Book Review : Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet”

The Sword of the Prophet

The book The Sword of the Prophet writ­ten by Dr. Serge (a.k.a. Srd­ja) Trifkovic of Ser­bian extract, is sim­i­lar to many such post-Cold War era books (writ­ten by pseu­do-experts like Judith Miller & Co.) that are writ­ten to keep alive the per­ceived threat” of Islam before our eyes, while guar­an­tee­ing them­selves prof­itable fees, con­sul­tan­cies, recur­rent appear­ances in TV and lucra­tive book con­tracts. To these bunch of big­ot­ed, eaves­drop­ping, lying and self-pro­mot­ing jour­nal­ists, in these days, espe­cial­ly after 911, there is no bet­ter and eas­i­er way to draw atten­tion and sell books than to demean and dehu­man­ize Mus­lims and Islam. It does not take too much insight to find com­mon grounds that moti­vates these bigots.

I think it is impor­tant to know who they are and from what back­ground they emerge in order to judge the val­ue of their con­tri­bu­tion and to under­stand the qual­i­ty of their thoughts and ideas. A scruti­ny of their edu­ca­tion­al back­ground would reveal that these hate-writ­ers do not have any exper­tise in Islam. What binds them togeth­er is a com­mon hatred for Islam and Muslims.

Serge Trifkovic, a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Southamp­ton, UK, is iden­ti­fied as one who pur­sued a post-doc­tor­al research at the Hoover Insti­tu­tion, CA, and then worked as a TV broad­cast­er and lat­er as a jour­nal­ist cov­er­ing south­east Europe for the U.S. News & World Report and Wash­ing­ton Post. He is a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor and, since 1998, for­eign affairs edi­tor to the Chron­i­cles : A Mag­a­zine of Amer­i­can Cul­ture, where his Ser­bian ultra-nation­al­is­tic stand is eas­i­ly dis­cernible. It is not clear if he had vis­it­ed any Mus­lim coun­try, out­side his native Ser­bia in for­mer Yugoslavia, a state that was guilty of eth­nic cleans­ing of Bosn­ian and Koso­var Mus­lims. His field of study had noth­ing to do with either the peo­ple or the reli­gion that he writes about in his hate-book The Sword of the Prophet. Yet his igno­rance did not dis­suade him from vent­ing his ven­om against Mus­lims in this spite­ful and inac­cu­rate work.

What qual­i­fies Trifkovic as an expert” on Islam today ? In the Fore­word to his book, he him­self con­fess­es of his hatred or as he mild­ly puts it lack of a pri­ori admi­ra­tion” for Islam. As one may also recall, dur­ing the geno­cide of Mus­lims in the Balka­ns, he tried to defend the case for his mur­der­ous Ser­bian leader — now being tried for crimes against human­i­ty in The Hague. While the whole world saw the sav­agery of the Ser­bian Chris­tians against unarmed Mus­lims in Bosnia, he blamed the vic­tim Mus­lims by stat­ing that the lat­ter had brought it down upon them­selves through self-inflict­ed atroc­i­ties and stage-man­aged mas­sacres.“Koso­vo : The Real Sto­ry, The Chron­i­cles and the Rock­ford Insti­tute (1999). http://​www​.inwave​.com What a crim­i­nal and sick mind to invent some­thing like this ! In a keynote speech at the Ball Union League Club, Chica­go, in June 7, ?96, he dared to equate the geno­cide as hon­or-killing by stat­ing that Bosnia is hon­or, and Yugoslavia a tragedy, but there was no holo­caust’.” To him, the total tal­ly of Mus­lim vic­tims in Bosnia was not 250,000 (as stat­ed by Pres­i­dent Clin­ton, address­ing the nation on Nov. 27, 95), but could have been as small as only 2,500, i.e., a mere 1% of the report­ed casu­al­ty.Srd­ja Trifkovic, The Hague Tri­bunal’: Bad Jus­tice, Worse Pol­i­tics, keynote speech at the S.B.A. Annu­al Schol­ar­ship Ball Union League Club, Chica­go, June 7, 1996. He active­ly con­demned the juris­dic­tion of the Hague Tri­bunal (ICTFY) that was estab­lished by the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil of the UN in 1993 on the basis of Chap­ter VII of the UN Char­ter (Res­o­lu­tion 827) for inves­ti­gat­ing crimes against human­i­ty in for­mer Yugoslavia. He also opposed the deploy­ment of NATO and UN forces in the Balka­ns to stop the eth­nic cleans­ing of Mus­lims. When his pro­pa­gan­da failed to dis­suade the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion, he dis­ap­peared from spot­light for some time until the tragedy of 911 occurred. When he sur­faced this time he came up with his Mein Kampf. That basi­cal­ly sums up a very dis­turbed and sadis­tic indi­vid­ual with a desire to set­tle old scores.

It is said that false­hood oft repeat­ed achieves the veneer of truth and some are sure to swal­low it. Trifkovic’s The Sword of the Prophet is a typ­i­cal exam­ple of such an attempt at dis­sem­i­nat­ing false­hood with dogged­ness and cru­el­ty. A col­lec­tion of lies and half-truths, many fuzzy facts, quite a few obso­lete and unre­li­able sources and mind­less anec­dotes, and a pletho­ra of imag­i­na­tion and false inter­pre­ta­tion, there­fore, forms the nucle­us mate­r­i­al for the above work. His hate-book demon­strates his belief that, in the post-Milo­se­vic era, it has fall­en on shoul­ders of ultra-nation­al­ist Ser­bian zealots like him to car­ry the man­tle of Milo­se­vic, Karadz­ic & their gang of sub-human brutes to fin­ish their yet unfin­ished busi­ness through mis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign what the half-decade long exter­mi­na­tion cam­paign could not achieve phys­i­cal­ly in the bat­tle field. It is no won­der that in this endeav­or he is aid­ed by all the big­ots — from the pujaris of Hin­dut­va (who want to cleanse India of non-Hin­du minori­ties) to Zion­ists (who want to jus­ti­fy the annex­a­tion of entire Pales­tine by uproot­ing Pales­tini­ans) — as is reflect­ed in sev­er­al web­sites belong­ing to these lat­ter hate-groups which rou­tine­ly post his lies and dis­tor­tions. Tru­ly, the fas­cists, racists and big­ots have dis­cov­ered a prized com­rade in their com­mon crusade.

In order to assess Islam and the Mus­lim world, areas that are unfa­mil­iar to him, Trifkovic uses the writ­ings of dis­cred­it­ed jour­nal­ists and ex-Mus­lims — whose moti­va­tion was noth­ing hon­or­able either. Such argu­ments hard­ly car­ry any con­vic­tion. Tru­ly, the work epit­o­mizes his intol­er­ance against Islam and Mus­lims, and in that process reveals noth­ing but his anti-Mus­lim para­noia and big­otry’. He quotes his peers like Judith Miller and Ibn War­raq vora­cious­ly in his book. Because that is the lev­el of his learn­ing or edu­ca­tion on the sub­ject he dared write about.

Let us look now at Miller’s work itself that Trifkovic uses. I shall try to be brief in my analy­sis here since I per­son­al­ly do not see the mer­it to a more com­pre­hen­sive crit­i­cism of her work (or that of Ibn War­raq). For those inter­est­ed in a more com­pre­hen­sive report, they may con­sid­er read­ing the book reviews by schol­ars of repute. I per­son­al­ly liked the book review by Prof. Edward Said of Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, NY.A Dev­il The­o­ry of Islam, review arti­cle by Prof. Edward Said, The Nation, August 1219, 1996. In review of Miller’s work I shall para­phrase Prof. Said’s argu­ments, wher­ev­er applicable.

Books like Judith Miller’s God has nine­ty-nine names” are symp­to­matic because, as Prof. Edward Said of Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty had right­ly point­ed out, they are weapons in the con­test to sub­or­di­nate, beat down, com­pel and defeat any Arab and Mus­lim resis­tance to U.S.-Israeli dom­i­nance.” In her book, Miller shows her pro-Israeli, pro-Pha­langist (a fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion) bias against the uproot­ed Pales­tini­ans. She dis­dains facts. She prefers quot­ing end­less talks to jus­ti­fy the maraud­ing activ­i­ties of the Israeli apartheid gov­ern­ment and the U.S. sup­port of it. Israel’s war against civil­ians is sim­ply buried in reams of chat­ter. Despite her knowl­edge of vio­lent activ­i­ties by right-wing Jew­ish fanat­ics, she delib­er­ate­ly omit­ted their mur­der­ous acts and promised, instead, to write a book on right-wing Judaism in Israel. It has already been more than six years ; still we have not seen that book and prob­a­bly nev­er will.

And when did Miller became an expert” on Islam ? Tru­ly, her work resem­bles the work of a name-drop­ping uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent, who begins with an anec­dote and then moves to a pot­ted his­to­ry. She cites unre­li­able sources that can­not be ver­i­fied. Her foot­notes only prove her igno­rance, lam­en­ta­ble prej­u­dices and fail­ures of com­pre­hen­sion. In her sum­ma­ry on the life of the Prophet of Islam, she does not quote one Mus­lim source, — none of the clas­si­cal biogra­phies of the Prophet. I won­der if Simon & Schus­ter, her pub­lish­er, would allow a book on Jesus or Moses that does not make a sin­gle men­tion of Chris­t­ian or Juda­ic author­i­ty. But such pseu­do-schol­ar­ship, hate lit­er­a­tures are now kosher when it comes to Islam. One won­ders what are we com­ing to in this age ?

Miller’s book is full of inter­views with whole bunch of self-serv­ing scoundrels that are not too con­vinc­ing for any objec­tive mind­ed read­er. Her use of phrase my friend” (a few hun­dred times), rather than con­vinc­ing her read­ers, puts them off the track through long digres­sion that fol­lows. And even when she man­ages to cite cer­tain names, she misiden­ti­fies their reli­gion. These laps­es in her account would not have been so bad if she was not bent on reveal­ing her inti­ma­cy with those indi­vid­u­als. She talks about Jews and their suf­fer­ing but does not men­tion Jew­ish beliefs and laws against the goy­im, the rab­bini­cal sanc­tioned prac­tices of killing, demo­li­tions, depor­ta­tions, land con­fis­ca­tions, annex­a­tion, etc.See, e.g., Exo­dus 15:3 ; Deut. 13:6 – 10 ; Psalms 144:1 ; Jere­mi­ah 13:14, 48:10 ; Book of Num­bers ; Joshua ; Esther (ch. 8 and 9); Mish­nah Torah ; San­hedrin 57a, 58b ; Baba Kam­ma 37b, 113b ; Sofer­im 15, Rule 10 ; Abho­dah Zarah (26b); Zohar (I, 25a), (I, 38b, and 39a); Ialkut Simoni (245c. n. 772); Hil­hoth Akum (X, 1) What a jaun­diced view of Israel and the Occu­pied Ter­ri­to­ries of Pales­tine !Baruch Gold­stein, a reli­gious Jew, killed about 30 – 40 Arab Mus­lims dur­ing their prayers at the Patri­archs mosque in Hebron. He had appar­ent­ly tak­en lit­er­al­ly the com­mand­ment in the Book of Esther to wipe out descen­dants of Haman, an ene­my of ancient Per­si­a’s Jews. The right-wing set­tlers in Israel’s ter­ri­to­ries agreed he had fol­lowed God’s com­mand­ment and said that mak­ing peace with their Arab ene­mies was tan­ta­mount to vio­lat­ing God’s will. [Ency­clo­pe­dia Brit.]

After read­ing her book, one won­ders why she tru­ly wrote this book ? After all, she con­fess­es that she dis­likes all the Arab coun­tries for one rea­son or anoth­er. She does not men­tion a sin­gle thing she loves about the peo­ple she wrote about. Arabs have a qual­i­ty to be open, wel­com­ing, to think well of oth­ers, to be hos­pitable and cour­te­ous to their guests. She sel­dom has a good word for their hos­pi­tal­i­ty. She nei­ther had the nobil­i­ty to return the cour­tesy shown to her nor the decen­cy to respect truth and to be as impar­tial as pos­si­ble in her eval­u­a­tion of Mus­lims. Tru­ly, hers is an epit­o­me of betray­al of trust. Her book is a pathet­ic dis­play of a deeply par­ti­san jour­nal­ist, a hos­tile com­bat­ant, who does not and can­not com­mu­ni­cate with the peo­ple she writes about — the com­mon mass, lis­ten to their con­ver­sa­tion, read their books, lis­ten to their music. Yet she has no prob­lem pok­ing fun at the peo­ple she met, the his­to­ry and cul­ture of a place that to her is one long saga of jum­bled rage and res­o­nance. In sum­ma­ry, as Prof. Said cor­rect­ly point­ed out, Miller is a shal­low and high­ly-opin­ion­at­ed jour­nal­ist whose volu­mi­nous work is unnec­es­sar­i­ly too long and short on facts, analy­sis, struc­ture and reflection.

What has been stat­ed above about Miller’s book is equal­ly applic­a­ble for Trifkovic’s book since the lat­ter copies her blind­ly. He often uses sources that are dubi­ous. Many of his com­ments on Islam and the Mus­lim world are provoca­tive, scorn­ful and pro­vide a phi­los­o­phy for reli­gious big­otry. His analy­sis on mat­ters per­tain­ing to Islam­ic faith lacks schol­ar­ship and sen­si­tiv­i­ty, and is based on innu­en­do and false inter­pre­ta­tion. The Qur’an, which is revered by more than a bil­lion Mus­lims, deserves greater respect than he is will­ing to con­cede. For exam­ple, in his dis­cus­sion around whether Mus­lims wor­ship the same God as Jews and Chris­tians, he demon­strates his total lack of com­pre­hen­sion and nar­row mind­ed­ness. He has no prob­lems sub­scrib­ing to Trin­i­ty, a notion which for the past two mil­len­nia the Church itself had dif­fi­cul­ty in explain­ing log­i­cal­ly not only because of its con­fus­ing nature, but has prob­lems with the sim­ple, log­i­cal and uncom­pro­mis­ing monothe­ism in Islam, a doc­trine that is equal­ly shared among the Jews (see Deut. 6:4).Islam­ic monothe­ism is void of Jew­ish exclu­sive­ness, as not­ed by H. G. Wells in The Out­line of His­to­ry, p. 485 He does not dis­close the fact that Islam is not alone in its rejec­tion of Trin­i­ty. Mahat­ma Gand­hi, when asked about Trin­i­ty, said, Jesus was the son of God only in the sense that we are all chil­dren of God. The belief that Jesus is the only begot­ten Son of God is to me con­trary to rea­son.“See Col­lect­ed Works of Mahat­ma Gand­hi ; also Mis­sion­ar­ies in India by Arun Shourie.

Trifkovic tact­ful­ly for­gets to share with us the fact that the con­cept of Trin­i­ty is nowhere pro­pound­ed with­in the so-called Old Tes­ta­ment and that Jews also reject the con­cept of orig­i­nal sin and vic­ar­i­ous atone­ment — con­cepts that they find repug­nant and arguably pagan in ori­gin. His cyn­i­cism reveals his bla­tant Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian lean­ings. In the Mosa­ic sto­ry about Samiri, who lured the Chil­dren of Israel into cow wor­ship, he con­fus­es Samiri with the Samar­i­tans, who, accord­ing to the Bib­li­cal nar­ra­tive, were implant­ed into Samaria after the Assyr­i­an con­quest (in the 8th cen­tu­ry BCE). In his jaun­diced view, he fails to see the sim­i­lar­i­ty in how child Moses (Ar. Musa) was cared for in his infan­cy (Exo­dus 2:1 – 9). He doubts the Islam­ic ver­sion of sac­ri­fice of Ish­mael (Ar. Isma’il), but has no prob­lem in accept­ing the Hebrew Bib­li­cal ver­sion in Gen. 22:2, where it states, Take thy son, thine only son Isaac.” How is Isaac the only son of Abra­ham when he was born 14 years lat­er than Ish­mael (see Gen. 21:5, 17:25, 16:3)?Gen. 16:3 shows that Hagar was Abra­ham’s (Ar. Ibrahim) legit­i­mate wife and not a con­cu­bine. Gen. 17:25 shows that Ish­mael, Abra­ham’s son”, was thir­teen years old, when he was cir­cum­cised. Trifkovic ques­tions the Ara­bic names for idols of Noah’s time but has no prob­lem accept­ing Angli­cized names for his lord Jesus, or for that mat­ter any of the Bib­li­cal Prophets. Did Jesus (or any of the Bib­li­cal Prophets) speak Eng­lish or any of the Euro­pean lan­guages ? What a selec­tive under­stand­ing and thought­less­ness ! His argu­ments are so sil­ly and ridicu­lous on all such mat­ters that it does not war­rant review­ing each of those points. His knowl­edge of Islam is incred­i­bly flawed, weak and childish.

Trifkovic’s knowl­edge of his­to­ry is equal­ly defec­tive. While he had no prob­lem deflat­ing the Bosn­ian Mus­lim casu­al­ty, he had no qualms inflat­ing casu­al­ty fig­ures when the vic­tims were non-Mus­lims. If his sources were reli­able, one could accept such, but he pro­vides not a sin­gle cred­i­ble source and choos­es pro­pa­gan­da mate­ri­als from web­sites that are man­aged by big­ot­ed non-Mus­lim fun­da­men­tal­ists who are on a revi­sion­ist mode of their own now to alter his­tor­i­cal facts, in order to jus­ti­fy their reli­gious-cleans­ing activ­i­ties against Mus­lim minori­ties.See, e.g., my arti­cles : Mughal Emper­or Aurangzeb?s Reli­gious Intol­er­ance : Truth or Fic­tion ? (pub. News From Bangladesh web­site : http://​www​.bangladesh​-web​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​d​e​c​/​20​/​f​20122001​.​htm); Hin­dut­va and His­tor­i­cal Revi­sion­ism, pub. NFB (Oct. ?10) http://​www​.bangladesh​-web​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​o​c​t​/​10​/​g​10102002​.​htm . See also NPR Morn­ing Edi­tion report on Indi­an text­books : http://​dis​cov​er​.npr​.org/​r​u​n​d​o​w​n​s​/​s​e​g​m​e​n​t​.​j​h​t​m​l​?​w​f​I​d​=​872595 He seems to be unaware of what cred­i­ble his­to­ri­ans and great minds of the past two cen­turies said about Islam and its Prophet. H. G. Wells, e.g., com­ment­ing on the impact of Prophet’s last ser­mon, states,

…they estab­lished in the world a great tra­di­tion of dig­ni­fied fair deal­ing, they breathe a spir­it of gen­eros­i­ty, and they are human and work­able. They cre­at­ed a soci­ety more free from wide­spread cru­el­ty and social oppres­sion than any soci­ety had ever been in the world before.H. G. Wells in The Out­line of His­to­ry, Gar­den City Books, NY, (1961), p. 484

Writ­ing about Islam, he fur­ther states,

It (Islam) was full of the spir­it of kind­li­ness, gen­eros­i­ty and broth­er­hood ; it was a sim­ple and under­stand­able religion.…Against it were pit­ted Judaism, which had made a racial hoard of God ; Chris­tian­i­ty, talk­ing and preach­ing end­less­ly now of trini­ties, doc­trines, and here­sies no ordi­nary man could make head or tail of ; and Maz­daism, the cult of the Zoroas­tri­an Magi, who had inspired the cru­ci­fix­ion of Mani. ibid., p. 485

Of the Mughal rule in India, Wells says,

…(Mogul dynasty) marks the most splen­did age that had hith­er­to dawned upon India. ibid., p. 577

Mahat­ma Gand­hi said :

I want­ed to know the best of the life of one who holds today an undis­put­ed sway over the hearts of mil­lions of mankind ? I became more than ever con­vinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid sim­plic­i­ty, the utter self-efface­ment of the Prophet, the scrupu­lous regard for pledges, his intense devo­tion to his friends and fol­low­ers, his intre­pid­i­ty, his fear­less­ness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mis­sion. These and not the sword car­ried every­thing before them and sur­mount­ed every obsta­cle.State­ment pub­lished in Young India (1924)

Sir George Bernard Shaw wrote :

I have stud­ied him (Muham­mad) ? the won­der­ful man and in my opin­ion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Sav­ior of Human­i­ty.The Gen­uine Islam, Vol. 1, no. 8 (1936)

James Mich­en­er wrote,

No oth­er reli­gion in his­to­ry spread so rapid­ly as Islam. The West has wide­ly believed that this surge of reli­gion was made pos­si­ble by the sword. But no mod­ern schol­ar accepts this idea.James Mich­en­er, Islam : The Mis­un­der­stood Reli­gion, Read­er’s Digest, May 1955, pp. 68 – 70.

Writ­ing about Islam­ic civ­i­liza­tion, Bertrand Rus­sell stated :

From India to Spain, the bril­liant civ­i­liza­tion of Islam flour­ished. What was lost to Chris­ten­dom at this time (6991000) was not lost to civ­i­liza­tion, but quite the contrary.
Bertrand Rus­sell in His­to­ry of West­ern Phi­los­o­phy, Lon­don, 1948, p. 419.

Trifkovic, in short, is typ­i­cal of the cyn­i­cal anti-Mus­lim hawks. His book is trash and falls under the cat­e­go­ry of hate-books. It implants prej­u­dice and har­vests hatred. Nat­u­ral­ly, in the after­math of 911 his capac­i­ty as a pen-push­er” has endeared him among Mus­lim-haters and Islam-bash­ers. We learn from his­to­ry that fas­cism is always pre­ced­ed by care­ful­ly con­coct­ed ide­o­log­i­cal dis­tor­tions. It is writ­ings like these that make our world more divid­ed than ever before.

Books of this kind do not belong to the shelves of seri­ous researchers except those who are search­ing for dirt and filth. Tru­ly, if one were to search for such mate­ri­als, there is no short­age of such in any com­mu­ni­ty.Here is a small list of such books that pro­vide plen­ty of mate­ri­als that might be objec­tion­able to oth­ers : The Ramayana of Valmi­ki 1:13:24 – 33 ; Brah­mavaivar­ta Purana 3:8:19 – 33, 83 – 8, 3:9:1 – 26 ; Mahab­hara­ta Adi­par­van 95 ; Kur­ma Purana 2:38:39 – 41 ; cf. Haracar­itac­in­ta­mani 10:74 ; Yag­is­varama­hat­mya 26a. 14 ; Siva Purana, Dhar­masamhi­ta 49:23b-46, 74 – 86 ; Siva Purana, Dhar­masamhi­ta 10:96 – 8, 163 – 8, 193 – 202, 213 – 14 ; cf. Kur­ma Purana (1818), 2:37:33 – 9 ; Bhav­isya Purana 3:4:17:67 – 78 ; Brah­ma Purana 72:18 ; Vamana Purana 27:56 – 9 ; cf. Siva Purana, Jnanasamhi­ta 18:62 – 8 ; Siva Purana 2:3:49:3 – 10 ; Skan­da Purana 1:1:26:15 – 22 ; Siva Purana, Jnanasamhi­ta 49:65 – 80 ; Skan­da Purana 3:40:1 – 59 ; Sata­patha Brah­mana 1:7:4:1 – 7 ; Skan­da Purana 6:153:2 – 27 ; Mahab­hara­ta I:203:15 – 26 ; cf. Skan­da Purana 5:3:150:18, 6:153:2 – 27 ; Mat­sya Purana 158:27 – 50 ; Pad­ma Purana 5:41:118 – 42 ; cf. Haracar­itac­in­ta­mani 9:196 – 221 ; Skan­da Purana 5:1:34:60 – 6 ; Siva Purana 3:22:45 – 55 ; 3:23:1 – 36 ; Siva Purana, Dhar­masamhi­ta 9:46 – 61 ; Mat­sya Purana 155:1 – 34, 156:1 – 40, 157:1 – 24, 158:1 – 27 ; Pad­ma Purana 5:41:1 – 118 ; Skan­da Purana 1:2:27:58 – 84 ; 1:2:28:1 – 14 ; 1:2:29:1 – 81 ; Siva Purana, Dhar­masamhi­ta 10:49 – 55 ; Pad­ma Purana 1:56:15 – 53, 4:101:174 – 9 ; Saura Purana 62:5 – 12 ; Pad­ma Purana 5:26:91 – 125 ; cf. Lin­ga Purana 1:106:1 – 27 ; Mat­sya Purana 252:5 – 19, 179:7 – 186 ; Kur­ma Purana 1:16:141 – 222 ; — Mahab­hara­ta 13:81:1 – 86 ; Brah­mavaivar­ta Purana 4:47:11 – 45 ; Rig Veda 10:86:6 ; Jai­miniya Brah­mana 3:199 – 200 ; Sata­patha Brah­mana 13:5:2:1 – 9 ; Hin­duism Unveiled : For­bid­den Vers­es in Hin­du Scrip­tures. Pre­sent­ed by Hin­duism Unveiled Enter­pris­es ; Oh You Hin­du Awake by Dr. Kamal Chat­ter­jee, pub. by Had­wa Dom, Dal­it­stan Jour­nal ; The Tal­mud : Judais­m’s Holi­est Book Unmasked by Rev. I. B. Pranaitis, St. Peters­burg Print­ing office of the Impe­r­i­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences 1892 ; The Truth about the Tal­mud by Michael A. Hoff­man II and Alan R. Critch­ley, Inde­pen­dent His­to­ry & Research, Box 849, Coeur d’A­lene, Ida­ho 83816 ; The Satan­ic Vers­es by Salman Rushdie, Pen­guin Books. Serge Trifkovic, "The Sword of the Prophet" 1Endmark


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7 responses to “Book Review : Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet””

  1. dav Avatar
    dav

    Robert Spencer request­ed Karen Arm­strong for a dia­log on Islam. Any­one knows when it is tak­ing place ?

  2. Mujaahid Avatar
    Mujaahid

    Chris­tian­i­ty is hate Reli­gion = KKKNAZI

    http://​www​.nobeliefs​.com/​D​a​r​k​B​i​b​l​e​/​d​a​r​k​b​i​b​l​e​3​.​htm The Dark Bible:Atrocities (only a few)

    The West won the world not by the supe­ri­or­i­ty of its ideas or val­ues or reli­gion but rather by its supe­ri­or­i­ty in apply­ing orga­nized vio­lence. West­ern­ers often for­get this fact, non-West­ern­ers nev­er do.” — Samuel P. Hunt­ing­ton, Jew­ish author of Clash of Civilizations”

    - ” Think not that I came to send peace on the earth : I came not to send peace, but a sword.For I came to set a man at vari­ance against his father, and the daugh­ter against her moth­er, and the daugh­ter in law against her moth­er in law:”- MATTHEW 10:34 – 35

    - ” A curse on him who keeps his sword from blood­shed!” — (Jere­mi­ah 48:10)

    - Jesus said : ” But these mine ene­mies, that would not that I should reign over them, bring hith­er, and SLAY THEM BEFORE me.”– LUKE 19:27

    -(Isaiah:13:16)-(Their chil­dren also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes ; their hous­es shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.)

    - (Psalms:137:9)-(Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy lit­tle ones against the stones.)

    Bible is the book KKK and NANI not GOD ! Read : http://islamplanet.jeeran.com/mercy%20and%20peace.html Is bible the book of mer­cy and peace ??

    White­man EVILE CRETURE :

    — For good­ness sake, will they hear, will white peo­ple hear what we are try­ing to say ? Please, all we are ask­ing you to do is to rec­og­nize that we are humans, too.” — BISHOP Desmond TUTU ( bish­op of south Africa)

    - (Hosea:13:16)-(Samaria shall become des­o­late ; for she hath rebelled against her God : they shall fall by the sword : their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.)

    - Kill Non­be­liev­ers : ” They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul ; and every­one who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman. “- (2 Chron­i­cles 15:12 – 13 NAB)

    -(Numbers:31:17)-(Now there­fore kill every male among the lit­tle ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.)

    -(Numbers:31:18)-(But all the women chil­dren, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.)

    HATE to human :

    I am fifty-two years of age. I am a bish­op in the Angli­can Church, and a few peo­ple might be con­strained to say that I was rea­son­ably respon­si­ble. In the land of my birth I can­not vote, where­as a young per­son of eigh­teen can vote. And why ? Because he or she pos­sess­es that won­der­ful bio­log­i­cal attribute — a white skin.” — Bish­op desmond Tutu

    -http://​www​.evil​bible​.com/​M​u​r​d​e​r​.​htm

    -http://​www​.evil​bible​.com/​S​l​a​v​e​r​y​.​htm

    -http://www.evilbible.com/Evil%20Bible%20Quotes.htm

    -http://​www​.cnsnews​.com/​V​i​e​w​F​o​r​e​i​g​n​B​u​r​e​a​u​s​.​a​s​p​?​P​a​g​e​=​/​F​o​r​e​i​g​n​B​u​r​e​a​u​s​/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​/​F​o​r​20000803​e​.​h​tml Bible Too Vio­lent for Kids’

    ” Every hon­est Jew who knows the his­to­ry of his peo­ple can­not but feel a deep sense of grat­i­tude to Islam, which has pro­tect­ed the Jews for fifty gen­er­a­tions, while the Chris­t­ian world per­se­cut­ed the Jews and tried many times by the sword” to get them to aban­don their faith “.– Uri Avn­ery (jew­ish Writter)

    My choice of Muham­mad to lead the list of the world’s most influ­en­tial per­sons may sur­prise some read­ers and may be ques­tioned by oth­ers, but he was the only man in his­to­ry who was supreme­ly suc­cess­ful on both the reli­gious and sec­u­lar lev­el.” ‑Michael H. Hart THE 100 : A RANKING OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY , NEW YORK, Hart Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny , INC

    http://​www​.islamher​ald​.com/​a​s​p​/​e​x​p​l​o​r​e​/​f​a​s​t​e​s​t​_​g​r​o​w​i​n​g​.​asp Who says that Islam is the fastest grow­ing reli­gion on Earth ?? Some peo­ple say that Islam was spread by the sword. What is the sword of Islam now that so many peo­ple are com­pelled to embrace this faith ? Here are some excerpts from reput­ed news ser­vices around the world.

  3. HeiGou Avatar
    HeiGou

    Doc­tor Maybe:“Dr. Ergun Caner Response/​Conclusion :
    Date : Jan­u­ary 23, 2006:“Islam does not demand the death of all infi­dels, but does pre­scribe vio­lence against the infi­dels in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, but at any­time dur­ing the vio­lence, the Mus­lim should work hard to try to bro­ker a peace with the infi­del, even if it will entail a great sac­ri­fice. But, at no time are inno­cent civil­ians are to be tar­get­ed in
    that violence.”
    http://​www​.ergun​caner​.com/​n​ew/.….004.asp#11

    Isn’t that Caner quot­ing the Mus­lim he is debat­ing with ? Notice he goes on to say :

    The salient point is, the fol­low­ing are not verse that I cite alone ! In a con­stant stream, Islam­ic lead­ers such as al-Zwahiri, Rah­man, Osama, and a myr­i­ad of oth­ers, not only call for the death of unbe­liev­ers, but they jus­ti­fy it by cit­ing the Qur’an and the Hadith.

    Do not take my word for it. Here are just a few links I offer to prove that my orig­i­nal state­ment was cor­rect– These peo­ple believe that Allah has com­mand­ed the death of the unbe­liev­ers, and they con­tin­ue to hold tremen­dous influence :

    http://63.175.194.25/index.php?ln=eng&ds=qa&lv=browse&QR=20824&dgn=4

    http://63.175.194.25/index.php?ln=eng&ds=qa&lv=browse&QR=7328&dgn=4

    http://​www​.isla​m​on​line​.net/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​S​a​t​e​l​l​i​t​e​?​p​a​g​e​n​a​m​e​=​I​s​l​a​m​O​n​l​i​n​e​-​E​n​g​l​i​s​h​A​s​k​_​S​c​h​o​l​a​r​/​F​a​t​w​a​E​/​F​a​twa
    E&cid=1119503544134

    Please notice- these are Islam­ic sites, not unbe­liev­ers who take the teach­ings out of con­text. These are answers from an Imam.”

    So Caner seems to be argu­ing that Islam­ic teach­ers do teach the mur­der of non-Muslims.

  4. DoctorMaybe Avatar
    DoctorMaybe

    Sure !

    Dr. Ergun Caner Response/​Conclusion :
    Date : Jan­u­ary 232006

    Islam does not demand the death of all infi­dels, but does pre­scribe vio­lence against the infi­dels in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, but at any­time dur­ing the vio­lence, the Mus­lim should work hard to try to bro­ker a peace with the infi­del, even if it will entail a great sac­ri­fice. But, at no time are inno­cent civil­ians are to be tar­get­ed in
    that violence.”
    http://​www​.ergun​caner​.com/​n​e​w​/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​/​l​a​t​e​s​t​n​e​w​s​I​D​004​.​a​s​p​#11

    ergun

  5. HeiGou Avatar
    HeiGou

    Doc­tor­Maybe said on 12 Decem­ber 2006:“Do you agree with Egrun Caner’s remark that Islam does not exhort its believ­ers to kill all infidels?”

    I am unaware of Egrun Caner or those remarks, so I can hard­ly make any sen­si­ble com­ment on them. May I ask for a source that I can check and so I can get back to you ? For what it is worth, I do not think Islam exhorts its believ­er to kill all infi­dels. At least not all the time. Just too often.

  6. DoctorMaybe Avatar
    DoctorMaybe

    Hagoo:Actually such argu­ments, espe­cial­ly from ex-Mus­lims, are high­ly convincing.

    Do you agree with Egrun Caner’s remark that Islam does not exhort its believ­ers to kill all infidels ?

  7. HeiGou Avatar
    HeiGou

    HS:“What qual­i­fies Trifkovic as an expert” on Islam today?”

    A good ques­tion. What qual­i­fies some­one like Karen Arm­strong except, of course, that you like her mes­sage and favor­able views of Islam ? Can we agree that in your eyes an expert” on Islam is some­one who agrees with you ?

    HS:“While the whole world saw the sav­agery of the Ser­bian Chris­tians against unarmed Mus­lims in Bosnia, he blamed the vic­tim Mus­lims by stat­ing that the lat­ter had brought it down upon them­selves through self-inflict­ed atroc­i­ties and stage-man­aged massacres.”1 What a crim­i­nal and sick mind to invent some­thing like this!”

    Actu­al­ly the whole world did not see Chris­tians do any such things. They saw Ser­bian nation­al­ists, Croat nation­al­ists and Bosni­ans or var­i­ous ide­o­log­i­cal per­su­a­tions do such things. Who knows what sort of sick mind invents such things but some sick minds do — as some Mus­lims in Iraq have done recent­ly by claim­ing some Shia burnt some Sun­nis to death. Some Mus­lims do, in fact, fre­quent­ly invent such stories.

    HS:“In a keynote speech at the Ball Union League Club, Chica­go, in June 7, ?96, he dared to equate the geno­cide as hon­or-killing by stat­ing that Bosnia is hon­or, and Yugoslavia a tragedy, but there was no holo­caust’.””

    Are you sure you heard him prop­er­ly ? It is more like­ly he said Bonia is a hor­ror”. That would scan properly.

    HS:“When he sur­faced this time he came up with his Mein Kampf. That basi­cal­ly sums up a very dis­turbed and sadis­tic indi­vid­ual with a desire to set­tle old scores.”

    Your cred­i­bil­i­ty goes out the win­dow when you say this sort of thing. As we can all see, you are no dif­fer­ent from the man you attempt to smear. Why don’t you put for­ward a sen­si­ble case for why he is wrong rather than try­ing this sort of gut­ter smear ?

    HS:“In order to assess Islam and the Mus­lim world, areas that are unfa­mil­iar to him, Trifkovic uses the writ­ings of dis­cred­it­ed jour­nal­ists and ex-Mus­lims — whose moti­va­tion was noth­ing hon­or­able either. Such argu­ments hard­ly car­ry any conviction.”

    Dis­cred­it­ed” by who except you ? You mean jour­nal­ists you do not agree with. Again you do not deal with the argu­ment but attack the man. This is utter­ly fool­ish, uncon­vinc­ing and frankly child­ish. Sup­pose every­thing you said was true, *his* argu­ment would remain unre­fut­ed whether he was a mass mur­der­ing child molestor or not. To defeat an argu­ment you must con­front the argu­ment, not sim­ple smear the man. Actu­al­ly such argu­ments, espe­cial­ly from ex-Mus­lims, are high­ly convincing.

    HS:“She does not men­tion a sin­gle thing she loves about the peo­ple she wrote about. Arabs have a qual­i­ty to be open, wel­com­ing, to think well of oth­ers, to be hos­pitable and cour­te­ous to their guests.”

    Well they like to think so, but who is stereo­typ­ing an entire cul­ture and peo­ple here ? Where is the evi­dence that Arabs actu­al­ly live up to their ideals ? Arabs also have many oth­er qual­i­ties as well. Why do you only select those you approve of ?

    HS:“She sel­dom has a good word for their hos­pi­tal­i­ty. She nei­ther had the nobil­i­ty to return the cour­tesy shown to her nor the decen­cy to respect truth and to be as impar­tial as pos­si­ble in her eval­u­a­tion of Muslims.”

    Just as you, and the oth­er Mus­lims here, have lit­tle good to say about the West and its enor­mous gen­er­ousi­ty to the world and the West­’s Mus­lims. She has a pri­ma­ry oblig­a­tion to tell the truth even if it goes against nobil­i­ty. Good for her. What evi­dence do you have that she did not respect the truth and was not impar­tial ? Again you seem to play the girl, not the ball and judge all truth by whether you like it or not.

    HS:“The Qur’an, which is revered by more than a bil­lion Mus­lims, deserves greater respect than he is will­ing to concede.”

    Why do you think it deserves such respect ?

    HS:“For exam­ple, in his dis­cus­sion around whether Mus­lims wor­ship the same God as Jews and Chris­tians, he demon­strates his total lack of com­pre­hen­sion and nar­row mind­ed­ness. He has no prob­lems sub­scrib­ing to Trin­i­ty, a notion which for the past two mil­len­nia the Church itself had dif­fi­cul­ty in explain­ing log­i­cal­ly not only because of its con­fus­ing nature, but has prob­lems with the sim­ple, log­i­cal and uncom­pro­mis­ing monothe­ism in Islam, a doc­trine that is equal­ly shared among the Jews (see Deut. 6:4).6 He does not dis­close the fact that Islam is not alone in its rejec­tion of Trin­i­ty. Mahat­ma Gand­hi, when asked about Trin­i­ty, said, Jesus was the son of God only in the sense that we are all chil­dren of God. The belief that Jesus is the only begot­ten Son of God is to me con­trary to reason.”7

    For exam­ple ? Why does that fol­low ? Of course the Church has prob­lems with the Trin­i­ty — they agree entire­ly with Gand­hi — it is con­trary to all rea­son. But that does not mean that it should be, much less is, reject­ed. Islam also has prob­lems with under­stand­ing God. So what ? Nor do you explain what his prob­lem with the Mus­lim God is. Clear­ly it is not the Chris­t­ian God although it may be the Jew­ish God. So what ?

    HS:“He seems to be unaware of what cred­i­ble his­to­ri­ans and great minds of the past two cen­turies said about Islam and its Prophet. H. G. Wells”

    And what qual­i­fies H. G. Wells to talk about Islam except that he agrees with you ?

    HS:“Mahatma Gand­hi said:”

    And what qual­i­fies Gand­hi to talk about Islam except that he agrees with you ?

    HS:“Sir George Bernard Shaw wrote:”

    And what qual­i­fies Shaw to talk about Islam except that he agrees with you ?

    And that quote is like­ly faked by the way.

    HS:“James Mich­en­er wrote,”

    And what qual­i­fies Mich­en­er to talk about Islam except that he agrees with you ?

    HS:“Bertrand Rus­sell stated:”

    And what qual­i­fies Rus­sell to talk about Islam except that he agrees with you ?

    You need to spend more time read­ing what peo­ple say and think­ing about why they do so. Not wast­ing all our time by per­son­al attacks and insults. None of us have a clue about any­thing ST said because you have not both­ered to attempt to begin to refute a sin­gle arug­ment he made. Call­ing some­one a son of a b!tch does not make him wrong.

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