"We have drunk blood [in the past], and we find no [blood] sweeter than that of the Byzantines [i.e. Christians]..."

The Emir of the Islamic State in Iraq Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi is waging a war that started thirteen centuries ago, went into cold dormancy, and emerged slowly in the mid-twentieth century.

Yes, what we are witnessing today has happened before, but this time the Mohammedans have the ability to travel farther and faster than by camel or horse.
 

In 632 AD the Muslim General Khalid bin Al-Waheed embarked on a campaign in Mesopotamia against the declining persian empire before turning west to take on the Byzantine Romans.

Khalid, dubbed 'The Sword of Allah' by Mohammed for his exploits in combat, swept north up the Euphrates offering all in his path the same bargain--the Koran, the tribute or the sword.

His first offering on the campaign was unambiguous:

"I call you to God and to Islam.  If you respond to the call, then you are Muslims:  You obtain the benefits they enjoy and take up the responsibilities they bear.  If you refuse, then you must pay the jizyah.  If you refuse the jizyah, I will bring against you tribes of people who are more eager for death than you are for life.  We will then fight you until God decides between us and you."  (Al Tabari, Volume XI)

If the bargain offered by Khalid seems familiar to you, it is because it is the same one offered by Bin Laden in 1996 when he wrote "I say to you William (Defence Secretary) that: These youths love death as you loves life" and in his 2004 and 2006 truce offerings.

(Only that Bin Laden is smart enough to leave out the details of conversion and what paying the jizyah actually entails as they would be the deal breakers for even the most committed liberal pacifist.)

The similarity of Khalid and Bin Laden is no mistake.  Niether is his 1996 reference to Ibn Taymiyyah:

"And after a long absence, imposed on the scholars and callers of Islam by the iniquitous crusaders movement under the leadership of the USA; who fears that they, the scholars and callers of Islam, will instigate the Ummah of Islam against its' enemies as their ancestor scholars-may Allah be pleased with them- like Ibn Taymiyyah and Al'iz Ibn Abdes-Salaam did."

Taymiyyah, a 13th Century Islamic Scholar, believed that ummah should return to the ways of the Mohammed, his companions, and the first rightly guided generations.

These are the same beliefs held by Seyyid Qutb, the intellectual architecht of modern Mohammedan Jihadism.

In his book Milestones, Qutb calls for a vanguard of modern Mohammedan Jihadists who adhere to the principles of the "unique Quarnic generation" i.e., Mohammed and his companions.

Qutbs vanguard is Taymiyyah's group of survival.  The role of the vanguard is to "eventually attain the status of world leadership."  (Milestones, Seyyid Qutb)

For Qutb, the role of the vanguard and Islamic revival is to use "physical power and Jihaad for abolishing the organizations and authorities of the Jahili system which prevents people from reforming their ideas and beliefs but forces them to obey their erroneous ways and make them serve human lords instead of the Almighty Lord."

The Jahili system being the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Code, the Ancient Common Law, the Ancient Continental Civil Law, the Uniform Commercial Code and any customs, standards and mores in conflict with Sharia.

For only under Sharia is a person free to choose his religion without hinderance.

In Qutb's Milestones, Khalid's bargain is rings throught chapter 4.

Qutb, citing Ibn Qayyim's commentaries on the Quran, states there are only three types of people:  Muslims, Dhimmies, and those at war with Islam.

Those at war had Khalid's options:  the Koran, the tribute or the sword.

Qutb Citing the Quran [9.29]:

"Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection." 

Has a formulation for the peace treaty:

"It may happen that the enemies of Islam may consider it expedient not to tak action against Islam, if Islam leaves them alone in their geographical boundaries to continue the lordship of some men over others and does not extend its message and its declaration of universal freedom within their domain.  But Islam cannot agree to this unless they submit to its authority by Jizyah, which will be guarantee that they have opened their doors for the preaching of Islam and will not put any obstacle in its way through the power of the state."

And as noted above obstacles to preaching by "the power of the state" include Western Jurisprudence.


The declaration of Al Baghdadi of renewed war against the Byzantines and the Persians is his acknowledgment to the rightly guided, unique Quranic generation who fought the Byzantine Romans and the Persians.

Today, the U.S. and the Western Coalition in general are considered the Byzantine Romans and the Shia Iranians are the Persians.

Baghdadi and his fellow Mohammedan Jihadists are the heirs to Khalid, as summed up by his statement:

"O Islamic nation, we now stand where the Prophet and his companions stood in the beginning of the Medina period [when the jihad began]. Our war with the Persians has [now] begun just like our war with the Byzantines, only the Persian rule is [even] more depraved and despicable than that of the Byzantines..."

Were the Mohammedan Jihadists logistics still restricted to camel and horse, Baghdadi's statments could be dismissed as the rantings of an impotent lunatic.

But they have proven their reach is beyond the equine and dromedary.

The battle raging today in land of two against the vanguard of an Islamic revivalist movement is the same as the one thirteen centuries ago.  Only this time we have the advantage of history and the words of the vanguard's own leaders to warn us.

And if history is any guide we see, that until the vanguard is crushed, they will continue to offer the bargain Khalid made to the Byzantine Romans as recounted by Gibbon:  "Ye Christian dogs, you know your option; the Koran, the tribute or the sword..."

References

Baghdadi
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=jihad&ID=SP145407

Bin Laden 1996
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html

Bin Laden 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/middle_east/3628069.stm

Bin Laden 2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-01-19-binladen-fulltext_x.htm

Taymiya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Taymiya#Students_and_intellectual_heirs

Qutb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb#Legacy

Ibn Qayyim
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Qayyim_Al-Jawziyya

Quran 9.29
http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=282392

Gibbon
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/gibbon/decline/files/volume2/chap512.htm#Damascus
 

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