Magnificat Institute Press

The Sword of the Prophet, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam

        We hear it said: "September 11 changed America forever." Less often do we hear a coherent explanation of what, exactly, changed. What changed, in fact, was that for the first time in American history we have been forced to confront Islamic militancy as it has assulted the rest of the world for almost 14 centuries.
        In The Sword of the Prophet, the reader receives the unvarnished truth about the rise of Islam and the patterns set by its founder, Muhammad; the historical meaning of jihad against the (non-Muslim) "infidel" that we see today in the al-Queda terror network; the broad sweep of the global military, political, moral, and spiritual struggle that faces us; and what we must do if we wish to survive.
        The sober, factual, and contextual presentation found in this book is essential. Every person owes it to himself or herself to know the real score of the post-9/11 world, and this invaluable volume is the place to start.
        SERGE TRIFKOVIC is a graduate of the University of Sussex in England. He received his PhD at the University of Southampton and pursued his postdoctoral research on a State Department grant at the Hoover Institute at Stanford. He started his working life as a broadcaster and producer with the BBC World Service in London and with the Voice of America in Washington. He also covered southeast Europe for US News & World Report and The Washington Times. In addition to authoring several books Serge Trifkovic has written scores of commentaries for, among others, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Times of London, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He has appeared many times on the BBC World Service, CNN International, MSNBC, and other leading media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic as a commentator on world affairs. He is also a regular contributor and, since 1998, foreign affairs editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

FOREWORD TO THE SWORD OF THE PROPHET

        The tragedy of September 11, 2001, and its aftermath have shown, yet again, that beliefs have consequences; the centrality of Islam to the attacks is impossible to deny. Our opinion formers, inflexible in their secular-liberal ideological assumptions, deny it nevertheless. They do not take religion seriously. Instead of pondering the complex problem of the relationship between Islam, the West and the rest, they assure us that no "religious" problem exists. Some of them at least seem to believe their own assurances, so that the most outspoken character witnesses for the hastily nicknamed "Religion of Peace and Tolerance" were non-Muslims: Sunday-morning popular entertainers, academicians steeped in political correctitude, and politicians. Their claims about the supposed distinction between "real Islam" and its violent aberrations were crudely ideological, based on their simple conviction that all faiths, having equal legal privileges, must in some sense be equally good, "true," and, hence, capable of celebrating all others in the spirit of tolerance.
        Such assertions cannot change reality. A problem does exist. Islam is not only a religious doctrine; it is also a self-contained world outlook, and a way of life that claims the primary allegiance of all those calling themselves "Muslim." Islam is also a detailed legal and political set of teachings and beliefs. There is "Christianity," and there used to be "Christendom," but in Islam such distinction is impossible. To whatever political entity a Muslim believer may belong—to the Arab world of North Africa and the Middle East, to the nation-states of Iran or Central Asia, to the hybrid entities of Pakistan and Indonesia, to the international protectorates of Bosnia and Kosovo, or to the liberal democracies of the West—he is first and foremost the citizen of Islam, and belongs morally, spiritually, and intellectually, and in principle totally, to the world of belief of which Muhammad is the Prophet, and Mecca is the capital.
        This is not, of course, true for every Muslim but it is true for every true Muslim: it is the central worldly demand of Islam. The purpose of this book is to outline its origins, its basic tenets, its historical record, and to explore its implications for the rest of us.
        What secularism has done, since replacing Christianity as the guiding light of "the West," is to cast aside any idea of a distinctly "Western" social, geographic, and cultural space that should be protected. This was obvious in Europe by the early 1960's and for the past quarter-century at least it has become obvious in the United States. Patriotism rekindled after September 11 is a reminder that at the grass roots level the capacity for instinctive self-definition is still alive, but it cannot be sustained if the dominant outlook is that of cultural relativism and anti-historicism. The only way we can meaningfully judge the present and plan the future is by the example of the past. The problem of collective historical ignorance—or even deliberately induced amnesia—is the main difficulty in addressing the history of Islam in today's English-speaking world, where claims about far-away lands and cultures are made on the basis of domestic mulitculturalist assumptions rather than evidence. The absence of historical memory has taken too many well-meaning Westerners interested in Islam right thourgh the looking glass into the virtual-reality world of superficial reportage, ideological treatises, and agenda-driven academic research that ignores the reality of what Islam actually is and what it does to its adherents.
        This author is not an Islamicist, but to be a non-specialist is almost a prerequisite for setting out an account of Islam that is free from wriggling apologetics, self-censoring fears, and self-denigrating deference to "the Other." He regards Islam with a mixture of feelings, but conceives his lack of a priori admiration to be no greater obstacle to understanding Islam and expounding its meaning than it would be to discussing yesterday's Marxism or seventeenth century New England Puritanism. The key to understanding is not sympathy and respect for any belief; it is curiosity, intellectual engagement, and a respect for the truth.
        Even if all history—as a philosopher argued—is in some measure contemporary history, it need not be dominated by the obsessions of the day. This work is presented, not in order to praise, condemn, or justify an improtant monotheistic faith, but in the conviction that the cause of peace and tolerance, in the West and elsewhere, cannot be advanced by misrepresentation or by the sentimental lapse of seriousness.

Serge Trifkovic

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