Note: The following book review appeared on Moonbattery:

We might reverse the decline and fall of Western Civilization if only we could get enough people to read Sword and Scimitar, a new book by Raymond Ibrahim. This highly readable military history of the ongoing 1,400-year war between Islam and the West focuses on eight key battles, four of which where won by either side: Yarmuk, the 717 Siege of Constantinople, Tours, Manzikert, Hattin, Las Navas de Tolosa, the final Siege of Constantinople, and the second Siege of Vienna. It would be hard to come away from the book without understanding what many felt in their gut after 9/11 and have had reinforced ever since. Islam is the enemy, has always been the enemy, and always will be the enemy until either it or we are eradicated. For Muslims, the current struggle is nothing new. War by terror and by mass immigration is a continuation of a struggle for supremacy that has been going on since the year 636. If one of the European victories in the battles listed above had gone the other way, the struggle would likely have ended long ago in Islam’s definitive favor. In the West, few realize that the Islamic world consists largely of land taken by force from Christian populations, which were then coercively Islamized over the course of centuries. Conquest and coercion are integral to Islam. The book is not for the squeamish. The horror and scale of Muslim atrocities against Western populations are staggering, featuring genocide, enslavement, wanton destruction, desecration of all things Christian, crucifixion, impalement on stakes, skinning alive, and of course rape. Imagine civilization threatened with extinction by overwhelmingly massive armies of Islamic State maniacs. That is the world our ancestors lived in for over a millennium. History is not over. It is still happening, and it is crucial to be able to place contemporary events in their historical context. Ibrahim explains why: Islam did not change, but the West did: Muslims still venerate their heritage and religion—which commands jihad against infidels—whereas the West has learned to despise its heritage and religion, causing it to become an unwitting ally of the jihad. … [I]f Islam is terrorizing the West today, that is not because it can, but because the West allows it to. For no matter how diminished, a still swinging Scimitar will always overcome a strong but sheathed Sword. For the past 2 centuries, the West has had the upper hand, but that could easily change if we do not remember how we got here and start fighting back. Terrorism, invasion by immigration, and nuclear proliferation may tip the balance back in Islam’s favor. A fifth column of liberals who side with Islam could be the deciding factor.

In his recent defense of the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya (dismantled here), Usama Hasan, of the UK think tank Quilliam, made the following admission:

It is true that hardened islamist terrorists, such as the Al-Qaeda & ISIS supporter Usman Khan who murdered two people at Fishmongers’ Hall [after pretending to have been “rehabilitated”], do misuse the principle of taqiyyah in order to further their cause. However, the charge that all Muslims are generally religiously obligated to lie, and do so routinely, is both dangerous and untrue.

While this may be true, it is also inevitable. After all, how is the infidel to know which Muslim is and isn’t “misusing the principle of taqiyyah”? Moreover, why should the burden of proof be on the non-Muslim—who stands to (and often does) suffer and even gets killed from ignoring the role of deceit in Islam—and not on the Muslim, whose religion allows deception in the first place? This is particularly so since more than a few “hardened islamist terrorists” are convinced that their creed allows them to dissimulate to their heart’s content—so long as doing so can be seen as helping further the cause of Islam.

In this, as in virtually all things Islamic, Muslims have their prophet’s example—two that are especially poignant—to turn to.

First is the assassination of Ka‘b ibn Ashraf (d. 624), an elderly Jew. Because he dared mock Muhammad, the latter exclaimed, “Who will kill this man who has hurt Allah and his messenger?” A young Muslim named Ibn Maslama volunteered on condition that to get close enough to Ka‘b to murder him, he needed permission to lie to the Jew.

Allah’s messenger agreed. So Ibn Maslama traveled to Ka‘b and began to complain about Muhammad until his disaffection became so convincing that Ka‘b eventually dropped his guard and befriended him.

After behaving as his friend for some time, Ibn Maslama eventually appeared with another Muslim, also pretending to have apostatized. Then, while a trusting Ka‘b’s guard was done, they attacked and slaughtered him, bringing his head to Muhammad to the usual triumphant cries of “Allahu Akbar!”

In another account, after Muhammad and his followers had attacked, plundered, and massacred a number of non-Muslim Arabs and Jews, the latter assembled and were poised to defeat the Muslims (at the Battle of the Trench, 627). But then Naim bin Mas‘ud, one of the leaders of these non-Muslim “confederates,” as they came to be known in history, secretly went to Muhammad and converted to Islam. The prophet asked him to return to his tribesmen and allies—without revealing that he had joined the Muslim camp—and to try to get them to abandon the siege. “For,” Muhammad assured him, “war is deceit.”

Mas‘ud returned, pretending to be loyal to his former kinsmen and allies, all while giving them bad advice. He also subtly instigated quarrels between the various tribes until, no longer trusting each other, they disbanded—thereby making Mas‘ud a celebrated hero in Islamic tradition.

In the two well-known examples above, Muslims deceived non-Muslims not because they were being persecuted for being Muslim but as a tactic to empower Islam. (Even the Battle of the Trench was precipitated precisely because Muhammad and his followers had first attacked the confederates at the Battle of Badr and massacred hundreds of them on other occasions.)

Despite these stories being part of the Sunna to which Sunnis adhere, UCLA’s Abou El Fadl—the primary expert the WashingtonPost once quoted to show that Islam does not promote deceit—claims that “there is no concept that would encourage a Muslim to lie to pursue a goal. That is a complete invention.”

Tell that to Ka‘b ibn Ashraf, whose head was cut off for believing Muslim lies. The prophet of Islam allowed his followers to deceive the Jew to slaughter him—even though Ka‘b posed no threat to any Muslim’s life.

Especially revealing is that, in Dr. Sami Makerem’s seminal book on the topic, Al-Taqiyya fi’l Islam (Taqiyya in Islam), he cites the two aforementioned examples from the prophet’s biography as prime examples of taqiyya.

It comes to this: even if one were to accept the limited definition of taqiyya as permitting deception only under life threatening circumstances (as Usama Hasan and any number of apologists insist), the fact remains: Islam also permits lies and deception in order to empower itself. Accordingly, and considering that Islam considers itself in a constant state of war with non-Islam (typified by the classical formulation of Dar al-Islam vs. Dar al-Harb) any Muslim who feels this or that piece of deception over the infidel is somehow benefiting Islam will believe that he has a blank check to lie.

That’s the inconvenient fact—passingly admitted to by Usama Hasan—that needs addressing; and that’s why the burden of proof concerning sincerity belongs on Muslims, not non-Muslims.