Customer comments on this selection.
 An eye opener
This is a thoroughly well researched book, that takes you from the early middle ages to modern times, and gives you a different perspective on islam from what the P.C brigade preach.
 Important but Unbalanced
In scanning the reviews it is obvious that people love the book or hate.
it. While I agree with the view that jihad has had, and is having, a pernicious effect on civilization, and it is important to include chapter and verse thereon, Mr. Fergosi's comparison of 1300 years of jihad with "less than 200 years" of the Crusades is specious and superficial. I suspect the reason to be that Mr. Fregosi is telling about jihad from a Christian viewpoint.
It is not merely the Crusades but the conquests of the post-Constantine Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire and the Christian spread throughout the Middle East, Europe and Asia, including the Inquisition, that should be compared with Jihad for a balanced view.
I am no expert on Christian "jihad" but it obviously should have been addressed more accurately in all fairness. Even so I imagine that Jihad would win in ruthlessness and brutality hands down even for Jews who suffered from the Crusades (and Inquisition) probably more than Muslims did.
Name your poison; beheading or being burned at the stake.
 UNDER ATTACK FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS
In the introduction, the author says that this book is the first to examine the history of European-Muslim conflict in its entirety. Three stars should be given for that alone. It begins with a brief description of Muhammad and then covers the conflicts and strugges that have been going on for over a thousand years. The rivalry did not start with the crusades, Fregosi points out, but in Islam's early years of conquest. He also argues that while Christians have committed many atrocities, these are inconsistent with the faith. The same is often not the case in Islam.
I wish more of this book had been devoted to Christian life under Muslim rule. How, for instance, did Christianity fare in this environment? What were relations between the faiths like? As it is the book concentrates almost solely on battles and campaigns.
I also take issue with Fregosi's claim that the Jihad was in fact a fraud, because soldiers and rulers frequently sought gold and loot more than conversion. After all, if the Jihad was a fraud, why be so afraid? All armies and rulers, like the rest of us, want money. What makes the Jihad so scary is that so many were willing to die for it, believing they would be whisked to paradise. That many looked for worldy wealth in conquest says little.
I was also a bit disturbed by the language used throughout. Some books come off as too verbose and intellectual, and suffer for it, but this one had the opposite problem. It is filled with words and phrases that don't belong in a serious work, giving the text the feel of a college bull session at times, and giving some the impression it is not to be taken seriously.
An excellent history of European Jihad
Fregosi undertakes what turns out to be a prodigious task, describing jihad by the Muslims against Europe since the inception of Islam. He confines himself exclusively to Europe, but due to the relentless and unrelenting nature of jihad this book ends up being a rather superficial treatment of European jihad. This book was written before 9-11 and its politically correct perspective reflects that pre-911 mentality. Fregosi bends over backwards to treat both sides even-handedly at times even going so far as to draw a moral equivalency between the two. This despite the fact, in his own words, "Muslims who kill are following the commands of Muhammad, but Christians who kill - and there are many - are ignoring the words of Christ. Therein perhaps lies one of the basic philosophical differences, as well as one of the basic ethical differences, between Islam and Christianity." Perhaps?! Just perhaps this is one of the basic philosophical differences?!
Despite Fregosi's reluctance to call a spade a spade this remains an excellent catalog of Islam's ruthless supremacist imperialistic ideology. For at its heart Islam is an ideology rather than a religion. In assessing the nature of Islam William Gladstone put it best: "They [Muslims] were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as far as their dominion reached, civilization disappeared from view. They represented everywhere government by forces opposed to government by law."
Winston Churchill said, "The influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."
William Durant in his "The Story of Civilization" succinctly stated, [Islam is] "probably the bloodiest story in history." He called it a "discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within." The bitter lesson, Durant concluded, was that "eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but keep its powder dry."
Despite the bleakness of his topic Fregosi manages to be funny at times and at others waxes poetic. Though Fregosi refuses to draw undeniable conclusions from his own material this is an exceptional book and an excellent description of Durant's "bloodies story in history," Gladstone's "broad line of blood," and Churchill's "militant and proselytizing faith." I strongly recommend this book.
Good read - important read
For an ordinary history of wars, rulers and kingdoms, this
book is a remarkably good read. It's fun and easy reading,
that's hard to put down. I found myself thumbing through
the book when I had finished, disappointed that there was
no more, looking for perhaps some part of a chapter that
I had missed. The author has wonderful sense of humour.
At the same time, he's presenting the 1300 years of history
of almost unrelenting war, driven by Islam's efforts to
conquer and convert Europe and Chistianity. The war has
ebbed and flowed over the centuries, and is ebbing again,
funded by oil. This is history we must know, to understand
where we are now, and how brutal we will need to become,
before we push back this latest onslaught.
The death toll for this latest round in a war of civilizations
lasting over a millenium has hardly begun to be taken. Islam
is a cancer on human civilization. We might have thought we
were in remission, but oil money has reinvigorated the cancer,
and a shrinking world means that no place is a far away place
anymore.
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