by Jules Gomes, Ideological Defense Institute
Christian colonialism is an oxymoron—a contradiction in terms. Jesus said: “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight.” Islamic imperialism is a pleonasm: it’s like saying “frozen ice.” Muhammad’s farewell speech: “I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah,’” became the doctrinal underpinning of Islamic expansionism. The Qur’an declares that Allah has made Muslims “his agents, inheritors of the earth” and “promised to… make them rulers in the earth” (24:55, 6:165).
Christian rulers who established empires in Jesus’ name were flagrantly flouting their founder’s teachings. Muslim colonizers who founded empires in Muhammad’s name were following their master’s model and mandate. The Western, ostensibly Christian, colonial project began around 1500. Islamic empire-building began when Muhammad established Medina as the first Muslim state in 622 CE. By the end of the 20th century, Western/Christian empires were as extinct as dinosaurs. In the 21st century, the world confronts the specter of a global Islamic caliphate.
The historical data is undeniable. Yet, for academic activists, the millenarian existence of Islamic imperialism is discombobulating. They would eagerly echo the famous line spoken by Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses: “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” These academic insurgents plot to subvert the Judeo-Christian West using Critical Theory and its bastard child, postcolonialism, but the reality of Islamic imperialism effectively dismantles their theoretical framework. In the fable of The Emperor’s New Clothes, Islamic imperialism is the little boy who, watching the fatuous parade of Postcolonial Studies, cries out: “The emperor is naked!”