The Dangers of Fake History: Did Crusaders Ruin “Five Centuries of Peaceful Coexistence” with Islam?

  RAYMOND IBRAHIM 

Increasing numbers of people have become wary of the dangers of Fake News. But what about the more subtle scourge of Fake History? Although far harder to expose than Fake News—requiring familiarity not merely with history, but with primary source texts—Fake History is arguably even more dangerous.

Unlike the “news,” which is ephemeral, causing its mischief in the present before quickly dissipating, the presumed lessons of history are concrete and long-lasting. People interpret current events through the prism of history; and if that history is fundamentally flawed, then everything they believe about the present will also be flawed. 

As a prime example of the dangers of fake history, take the historical writings of John Esposito, an award-winning professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. He is the author of more 35 books on Islam; editor-in-chief of numerous Oxford reference works, including The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World and The Oxford History of Islam; advisor to the award-winning PBS documentary Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet (2002); and, perhaps most notably, a go-to expert on Islam, certainly in his heyday after 9/11, when he was frequently called on to brief the State Department, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security and various branches of the military. 

Surely such a man knows his Islam. (Incidentally, I was a graduate student at Georgetown University’s Center of Contemporary Arab Studies some 25 years ago, where he was treated like a celebrity whose word on Islam was law.) 

Now, consider the following passage from Esposito’s book, Islam: The Straight Path p. 64): 

Five centuries of peaceful coexistence elapsed before political events and an imperial-papal power play led to centuries-long series of so-called holy wars that pitted Christendom against Islam and left an enduring legacy of misunderstanding and distrust. 

Yes, you read that correctly. Esposito is saying is that, since Year One of the Islamic calendar (622), to the First Crusade (1095), for nearly five centuries (473 years to be exact), Muslims and Christians lived in “peaceful coexistence.” 

This claim obscenely ignores several cataclysmic and foundational events of world history. 

In just the first century following the death of Muhammad, from 632 to 732, the newly founded Muslim state invaded and conquered three-quarters of the Christian world, including the Middle East and North Africa , which was the older, richer, and more sophisticated part of Christendom. The Islamic jihad also conquered Spain and nearly France before it was finally halted in 732 at the Battle of Tours. 

These conquests, like most, were bloody and savage. Contemporary sources, both Christian and Muslim, talk of the slaughter or enslavement of thousands upon thousands of Christians and the destruction of their churches. Moreover, the sources — specifically the Muslim ones — make it unequivocally clear that all these atrocities were committed in the name of jihad: the reason Muslims were invading and conquering the lands of “infidels” was because Islam commanded it.....