Holy War: The Year the Muslims Took Rome
Few know about it, but it happened. A book published in the United States offers to the public the first comprehensive collection of the major documents on the theory and practice of jihad, from Mohammed until today
ROMA, January 5, 2006 – A book published recently in the United States lifts the veil on a crucial aspect of Islam, one which too many understand poorly and know too little about: jihad, the holy war.
It is an aspect that meets with widespread silence, as if it were a taboo. Even among Christians, there are wide gaps on this topic in the general awareness of Church history.
An example? Many recall what happened in Rome, at St. Peter's Basilica, the night of Christmas Day of the year 800. After the Mass, pope Leo III solemnly placed upon the head of Charlemagne the crown of the Holy Roman Empire.
That night, the basilica of St. Peter gleamed with breathtaking brilliance. A few years earlier, Leo III's predecessor, pope Hadrian I, had covered the entire floor of the sanctuary with plates of silver; he had covered the walls with gold plates and enclosed it all with a balustrade of gold weighing 1,328 pounds. He had remade the sanctuary gates with silver, and had placed on the iconostasis six images also made of silver, representing Christ, Mary, the archangels Gabriel and Michael, and saints Andrew and John. Finally, in order to make this splendor visible to all, he had ordered the assembly of a candelabrum in the form of a huge cross, on which 1,365 candles burned.
But less than half a century later, none of this remained. And what happened remains generally unknown among Christians today.
What happened is that in 846 some Muslim Arabs arrived in a fleet at the mouth of the Tiber, made their way to Rome, sacked the city, and carried away from the basilica of St. Peter all of the gold and silver it contained.
And this was not just an incidental attack. In 827 the Arabs had conquered Sicily, which they kept under their dominion for two and a half centuries. Rome was under serious threat from nearby. In 847, the year after the assault, the newly elected pope Leo IV began the construction of walls around the entire perimeter of the Vatican, 12 meters high and equipped with 44 towers. He completed the project in six years. These are the "Leonine" walls, and significant traces of them still remain. But very few today know that these walls were erected to defend the see of Peter from an Islamic jihad. And many of those who do know this remain silent out of discretion. "Bridges, not walls" is the fashionable slogan today.
The book that lifts the veil on the Islamic holy war is entitled "The Legacy of Jihad," and is edited by Andrew G. Bostom.
The book is essentially made up of documents, many of which have been translated for the first time from Arabic or Farsi, or have been reproduced from books of oriental studies that would be difficult for the general public to find.
The documents range from Mohammed in the seventh century, to the twentieth century. And they include the classic texts on the topic of jihad by Muslim theologians and jurists, accounts of war from ancient and modern witnesses, and analyses of jihad by scholars of varying outlooks.
The book also contains islamic miniatures depicting moments of jihad throughout history, and maps that document the military expansion of Islam century after century, from the seventh to the eleventh century. Each map is accompanied by a summary listing the acts of war in each region.
For example, in the ninth century, during which Rome was assaulted and Sicily was conquered, the Muslim armies occupied Bari and Brindisi in Italy for thirty years; Taranto for forty; Benevento for ten; they attacked Naples, Capua, Calabria, and Sardinia several times; they put the abbey of Montecassino to fire and the sword; they even made skirmishes in northern Italy, arriving from Spain and crossing over the Alps.
One fact emerges clearly from the documentation compiled by Bostom: jihad is not just one of the forms by which the expansion of Islam took place in particular places and times, but it is an institution inherent to the Islamic system itself; it is a permanent religious obligation.
One astonishing thing is that it was not a specialist who published this documentation in the West. Bostom is an epidemiologist living in Providence, Rhode Island. But perhaps this very distance from the academic world of the oriental and Islamic studies scholars leaves him more free from the taboos that gag many of these.
Biting criticisms of the pro-Islamic sentiment of much of Western culture have been written by, among others, Jacques Ellul, Oriana Fallaci, and Bat Ye'or. The latter of these is a leading specialist in the condition of subordination systematically imposed by Islam upon the non-Muslim subjects of conquered countries. She is also the author of an essay published in 2005, carrying the eloquent title "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis."
One of the central theses of the three authors cited is that Islam is an organic whole and cannot be reformed in its essential elements, and that personal freedom and rights cannot be incorporated into it.
But even another author who does not share this thesis, and is indeed one of the most decisive proponents of the idea that Islam and democracy are compatible – Bernard Lewis, one of the most authoritative Islamic studies experts alive, professor at Princeton University – has severely criticized the pro-Islamic tendencies in vogue among Western intellectuals and politicians, even among Jewish ones.
In an essay entitled "The Pro-Islamic Jews," Lewis explains how the idea of an early Islamic Spain tolerant of Christians and Jews – evoked by many today as a golden age – is a romantic myth of the nineteenth century, created by Jews themselves in their intellectual conflict with Christians.
And modern Turkey's aligning itself with the Western world and its support for the state of Israel have also induced a widespread unwillingness to speak about the massacres it carried out last century against the Armenian Christians.
Other factors encouraging the general silence over the holy wars of yesterday and today – and also over slavery, which is still practiced by Muslims in some regions, over assaults on churches and the killing of Christians – are the effort to establish a good relationship with the increasing numbers of Muslim immigrants in Europe, fear of terrorist attacks, and the desire to create distance from the outlook of the "clash of civilizations."
But the Muslim victims of this reticence and silence on the part of the West are precisely those who are courageously fighting to reform the Islamic faith and reconcile it with democracy and modernity.
It's a good thing that, with books like the one by Andrew G. Bostom, they aren't being left entirely alone.
The book:
"The Legacy of Jihad. Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims," edited by Andrew G. Bostom, foreword by Ibn Warraq, Prometheus Books, New York, 2005, pp. 762.
On this topic, on this website:
> From Lepanto to Baghdad, There's a Road that Leads through Rome (19.12.2005)
> Is Europe a Province of Islam? The Danger is Called Dhimmitude (17.3.2003)
> Focus on ISLAM
English translation by Matthew Sherry: > traduttore@hotmail.com
Go to the English home page of > www.chiesa.espressonline.it, to access the latest articles and links to other resources.
Sandro Magister's e-mail address is s.magister@espressoedit.it