Slender Assurance

“Western media have poked fun at the Muslim understanding of Paradise (heaven)—virgins for men to enjoy and so forth—but it is much more significant to recognize that dying in jihad is the only way a Muslim can be assured of entering Paradise at all” (Mark Gabriel, Islam and Terrorism, p. 29).

Sheik, Rattle and Roll

“When I was a feshman at Al-Azhar University in 1980, I enrolled in class called Quaranic Interpretation. Two times a month we would gather to hear lectures from a blind sheik whose passion for Islam made him popular among the students. Yet his radical side was obvious. Anytime he encountered a reference in the Quran …

River of Blood

“Islam is full of discrimination—against women, against non-Muslims, against Christians and most especially against Jews. Hatred is built into the religion. The history of Islam, which was my special area of study, could only be characterized as a river of blood” (Mark Gabriel, Islam and Terrorism, p. 5).

Actually the Muslims Were the Ones on a Crusade

“While the Europeans occupied themselves with hysterical speculative eschatology, the Ottomans expanded their conquests. Sultan Selim called for a renewed Ji’had and added Greece, Macedonia, and the Balkans to his empire. His son, Suleiman, swept into Belgrade in 1521, expelled the Templars from Rhodes in 1522, and conquered Hungary in 1526. Then in 1529 he …

God’s Iconoclasm

“It was not until 733, when Charles Martel stopped the Moslem advance north of the Pyrenees, that this first great period of Islamic expansion came to an end. In just one hundred years time, the map of the venerable old Mediterranean world had practically been transformed from one vast Christian empire into a vast Islamic …

The Past, Present and Potent

“Early in his tenure, Saddam Hussein announced his intentions to restore Iraq’s Babylonian heritage. He launched a meticulous, multi-billion-dollar excavation and reconstruction of the ancient city located sixty miles south of Baghdad, rebuilding a number of its most significant sites. They included Nechadnezzar’s opulent grand palace, the vast Esagila temple precinct, the beautiful Via Sacra …

This Goes Way Back

“Israelis tenaciously hold on to the occupied territories of the West Bank because of promises made millenniums ago to the patriarch Abraham; Iraqis invade the lands of fellow Moslems in order to settle grudges that date back to the time of Nebuchadnezzar; Iranians stir up revolutionary passions that have lain dormant since the demise of …