Raymond Ibrahim

The real story of Islam and the west or Christianity is not what we were told.

Josh

Once upon a time, there were zero Muslim nations, and now there's 50. Well, that happened somehow.

Raymond Ibrahim

Any one of these stories, by the way, if it was the opposite, if it was a Christian, Jewish or Muslim, it'd be everywhere. Everyone would know.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Well, hey, Live Free Nation. Before we jump into the episode, this podcast is recorded right here at Lake Pointe Church in Dallas, Texas. But the Live Free Nation is spread all over the country and all around the world. So if you've been watching and thinking, man, I wish I could be part of something like this, we want to invite you to take a simple next step, and that is join us for Church Online. Every weekend we stream our services live on YouTube, Facebook and our church Online platform. And it's more than just watching a service. There are live hosts in the chat, prayer teams ready to stand with you, and people all around the world worshiping together in real time. And so whether you're exploring the faith, coming back to church, or just looking for a place to start, church Online is a great way to jump in and experience what God is doing here at Lake Point. We would love to see you in the chat this weekend and now enjoy the podcast.

Josh

Raymond Ibrahim, welcome to Live Free.

Raymond Ibrahim

Thanks for having me, Josh. Happy to be with you.

Josh

This is great. So for listeners, I just want to tell you, like, one of the coolest things about this, the podcast kind of doing what it's done is I was telling you beforehand, when I read something that I really like, I can actually get a hold of the guy.

Raymond Ibrahim

That's a good thing.

Josh

Yeah, it is. That's what happened with you. So I'm honestly, I'm just going to tell everybody how I found out about you. And then heads up for people that are listening, we're about to have a very interesting discussion on the history of Islam. I think some of you guys probably like me when I read Raymond's book, are going to get pulled out of the Matrix and then talk about how some of those things intersect with what's going on in society. Now, here's how I got introduced to you, and I want to thank you. I sleep terrible, so I usually wake up between like, 2 and 4. And I read military history. That was the first book I read Sword and Scimitar. So I'm going to toss this up here for people who like to read like me. That book was unbelievable. I couldn't put that thing down.

Raymond Ibrahim

Thank you.

Josh

So. And I'm here in a second. I'M asking you what it was about and all that stuff. Then I got a hold of that guy. This is Defenders of the West. That book is hard. That's an awesome book. That's like. It's like vignettes of. Is primarily guys during the Crusades.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, yeah.

Josh

So one of the fun facts for me was discovering that Vlad the Impaler, the guy that Count Dracula is based on, was one of the defenders of the West. So I may ask you about that.

Interjecting Commentator

Of course.

Raymond Ibrahim

Please. That's a. That's a. That's a big one.

Josh

Yeah. So here's where I want to go. There's a few things I want to ask you about. One, I want to talk to you about the Crusades and kind of the vibe I picked up in high school, that it was all evil, racist Christians. You just want to colonize people. I want to talk to you real quick about the rise of Islam in Europe and the United States. We're seeing this a lot in Dallas and like, man, how should we. And maybe should we not think about that kind of stuff? I definitely. I have been waiting to ask you this question. I definitely want to talk to you about the. What I feel like is the weird alliance between progressivism and Islam. That makes no sense to most people. Makes no sense to most people. But first, can you just tell me a little bit about yourself and why you have canceled in your YouTube bio?

Raymond Ibrahim

All right. Well, thanks, Josh. And I'm really happy to hear that you liked these books and we'll talk about them. The reason it says canceled in my bio is because I actually have been around for quite some time. I started writing and publishing and all that sort of thing soon after 9 11. And in the context of 9 11, right around 9 11, I finished my master's thesis, which was about the first military encounter between Muslims and Christians, the Battle of Yarmouk. So obviously, I had an interest in that. That was around late 90s, right around 2000. And from that point on, I actually continued graduate school. I went to Georgetown University in D.C. because at the time, they had, you know, what was taunted as a great Arab studies program, Islamic studies. Of course, I learned the hard way, and we can get into what I learned in academia. But long story short, it left, know, bad taste in my mouth. And I was about to leave, but I got a job, an internship at the Library of Congress in the near east section. Library of Congress has. It's the largest library in the world. It's really. It's amazing and fascinating, especially if you Work there because you can go behind the scenes and most people can't get into the stacks. I could. And long story short, I was working with Arabic language books and I came across writings by Al Qaeda, which was a topic back then. Okay, this is, I came across these maybe 2004, and they were writings by Osama bin Laden in Arabic and Ayman Zawahri, who were at the time first and second leaders of Al Qaeda. Long story short, I got, I got it, actually a book deal to translate these and basically annotate them and explain them. And they came out in, finally in 2007 by Doubleday, it's the Al Qaeda Reader. And the whole point of that book was to show you that before I came across this stuff and translated it, Al Qaeda was actually sending communiques to the west. And the west was happily disseminating it. The media, BBC, cnn, and everything Al Qaeda would say was, we attacked you because you attacked us. It's all about reciprocal treatment. You respect us, we'll respect you. And it listed grievances, endless mountains of grievances, from the Crusades to the colonial era to Israel. Two teddy bears named Muhammad. Okay. Really? Okay.

Josh

Like that's, that'. That's real.

Raymond Ibrahim

That's real.

Josh

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah.

Josh

All right.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, you're mocking our prophet to the Kyoto Protocol that the, you know, the environment. So it was just as long. It was very, it was tailor made to a Western audience and it was very intelligible to Western audience because, oh, yeah, we're bad. Because of course, the west is conditioned into thinking it's bad.

Josh

I want to ask you about that.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a huge theme. That's what I call the enabler of everything. But then what I came across in Arabic was the same bin Laden and Ayman Zahiri writing in Arabic to Muslims. And it was a completely different, different message now. It was, oh, we have to hate them because of who they are. Oh, it's, we have to do jihad. And these are kuffar infidels. Oh, they're the enemies no matter what they do. Okay, so it was a completely different message.

Josh

Wait, I want to understand you. Right, yeah. So wait, you're saying the same communiques were getting translated one way by public media, but the actual translations were different?

Raymond Ibrahim

No, he was sending communiques directly to the west and probably in Arabic and Western media would translate it. But then he wrote books in Arabic to fellow Muslims not sent to the West. Okay. In the Arab world. Yeah, Right. And that's what I came across and found it wasn't even cataloged yet. It was in the Library of Congress. And I read it, and I was just amazed. I was like, wow, because I can read Arabic. I was like, he's saying all this and nobody knows, you know, where's. Where's the CIA? Where's, you know, where's the intelligence community? You know, I'm some guide who's like, I was in my early 30s, you know, just in graduate school. Anyway, so I translated it. And that was the big revealer at the time was kind of like, oh, look at the. That. You know, that he's the double speak from these Islamic groups. Right. So anyway, I tell you all that. That's a long story. Just tell you how I got into this whole field. But then I was working at the Library of Congress, like I said, and I was even. I was helping the Congressional Research Department and that sort of thing. And then eventually I just. And I started writing about another topic that's near and dear to me, which is Muslim persecution of Christians. By background, I'm a copter Christian, which is the indigenous Christians, indigenous natives, actually, of Egypt, who were Christian before Egypt got conquered and Islamized in the seventh century. So I've had an obvious interest. That's why I've always had an interest in the nexus between Muslim Islam and Christianity. That's why I wrote my thesis about what I did. So one of the topics was the persecution of Christians. I ended up writing my next book about that, came out in 2013, called Crucified Again. And. And I still actually, every month I write reports for the Gatestone Institute for. Since 2011, monthly reports about what happens every month to Christians at the hands of Muslims. And you'd be surprised because these reports are long and they get longer and longer, and they range from just, you know, slaughter left and right, especially in Africa.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

Churches being desecrated, burned ritually, blasphemers and apostates. Muslims who want to become Christians getting attacked and killed by their family, imprison and that sort of thing. And any one of these stories, by the way, if it was the opposite, if it was a Christian doing Islam,

Josh

a Muslim, it'd be everywhere.

Raymond Ibrahim

Everyone would know it would be everywhere. These stories. Nobody knows it.

Interjecting Commentator

Okay.

Josh

I'm not worth reporting a second. Why you think that is? Okay, you go ahead.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah. And I'm just. I'm fast forwarding to give you a quick recap of who and what I am and why I do this. And then after. At that point, I became Basically just a professional writer, a fellow at various think tanks. And that's when I started going back to my original interest, history, which is what I studied in college. My professor, by the way, you may know, Victor Davis Hansen.

Josh

Yeah, I love reading stuff. Yeah.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

And so, yeah, he was. Yeah, exactly. That's why I got into military history, because he was my professor at the time.

Josh

He started doing military history, right?

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, yeah, he. At the time that I started my MAA thesis with him, which was about the Battle of Yarmouk, he was writing the book the Carnage and Culture.

Josh

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

Which was. So there was a lot of symbiote. Symbiotic kind of. I think I even helped a little bit of research for him at the time as. As we were like interns a little bit, some of the students. Anyway, so I've been writing now back to the history because I find that much more fascinating. When we talk about Islam, for example, in the Al Qaeda Reader, I talked about the doctrine of Islam and a lot of people talk about, you know, the problematic doctrines of Islam. And I think that's good. I do it too. What no one had really done before me was to show you the historical manifestation of these doctrines because that's a lot harder to do. It's easy to memorize, you know, 10 verses in the Quran which are anti infidel, etc. And we all talk about it all the time. It's a lot harder to actually dig into the sources and find out what happened. Especially as I found out when the secondary sources, what we call secondary sources, historians. I'm a secondary history. So primary sources are, you know, as close as you can get to the events, eyewitnesses, hopefully maybe not, but whatever is closest to it. Those are the original primary sources. Secondary sources is someone like me. I take them supposedly and I write a book, a modern day book. And that's what you find in Barnes and Noble, right? Or wherever. And you read it. Now when I consulted those books, those history books that were written by the professors, they said, what we're going to talk about, which is, you know, the crusaders are just evil white racists and colonialists.

Josh

That's like the whole vibe. My whole.

Raymond Ibrahim

Me too, but because I did consult, especially when I was at the Library of Congress and I had all this access to books and chronicles and I took a lot of time. That book, Sword and Scimitar, the first one that came out in 2018, even though it came out in 2018, much of the research was done during the years when I was at the Library of Congress and had really great access, which I still do. Anyway, so what I started finding is that the real story of Islam and the west or Christianity is not what we were told.

Josh

Yeah, that's what I figured out real fast, reading your book.

Raymond Ibrahim

Right. And that's why I felt like, okay, I need to. I need this. People need to know this. Okay. Because like I said, again, if you understand the historical method, you have Primary sources is what it's all about. This is what we. This is the facts as as good as we can get them. Secondary sources is a synthesis by an academic and a scholar who supposedly has put it together for you so you can understand. And like I said, those were. Not only were they not doing justice, they were literally saying the opposite of what had happened. So when I started looking at these chronicles and also in Arabic also, you know, so all the different languages, Muslims and Christians, it was a completely different story. It was. Excuse me. And so maybe it's best now to tell you, you know, like, the beginning of all this, the historical beginning.

Josh

So is this how you got canceled?

Raymond Ibrahim

Oh, the canceled question. You're right. I got canceled because when the Al Qaeda reader came out, the first book in 2007, I was invited to all the. I was on CNN and npr, like, even the very liberal leftist NPR and PBS and things like that, and they'd have me on to talk about it. But then eventually I started just. I didn't even think of it that, like, I'm. I'm shifting gears. I just was saying the truth, you know, in my mind, and it just. Before long, I was kind of, like, gone. And then. And then social media did some weird stuff on me where I completely. No one would ever see me on, and they would be like, we don't even. You got to a point where I would Google, you know, if you Google the title of an article, it'll come up. At least mine wouldn't.

Josh

Shadow ban.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, exactly. I was totally shadow banned. And I went on for a while, but. And that's. Which was maybe, in retrospect, good, because that's when I started really focusing on the books, which is what I enjoy.

Josh

Didn't you get invited to speak at some, like, military thing and then, like, care or somebody? Like, what was that deal?

Raymond Ibrahim

Well, Sword and Scimitar.

Josh

I've been nerding out on your stuff for a couple years.

Raymond Ibrahim

Sword and Scimitar, The. The book. We're talking, the first book. It came out 2018. By 2019, the US Army War College, someone had Read it. And they wanted me to come give a presentation on it. Then care. That. That that acronym is so cloying.

Additional Commentator

Care.

Raymond Ibrahim

Like they care. They're really terrorists.

Josh

Literally stands for what?

Raymond Ibrahim

The Council of American Islamic Relations. Anyway, it's, it's part of the Muslim Brotherhood. It's, it's. I think here in. Is in Texas, there's actually banned now.

Josh

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

Because it's part of the Muslim Brotherhood and they are terrorist organization.

Josh

That's correct.

Raymond Ibrahim

So that group with some leftist organizations went, had a hissy fit and sent all called the top head of the War college saying this guy's me Islamophobe. If you guys do this, you're a white supremacist. I'm a white supremacist. It really went hysterical. They had petitions and I forget her name. Sarsour. Like a lot of, A lot of the famous big mouths were like at it and lo and behold, all of a sudden, two days before I was supposed to go and Talk and in 2019, they called me up and said, oh, we're going to postpone it, you know.

Josh

They pulled you?

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah.

Josh

They pulled you.

Additional Commentator

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

So I not want to take it lying down and made sure everyone knew about this. So, all right. I wrote articles about it and a lot of people picked it up and before long, like something like 10 congressional congressmen represented me and sent a letter to Trump and the association of Scholars. I forget, it's like a well known association of scholars. American association of Scholars also wrote a long letter and it got petitions all from colleges and professors. It became a big thing. And then before long, and people were sending me emails saying we've pulled our children out of that school because we can't believe they would cancel someone just because he's going to talk about history and they're buckling into Islamic terrorists and you know, the US Army War College of all places. Right. Not Berkeley.

Josh

That's right.

Raymond Ibrahim

I mean, it's different. So obviously they got ashamed eventually and they reached out to me again and I made sure not to respond to them for a couple months to keep the heat on until they were like begging me. And then I said, okay, fine,

Josh

that's hilarious. All right.

Raymond Ibrahim

And I went and it was the. They told me it was their most packed event. I think the only one more than mine was a Buzz Aldrin event.

Josh

Oh, wow.

Raymond Ibrahim

And so to which I say thank you, care for all the free publicity, because everyone wanted to know what's about. Right. And the only one thing that kind of annoyed me is they. It was part of the agreement is it was being videotaped and they would put it on, on their whatever website and they never did. You know why? Because when I did give the talk, it was in February of 2020 and Covid happened and all of a sudden that became the excuse, we can't, we can't. We, you know, because of COVID we can't publish videos. And that was it. Okay, so. So that's one of the. That was one of the main cancellations, but it was actually a victory. Actually, me and care, we have. We had two. And both of them are victories for me. This one and another one was at a Seattle based college that invited me. And all of a sudden msnbc, you can still find it online. It's like a big spread about Islamophobia with my face. And I'm bewildered because I didn't. Because I just walked in to give a talk. And just to show you, just to give you an idea and your audience of the little tricks they play, I went in. It's a Seattle based college. It was packed again, because there was a lot of controversy. And I remember giving the talk and I mean, there were students sitting on the ground because everything, all the chairs were taken, right? And then when you look at the spread, I can't even show it to you on msnbc, they show just one woman in a black burqa and another Muslim man and then like one kind of one kid. And like that represents who came.

Josh

But it was packed.

Raymond Ibrahim

It was packed with regular, normal Americans who were very happy to hear this.

Josh

But that's how they publicly.

Raymond Ibrahim

That's the image they wanted to give to the world.

Josh

Okay, all right, well, let me. Let's get into it. So here's where I start. And you can, you can start wherever you want to because I've read two of your books and you got a lot. You take this. All right, so here's the vibe that I got growing up public, public school, mid-90s. And honestly, like Kentucky, fairly conservative state, you know, that kind of thing, you know, so now I'm not in like Portland. But the vibe that I always had until I read your book was this kind of vibe of like, hey, man. Yeah, you know, the Crusades were really. It was just all racist, genocidal colonizing Christians. And kind of how it would get brought up particularly is, you know, anytime that there was, you know, any form of Muslim violence, it'd be like, oh, okay, yeah, there are some. But Christians can be just as violent too, because the racist genocidal colonizing Christians did these unprovoked attacks called the Crusades. How evil. That's the vibe I always got. I'm going to set you up with a quote that I have heard you mention before from a guy named John Esposito, Georgetown University. So this is a professor, Georgetown University. This is the vibe I always got. It's like, here's his quote. Five centuries of peaceful coexistence elapsed before political events and an imperial papal power play led to centuries long series of so called holy wars that pitted Christendom against Islam and left an enduring legacy of misunderstanding and distrust from Muslims. Raymond Ibrahim, what say you?

Raymond Ibrahim

That is such a paradigmatic and excellent quote because it's really, you're really setting up the question in a perfect way because I'm now going to happily dismantle it all for you and rebuild it. So what he just said, there is five centuries of peaceful coexistence elapsed between Muslims and Christians before the Crusades left a misunderstanding and bitterness from Muslims. All right, so what's five centuries? He's talking about from the dawn of Islam, which is the official date. I mean, Muhammad's born in 570, but the official date is 6:22 to 10:95. That's the first crusade. So he's, you know, he's estimating five centuries. All that time is peaceful coexistence, right?

Josh

That's what he says.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yes, of course. So now let's see what really did happen. Okay. Once. Okay, I'll give you the sort of digest version because Sword and Scimitar is the story of what happened. And it's over 300 pages.

Josh

You do whatever you want.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So Muhammad dies. Jihad is declared on all the non Muslims around Arabia.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

After they've been consolidated, there's these Ridda wars where the, you know, some people want to apostasize anyway, they all become collectively the Islamic Ummah. They're localized, they're in Arabia, they're Arabs as Muhammad was. And at that point, and what I'm telling you now is the Islamic historiography. So this is what is Muslim history teaches, right? And a lot of Westerners just kind of like pooh, pooh it and oh no, that's, it's hagiographical, meaning it's made up, it's embellished. It wasn't really like that, but okay, this is what the Muslim histories say. Then they declared Jihad and they sent letters, for example, to various kingdoms saying we're giving you three choices. The Famous Islamic choices, which is convert, become one with us, become equal. If you're a person of the book, as they're called, which is a Jew or a Christian, and live in tribute, that jizya is a word that is connected to the idea of like a substitution, which means I'm buying my life by paying you.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

Because they like to translate as a poll tax, which is to me kind of euphemistic.

Josh

That's how I've always heard it.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, it's to me more like, you know, you're being extorted or else you can get killed or be enslaved immediately. So they could have that option and maintain their religion. But also it's not equality or anything like that. You maintain your Christian or Jewish identity, but you are openly treated as a, at best, second class citizen. Okay. You have no rights compared to a Muslim and you have to embrace that or you fight to the death. So those were the three options. Islamic historiography is full of that. Okay. Now when we look at the world, or at least the old world, what we're talking about at this time in the seventh century, right, when Islam is about to erupt out of Arabia, we're looking primarily at the Christian world because North Africa and what we today call the Middle east at that time was, it was mostly known as Greater Syria, but it encompassed all the countries that we know modern day Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and the Asia Minor, what we call Turkey. All of that.

Josh

I just want to interject, a lot of Christians don't know what you're about to say.

Additional Commentator

I know.

Josh

So like I, I did a, like a. I visited all the seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelation last year. And honestly, man, I felt like an idiot. I did not realize until that trip. They're all in Turkey.

Additional Commentator

Yeah.

Josh

So it's like the center of Christianity when, when the Apostle John writes the book of Revelation, the center of Christianity.

Raymond Ibrahim

I really should unpack this because this is an important point. I'm glad you kind of like stopped me there because if you go to. Okay, again, you know, one with the idea that you had, which is, you know, the crusaders are evil, Christian, white, racist. The other idea is that Christianity is like this European thing.

Josh

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

Maybe we know Jesus from the Middle east and he's Jewish, but you know, it's, it's a European thing. All right, so in this, in fact, when, when the time we're talking about where Islam is being born, Christianity, the heart of it is in North Africa. It's in what we today call the Arab world. It's Egypt, okay, It's in Greater Syria, it's in Asia Minor, Turkey, as you said. I mean look at all the letters in, in the book of Revelation. It's in Asia Minor, it's in North Africa. St. Augustine, this great luminary theologian, he's from Algeria, he's a Berber. The Coptic Christians, for example, one of the oldest churches, the Armenians, right, These are the oldest, the Assyrians, Aramaic speakers. So if you looked before the Islamic phenomena arose and you looked at the Christian world, most of it was in North Africa and in the Middle east. And Europe was actually the secondary part, it was the lesser part. In fact, Constantine the Great, the emperor who became Christian because everything was in the east, moved the capital to the east, to Asia Minor, Constantinople, which today Istanbul of course is in Asia Minor because that's where everything was. All the learning, all the theology was in, was Greek speakers and a little bit Latin later. So it's ironic when you talk about today, if you mention something like Egypt or Syria, it's, it's people just assume it was kind of like always Islamic and it wasn't, it was actually part of the Hellenistic world. They were Greek speakers, you know what I mean, and, or Latin speakers and that, that was it. So when Islam came, this was a cataclysmic event. It conquered and swallowed up literally at that time, 2/3 of the Christian world. Jeez, this is the time when that professor is saying it was peaceful coexistence. Those five centuries was non stop conquest, annexation and atrocities that make Islamic state look like child's play.

Josh

All right, what's the postage stamp? Like I know this is not fair to ask a guy like you, but like if you postage stamp overview, here's what happened in those five centuries.

Raymond Ibrahim

Like what's the basically just conquest, abduction, enslavement, harems, you know, sex slavery. This is a Quranic principle. Muhammad engaged in it. You know, you're probably familiar with what's happening in Britain, you know, this gang rape and a report came out about a quarter million girls that were systematically groomed as they used to call it, that is to say sexually raped and exploited in really disgusting ways. That sort of thing goes all the way back to Muhammad. I mean honestly, Muhammad himself. There's a hadith. A hadith is a, you know, where it's a recorded saying of Muhammad. It's secondary to the Quran where he tries to entice his followers to go war on what we call the Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, Europeans. And he says, don't you Want the women of yellow.

Josh

And that's his language.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, well, in translation he says the women of yellow. And linguists try to figure it out. But the best explanation is he means fair skin, fair haired, women, Europeans. And that's a motif that actually just repeats itself all throughout history. People don't know. The entire Viking phenomena was almost came into being because the Abbasid Caliphate wanted white slaves.

Josh

What? Yeah, click on that real quick.

Raymond Ibrahim

Okay, so the Vikings, which we know, right, who would raid and plunder the European coastline, England, France, everywhere, a lot of it was to get slaves, white slaves, and sell it to the Arabs because they would pay top dollar for it. And one of the ways we know this is when you find all these Viking treasure troves are full of Abbasid golden coins. What are they getting from them? It was primarily slaves. And we do know that there was a premium on European slaves, especially women.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

So that, that kind of thing goes on habitually this. But, but before we finish the, you know, the Christian aspect of the Middle east and North Africa. So this was really one century. Muhammad died 766-327-32. One century Muslims have conquered that entire area are, and now are in the middle of France fighting at the battle of Tours. Charles Martel, one century. All right, look at. So they've conquered that ancient original, richer, more sophisticated, more developed part of Christendom, violently and savagely. You were asking me all the things they did. Massacres, mass enslavement, systematic destruction of churches, turning them into mosques later on, especially the nicer ones, and the enslavement and so forth. And then this goes into Spain. Okay, so now they're in Europe, same thing. And in 7 11, Spain gets conquered. And then 732. Now they're tours.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

All right, that's the first of John Esposito's five peaceful coexistence centuries.

Interjecting Commentator

Wow.

Josh

So then, like, what, so then like what precipitates the Crusades?

Raymond Ibrahim

Okay, so. And we'll get to that.

Josh

But.

Raymond Ibrahim

And just so the John Esposito quote is a perfect example of what I mean by. You see how the, the secondary history. He's a secondary historical source. Look at how he presented it in the exact opposite of reality. Yeah, okay. That. Oh, everything was fine. Muslims and Christians were getting along. Not that Muslims were conquering and annexing and destroying Christian territories. Everything was fine until those crusaders dare do something. Right, so that's just him again.

Josh

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

It's everyone. Yeah, but that's what I mean. Like, this is why it's, it's really a travesty when you look at these history books that you can go buy. And the more popular the book is, I'm sorry to say, oftentimes the worse it is. It's like that John Esposito was a really famous professor at Georgetown and he was to the point that he was the editor in chief of the Oxford History of Islam. Jeez, now you, that's the mentality that is in charge of that really prestigious encyclopedia, Oxford Encyclopedia.

Josh

Okay, so it's like, it's not, you know, sometimes it's not fair to ask somebody about, like to, to guess motive. But like, let me, like, let me, this is curious to me. Like when I'm reading your stuff, I start two years ago, I'm reading your stuff and I'm like, dude, this is, it's like unplugging from the Matrix. I'm like, this is literally the opposite of like everything, all the vibes that I got. And then, you know, I read more and the more I'm realizing like, oh, this is, this is legit, you know, and it's ubiquitous. It's, it's, it's the area, it's the air you breathe, right? Every. That's the slant. Why do you think that is?

Raymond Ibrahim

All right, I actually don't think, I mean, your question is sort of touching on, which makes sense and it could be, and it probably is in, in select cases, but that these people are intentionally lying for whatever reason they're getting paid. Right? Or so I think, of course there is some truth to that, but I, what, what really happens is the lie gets created and it just snowballs and everyone goes with a lie because they accept it as the truth. Okay, so what I did is most historians, or would be historians, they get all their knowledge from the secondary histories. So they'll go and get, you know, oh, there's a topic I want to read about or study. They'll get maybe 10 books of John Esposito and Karen Armstrong and all the well known names who have, you know, PhDs and come from the Ivy League and they've published best selling books about whatever, something Islamic. They'll read those books and then that's all they'll know. So they don't know they're lying and their colleagues read the same books and it, so it becomes like a little ecosystem. We all agree to it until someone like me comes and says, well, let me see what the original guys had to say. The guys that were there. And you find out, oh, they're saying something way different. They're not saying what. And the Muslims validate them. So even, you know, the Muslims and the Christians are enemies at this time, but they both, Their records validate what they're saying. They're in agreement about what's happening, happening,

Josh

you know, so you don't even, like, you would say, man, I'm not even sure there is a motive. You like? No, there's not. Maybe not.

Raymond Ibrahim

No, no, I believe there. I actually, I mean, I'm. I'm a firm believer there is motives and there are, you know, guiding intelligences behind lots of what we're discussing. I'm just saying they're usually, you know, at the very top, and then it just trickle. Then it becomes, it snowballs and takes a life of its own and everyone just agrees to it. Not. And this isn't just what we're talking about. We're talking about books, but I think everything, like the, like in the news, the, you know, the. We talk about how the left thinks. Okay. I'm, I, I have no doubt that the left is an engineered construct, because it's insane. But most of the people who think that way are. They believe it. You know, they, they're, they're sheep. Okay. But I do believe behind them are people exploiting them and putting these thoughts into their heads.

Josh

So do you like. I mean, do you mind me asking what you think?

Interjecting Commentator

Even.

Josh

So, the people who create the lies, what do you. What's your best guess on motive on that?

Raymond Ibrahim

Why does it control, you know, control. For example, when I see, you know, in the west, this, okay, there's this, you know, like, relentless assault on boys and girls, but to convince them you're not a. But you're not a boy, you're really a girl. Right? A complete emasculation. Let's just talk about boys for now. But same thing with girls, okay? You're just taught, you know, you don't know that's toxic masculinity and parents are taught, oh, I want to make sure my son has the opportunity. Maybe he wants to play with a girl, a doll, or, you know, wear a pink dress. Okay, that thing, to me, this is not organic. This is. You want to control society, the first thing you want to do is emasculate the men. Who would you write. If you want to control a group, who do you think would be harder to control? 10 guys that think they're women or 10 of you and me?

Josh

Yeah, probably you and me.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah. Right. Okay, so I do believe, like, that is why we See all this sexual confusion and all this, you know, literally emascul manipulation because it's such an easy way to control people. If, if my day is busy thinking about, you know, what pronoun I'm going to be identified by. Yeah, I'm a fool. And you can do. You can control me and manipulate me any way you want. Right? So that's why, I mean, I do believe there's motives. I do believe a lot of it is engineered, and I do believe a lot of it is ultimately for control. And you as a pastor, I think you'll appreciate this. I do believe it's ultimately diabolical and part of the cosmic war between good and evil.

Josh

I do think that. I do think that. Okay, let me. I want to show you something and just see, like, I want you to react to something because what I've noticed is, like, a lot of these vibes that just, it seems like, you know. So my theory on some of this is, is that the strategy is sometimes rewrite the past to control the future.

Raymond Ibrahim

Of course. Absolutely.

Josh

Rewrite the past. So if we rewrite the past, as man, honestly, it's especially the, you know, we don't have to do the whole thing, but, man, if we rewrite the past as the Christians are the bad guys, then they, man, look what happened when they had control. Rewrite the past. Now we can control the future. If it went bad when they had control in the past, we all need to make sure they don't have control in the future.

Raymond Ibrahim

That's absolutely exactly what I believe. Okay, so when you ask me about motive, the one thing I see is the rewriting of the past is always, always, always about demonizing Christians and making modern day their descendants Europeans, modern day Americans and so forth. Disavow their heritage. Not want to be like those people because they were horrible. And so if you're not going to be like them. And what were they? Well, they were normal, religious and commonsensical and conservative. So you have to be the opposite. Otherwise you'll be like these evil, horrible Christians. So that is absolutely the case. You can see this. I call it fake history, which I find much more dangerous than fake news for the reasons that you alluded to, because fake history, okay, fake news, right, is there's a new headline and it's a lie and it creates its chaos and whatever, but it's ephemeral. It goes on new cycle, has something tomorrow. Fake history creates overarching narratives that you see reality through. So I'll give you a per. So one Example, of course, is what we're talking about. Oh, the Christians are the bad guys and poor Muslims now. You need to make it up for them. Bring them into your country and shut up. And you know, that kind of mentality. But here's another one. The idea that slavery is a white man thing. Right. White men created it. Everyone else, I don't know if you've ever seen this. I talked about her a lot. There's this a black professor, her name is Bridget Cooper at Rutgers University. You need to watch this clip. She comes up and she talks about. Literally, she says whites are the ones who did slavery. Before that yellow, black, and brown people got along, and there's just something inherently evil about white people. And we got to take those mofos out. This is a professor. Okay, okay, now, yeah, yeah. But you know what? But it makes sense that she says that because she's been taught that, yeah, slavery is something that white man created. Okay. In reality, of course. And if you want to talk about Islam, they've enslaved way more people historically. Really? Oh, my God.

Additional Commentator

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

And really, really. And the slavery was always accompanied with sadism and real mistreatment because those they enslave are infidels. And there's a whole, you know, teachings about how to treat the infidel. And I'll give you one example. They enslaved a ton of blacks from sub Saharan Africa. You know what they did, too, at the same time, they castrated all the males because they didn't to want. Want their blood polluting their genes.

Interjecting Commentator

Wow.

Raymond Ibrahim

So that's why in the Arab world, you don't have black DNA.

Josh

Wow.

Raymond Ibrahim

Look at. In America, you still have a large black population because that didn't happen to them. Okay.

Josh

Wow.

Raymond Ibrahim

There's also the fact that, well, who actually abolished slavery? Okay, yeah, whites and Americans did it, but so did everyone else. But who abolished it? Oh, it was Europeans. It was whites. Is Saudi Arabia had slavery officially up until the 1970s.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Wow.

Additional Commentator

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

And the Islamic world, the only reason it was officially canceled was due to the colonial powers, which now we're told they're the bad guys. Oh, the colonial era, they actually. Yeah, they Imperial colonizers, they actually got, you know, did away with slavery. So this is why history is so weaponized. If you don't know all this and what you're told and what this is, what we're told, that whites, Europeans, Christians, historically were just monsters.

Interjecting Commentator

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

There's a reason for that fake history and that narrative, because now you, to be a good person, have to do the opposite you have to be tolerant. You have to be a doormat to everyone else, Muslims especially. You have to make up for your sins and all that sort of thing. So it's very effective. It's very diabolical, you know, and it's, it's so widespread and permeates everything. Now we're talking about books and. Esposito, look at Hollywood. Yeah, I mean, you know, you're telling me about this idea of the, of the crusaders are, you know, these evil racists, whatever, that's in every movie. And there's no movie that you can watch where they don't come out like that. And the Muslims are the noble, magnanimous, you know, sort of wise characters like Saladin. It's always like that.

Josh

Actually, that actually, actually dovetails. Something I want to ask you, like what? So two primary objections. Then I want you to respond to something that was very, very viral. This is a good example we're talking about here in a second. Objections that I think people would have, like when they hear what you're talking about. Number one is, hey, Raymond, aren't you selectively editing history? Because, man, there have been times, even in antiquity, when Christians and Muslims and Jews live together in prosperous ways. What about Andalusia? You know, things like that? Like, I think some people would say, man, you're, you're selectively editing.

Additional Commentator

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

My response to that is when we talk about the long war that I document in these books, okay? It initiates from the Muslim world and it continues on, on everywhere, always, until it stopped. Okay? That's the history. So there was never a time where you had a Muslim power living side by side with a non Muslim power. And it just said, oh, we'll live. We'll leave you in peace. Okay? The only time that happens is when the Muslims are in the weekend. They're weakened and they can't do much about it, which is kind of like now. So, okay, Andalusia. All one has to do is look at a book by a friend of mine, Dario Fernandez Moreira, professor is called the Andalusian Myth. It's about a 600 page book. And he just goes into it deeply and just shows you how it was. It was another fake history fabricated a few decades ago, okay? And if you want to talk about cherry picking, that's the cherry picking. Here's what, here's what these Golden Age myths, what they are like, they look at a place like Andalusia, which is the Islamic name for Spain, conquered Spain. And they see things like wealth, they see great Architecture.

Interjecting Commentator

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

They see opulent palaces and, you know, waterfalls, and they learn and they see, oh, there was a lot of, you know, literary. Literary works being produced in Arabic and whatnot. So it seems like, wow, this is a, you know, very kind of like, advanced time. And it seems like. And then they compare it to Europe and they say, oh, this is the Dark Ages. And these people are living, like, you know, just backwards, etc. Okay, okay, now I'll give you a proper analogy with the truth. Are you familiar with. What is it? Uae?

Josh

They have these, like, United Arab Emirates. Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

Whichever one of those has those massive skyscrapers and they're like, Dubai. Dubai. I think maybe. Yeah. Where they have, like, all this crazy architecture. Really impressive architecture. Okay, imagine now 100, 200 years from now in the world's changed and that civilization's gone. Western civilization is gone. But people come and they see those. Wow, those skyscrapers, and there's nothing like it. And then they start learning. Oh, and. And there was a lot of wealth here and this and that. And, oh, there were workers from the Philippines. And no, maybe this was a really advanced kind of society. All right, but the truth. It was. But why? Well, one, it was. It was oil money. So none of that was actually built by them. It was built by Western engineers, for example. And two, they were living still, like, under Sharia, Islamic primitive law.

Josh

In Andalusia?

Raymond Ibrahim

Well, yeah, in Andalusia. Okay, so I was giving you the example of, like, UAE or Saudi Arabia. But okay, so, yeah, in Andalusia, I'll give you a perfect example. At the height of the Golden Age, something. There's what's known as the martyrs of Cordoba. And Cordoba is the jewel of Andalusia. This is the Golden Age. And right at that time, basically, you had something like 50, 60 Christians, Spaniards, who were systematically executed because they were declaring Jesus Christ. Some of them had converted or their parents had converted out of duress to Islam, like most Spaniards did during the conquests. And they wanted to sort of unburden their soul and say, no, I'm going back to Christianity. I renounce your prophet. And they were skinned alive, beheaded, boiled alive, crucified, torn to pieces in this Andalusia. In the Golden Age of Andalusia.

Josh

Yeah, because that's the one that people typically point to as a historical example of, like, peace and harmony. See that?

Raymond Ibrahim

So what I'm saying is. No, no, there was. What it had is. It had wealth because it was plundering it from Europe. Cordoba, again, this. This is the heart of the Golden Age. The endless myth was the slave emporium of the Muslim world. So why? Because it was based in Europe and I told you they wanted European slaves. So that was where all the European slaves that they could hunt down from Europe were brought to Cordoba and sold there. So my point is, yeah, it was opulent, it was rich, it was advanced, it had good architecture and it had literature. That doesn't mean that what we associate with radical Islam and, you know, tribal primitiveness wasn't there. It still was, you know, so what

Josh

about like, okay, before we react to this thing from this. It's a Tucker clip I want you to react to. So, all right, you just mentioned radicalism. I think that's something. And this is, honestly, I don't know what to think about. So that's why I'm most excited about this. I'm just genuinely asking. So I think what some people would say or like, this is the vibe that I've picked up before is, man, you're selectively choosing the actions of a few to tarnish the reputation of the vast majority. And I will say, man, you know, you, you walk around Dallas a lot. There's a lot of like, you know, I call them sweetie pie Muslims. You know, they just seem like sweet little families driving my Uber Uber, you know, whatever it is. And then I pulled, you know, you've got some, you've got quotes from, to tie into this. Some people would hear that and they go, and Raymond, doesn't the Quran command peace and acceptance and non violence? And they'll quote things. I'll just give, give a couple quotes. Indeed, the believers, Jews, Christians and Sabians, whoever truly believes in Allah and the last day and does good will have their reward with the Lord. And there will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve or like, here's another quote. Let there be no compulsion in religion. So I think what they would say is, hey man, you know, these people who did this stuff you were talking about, they were actually disobeying, like what the. That's what they would say. For the truth stands out clearly from falsehood. So whoever renounces false gods and believes in Allah has certainly grasped the firmest, unfailing handhold. And Allah is all hearing and all knowing. So, Raymond Ibrahim, aren't you just using the actions of a few to tarnish the reputations of a majority? And you're, you're selective editing.

Raymond Ibrahim

All right, very good. So let's, let's dig into this. All right, the first thing is, and I, I'm always Confronted by that question, which is. Which I can also word in a different way, which is, I know a good Muslim though. You know, my cab driver or my. The guy at 7:11, you know, know he's a great guy. Okay, fine. I have no problem with that. And that does not in any way, shape or form pose any problem for me because I am not interested in what a sub. A human, how they practice their religion. I already know amongst Christianity and all religions, you can. It is a teaching. And then you can. You can call yourself a Christian and do the exact opposite.

Additional Commentator

Right?

Josh

That's right.

Raymond Ibrahim

So I'm not. That doesn't do anything for me. I'm sure there are Muslims out there who are great, awesome people. People, Right. What I care about is what does the religion teach? Yes, that's it.

Josh

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

And guess what? That is easily ascertained. We can find that out. This is not a mystery at all. Unlike Christianity. Actually, one good thing about Islam is it's very black and white. It's very simple. It doesn't have a metaphysical side or, you know, something about my relationship with God or something abstract. It's just the law. Literally, it's the law. The word is submit. Islam means submit. Well, what am I submitting to? To the laws of Allah, which we call Sharia. Okay, so we know what those laws are. And some of them I can just tell you, okay, if you're an apostate, if you want to leave, you're born. No one, Muslims are born into it. If your father is a Muslim, you're a Muslim. There's no baptism or ceremony. That's it. You're born into it. And if you try to leave, yeah, you can die. That's part of Islam. Muhammad said in a canonical hadith, whoever leaves his religion, Islam, kill him. And now you have basically in Sunni Islam, which you have four schools of jurisprudence, all of them agree that the apostate has to be punished. Most of them say kill him. Some say, don't kill a woman, just keep her trapped in a house and starve her. Yeah, all sorts of things like that. Blasphemers, anyone who dares speak against Allah and his prophet. Same thing.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

This is part of the religion. This is not in any way, shape or form a radical interpretation.

Josh

Does that still happen in nations today?

Raymond Ibrahim

Oh, yeah, all the time. I was telling about those reports I write, you know, Muslim persecution every month. There's people who are killed because they're perceived and seen as apostates who became Christians or who are being jailed, killed because they spoke something or perceived or accused of speaking against Islam.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

Sex slavery, concubinage. Yeah, that's in the Quran. I told you Muhammad did it. It's part of the religion. Slavery was only abolished because western forces forced Islam to abolish it. But it's part of the, and it still goes on underground. There's 50 million slaves around the world, almost all of them in Africa and Asia, in the Middle East. Okay, so the, the religion is the religion and it is what we're talking about. Then there's the history which, so we're talking about the doctrines and some of the more problematic ones. The history is one long manifestation of the doctrines. Okay, so even history validates that. Yeah, it's not just some abstract book that, that or a verse. This is what happened, this is what they did. Okay. As far as the issue about, you know, there's some verses in the Quran, you have your religion, I have mine, the Sabians, etc. Etc. What people don't understand is that Islam, there's a whole science in Arabic it's called. And what this in translation means is the abrogated and the abrogator or you know, which basically means Muslims realize real quick if you look at the Quran and you want to make sense of it and you want to create laws out of contradicts itself, because there is verses that sound peaceful and say you have, there's no compulsion and you have your religion, etc. Etc. But then there's verses that say fight the infidel, you know, conquer them, kill them, subjugate them. And so the, the logic of what this doctrine, which is widespread and the only way you can understand the Quran is the revelations, as they're called, that came to Muhammad earlier, get abrogated, get canceled, replaced by the later ones. Okay, okay. And it just so happens that if you look at Muhammad's career, it's, it's sort of split into the earliest phases in Mecca and the later phases in Medina. In Mecca he was weak, he was outnumbered, he had no followers. That's when you get all the peaceful, tolerant verses. He goes to Medina, essentially becomes a warlord. And that's when he begins the jihad. And after about a decade, he's almost conquered most of Arabia. Re conquered Mecca around 6:30. That's when he gets the verses that now go on the offensive. And the two verses that are amongst the very latest, they're from Surat al Toba, which we know as chapter nine in the Quran is 9:5 and 9:29. And they are collectively known as the sword verses. Because these verses 9:29, for example, says fight the people of the book, Christians and Jews until they pay tribute jizya and feel themselves subdued. And 9:5 says wherever you find the pagans, slay them. Lay in ambush for them, await them, slay them and kill them. Peace. Those two verses according to the. As they're known, the scholars and there's consensus on this and consensus is very important in normative Islam. Abrogate all that peaceful stuff.

Josh

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

That's one main view. The second view is similar and more elastic. What it says is you, the Muslim can implement the verses that you find yourself in a situation. So if I find myself, I'm a Muslim and I'm living in an infidel country and I'm outnumbered.

Additional Commentator

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote when. What Muhammad quoted when he was weak. The Meccan versus the tolerant verses as a ruse. And when, when the time comes that now I'm in a stronger position, that's when I implement the. The violence later verses.

Josh

And you do see, is that historically what happens?

Raymond Ibrahim

Yes. Yeah. You know, when ISIS came to power in 2014. 2013, 2014. I remember because I do follow. So if you're going to do that, I'm going to start.

Josh

I'm getting a cookie.

Raymond Ibrahim

All right, go ahead.

Josh

I'm enjoying this.

Raymond Ibrahim

I will. In around with the rise of isis, I. Because I follow the persecution of Christians, I came across a lot of stories of Assyrians and other Christians living in Syria and in Iraq. And they talked about how they lived, you know, their. Their people, the Christians lived with Muslims side by side in villages for, you know, decades, centuries. And they knew each other and they would. Oftentimes a lot of the Christians were better off and they would help the Muslims and whatnot. And they would. They talked about them as family. And then when ISIS came to town, those same Muslims went and pointed out and said, that's the Christian house. This is where we get. If you remember the noon, the N that, you know, it was like a. You know, it's like a symbol. It's the Arabic letter for Nasar, which isis. And those Muslims would put on Christian homes to say this is where the Christian lives. And people started using it as a sign of solidarity. But there were numerous accounts like that. And the people, the Christians said they were just like, they were so shocked. I thought this guy was like family. And the moment the circumstance changed and Islam came to town, they just jumped on that bandwagon.

Josh

I didn't plan to go here Trinity, can you grab, can you pull that? There's a graphic that does the three phases of Muslim immigration. So this went like viral a few years ago. I want to know. This is why I like doing stuff like this, because I can ask you if this is true or not. So, like this went crazy viral like a year ago and I grabbed it. It's three phases of Muslim immigration. Phase one, few in number, oppressed Islam, play the victim, claim Islamophobia, more tolerant of others. Phase two, large minority indignant Islam threatening demand Sharia law, intolerant infidels. Phase three, clear majority dominant Islam, militant, strict Sharia law, kill, subdue all infidels. And then it says for 1400 years this pattern hasn't changed. Et cetera, moderate surah. Historically, is that true?

Raymond Ibrahim

Logically, it's true. Historically, I'll say it's not true for one reason, because you can only get away with this amongst stupid Westerners. And historically, Westerners weren't stupid. Okay, so phase one, play the victim, claim Islamophobia wouldn't have worked a few centuries ago. You can't go to a European country in the medieval era and be, oh, I'm an oppressed Muslim. They'd kick you off out.

Josh

It doesn't work in like Anglo Saxon Britain probably.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, okay, so, so yeah, it works now, but historically, to their credit, Europeans would not have fallen because it requires naivety. You have to, for phase one, you have to be naive and go, oh, they're poor victims. Oh, Islamophobia. Oh, I got to give you tolerance. Yeah, that wouldn't have happened. Okay, so, but, but now, yes, this is absolutely correct amongst the naive West.

Josh

So like, for listeners, because like, if you're like me and you're trying to get your head around historically, how does this work in civilization? You know, it's like, honestly, if you just zoom out, like as I'm reading your stuff, I'm like, if I just zoom out, once upon a time there were zero Muslim nations and now there's 50. Well, that happened somehow. But what, so what do you do with like nations? Like, I think it's like Albania, there's like a few nations where it's like people go, hey man, see, that's a, that's a Muslim nation where it's very tolerant and pluralistic. And what do you, how do you think?

Raymond Ibrahim

Well, okay, the truth is, is Albania for historic Albania is really like schizophrenic. Because what's funny about it is it became Muslim through coercion. One of the guys I Don't know what that is. Do you remember Skanderbeg?

Josh

I don't.

Raymond Ibrahim

Okay. One of the characters in Defenders of the west, chapter seven, I think, is this Albanian hero. He's probably one of the greatest warriors of Christendom who fought the Ottomans, kept them out of Albania for a quarter of a century.

Josh

I do remember this guy. Yep.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah. Anyway, after him, the. The Muslims were so indignant that they once. They did conquer Albania. Their Albania is basically either there was no. You pay tribute, you become Muslim, or not. So that's why it entered into Albania. But what's funny about it is that it's so. It's just a nominal thing. It's just a superficial thing, because their hero and their flag is still Skanderbeg, who fought Islam. The Muslims. The Muslims of Albania still venerate the Christian guy who fought Islam. Okay.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Why?

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, because he's their hero. But at the same time, they're all very secular and atheistic. If you go to Albania, it's like, nobody there is. It's just a nominal thing. Yeah. It's like we're called Muslims, but there's literally almost nobody there who's a true Muslim. I'm sure there are.

Josh

It's almost like, so, like an example. You know, I grew up in the Bible Bell south, and a lot of times you would see people like, yeah, dude, you know, they're taking a census and like, well, you know, I'm not a Muslim, and I'm not an atheist. So, yeah, I guess I'm a Christian.

Raymond Ibrahim

Christian, yeah.

Additional Commentator

Yeah.

Josh

Cultural. We would call it cultural Christians. And they were. I'm culturally Muslim.

Raymond Ibrahim

It's my cultural thing. Yeah, yeah. Oh, there's this thing, Ramadan. We hang out at night, eat, you know, we feast. And, you know, for that. For that particular. That's what I mean by Albania. You know, it's. It's such an aberration. It has a weird history. It's still very European in a way. It. Its flag is the guy who fought Islam even though they're Muslims. You know, it's like really a weird kind of. Of dynamic, which I would say is very aberrant and doesn't really reflect on our topic because we have multiple examples that validate what we're talking about, you know, so you'll always find an aberration. And even in Albania, I don't want to make it sound like there are. I'm sure there's a radical Muslim there here or two, you know, I'm sure. But I say, by and large, they're very kind of like a secular atheistic. It's the same thing with the Stan countries, you know, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, they are Islamic, but because of under Soviet rule, they're literally atheistic. So, you know, they're not. You know what I mean? So. Okay, so it's just. Yeah, it's like a nominal name cultural thing.

Josh

But you're saying like when. When you're saying in general, historically and geopolitically, when actual practicing Muslims gain power, that graphic tends to happen.

Interjecting Commentator

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah. Okay. So that's what we're seeing in Europe. Europe right now.

Josh

Okay, I want to ask you about that.

Raymond Ibrahim

And America too, which is when they're tiny minorities. Oh, you know, I'm oppressed. I need special privileges because I'm being, you know, oppressed. And then when they become, you know, stronger but still a minority, then they become more demanding and more assertive. Yeah, you're seeing that everywhere in Europe. And then of course, I'll give you another perfect example of what happens. So in Nigeria, that's one of the rare countries where the Muslims and Christians are literally 50.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

50.

Raymond Ibrahim

It's a genocide of Muslims against Christians now because 50. 50.

Josh

Well, for devil's happy. Does it ever happen the other way where the Christians attack the Muslims on provoked that kind of thing?

Raymond Ibrahim

You mean Nigeria or in general?

Josh

In Nigeria?

Raymond Ibrahim

No, no, not at all.

Josh

I just didn't know I wanted.

Raymond Ibrahim

No, no, no, no. It's a good question. No, no, it's. It's. It is. Okay. And here's how the media plays it. The media will never tell you it's Muslims or Christians. It'll say there's a. It's, it's, it's.

Josh

Dude, I've noticed this. Yeah, keep going. I've noticed.

Raymond Ibrahim

They'll say, okay. They'll say, oh, these herdsmen, because they need grazing land, invaded and attacked and, you know, killed a sedentary village. And that's it.

Josh

It just so happens they tie it to climate change.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah. Have you noticed this openly? They tie it to climate change and. But then you find out, oh, all the herdsmen are Muslim and they were dressed in black, chanting Islamic slogans and saying Allahu Akbar, and all the sedentary villagers were Christians.

Josh

Times.

Raymond Ibrahim

Okay? So, yeah, it's the same dynamic over and over, but the media dissembles as usual.

Josh

Now let me. Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

Because remember, a Christian can never be the victim. Christians are the oppressors. We worked very hard to create a fake history to convince you Christians are bad. So we can't have you thinking Christians are being persecuted by Muslims? That's why that topic, as.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

As.

Raymond Ibrahim

As massive as it is. I mean, I told you, every month I write a long report. I wish I didn't have to. It gets. Nobody knows about it. Nobody. Including Christians in the west because it's such an Achilles heel. You're not supposed to believe that Christians, who we told you, are the bad guys. You've got to be liberal. You know, you can't be like any Christian are. They're the ones who are being killed and worse by Muslims because we taught you you're the bad guy. You need to accommodate the Muslims and so forth.

Josh

So, okay, so you. And you mentioned. I mean, you brought. And honestly, this is one of the. You can have some of that if you want it. You. You brought this up like, hey, man, some of this is happening in Europe and America. So this is honestly what. One of the reasons I want to reach out to you. Just. Just to shoot you real straight. So, like, here in. In Dallas, like, we've got a couple areas of Dallas that are. They're very, you know, very heavy Muslim immigration, that kind of thing. So I'm gonna. This is gonna take me a second. I'm gonna run through some things that are really not as much for you. They're for people who are listening.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

I'm chewing.

Josh

Yeah, you're good. So that we can give you a chance to eat cookie so that people understand, like, why is Josh asking this question? Well, this is what I'm getting ready to do. This is why I'm asking this question now for listeners. What I'm doing for. For Christians is I just want to remind you something like, biblically and theologically, what you got in the Scriptures is that God establishes three institutions for the flourishing of humanity. He establishes the family, the church, and the state. And what Christians are not good at doing. This is not going to be a surprise to Raymond. What Christians are not good at doing is thinking in categories. So what Christians have to learn to do is with any issue, honestly, especially things like Islam, Muslim immigration, that sort of thing, Christians have to learn how to put their theological thinking cap on, open the Bible and then think in categories and ask three questions, not one. Instead of just asking, man, how should I think or feel about Muslims and Muslim immigration, we actually have to ask three questions again. Family, church, state. So you need to ask the question 1. For me, as an individual Christian leading a Christian family, how am I supposed to relate to my Muslim neighbors? Dude, we got commands for that. I'm supposed to Love my neighbor. I'm supposed to share the gospel with my neighbor. Question number two, then we need to ask the question. Awesome, man. I'm a pastor of a church with a massive missions budget. This is just. You don't know anything about me. But that's, that's what we and like our goal is to fulfill the Great Commission is to share Christ with all nations, teaching them to obey all the things, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and the Spirit. So then we ask the question, what should we do as churches? Well, we're supposed to fulfill the Great Commission. So I'm like, dude, I love Jesus, loves everybody in the world. I love everybody in the world. We're going to try to share the gospel with everybody. But then what Christians historically are not good at doing, which you are good at helping people think about, is asking the third question, what about the role of the state and thinking civilizationally Christians, honestly, we haven't had to think like that for a couple hundred years. And what I'm trying to do here is, and this is leading into a long question here, here is man, when Christians put their theological thinking cap on and ask the third question, how should Christians want the role of the state, the biblical role of the state, thinking civilizationally to relate to things like Muslims, immigration? That's where Christians, I think, get a little naive, to put it mildly. Now, if you're listening and all this is leading into a question I'm going to ask you. So for people who are watching and you're like, dude, why is he even talking about this? So there's obviously this is a massive conversation in Europe, parts of America. If you're not a listener from Dallas, this is a pretty big conversation in parts of Dallas, parts of Michigan, New York City. So go ahead and toss that first thing up the. Yeah, that's it. This is BBC. Muhammad overtakes Noah as the most popular boy's name in England and Wales. So for listeners, I just zoom out in England and Wales. Pause for dramatic effect.

Raymond Ibrahim

It's not just there, by the way.

Josh

I'm going to keep going. Overtakes Noah as the. No, no, don't do that yet. Yet. So I've got some other things. 11%. You can take that down. Trinity. 11% of England's mayors are now Muslim. 11% in the following cities in Europe. This kind of thing that, like, if you're a Christian, you're like, what, bro? What is going on in the following cities in Europe? If you take there's variants of how people Spell Muhammad. I think there's five primary. If you take them all and combine them into one name, in the following cities in Europe, Muhammad is now the number one male baby. So you have the entire nations of England and Wales. London, England. Manchester, uk, Berlin, Germany. Oslo, Norway. Brussels, Belgium. Amsterdam, Netherlands. Edinburgh, Scotland. Glasgow, Scotland. Nationally, as of this year, for the first time in human history, nationally in Scotland, the variants of Muhammad combined are now nationally the number one baby name in all of Scotland. Before I toss up this next graphic, for people who don't know this, like, I'm not as much of a history nerd as Raymond, but I'm a little bit of a history nerd. Since 1521, the king of England has been referred to the Pope, originally titled the King of England starting in 1521, the protector of the faith or the defender of the faith. Talking about the Christian faith. Who did that? Do you know who did that?

Additional Commentator

Pope.

Josh

Yeah. Or what king. Do you know what king was originally called that?

Raymond Ibrahim

Actually, I believe it was Henry viii.

Josh

That's right.

Raymond Ibrahim

When he was still Catholic.

Josh

Okay. There you go. That's awesome. That's hilarious. Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

But then he kept it when he

Josh

became Protestant ever since. Good job.

Additional Commentator

Good job.

Josh

So ever since 1521. So for 500 years, the king of England. Oh, by the way, until this month, has been referred to as the defender of the faith. Go ahead and toss that up. As of this month, for the first time in English history in 500 years, they switched it from defender of the faith because it was Christianity to defender of the faiths. And now it's like, now we're protecting all faiths. Go ahead and toss that. The video of the march. So this just for people who don't know what's going on. That's a march.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

March.

Josh

And you may look at that. You may be going, this is. This is last month, by the way. You may look at that. You may be going, oh, man. I wonder what's going on over there in Saudi Arabia. Yeah, that's Michigan. That's Michigan, by the way. I don't know. What are those flags? Do you know what those flags are?

Raymond Ibrahim

Trying to see what's written on them. Yeah, I mean, it's all. I mean, based on the context, it's all supremacist, Islamic Arabic jargon.

Josh

Okay. I don't know. I tried to put you on the spot.

Raymond Ibrahim

A lot of them is the. The shaheda. There's no God but Allah. Muhammad is his messenger.

Josh

Okay. That kind of stuff. All right, you can take that down. So that again, that's not like Iran. That's not Saudi Arabia. That's Michigan. Go ahead and toss that Apple maps thing up. Trinity. So here's what this is, Raymond. This is because of the immigration thing. This is mosques, new mosques in the last three years, just in the Dallas Metroplex. So I'm going to let that just sink in for people.

Raymond Ibrahim

These are new ones.

Josh

These are new ones, from what I understand. New ones just in the last three years in the Dallas Metroplex. And then I'm going to play. And I know it may be a little incendiary, but like, I just want you to comment all this stuff. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to ask you, and then I'm going to. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to ask you. Then I'm going to show this. And then I want you to answer the question. Like when people zoom out historically and watch this trend, if the trend continues, my question to you is like, based on history, what's next? So before you ask that question, this next thing you're getting ready to see is, this is an imam in. If I remember right, I think it's in New York. This is an imam in New York. And he's explaining to people the strategy. Go ahead and play this real quick. Trinity.

Additional Commentator

One day you're going to be the president of the United States of America. No one go in my galani. Who can stop you from becoming a president? President. Dream big, have a vision. Because if Barack Hussein Obama can be a president, Suheb Jawad cannot be a president.

Josh

Do Muslims think of him as a Muslim?

Additional Commentator

He's going to be a president.

Raymond Ibrahim

His father was Muslim, right?

Additional Commentator

They used to laugh at him.

Josh

Now listen real close.

Additional Commentator

What happened? What is Makkah now? Where is. It's coming. Change is coming to America. And what is Allah telling us? You are the best of nations. You're better than everybody else. That's what Allah is saying. Let's work towards that. Let's work towards a Muslim mirror. Next election that comes in, nominate people for the school board of education. Next election that comes here, nominate people for the local township. Became the demographics change. People converted. There's a big, huge conversion going on in this country. Where are the converts? They just convert and they're gone in the wilderness. The other thing, children. Muslims have the highest population. Pew foundation did a research study. Pew foundation. And they said that Muslim household average is 3.4 child per family. The white American has one child per family. We're already beating the march, because these are voters. These are not just babies being born in hospitals. These are voters. That's the way a politician looks at it. We have to change the framework, start looking at things from a different lens, different angles for future. You're not going to change society today in your lifetime, but you think about your grandchildren.

Josh

There you go. So when you see that, first of all, is that fringe rhetoric or is that historically centered? When you see all that, like as you're watching what's happening in the world, Europe, parts of America, what do you think about it? And then like historically, like if the trend continues, you know what happens?

Raymond Ibrahim

So first of all, what you just played, I've seen countless of that throughout the years because I, I know Arabic and I can I just watch them. I mean, you're lucky when you get a translation or if he speaks in English. But they are constantly, they feel especially relaxed speaking Arabic because most people don't know what they're saying. So that sort of message is like, I, I can anytime go on the satellite and hear some guy saying something like that, first of all. So that's very common, very mainstream. And second, you have to understand. Let's go back to the concept of jihad, right? And I find it very interesting. Here's one of those ironies. Maybe you've, you're acquainted with what I'm going to say. But one of the apology the apologias about the word jihad is historically it was translated as holy war. Right? Because that's what it was. It manifested itself the way I described it in, in holy war, war on behalf of empowering Islam and Muslims and scholars will tell you, no, that's not what the word means. It actually means to strive, to struggle. Okay, okay. And guess what? Yes, that is literally the word, what it means, the connotation of course is holy war. Because that's how historically, if you were going to empower Islam vis a vis the infidel, if you were going to beat the infidel, you had to do through what war? Because they're not going to let you walk in and take over them. This is why when you asked me to explain it historically, it's not that easy because what we're seeing today doesn't have a historical pres. Precedence.

Josh

Oh really?

Raymond Ibrahim

No, it's. The historical precedent is Islam was aggressive and it tried to conquer. What we have today is western countries empowering and taking in Muslims and allowing them to come in and being outbred by them and appeasing them. Europeans never did that before. Of course not.

Josh

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

Because they actually had a civilization they wanted to defend and a faith and a religion. Today's Western person, you know, he's just, I don't know, hedonist, A nihilist. It doesn't. A relativist. Anything's fine, right? Yeah. Why not? So that's one of the issues which we'll get to. But the word jihad, so it's interesting because when they tell you, oh, it just means to struggle and strive, that really show. That really explains what you just saw. It does mean that. But again, what are you struggling and what are you striving to do to empower Islam? Okay. And guess what? So amongst these types and amongst the scholars and the Muslims, there's different forms of jihad. There's a physical one, we know, holy one, but there's things that they call jihad of. I'll give you the English translation. The jihad of the tongue. Jihad of the pen.

Josh

Can you do the Arabic?

Interjecting Commentator

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

Jihad Alissa. Jihad al Kalam. Okay. These are the jihad of the tongue, Jihad of the pen. And these basically like. Like propaganda and disseminating lies to help Islam, to empower Islam to cry Islamophobia, for example, to say, you are oppressing me, that's a jihad. Now what you're seeing is there's also what's known as. It has different names, but jihad of the womb, which is basically breeding them out. Breeding them. Yeah. So what he said, I've heard countless Muslims say this. That is the game plan. All right? We will outbreed you. We. By numbers. We will take over. And this is why some of these European countries, like, you know, England and France, they talk about we're gonna stop migration. Well, it's too little too late because

Josh

you think so for real.

Raymond Ibrahim

It's too little too late because what are you gonna do with the 10 Muslim pop population there that's constantly outbreeding you? Right. And by the way, there's a reason they give that Muhammad is the number one name, not Ahmed or Mustafa. Muhammad's a popular name amongst Muslims, but in the Islamic world, if you go to a Muslim country, it's going to be in the top, but it's not necessarily be the number one. The reason it's the number one name is they're letting you know what this is about because that's the name of their prophets. It's a religious thing. Okay? So it's, it's. It's a. You know, it's like in your face. We are here to outbreed you. Do with Our prophet, you know, our, our master Muhammad. So, so this is definitely. It has it. It now when I say when I try to tell you that there's no historical precedent, what I mean by that is historically the only jihad that would work against non Muslims, including Christians and Europeans, was the physical kind. You couldn't dupe them by saying, hey, we're gonna go live in your country and we're gonna start out breeding you and you're gonna give us free money and you're gonna let us build mosques and you're gonna suppress your, your faith because it's offensive to us. That would have never happened. That's a modern day phenomenon, okay? And that's completely a byproduct of the West's spiritual sabotage. It has nothing left. It's a vacuous civilization. Unfortunately, that's why those guys and the defenders of the west were actually during these times that we're talking about the Crusades. And around that time Europe was the weak one. That was the weak side. The strong side was the mammoth behemoth, both Ottoman Sultanates and the Caliphates. But they still fought tooth and nail to the death. They had something to defend. They had the faith, they had their culture, they had their families. Today because a lot of Western people don't have any of those. They're capitulating and they go by feel good mantras and oh yes, tolerance and this and that. And you know, one last thing is the king and you know we're talking about, he's defender of the faith to defender of the faiths. Just to show you how ludicrous it's reached on the surface, this doesn't look bad. Okay? So you know, of course England is a multi faith country, so he has to represent them all or something like that. But for starters, England or Britain has religious freedom. So you can be a Muslim, you can be a Sikh, whatever, okay? So it doesn't need that. Defender of the faith historically meant that there's a faith that we believe collectively, us Brits, us English is true. Which was Christianity. And we will defend this, okay. When you turn that singular faith into faiths, okay. What you've just done is said that your faith is not real because there can only be one real faith. Okay. Faiths means none of them are real.

Josh

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

It's just an opinion that we each. He has that opinion. You have that opinion. Yeah, but you've just so just putting that little square has just turned the king of England and here the, the ironies just never end. His entire monarchy is validated and justified by Christianity. He is the Christian king, and he is now going to defend a religion that, in its core doctrines, attack Christianity by saying things like, you know, there is no such thing as a trinity. Christ is not the son of God. Only filthy infidels will say that we have to fight and kill them. So he's now going to protect that mentality, and yet he's the defender of the faith. So.

Josh

So, like, I. I read this quote years ago, and I. I'm. I made sure it was legit. So Erdogan, the guy, the Turkey. The president of Turkey. President. Is that what he's called? President? Okay. He said this, he said, because he was originally democratically elected, and now that's not how it rolls over there. So his quote was, democracy is like a streetcar. You ride it until you get where you want to go, and then you get off.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, that's. That's absolutely the Islamic game plan. You just saw him. They constantly come and they, you know, the Muslims will tell you, oh, we're gonna vote for the Muslim candidate, right?

Josh

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

Okay, well, that's not democracy. That's tribalism.

Josh

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

That's like a white guy saying, we. We're voting for the white guy.

Interjecting Commentator

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

How does that look? Right? You're supposed to vote for the guy that represents what's best for the society. Right. That sort of thing. But they come collectively. They don't even know who it is. It's just a Muslim. Muslims, because that's all we care about. We are a tribe. We're not here to assimilate. We're not here to have a civic society with you that's beneficial to you and me. It's just Islam 101. But it's. It's. It's found a little groove, and it's exploiting it. And due to the naivety that's embedded, and the problem with Western civilization and society as it is today is it's such a. It's a. It's a. Takes it for granted. It's very high trust society. And then you bring a sort of parasitic element moment that is not like that at all, that sees you as the enemy and just sees you as a freebie. What can I exploit this person out of? I'm not here to, you know, get along with or like, you know, we saw these, you know, financial scams, the Somalis, you know, what was it? Minnesota, 350 million or something like that.

Josh

Insane.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, because. And even in England, I remember watching Muslim clerics. I told you about the jizya is, you know what Christians would pay in tribute butte to their overlord, Muslim overlords. And I, you watch Muslims saying, yeah, we, we take welfare from you guys because it's jizya. It's our rightfully earned money.

Josh

They just say that publicly.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Yeah.

Josh

So that's the mentality. It's justified by that doctrine.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah.

Josh

Interesting.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah. There's one, I saw a Pakistani cleric, Sheikh Anjum Chowdhury. Chowdhury, Pakistani in Britain. And there was a video of me. I don't know if it's gone now, but there was a video of him where he says that joking, he's like, of course we get our welfare, but it's jizya. They owe it to us.

Josh

That's the doctrine. They used to just. I didn't know that. That's the mentality. Okay, let me. So let me, let me gear shift a little bit.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Well, hey, before we get back to the episode, I want to tell you about something coming up at Lake Point that we're really excited about. This summer we're hosting at the Movies a four week sermon series where we'll use movie clips and stories to illustrate powerful biblical truths. It's one of the most fun, incredibly creative experiences we do all year here at Lake Point and it's designed for the entire family. And so every weekend at our physical locations we'll feature unique movie themed experiences, fun characters in the lobby for both kids and adults, incredible worship and practical teaching from the word of God, and of course, popcorn and drinks for everyone. So whether you are here and maybe you're a longtime churchgoer, someone who's been away from church for a while, or maybe you're looking for an easy way to invite a friend, neighbor or co worker to church. This right, right here is the perfect series for you. At the Movies is an in person only event and begins July 11 and 12 and continues through August 1 and 2. And so if you're in the Dallas area, we'd love for you to join us at one of our campuses. You can find service times, locations and more information by texting the word atm to 20411. Now let's get back to the conversation.

Josh

So like stuff like this constant recently it goes pretty viral. Like man, it's like very high view count reach. So like there was a couple guys, a couple pastors on quote unquote pastors. I don't know these guys so I'm hesitant to give them that title that were on Tucker recently and dude, this blew up. I mean, I don't know if you actually. I know you did see it, and this episode, I mean, it went. It was very significant. So, like, I want to show. I just want to show you this kind of thing. I mean, there's millions of views. Okay. And it's the kind of thing you see quite frequently. So let me show you this. Do you have it chopped up in the same clips? Trinity? No, there was a. Well, we'll do our best here. You tell me when you want to pause and respond to something he says, and we'll just kind of. You tell when. Trinity. When you want to pause. But this is the type of thing that it's in the mainstream, gets injected in the mainstream, and it taints how people think about stuff. Okay, so, yeah, go ahead and toss that.

Interjecting Commentator

The Ottomans didn't charge churches tax. And so when the Ottomans were in control of the promised land for 400 years in the millet system, they didn't charge churches tax. Israel started just a few years ago.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah.

Josh

Yes. No, no, no.

Raymond Ibrahim

This reminds me of the John Esposito quote, the four centuries of peaceful coexistence. Because he says four centuries and it's just as bad. What do you say? You know, so. No, this is. Okay, this is like he's comparing apples and oranges, right? Okay, you're comparing four centuries under Ottoman rule with Christians living in Israel. And it's just. Okay, here's what happened under the Ottomans. You're not a citizen, okay? You're dhimmi. You pay tribute. You're not. You don't have equality with fellow Muslims under Israel. You're a Christian. You're a citizen. Yeah, you do have equality. All right? You had to pay tributes. You had to pay all this. And if you don't, you get killed or sold into slavery. That doesn't exist in Israel. All right? And so what do you say? The 400 years. And then he's talking about attacks, about how Israel. There's attacks going on right now, which. And his point is. And the Ottomans didn't tax churches. And this is. To me, it's such a disingenuous thing to say because was literally, they didn't tax churches, but they taxed the Christian communities almost to death to exist. So that was part of it, kind of jizya. Yeah.

Josh

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

Okay. So it's a one big tax. You guys don't give it, we're gonna kill you. And then once you've done it, okay, you have your little church in your little village, and you better not repair it or enlarge it. That's what it is. You're telling me that's, that's better than what Israel does with churches? Churches aren't taxed.

Josh

And what they're referring to, actually, just to interject, reject. We have a church partner in Israel that we, we fund. They do great. They're doing just fine.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, so it's, it's just, it's beyond. I have no problem if he was, you know, if they're criticizing Israel because of the things that we see like the spitting on the Christians or a soldier destroying a Jesus statue, okay, that's fine. But that is a far cry from what happened to Christians under Ottoman rule. So I'll tell you this. Like, here's one aspect that did. Okay, I told you to be, to be a Christian under Ottoman rule, you're basically second class citizen. Now. There was a time, due to the colonial era, that they pray because the Western powers were so strong, especially Russia, they pressured the Ottoman Empire to give Christians Christian subjects equal rights. When that happened, the Muslims flipped out and there were mass pogroms against Christians and then just like something.

Josh

Which means what?

Raymond Ibrahim

Like, they just would invade Christian villages and slaughter tens of thousands of them and rape them and mutilate them. All right, and the Ottomans would look the other way. Why? Because how dare you, Christian actually be my equal. All right, so that was the mentality of the Ottoman Empire. Is that what's going on in Israel where actually you have Christians who are citizens and who, you know, the spitting and all that. Okay, but that's not what the Ottomans did, like literally. And then, and then when there was war, War. So we can look at what's happening. You know, Israel is at war and now Christians are suffering more. Okay, but are they being targeted? I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, it's just war, right? When the war happened, World War I, the Ottomans, and this was well known Churchill, there's a quote where he says, yeah, they use the fog of war to do what they've always wanted to do, which is a genocide of Christians. So I'm talking about the Armenian.

Josh

Churchill said this.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah, I'm talking about the Armenian genocide, the Assyrian genocide, the Middle Eastern Christian genocides of the holy land land, 2.5 million systematically were killed. So if you look at Israel and Christians at peace, compared to Ottomans and Christians at peace, Israel wins out. If you look at war, yeah, Israel wins out. Because once war started, a genocide was launched against Christians. War is going on now with Israel and Lebanon and there's Christians there, but I don't think it's lamentable when anyone dies, especially a Christian. But it's. I don't think they're targeting them out of hatred the way the Ottomans and the Muslims did.

Josh

All right, keep going. Trinity.

Interjecting Commentator

And you know, so that Christians have pressure applied to them. I mean, native believers, the ones who, whose churches have been there longer than Israel has been a state. They're the ones that are facing the pressure that it's very hard to get Christians in America to care about at all.

Raymond Ibrahim

And their Muslim rulers did, didn't do that during the Ottoman period.

Interjecting Commentator

Okay, so the answer is no.

Josh

Tell me when you wanna.

Interjecting Commentator

The Muslim rulers didn't tax churches during the Ottoman period. Listen, they were very kind to Christians. As a matter of fact, they took care of our holy sites. They had rebuilt. Islamic authorities rebuilt the Church of the Sepulcher three different times over the centuries.

Additional Commentator

Right.

Raymond Ibrahim

Let me tell you what he's talking about. First of all, the, the Ottomans were very kind to Christians. That is, that's worse than John Esposito talking about, which is saying something, right. That, I mean, I already gave you an example of what the Ottomans did to Christians. The Ottoman policy was janissaries, or the. They would go into Christian villages and once they've been subdued and take the healthiest, strongest boys and force them, take them young, convert them forcibly into Islam and train them to become jihadists. Ten years later, when they're ferocious and indoctrinated, they send them back to their Christian families to conquer them again. Okay. Does that sound very kind to you? They would take their prettiest girls, throw them in harems. Right. Destroy churches constantly. I just told you. A genocide, mutilation, raping Armenian girls and then crucifying them. Okay, this is very kind. I mean, I, I.

Additional Commentator

What?

Raymond Ibrahim

That line that he just said, I mean, I know that very well because I already responded to it and so has everyone else. It's so absurd. But as far. And, and look at what he says. I actually did a video about him and what you. About that clip where he. It's kind of weird. I'm not saying that he's a Muslim, but he's engaged in an Islamic doctrine of deception, which. It's called tauriya. And basically what tawereh is, is, is I can lie to you. And it's okay in Islam as long as what I'm saying is literally true, but even though it's deceptive. So an example is, you ask me, hey, Ray, can I borrow 20 bucks and I tell you I don't have a dime in my pocket, you're going to walk away thinking, I'm telling you I have no money, but I might have wads of $20. I just don't have a dime in my pocket.

Josh

Okay.

Raymond Ibrahim

So that's not a lie.

Josh

Okay, I didn't lie to you. Interesting. Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

So it's funny because the first thing he said is, yeah, the Ottomans didn't tax churches. Churches, which is true. But he doesn't tell you that they were taxing and extorting the Christians themselves to death. Right. And here he says, and, you know, they built. They. They took over our. They took care of our holy sites. They rebuilt the Holy Sepulcher three times. He doesn't tell you that it was the Muslims who destroyed the Holy Sepulcher three times.

Josh

Okay, that seems like an important point.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah. And that how. How they took care and rebuilt it, the Muslims, was the. That the Christians were up in arms because that was the most holy site. And at one point, for example, Russia was going to invade, and so they allowed the Christians to rebuild it. Their own money, their own labor, and. And also a lot of caliphs always wanted the Holy Sepulcher because it was a massive source of income and revenue because pilgrims from all around Europe would come and they'd have to pay the caliphate.

Additional Commentator

So it was.

Raymond Ibrahim

Even from a pragmatic point of view, it's like, economic. Yeah. You want to keep it open. Open. It was actually. Most people don't know this. The Holy Sepulcher was torn to the ground right. In 1009 by a Khalif, by the Muslim authorities that are very kind to Christians. Totally pulverized. And then maybe 40 years later, another Khalif decided, okay, I'm gonna. He allowed the Byzantines to rebuild it. And it's clearly because he said.

Additional Commentator

He.

Raymond Ibrahim

He basically said, so I can get revenue and income. Okay, so. But is that how it comes off? The way he says, that's it. Oh, they. They took care of our holy sites three times. They rebuilt it because, you know, there were earthquakes and. And things, and. And they just. Out of altruism, they went and rebuilt it for us.

Interjecting Commentator

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

So it's kind of interesting that. That he's. He's doing this to thing. I'm not saying he's a Muslim, but maybe he has Muslim friends and he's learned a couple of tactics.

Josh

Okay. Was that the end of that clip? Trinity? Okay, so let me ask you this. So this is something I think a lot of people are confused By. So, like, in the United States

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

in

Josh

general, you have a lot of elections happening right now. This is kind of why I first reached out to you. You got Mom Donnie up there in New York City. Rashida Tlaib. You've got a lot of the DSA candidates that are Democratic Socialists of America.

Lake Pointe Church Announcer

Yeah.

Josh

The Chevalier girl that was just elected up there in New York City, that's like, you know, Muslim girl, attended a rally after October 7th celebrating the slaughter of the Jews, you know, that literally has public quotes. Actually, will you just. Do you have those from Chevalier? Those Chevalier. Like, this is a girl that just won an election up there. Do. Do the blue one first? Trinity. No, the blue one first. Right there. So she's the one. Yeah. That was elected Democratic Rep. Loses primary to Mom. Dani backed Darieliza Avila Chevalier that you got. Go to that next one that you got right there. Nope. The other one. The. The.

Raymond Ibrahim

The.

Josh

You've got it already pulled up. Yeah, that one right there, she's like, on record, like, we. We are fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization. And then you go to the next one that you have underneath that. Yep. And then, you know, like, just openly hates the United States. I forgot to get napkins. So I wiped my hand on the American flag behind me. She calls white women ugly colonizers. She, like I said, attended the rally after October 7th celebrating the slaughter of the Jews. She's for, you know, abolition of all border borders and prisons. Calls the United States a disgrace of a country. US Service members are war criminals. It's kind of. And you have more and more elections that are kind of moving that way now. What I think is confusing to a lot of people, especially Christians in America, is they're always. They're always progressive. So, like, we got this little clip of Mom Donnie right here. You got that Trinity. This little clip of Mom Domini. And this is very normal. You know, he's at a. He's at a pride parole. So this is like, this is him up there. Pride parade. And that's pretty normal for, like, some of the Muslims that are getting elected. And I don't know anything about them. Like, maybe that's how they feel. But I think people look at that, this alliance of, like, the progressive left and Muslims, and they're like, wait, you guys are supposed to be for women's rights, but it's like, that's not the vibe of, you know, Islam. And you guys are for lgbt, quote unquote rights. And that's not. So, like, let me just ask, like, what is going on in your mind?

Raymond Ibrahim

It makes perfect sense to me. What's going on is you have to see beyond it all. And this is. Now we have to get spiritual talk about religion. And it's, it's. What's going on is. Yeah, you're absolutely right. These are two antithetical mentalities. I mean, Muslims are draconian, you know, patriarchal, not homosexual friendly. And then you have the left, which is the exact opposite. And so how does that work? That's what you're asking? How do they complain? Support. And I think it comes down to the idea of the enemy of my enemies, my friend. And both of them have the same enemy, which is basically Christian civilization. Yeah, that's the way I see it. And they're coming from different angles. And this actually, this does have precedence again. But most people don't know it. If you go back in time and you had the medieval Christian world, we, we know the Muslims were attacking it. Right. But also the pagans. And guess what? They were often allied with each other.

Josh

Fascinating.

Raymond Ibrahim

And they both hated it for the same reason. Vikings destro crosses. Muslims destroying crosses. Okay. So in many ways I see the left as the, as the descendants of the pagans and the Muslims are the descendants of the Muslims and they still have the same enemy. But you know, unfortunately for most Westerners and most Christians, they don't get that. And, and, and, and it's an alliance of convenience. So for example, we just saw Mom Dhami with the, you know, the gay flag and all that sort of thing. And maybe you're familiar with this story. I think it's in Ham Tram.

Josh

I've heard of it.

Raymond Ibrahim

Michigan.

Josh

The guy that got elected.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yep. Yeah. Where basically it's it. I. Last I heard, the city council is Muslim majority.

Interjecting Commentator

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

And it was the left that went out of their way to bring them in and empower them and represent them. And once they became the majority of city of the, of the. Of the city council, they canceled Gay pride.

Josh

Yeah, first thing.

Raymond Ibrahim

First thing. Right.

Josh

So again, so then all the progressives felt betrayed.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yes. Well, and, but they're idiots because of course, I mean that's, that is Islam. Islam's not on your side. But they're both, both helping each other because their true enemy is the Christian body is really Christianity. But the media doesn't show it that way. Nobody's going to discuss it that way. But that's why you can get two diametrically opposed forces who are working in cahoots, because what they really hate is us, dude.

Josh

That's honestly. So if I take off my history hat and take off the history conversation, I just put on the Bible conversation. There's a really interesting thread, and I'm interested. I'm sure you've seen this. But Muslims in general, they like to claim heritage from Ishmael. That's correct. Okay, so what you have in general is you have, for people who are listening is obviously, Abraham's born, the covenant's given to Abraham, the child of the promise is Isaac, and then the child that's not is Ishmael. So what really becomes interesting is you have. You have one covenant, but you have two sons. Well, now you got a problem. And what Islam historically does is they claim Ishmael, male and obviously Jewish people. And then there's A Whole Romans 11 Theology of Christians are grafted into the covenant promises that people given to the Jews. And so what we would go is, we're like, well, man, we're kind of team Isaac, our spiritual descendants. Now, what's interesting is, man, you fast forward and those two essentially brothers and spiritual lineages are really striving against each other for the rest of Old Testament history. Now where it kind of gets interesting. You may think I'm crazy, but I'm just gonna. I'll just do it. What's interesting to me is you get a John's 16. In John 16, Jesus is talking about the end. He's talking about end times. Eschatology is, you know, the theological word. And he says, the time is coming when they will kill you and think they are offering service to God. Now, I just want to point this out. I think what a lot of Christians have thought for the last 50 or 60 years in America is, oh, you know what our big problem is? Secularism. Secularism, Atheism and secularism. Our problem, what that verse says, is it the final boss at the end, before Christ returns and he's gone, is that actually the final boss will be some form of religion that thinks killing infidels is good and holy? That's interesting. All right, now you fast forward to the book of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. And I'm going to put on my tinfoil hat here and take this, all this with a grain of salt. First, Second Thessalonians talk about how before Christ returns, there will be a quote, great delusion that deludes mass numbers of people, like mass numbers of people. We don't know what it is. The Bible is intentionally vague, but it will be some form of religion, philosophy, Ideology that is explicitly Antichrist. That's interesting to me. Now fast forward again to Revelation chapter 20. In Revelation 20, the apostle John is given a vision at the end of the throne of Christ. I think, like in the era when he's going to return. And I'm just going to read what the verse says. It says the souls of those who had been. And it says. It doesn't just say who had been killed. It specifies the type of death that those people will have experienced. And it says those who had been beheaded because they refused to worship the beast. I just want to point this out. There is one religion and one religion only that I am aware of. You might correct the record that has some specific directions on how to kill people that they disagree with. If I understand it right, the Quran calls it striking necks is what it's called. Okay, that's interesting to me. Now, if you want to do this, you know, in the same way that I'm sure that Islam and other religions have multiple eschatological views, so views of how the end times will play out, I just want to know what you think about all this when I'm done. In the Old Testament, it's in the book of Zechariah, a lot of people think that what, that there's an end times prophecy. In the book of Zechariah, a lot of Bible scholars think, and it's talking about what will happen. And essentially all of these nations will gather together and unite to destroy Israel, to come against Israel. And it lists the name of the nations. Now, the names that it lists in the Old Testament, the Old Testament names are Gog and Magog, Meshech and Tubal. I'll probably pronounce some of these wrong. Persia, Cush, put Gomer and then Beth, Torgamah. Those are the Old Testament names. Now, but if you take the geographic regions that corresponded to those names and then you go, well, what are the 21st century equivalents of those nations that it lists? They are Gog and Magog would be Russia. That's kind of where it is right now. Turkey, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Turkey again. Turkey again. Now, I just want to point this out. All of those are predominantly Muslim nations, except one. That'd be Russia. But in Russia, the fastest growing religion by far from what I understand, is Islam. So it's all I'll say is, man, I'm not a guy who opens my Bible and I'm like, I'm gonna put on a tinfoil hat and here's your chart. And I know exactly what's Gonna happen. That stuff is interesting to me. When you hear that, I don't know. Is that something you've laid your eyes on? You got thoughts on that?

Raymond Ibrahim

Well, I'm very familiar with what you're talking about.

Josh

You're not gonna hurt my feelings if

Raymond Ibrahim

you're like, eh, I'm more of a preterist. Partial preterist.

Josh

Yeah, I'm familiar.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah. Which means I actually think most of the prophecies were actually fulfilled at the time. They're not necessarily 80, 70. Yeah, yeah, yep. Yeah. So. And I think, and you know, when I. A lot of people always thought, feel like we're in the end times, but if you're familiar with history, it's like,

Josh

man, we, we for 2,000 years.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah. Imagine, imagine like living in 1240s in Russia and for like two for 3,000 miles, everything's burned and there's just pyramids of heads, you know, Would you think that's the end times?

Josh

Yep. Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

Because a Mongol horde just swept through. Yeah. So, you know, horrific stuff's been going on. That's right. And much worse actually. In many ways. I do believe in the great delusion. And I think what we're discussing and what we call the left and wokeism, that is all part of the delusion. And the, you know, when we talk about like I tell you what the west is doing today is unprecedented because it's naive that all of that I think is, is, is the part of that delusion. So that definitely makes sense to me. But my thing with prophecies and this is probably unpopular, but I'm very much moved by what Jesus said, which is like no one knows, not even the angels. But I do know one thing. A lot of these prophecies, we think about them and we obsess about them and it makes sense. I get it. It's logical because we think it's going to be in our lifetime, possibly. And that's exciting. But here's the thing. I can already guarantee you and everyone that yes, within your lifetime you will see the end times. It's called the day you. You die.

Interjecting Commentator

Yeah.

Raymond Ibrahim

Right. When you die, that is equivalent to the end times because it's like a scroll unfolding.

Josh

There you go.

Raymond Ibrahim

And that's gonna happen. It might happen today, might happen a few decades from now. So I don't get caught up in like all these theories about times, date, seasons. Because and especially after Jesus says nobody knows, not even the angels. Right.

Josh

That's right.

Raymond Ibrahim

So why would I? I already know I'm gonna die. And I'm temporal, and my time is pretty short in the big picture of things, so I don't have to even think about that sort of thing.

Interjecting Commentator

Thing.

Raymond Ibrahim

That's right. But I'm not. And I'm not, you know, trying to. I'm not trying to, like, condemn it or push it. Anyone who wants to go with that. It just. To me, I don't find it very useful. And it's kind of like. It's like a bunch of rabbit holes that you can go down and kind of get lost and lose. Lose sight of, like, what's really going on. I mean, the bottom line is, yeah, time is up for all of us, one way or the other, and you want to do the right thing and you want to make it a better place. And, you know, and ultimately I've reached the point, I think, you know, the entire life journey is just all about trying to ascertain and live according to the truth. That's it.

Josh

That's great.

Raymond Ibrahim

You know, that's actually what we all do one way or the other, you know, and so, yeah, prophecies that they. They did happen, they will happen. I think that's fine. I have no problem with any of that, but I don't want to. And I. And I unfortunately do believe it's also being. It's like a mar.

Interjecting Commentator

It's.

Raymond Ibrahim

It's. It's an industry where people.

Josh

You know.

Raymond Ibrahim

You know what I mean?

Josh

Totally.

Additional Commentator

Yeah.

Josh

Totally.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah.

Josh

So that.

Raymond Ibrahim

That actually really, really leaves a bad taste in my mouth because I know people are manipulating it for, you know, whatever political gain or whatever the message is. Again, that's not to say I don't believe there's a judgment day or an end time. I just think it's not for me. It's. For me. It's simple enough trying to.

Josh

I'm following Jesus. I'm gonna see how it all works out.

Additional Commentator

Yeah, that's it.

Raymond Ibrahim

Yeah.

Josh

All right, let me. Let me end on this. So hopefully a note of hope, and also I'm interested to hear how you'll answer question this question. So, first of all, there's these cool stories about lots of Muslims converting to Christ in certain parts of the world. And we've even got, like, one of our international mission partners with Laypoint. He's a guy whose dad was an imam. And this guy literally has a dream, the man in white kind of thing. He has a dream about the man in white going, hey, man. Essentially, I'm him. And then a missionary comes and he realizes, like, that's the guy and was Jesus. Okay, so that's like, literally how we got one of our international mission partners. And it's been really cool. Like, at our church, we're starting to see, like, a weird number of Muslims come to Christ at Lake Point. So, like, I'm walking around campuses and people are telling me, like, you know, their families are five, six generations deep Muslim families, and here they're worshiping Jesus. So there's some cool stuff happening there. I would just ask this question. I'm curious you'll respond to this, because that's what we want. We want to reach people for Christ. You know, that's like our. Our thing. What would you say to, like, a Muslim person who. They're. They're listening to a podcast like this. They're. They're peeking their head in a Lake Point. They're hearing me. I'm just opening up the Bible teaching verse by verse every week. And honestly, they're hearing it and they're watching it, and they're beginning to have some doubts about Islam and, And, and, you know, all. All the things. And maybe for the first time in their life, they're considering Christianity, maybe a little nervous about. About it. If you're talking to that person, what would you say?

Raymond Ibrahim

Ah, well, you know, it depends on which country and what kind of Muslim they are, because, you know, there's various cultural factors that might, you know, pose ill for them. We were talking about apostasy. I mean, there's. There's families that will kill you, right? And there's more liberal ones, countries like in Morocco and Tunisia, Lebanon. So. So, yeah, but what I would say is, you know, I mean, look, this whole. The whole polemics against Islam, this is an ancient thing amongst Christians and rightfully so, and apologetics for Christianity and trying to bring them. So this has been going on for a long time, and I think it should go on. This is actually one of the best ways to deal with the Islam problem. Right. The thing you have to remember is, you know, and this is why Islam is such a problem in the secular west, because it has you. You have to fight fire with fire. Muslims are believers. They believe in God. They believe in, you know, called in doing right works. A lot of the works isn't bad. A lot of it is considered, you know, it's not like everything you do is evil, okay? People sometimes have that idea. So in order to get to a Muslim, you have to fight fire with fire, which means you're not going to supplant their religion by telling them about secularism. And human rights rights. You have to actually talk to them about something like Christianity that will resonate. I used to watch. His name was Father Zechariah Butros. He was a priest, and his shows are all in Arabic. And he was one of the most hated priests in the Islamic world because he would actually, a lot of Muslims would convert because he would get into the Quran and the Hadith and talk about the Bible. And, you know, he was a polemicist and he was power. He was, he, what he did worked because he was fighting fire with fire. He was going against a religion with a religion, going against the holy book with a holy book, going against a God with a God. And I think that's what you definitely need to do as a. And this is why when Muslims. It's amazing. If you look at Muslims in the west, the problematic ones are the, the ones who have been born there two, three, four generations. It's not the guy that just came over. Isn't that weird? And that's because I believe Western culture, the more hedonistic and nihilistic it becomes, the more it pushes the them back to something, to some kind of faith, because Islam is better than that, believe it or not. Yeah. So I'm, I'm all for Christian proselytization of Muslims. And I do believe there's a lot of sincere converts. And I. And I think that's because they are. There's a lot of good Muslims who are searching for the truth. And that's why these stories you're talking about Christ appearing to them, they're just everywhere. And they, you know, cross cultures, cross. It's not, it's. It's like a. It's a real phenomenon. It's not something that just, you know, it's happening in one area, happens in Africa and Iran and in Asia. So I do believe that's real. But as far as, you know, what, what to say, I'm. I'm not a great proselytizer. I'm more of a, you know, simple historian. But I would just, you know, make the arguments. You know, the, the smart way is first you dismantle the Quran, but then you, you have to give it something in place, which would be the Bible. And that's why secularism doesn't work. You want to dismantle it and supplant it with secular humanism. That's just not appealing. I'm sorry, it's not appealing for Muslims and Arabs and people from that world. It doesn't make sense. So, yeah, that's great.

Josh

Well, you can do the history, and I'll. I'll do the proselytization.

Raymond Ibrahim

All yours.

Josh

Hey, Raymond. Abraham. Thank you. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for your writing. I'm going to keep reading your stuff. Thank you for your time.

Raymond Ibrahim

I appreciate it, Pastor John. I really do. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Josh

Yes, sir.

Raymond Ibrahim

Sam.