the body of Christ.

And this is one of those issues. It's a very controversial issue that's highly contested and debated even amongst my fellow Reformed Protestant Christians on whether to look upon the Crusades favorably or negatively or a combination of both.

But I am very fascinated to step into this discussion because I know very little about this period of history. And first of all, Raymond, what is it about your own background, perhaps your religious and or ethnic background, that led you to further investigate the topic of your book and pour such time and effort into getting details correct and finding out more about these issues yourself?

Sure, Chris. These the issues that I write about, I've had a very long interest in and both a sort of personal and professional background in it. And by it, I mean this nexus of study that I focus on, which is really Islam vis-à-vis the West slash the Christian world.

So my own background personally is my family are what's called Coptic Egyptians, Coptic Orthodox. So they're basically the indigenous inhabitants of Egypt before Islam invaded and conquered it in the year 640.

As you know, the Eastern sort of world was Orthodox, so they were part of that, you know, like the Greeks and the Russian. Today they're called Coptic. Coptic is just a word. It means Egyptian, actually.

It comes from the Greek word aegyptos, and the Arabs shortened it to gypt, and that's where we get copt.

Would that also be a part of what is known as the Oriental Orthodox? Yes. Yes. I was going to say that, though.

So I eschew that term. I find it kind of strange because Oriental means Eastern, and they try to distinguish Eastern Orthodoxy from Oriental Orthodoxy, which both means Eastern. But you're right. Oriental Orthodoxy would be the Coptics, the Armenians, I believe the Assyrians, Ethiopics, whereas Eastern would be more Greeks and Russians and so forth.

So my family came from Egypt. I was born here in the United States, and they actually did leave the country due to what was at the time not outright persecution, as it is now, actually, in the Middle East, including in Egypt, often, but more discrimination.

And so my family came here where I was born, and so I had that sort of personal background. I grew up speaking Arabic, so I'm bilingual, and I also formally studied it in college later on. So I've had an interest, especially in what happens to Christians under Islamic rule in Egypt, in particular, but also eventually also the Middle East in general.

And then in college, you mentioned Victor Davis Hanson. He was actually my professor for a number of years. Yeah, he was the chair of my thesis, my master's thesis, which was also about actually this nexus, the first military battle between Islam and the Western world, the Battle of Yarmouk in 636, which I wrote well over 20 years ago.

So even in my academic setting, I mastered in history. I'm sorry. Well, I got a master's degree in history. I majored in history, and like I said, Victor Davis Hanson was my professor for a number of courses, so a lot of classics, Greco-Roman history, medieval history later on, Byzantine, Islamic history, studied various languages, Arabic, can read Koine Greek, a little Latin, Farsi, other Middle Eastern languages.

And actually, soon after 9 -11, that's when I was writing my thesis with Victor Davis Hanson, and he recommended I continue my studies because Islam was becoming an important topic again, which I was already focused on.

So I applied and went to Georgetown University in Washington, D .C., where I was there for a little bit, and then I got a job at the Library of Congress in the Middle Eastern Division, working with all these Arabic books and other languages.

And while I was there, this is the origin of how I got into writing. I discovered writings by Al-Qaeda in around 2004, because the Library of Congress gets all the books from all around the world, and they weren't even catalogued.

They were actually in a big yellow tub that I would just peruse through. And I found these writings by Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri that had never been translated. Long story short, it became my first book project, the first book that came out in 2007 called The Al-Qaeda Reader.

And it basically demonstrated how Al-Qaeda and all these other radical groups were saying one thing to the West in their communiques, basically, we're fighting you because you're the aggressor, you support Israel, you're a colonial power, you're racist, whatever.

And then what they were writing, what I had found in translated, is what they were writing to all Muslims, which was the opposite. It was basically we have to hate and fight them because they're non-Muslims or infidels, Islam requires jihad, et cetera, et cetera.

And so that was the nature of that book. At any rate, after that book came out, I exclusively focused on researching and writing, increasingly at that time, about the persecution of Christians under Islam.

And then my next book in 2013, Crucified Again, Exposing Islam to the War on Christians, was dedicated to that, the persecution of Christians, which is a horrific story that's unknown and it's ongoing and getting worse.

And perhaps we could talk about it. Anyway, then I went back to my historical writings. And with my last book, Defenders of the West, I went back to what I was researching when I was at college, Victor Davis Antony, because as you know, his original claim to fame was basically as a military historian.

Even though, of course, now he talks about everything and is very influential on everything, it seems. But that's what I was studying. And so now I'm writing more, again, on that topic, the military history, the historic history between Islam and the West in those books.

And in the book before it, Sword and Scimitar, 14 Centuries of War Between Islam and the West. And that's another interesting story. We can talk about the U .S. Army War College, how they had me talk about it and how Islamic.

Organizations Do you know that that's five minutes from where I'm sitting?

Oh, really? So you're in Pennsylvania by Pittsburgh, was it? Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Carlisle. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So are you familiar with what happened? There was a lot of noise about me in the War College maybe two, three years ago.

What was it? Three, four years ago. Yeah. No, I I can give you the story if you want now or later. Yeah, sure.

Especially since it's local Carlisle stuff. I know people who are involved in the War College, personally. Okay. One of whom is a member of my church where I'm a member. All right.

So you'll probably like this story. The book before the current one, which is called Sword and Scimitar, 14 Centuries of War Between Islam and the West, came out in 2018. And soon thereafter, some folks from the War College contacted me to come give a lecture on it.

And I said I agreed and everything was fine. And, you know, I booked my ticket and hotel and everything because they contacted me maybe six months or four months before the event. At any rate, like maybe three, four days before the event, I learned from the War College that are you familiar with the Council on American Islamic Relations?

Yes. Okay. So that group and all sorts of other activists, leftists, and so forth, protested to the US Army War College for having me on. They said I'm an Islamophobe, I'm a bigot. They called me a white supremacist despite being Egyptian.

So, you know, they threw everything they could at me.

Oh, they call Larry Elder a black candidate for president of white supremacists. I know.

I know. And, you know, they do that so much that these words have lost all meaning. That's right. That's right. And, you know, they cry wolf too much. Yes. Anyway, so anyway, sadly, the War College capitulated to the pressure and they rescinded my invitation.

Wow. Yeah. But then I, you know, a lot of people learned about it and interviewed me and I got, you know, I appeared on various shows and a lot of people learned about it. A lot of organizations like the Association of Scholars wrote a letter to Trump, who was in the office at the time, basically saying this is the National Association of Scholars and petitioned.

And long story short, it made a lot of noise and it made the U .S. Army War College look really bad because all I was doing was I was invited to give a talk about history. Right. And you were invited.

And they invited me. I didn't reach out to them. Right. And they really put me out because I made, you know, I had to prepare and I told you I got tickets. It was a little effort and sacrifice on my part.

And then they just pulled the rug from underneath me about two days before I was supposed to fly up anyway. And apparently they got a lot of negative emails and angry parents and so forth. So they actually re-invited me and I ended up giving the talk.

I think it was in February 2020. Wow. And yeah. And CARE, once again, when they learned that I had been re-invited, started their mass campaign and their hysteria and basically saying things like if they invite me to talk, I'm going to incite the military to go and kill more Muslims around the world.

And just, you know, real ludicrous stuff. I'm just talking about history, documented history. Right. But they went through with it. And if anything, thanks to CARE, they had created so much hubbub about this event that it was actually kind of a sold out event.

It was packed. I think they told me it was the second most packed event after Buzz Aldrin.

You know, I'm actually upset right now because I know at least two people from the War College and I don't remember them telling me about this event at all. And that was six years after I moved here to Pennsylvania.

Well, you know, to sort of, you know, help shed light on that, when they invited me over, I mean, it was clear to me they were doing it because they got so much negative press and they just wanted to kind of redeem themselves.

Right. But they had also told me that they're videotaping it and that they videotape all these lectures. And that was one of the main reasons I wanted to do it, not just for that audience, but to have kind of a record for anyone who wants to see it.

And they did videotape it, but they never published it until now. I remember the last time I spoke to them was maybe their excuse became the famous excuse, COVID, because COVID hit right after. This is February 2020.

And so because of COVID, it's been three years that they haven't been able to upload the video. So I think in the end, they just wanted to cover their back. But when it comes down to it, they don't want any more controversy by airing this video.

By the way, I don't want to take us on a rabbit trail because I know it's not the focus of our topic today. But I've always been mystified by progressive Muslims who might even be correctly categorized as liberal Muslims who are not really following the Koran or the Hadith to the letter, are much more progressive in interreligious relations, egalitarianism with women, possibly even homosexuality, et cetera.

It always baffles me when I hear people like that and even just your average garden variety of non-Muslim leftist who get so upset about any criticism of authentic Koranic Islam, especially when it comes to the violence associated with it.

When folks like them, if they were living in Sharia law, would be the first to either be tortured or executed. So it's baffling to me. Can you explain this? What is the why the rush to defend a segment of their religion?

Of course, they don't all do this. There are progressive Muslims who do openly and publicly oppose the violence of those involved in Islam and Sharia law and so on. But do you have any explanation as to why these people are rushing to so quickly defend the same segment of Islam that would no doubt have them in very serious, life-threatening danger if they were living in their nations?

Well, a lot of these groups, if you mean activist groups, let's say like CARE, whose entire being is dedicated to shutting down any criticism and saying it's Islamophobia under the guise of we want to promote tolerance and we believe Islam is not violent, Islam is tolerance, we want to just get along and that sort of thing.

Those people are actually part of the same problem. They're part of the radical thing. Islam itself has, you know, we can talk about Jihad and the doctrines, but it actually has several teachings that encourage Muslims that when they're in a position of weakness and they can't go all out Jihad, they are supposed to do anything possible.

They can even outwardly convert to, let's say, Christianity, and they did this. And there's a whole long chapter of that that we can talk about, especially in Spain during the Reconquista. Basically, they can abjure Muhammad and curse him and take communion, Catholic Spain at the time, and do everything, but as long as their heart is with Muhammad and they want to re-subvert Spain, in this example, back to Islam, then they're considered good Muslims.

And, you know, the most famous manifestation of these teachings or doctrines is called Taqiyyah, which is based, and this is in the Quran. I think Quran 328, if I'm not mistaken, it basically says, do not befriend non-Muslims, and it talks about not befriending Jews and Christians, and then it says, unless you're doing so by way of a precaution.

And, you know, there's other verses that talk about how you can't befriend them.

I've also heard it pronounced Taqiyyah. Is that also...

Taqiyyah, yeah. In Arabic, it's Taqiyyah. Okay.

But yeah, it's pronounced in all sorts of ways. Because I remember the first time I heard it, a Christian apologist who's an expert on Islam said that Muslims support Taqiyyah, and I said, wait a minute, I thought they were against hard liquor.

But then I found out what it meant.

Right, right. But it's actually, it's the most notorious of many Islamic doctrines that essentially support subversion, support lying, support being two-faced. And so, to me, these groups that come up and tell you, you know, Islam is not what you think it means, Islam is peace, bring in more Muslims, let's say, let the migrant...

But we're, for example, in Europe and Western nations, they're on board with the agenda, and they're just, you know, that's their... The doctrine of jihad, okay, we know the manifestation of it, the physical one, which is warfare.

I'm sure we'll get into that, which happened historically. But jihad, you know, it's funny, a lot of the apologists will tell you jihad does not mean holy war. That's how they translated it, orientalists did, into English.

They'll tell you jihad means struggle. And they're absolutely right, jihad does mean struggle, and therein lies the point. The struggle can take any form. So the most prominent historic form was violence and warfare.

But you can struggle on behalf of Islam, and the whole point is to spread Islam and bring the entire world under its rule, sharia law, sharia rule, and you can do the struggle anyway. So there's classifications such as jihad al-mal, I won't give you the Arabic.

Basically, jihad of money, jihad of the tongue, this is propaganda. Jihad of money is funding and sponsoring and disseminating radical ideas and so forth. There's jihad of the womb, which is the demographic jihad, which means having as many babies as you can, Muslim women and men, so you can outnumber the infidel.

So all of these are ongoing by people who will tell you Islam means peace, you have a wrong understanding. So they are, in fact, engaging in jihad. One of the most famous is jihad of the tongue, this is propaganda.

That's what CARE does. CARE, to just underscore what I'm saying, was actually busted maybe 15 years ago, and I can send you the official letter, court letter, and they're an unindicted co-conspirator of the largest terrorist funding case in U .S. history, and yet here they are dictating to the U .S. Army War College who they can listen to and who they can't listen to.

So there are those Muslims, of course, who actually think Islam means peace and they preach these sorts of things, but they're really in the minority, the ones who sincerely believe this. The majority are actually part of the larger issue that we're discussing, and to me they're the more dangerous ones because they're more surreptitious and basically clandestine, whereas the ISIS, Islamic State, al-Qaeda types are in your face.

At least you know who they are and what they're all about, whereas the others are really dedicated to this long program of internal suppression.

Now one more question off topic before we go to our first commercial break. One of the mysteries to me that is related to my earlier question, or should I even say two of the mysteries to me, are Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the two first Muslim women sworn into Congress in the United States.

One of them, which Omar, wears the headdress and so on, giving the appearance of her being a strict Muslim. But what baffles me is that these are leftists. These are people who support feminism and homosexuality.

Is this a masquerade, their association with Islam? Would they survive in a nation under Sharia law, even just because they're so vocal and outspoken and are women in the public square? Is that kind of thing tolerated?

It'll all come down to sort of what I was saying, is what they're doing, can it be seen by the strict radical Muslim as benefiting Islam? And I think it can. Again, throughout history, Muhammad himself told his followers, you can deny me, you can curse me, you can eat pork, you can do all the things that you're not supposed to do, as long as you're doing it to help Islam.

So if these women, for example, are paying lip service or whatever, or allying with this leftist cause, if that is helpful to Islam, and I think it is, because it's the left that totally sponsors and supports Islam and Muslims, especially in America and all throughout the world, really, if it is helping, then it is legitimate, and they would actually be congratulated for what they're doing.

They would be considered heroic Muslim women, even if they take off their hijab, to a limit, obviously, what they can do. And again, even what I'm saying, there are some Muslims who will tell you, no, that's not acceptable, but I do know for a fact that there are those, including scholars, and it's something that's manifested throughout history, who would sponsor them and support them and say they're good Muslims, even though they are espousing, seemingly, leftist views and positions.

But you don't know personally whether these are two charlatans who are intentionally coming by stealth, by pretending to be leftists, or if they're just being shills, they're duped into being a benefit to Islam, even though they would never survive physically if they were to hold these positions in Sharia law.

I think a little of both is perfectly understandable. So they come from an Islamic background, especially Omar. She comes from Somalia. If you study that nation, if you know anything about it, it is one of the most radical Islamic nations in the world.

So, for example, I follow closely the persecution of Christians throughout the world, most of which happens in Islamic nations. But the absolute worst Muslim nation, which comes in second in the whole world, after North Korea, which has its own issues and it has cults going on there, but the first and absolute worst Muslim nation is Somalia.

And if they even know you're a Christian, you're immediately killed, just on principle. So that's the background and the culture she comes from. I know she knows that. So obviously she's going to tell you, no, that's not true Islam, and she's going to play the nine yards.

But I do believe that both of them know what Islam is about. And on the other hand, they're humans, they're women, they live in this society. And so on the one hand, they know that by allying with the left, as long as they're doing it to help Islam, they're okay with Muslims.

But on the other hand, I don't know how much of their heart and mind has become infiltrated truly by leftist ideology. So they're sort of trying to, I would think, play a balancing game to make both sides happy.

And are the aforementioned Coptics the most victimized and persecuted group by Muslims? And how does that rank actually with Muslims persecuting other Muslims? Is there far more people who are murdered and persecuted by Muslims who are themselves different kinds of Muslims?

Or would the Coptics be a higher number of casualties?

Well, you know, to the latter point, Muslims killing and fighting other Muslims on the basis of not being Islamic enough or the wrong sort of Islam, Shia versus Sunni, sure, that happens. I don't think it's anywhere near as prevalent as the persecution of Christians throughout the Muslim world.

You know, organizations like Open Doors, it's a well-known human rights organization that follows and tracks the persecution of Christians. It's the last report that publishes annual reports. I believe they're called the World Watch List, followed by whichever year.

So 2023, it said 360 million Christians are experiencing severe persecution around the world. And then when you look at it, that's where you have the chart. It lists the top 50 nations, and I usually count them out, something like 38 to 40 are Muslim nations.

Okay? And then when you read about the country profile, so the Copts in Egypt, they, I mean, if they're the most persecuted throughout history, quite possibly because if you know their history, which I do and I've studied it.

Remember, Egypt, people don't know this. You know, most people today, if you mention Islam in the Middle East, they just think, and I'll underscore it by saying people ask me and they say, well, you guys are Christians.

Why are you being, why would your parents become Christians in Egypt? Well, they don't realize that the Christians were there first, and Egypt was actually a very Christian nation, more so than Europe, just like Syria was, and it makes sense, because that's where Christianity came from, the Middle East.

So when Muslims entered it in the 7th century and conquered it, the population was Christian. And so today, now it's down to 10%. And if you look at the history, you'll see, you know, constant upridings and Muslim persecution.

This sultan's a radical, this one's not. When he's radical, you see Christians being killed, churches burned, and so forth, and that went on so that Egypt went from being almost 100 Christian to being 10%.

So until today, the laws against them, and what I'm saying, you know, while I'm happy to talk about the Copts at any length, it's really applicable to Christians all throughout the Islamic world. I think the Christians in Pakistan have it really bad.

I think the ones in Nigeria, in Nigeria there's a full-fledged genocide of Christians going on that nobody even knows is happening. You know, we hear all these groups screaming about Black Lives Matter, but in Nigeria and other sub-Saharan nations, let's just stick with Nigeria, something like every month, and I follow this very closely, 300, 400 Christians are butchered, massacred, chopped to pieces with machetes for the sole reason that they're Christians.

But of course the media will not mention it, and when it does mention it, it won't even bring religion into it. It'll say, you know, that the persecutors or the murderers are one tribe and the Christians are another tribe, but that's really not what's going on.

If you read again what they say, the Nigerian Muslims, it's all about religion for them. They're infidels, we have to kill them, we have to take their land, and so you have a full-fledged genocide going on right now, and most people don't even know about it, even though they'll scream and whine and cry about how supposedly Black Lives Matter, but not when they're Christian, apparently, and being killed by Muslims.

So we can get into, you know, why Islam does this to Christians. It's, you know, the doctrines and the teachings and the history and so forth, but yeah, it's not an enviable lot to be a Copt in Egypt or to be a Christian in any Muslim nation by any stretch of the imagination.

All right, we're going to our first commercial break. Again, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for my guest, and his name is Raymond Ibrahim, and we are discussing his book Defenders of the West, The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you are in agreement with my guest, but the church where you are a member may be radically opposed to what my guest is saying and defending, and you don't want to identify yourself. You might even be an elder of a church who is in disagreement with his fellow elders over what we're discussing.

We understand reasons like that would compel you to remain anonymous, but if it's a general question on history, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

We'll be right back with Raymond Ibrahim right after these messages from our sponsors.

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And don't forget folks, royaldiadem .com is still offering Iron Sharpens Iron Radio 100 of the profits from any sale of jewelry to an Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener, valued at $100 or more, whether it is something that they have in stock in the realm of jewelry or if you're having a custom design piece of jewelry created.

They are giving us 100 of the profits simply by you mentioning that you heard about them, royaldiadem .com, from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Please, if you have any interest in purchasing jewelry for yourself or someone you love, go to royaldiadem .com soon and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.