Hiding Your Assets: the Surprising Origin of the Burka and Niqab
24th March 2010
This attitude, that the Muslim is entitled to live in perpetuity off the labours of infidels, goes a long way to explaining the peculiar propensity of Muslim societies for producing bandits and pirates. In my Holy Warriors: Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization, I examine the part played by Muslim piracy in the destruction of Graeco-Roman civilization during the seventh century. The war begun by Islam against the rest of the world in the seventh century was a total and unending one, and a real or enduring peace with the infidel world is impossible, owing to Muhammad’s stipulation that Muslims wage war against the non-believers until all peoples accept the one god, Allah. All Muslims were therefore permitted and even required to wage active jihad against the infidel world. A private individual cannot raise armies and invade infidel countries; but he can organise small-scale raids and guerilla attacks. And this is precisely what we see Muslims doing throughout history wherever they lived in proximity to non-Muslim peoples.
It was such “low-key” warfare, in the form of countless piratical raids, that effectively closed the Mediterranean to trade during the seventh century and terminated Classical Civilization.