victory over Islam. There's this basic view that Islam is unbeatable and Muslims are the unbeatable force, invincible and of course that's one of the teachings of Muhammad that Muslim armies cannot be defeated by infidel armies. Also it's common cause that the crusades were bad, evil, terrible, wicked and the crusades were a failure. And I'm going to contradict all of that conventional wisdom and start off tonight with understanding the Crusades. Now we're not going to get to the Crusades, not tonight, that's going to take another one, but we're going to go through what preceded the Crusades. The first thing to notice about the Crusades is that the Crusades were a reaction to Jihad, a reaction to centuries of Islamic Jihad. Muslim armies had conquered most of the Byzantine Empire before the Crusades began. The enemy was literally at the gates of the greatest Christian city in the world at that time, which was Constantinople. The Muslims had conquered Spain, Sicily, Southern Italy, many of the islands in the Mediterranean Sea had been conquered by the Muslims before the Crusades even began. Vast territories which once had belonged to Christians were now under the rule of Islamic rulers who abused the Christians, who looted the churches, who kidnapped, tortured and ransomed Christian pilgrims who were trying to visit the Holy Lands, those places where the Lord had lived and ministered. Millions of Christians were being enslaved by the Muslim world. Muslim pirates were threatening Christian shipping. Christian lands were threatened by Islamic raids and full-scale invasion. Even before the death of Muhammad in 632, Muslim forces were already raiding the Byzantine Empire and Persia. And both the Byzantine and Persia, those empires, were being weakened by incessant wars against one another. I think your coffee cup is in the way of the text. The Arabs were able to exploit the exhaustion of the Persians and the Byzantines, not only by the hit-and-run raids for plunder and loot, but also by sustained military campaigns where they were seeking to wrest substantial territory away from these vast empires. Syria was the first Arab conquest. At that time, Syria was actually a province of the Byzantine Empire, and the capital of Syria, Damascus, is renowned as the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. The city of Syria was far more fertile, of course, than the land of Arabia, and therefore ripe pickings for looting and pillaging. After centuries of Byzantine rule, Syria had fallen to the Persians in 611, and then was retaken by Byzantine 630. But during those interleaving few years, the Persians had destroyed the institutions of Byzantine rule, wiped out the people who had been on every level down to municipal ruling, so a leadership vacuum had developed and made Syria even more vulnerable. As the Byzantine Empire employed many Arab mercenaries to guard against their raiding kinsmen from the south, the defection of most of the Arab defenders left huge gaping holes in the defence of Syria and this is one of the recurring problems. Time and again you find that the very people the Muslims are attacking are utilising Arabs as part of their defence forces and at the key time they defect in the middle of the battle and the battle is lost. During key battles, the defection of Arab mercenaries who were meant to be fighting for Byzantine was decisive in turning the tide of the battle against the Christians. And soon the Muslim Caliph established Damascus as the capital of the growing Islamic Empire. And the next target was Persia, which at that time included Mesopotamia, what today is known as Iraq. And here as well, whole units of the Persian cavalry consisted exclusively of Arab mercenaries fighting for Persia, who of course turned traitor at the key time. The Muslims managed to exploit the conflict of loyalties by persuading whole units of Arab mercenaries to turn traitor to join the Muslim side. Soon even the heartland of Persia, what is today known as Iran, was conquered by the Muslims. Yet the Persians continue to rebel against Muslim rule for at least another century. And by the way, Persia, or Iran, stands, along with Turkey, as one of the only two countries in the Muslim Middle East that have resisted Arabic as a language. They've fallen under Islam, but they continue to have their own language, Farsi and Turkish, whereas the rest of North Africa and the Middle East have lost their original languages and are speaking the colonial language of Arabic. Caliph al-Mansur moved the capital of the Muslim Empire then from Damascus to Baghdad. You can see how they now have moved from Mecca to Damascus, from Damascus to Baghdad. And from this space the Muslim armies moved out to conquer the Indus Valley of India, what today is known as Pakistan. Of course they originally were all Indian. The Pakistanis were Indians who converted to Islam, or were forcibly converted to Islam. Now, as Palestine was part of the Byzantine province of Syria, the decisive defeat of the Greeks at the Battle of Yarmouk left Jerusalem vulnerable to attack. And you need to remember that the Byzantine Empire was the Greek Empire. Yes, it was the eastern part of the Roman Empire, but they were more Greek, and they spoke Greek as their main language. And therefore, in many ways, you'll hear the word Byzantines and Greeks in Christians used interchangeably, because they were the great millennial empire, the empire that lasted a thousand years in the East. And for 800 years the price of bread in Byzantium cost the same. One coin didn't change in value for 800 years. It was a gold-based currency. Now, this made Jerusalem vulnerable with Syria gone. Many Jews, hostile to the Greek Christians of the Byzantine Empire, welcomed invading Muslims and opened the gates of Jerusalem to the Caliph in 638. So, without a fight, Jerusalem was handed over to the Muslims. And yet, despite this, the Caliph prohibited all Jews from living in Jerusalem. They had just given it to him on a platter. But you just see the treachery responded to by more treachery. Now, Egypt was a province of the Byzantine Empire. An abandonment of Syria and Palestine by the Greek forces left Egypt particularly vulnerable and isolated. Yes, they could be resupplied by sea from across the Mediterranean, but their land supply route was cut. The first invasion of Egypt in 639 by the forces of Caliph Umar was unsuccessful. He got beaten back. So in 640 they came back with a force of 12,000 Muslims who attacked and they succeeded in luring the Byzantine Empire out from their secure walled cities where they were safe, and they were ambushed and slaughtered in great numbers. The Muslim invaders then massacred the inhabitants of the undefended towns of Nicaragua and quite a few other towns. Alexandria was the second largest city in Christendom, after Constantinople. And when the Arabs attacked the city of Alexandria they were repulsed with great losses. The Arabs thereupon had to withdraw out of the range of the catapult shots and the arrows of the walls and they began what should have been a hopeless siege because with Alexandria being a port city and the Byzantine navy having complete supremacy of the Mediterranean Sea they could have easily resupplied and reinforced Alexandria for as long as necessary so the siege had no chance of succeeding. However, inexplicably, the new governor of Egypt, Cyrus, betrayed Alexandria and all of Egypt by handing it over without a fight to the Muslim invaders, and one cannot understand why he would have done this. This was treachery and stupidity of a higher order. Four years later, a Byzantine fleet of 300 vessels arrived at Alexandria, reconquered the city with ease. So the Greeks once again had an impregnable position behind these formidable walls of the city, and nobody could get them out. However, a foolish and arrogant commander led his soldiers out in a very ill-advised move and was ambushed. When you've got an advantage, why throw that advantage away? Even so, the Arabs still had no chance of conquering Alexandria because they had such formidable walls. It was at this time that a traitor within opened the gates of the city to the Arabs and the Muslims poured into the city, massacring, plundering, burning until more than half of the great city was destroyed. And this is when the tragic great fire of the Library of Alexandria happened. Six million books and manuscripts destroyed. Because the Caliph was asked, what should we do with the Great Library, which is considered the greatest library in the world. It's down to the original copies of the Bible. If it doesn't confirm what's in the Qur'an, we don't need it. If it does confirm what's in the Qur'an, we don't want it. If it doesn't confirm it, we don't need it. If it does confirm it, we just burn them all. And they burned the greatest library in the world at that time. Now at this point the Muslims had realised their greatest weakness was their lack of naval strength, so they turned to the Egyptian shipyards and they commissioned a Christian workman to build them a fleet. They hired Christian mercenaries to do the navigation of sailing, so the Christians built the Muslim navies, the Christians staffed the Muslim navies, the Christians navigated the Christian navies, and in 649 this entirely mercenary fleet of Christians working for the Muslims enabled the Muslims to take Cyprus, Sicily and the island of Rhodes. It was at this point an opportunity arose that could have enabled the Christian Byzantine Empire to regain all their losses as the Muslim world erupted in a vicious civil war, and this sort of thing happens repeatedly in the Muslim world, they turn on themselves. But, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali staged war against Mu'arraya, the cousin of the murdered Khalif Uthman, Caliph Uthman, you recall, is the one who ordered all Qurans in the world to be gathered up, destroyed because he wanted just one authorised version because there were seven different versions of the Quran even in the lifetime of Muhammad and it had gotten so out of control that the Caliph Uthman said every Quran has to be surrendered up for destruction and they produced a new unified version and the Shiites claimed that 22,000 surahs were left out, 22,000 verses of this new version, and they have split from the Sunnis on that basis. Uthman was a Sunni. Well, Ali, who is the son-in-law of Muhammad, he was murdered, and Muawiyah became the caliph. From this point, Islam was divided into the Sunnis, the majority, and the Shiites, the minority, and what you've got in Iran, for example, are the Shiites, Muslims. Very, very, very much more radical in many ways. The Ayatollah, for example, would be the head of the Shiite section of the Muslim world. And the Muslim world has forever had that massive division. It's more radical than the Catholic-Protestant split in the Christian world. Muslims who say that there's no division in Islam are being disingenuous, to put it mildly. But the Christian world failed to take advantage of this opportunity to regain their lost territories, because when the Muslims were divided, the Christians didn't. seized initiative, as they could have. At this time, with the exception of conquered Egypt, the whole of North Africa was still under the rule of the Byzantine Empire. The whole northern coast, except for Egypt. But the Arabs then targeted the desert-dwelling Berber tribe, many of whom had converted to Judaism. And after much bloodshed and bitter resistance, the Berbers were subjugated and enlisted as allies of the Arabs, and to this day the Berbers remain a solidly Muslim nomadic northern desert tribe. In 698 a combined Arab and Berber Muslim army of 40,000 swept over the coastal cities, taking even the ancient city of Carthage, which in 705 was razed to the ground and most of its inhabitants were massacred. That's in what today is Tunisia. Well, by 711 an army of 10,000 Muslims from Morocco crossed the Mediterranean at its narrowest western point to land at Gibraltar, the rock which today is a British little enclave, on the southernmost coast of Spain. And you can see in this classic move, he burns the ships, which reminds one of what Cortes did when he took his soldiers to Mexico and he burned the ships. In other words, you conquer, there's no way back. and that was to show they weren't just coming to raid, they were coming to stay, to enslave and to colonize. They were coming to take over in Europe and they weren't going back. King Rodrigo of Spain marched a hastily assembled army south from his capital in Toledo and he was defeated at the Battle of the River Guadalete, which was an absolute disaster. The king was drowned in the river and the Berber Tariq ibn Zayed sent the king's head to the Caliph in Damascus. Within seven years the Moors, that's what the Spanish called the Muslim invaders because they came from Morocco. So the word Moors, even though they're Arabs, they're called Moors simply because the land they came from was Morocco. They're also called Saracens. Saracens, Moors, Muslims, Arabs. All synonyms for the same thing. The Moors had conquered most of Spain. and they called this now Al-Andalus and you can see how they invaded and attacked and went all the way through from Tangier to Gebel al-Tariq which later became Gibraltar and all the way up to Toledo. The Muslims called Spain the Emirate of Cordoba. And on the site of a Christian cathedral in the city of Cordoba, the Moors built a large mosque. They destroyed the church, the cathedral, and then built a mosque there. Now this is significant because you notice what's happening in America right now. The Muslims are trying to build a super mega mosque in New York City on the very area where the World Trade Center had stood and was collapsed. And they're wanting to call it the Mosque of Cordoba. Now why would they choose that name? Because that's the longest reigning colony that Muslims ever ran in Europe. For 800 years they had the Emirate of Cordoba which was for 8 centuries a Muslim colony in Europe and so what they're basically saying is we wanted to do to America what we did to Spain. It's a very symbolic thing to build a mosque at the start of a great victory. To build a mosque over a church, like the dome of the rock they built over the temple where they think the holy place was, for the Temple of Solomon. Well, there were numerous Muslim invasions of Sicily. They didn't all succeed. In 652 and 667, 720, each of these invasions of Sicily were defeated. But finally in 827 the Muslims invaded with 10,000 troops and subjugated Sicily. But the local Christians fought back furiously and it took more than 70 years for the Muslims to conquer Sicily after much fighting and many massacres. After a long, prolonged siege Palermo fell in 831. Syracuse held out till 878. Turamina held out till 902. Now Sicily, you wonder why they're such tough, tenacious mafia types out there in Sicily. Well, they've got centuries of practice in fighting. From Sicily the Muslims invaded southern Italy, they conquered Taranto and Bari in 840 and in 843 they looted the historic city of Rome itself. Now I found very few Christians aware that Sicily and Italy were conquered by the Muslims. And all the famous churches in Rome were looted in 846. It's a miracle we've got as much of the history that we've got and as many of the ancient artifacts because with the Muslims stealing so much and burning so much and destroying so much, it's extraordinary. Well, then you add Second World War bombing as many cities as the West. It's extraordinary we've got any good cathedrals and museums and historic sites left. The Muslim occupation of Sicily and Southern Italy lasted for over 200 years. And islands were invaded. Cyprus was invaded and conquered by the Muslims in 653. Rhodes in 672. Sardinia in 803. Majorca, which today is part of Spain, one of the islands of Spain, conquered in 818. The island of Crete was invaded by the Muslims in 824. Malta fell in 835. Plainly the popular propaganda that Islam only advanced peacefully and that Jihad was only a defensive concept. This is fiction. What were Saudi Arabians defending in Spain and Cyprus? I mean, it needs to be asked. These desert Bedouins, what on earth did they have to defend in Sicily and Spain? And so, time and again, people tell you how Islam only advanced peacefully, and you could bring up some of these examples we've just given to refute that. Now, it should be noted that at that time, most of the armies of Persia and the Byzantine Empire were poorly trained. They did not have good soldiers. Most of their soldiers were used for static defence of strong points like garrisons and walled cities. They were not properly trained in manoeuvres for battles. The Byzantine Empire was particularly overstretched with insufficient soldiers to maintain their vast empire and most of them just basically guarded a walled city, which is not good preparation for the kind of fluid battles that the Arabs were fighting. And most of the soldiers employed by both the Byzantine and the Persian empires were foreigners, who served mainly for pay and obviously didn't have proper loyalty. And many of these mercenaries were Arabs, most of whom ended up deserting to the Muslim side. I think that's something that the West needs to ask themselves. How many of the soldiers in NATO or in America are really loyal to their side? And if there ever was a choice between Islam and the army whose uniform they're wearing, would there be any conflict of loyalties at all? Would there be any question which side they would turn to? Historically, the great empires of Byzantium and Persia fell because of Arab mercenaries whose loyalty switched to the Muslims in a heartbeat. You've also noticed the tremendous mobility that the Arabs had. The use of camels provided the Arab invaders with superior mobility. particularly across deserts. Even the Arab cavalry rode between battles on camels, leading the horses. So they would travel across on camels. Their horses were just brought along, and when they went into battle, then they got into their horses. The camels enabled the Muslims to outflank the imperial forces of Persia and Byzantine by using desert routes. And whenever confronted by superior forces, the Arabs withdrew into the desert to avoid battle. This much greater mobility allowed the Arabs to select and attack smaller forces and destroy them before reinforcements could be sent. Mobility makes all the difference. The imperial forces of Byzantium made themselves vulnerable by spreading themselves out and trying to defend everywhere at once or themselves they were worn out marching in fruitless pursuit of battle which the Muslims kept avoiding until they outnumbered them. Now these battles the Arabs normally avoided until they greatly outnumbered the enemy. The immensity of the Byzantine Empire, this whole area of purple is where the Byzantine Empire was. They didn't just control the Eastern Roman Empire. At one stage they even conquered most of Italy, Sicily, Slovenia, Corsica, all the way through. And so they had enormous amounts of Egypt, North Africa, coast. So the Byzantine Empire was huge. It almost extended to a lot of the extent of the original full Roman Empire, including a lot of the West. But the Arabs concentrated their forces to attack specific areas at a time and thereby were able to, in set piece, destroy all these outposts of the Byzantine Empire because the Byzantine Empire was not fluid and mobile. And you can see how the Islamic Caliphate spread to conquer a lot of what used to be the Byzantine and the Persian Empires. They basically were parasitic. They took over what the Persians and the Byzantines had conquered and they were able to first inculcate themselves through mercenaries and later subvert and take over the whole of these empires. Now, what about the myth of Islamic tolerance? Muslim propaganda makes great claims as to the tremendous tolerance which has been meant to have been shown by Muslim rulers to Christian subjects. Now I've heard Muslims boasting about how well they treat the Christians in Egypt, even. You've got to be kidding. They're depending on the fact that you know nothing about what they're talking about. Otherwise, if you knew anything about it, you'd know they're lying. The Christians in Egypt are being murdered and their church is being bombed and burned. How can Muslims boast about how well they treat the Christians in Egypt? And there's been so many massacres of Christians in Egypt. But you'll hear them in a mosque if you... They're assuming that you don't know your history. that they can talk this kind of propaganda. Actually the claims that Muslims are very tolerant didn't begin with the Muslims. It began with Voltaire and other 18th century humanists who continually tried to cast Christians in the worst possible light. In this case they invented the fiction of Islamic tolerance. The Muslims never pretended to be tolerant. It's something the secular humanists attributed to them because they were seen as the enemy of the Christians and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So just like today, many of the atheists and secular humanists seem to love and tolerate the Muslims, we think, what do they have in common? All they've got in common is they hate Christians, hate Christianity, hate the Christian God. And so this was in fact nothing but a Voltaire propaganda piece. From the very beginning, Muslim authorities went to great lengths to humiliate and punish dhimmis. a Dhimmi is a Jew or Christian who refused to convert to Islam and they were made second and third class citizens forced to pay extra taxes and official Islamic policy was that Dhimmis must feel inferior and subjugated forget equality there's no such thing as equality in a Muslim country laws were passed that Christians and Jews were not allowed to ride horses at best they could have a donkey Jews and Christians were compelled to wear marks in their religion when they were amongst Muslims. Non-Muslims were prohibited from wearing clothing similar to that of Muslims. Non-Muslims were forbidden to be armed. They had to be unarmed in areas where the Muslims were all armed and used as a target for banditry. Non-Muslims were severely taxed with Jizya. No new churches or synagogues were allowed to be built. Jews and Christians were prohibited from praying aloud, or even reading the scriptures aloud, not even in their own homes or churches, lest a Muslim walking by hear them. So you could only pray softly, silently I should say, not softly. You could only read the scriptures out, but you could never read it aloud in a Muslim country by law. In 705, Muslim invaders of Armenia assembled all the Christian nobles in a church and burned them to death. Massacres of Jews and Christians were absolutely common. In Morocco, for example, in 1033, 6,000 Jews were killed. Even more were murdered in Grenada. Tens of thousands of Christian civilians were massacred by the Muslim invaders of Cyprus in 1570. Any Muslim who converted to any other faith was condemned to death. Those today who attempt to portray Muslims through the ages as enlightened supporters of multicultural tolerance are either ignorant or they're dishonest. Now, that's just prelude in the sense of why there were crusades. Obviously we've just taken a few examples. We could spend months talking about all the horrors and atrocities and aggressions of Islam, but that's sufficient to prove that point. The main thing I'm wanting to get to is victory of Islam. Muhammad assured the Muslims on the authority of Allah himself that it was absolutely impossible for any Muslim army to ever be defeated by an infidel army. Muslims are invincible, they cannot be defeated. That is an Islamic doctrine. Muhammad taught it on the authority of Allah himself. And yet, fact, Muslim armies have suffered numerous defeats through the centuries. For example, 672, the Caliph Muawiyah attempted to conquer the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople. And with a massive fleet he had built up from by the Egyptians, he transported 50,000 fighting men through the Dardanelles, that's a narrow strait linking the Mediterranean with the Black Sea, And the Islamic assault on Constantinople in 672 was described as the fiercest which has ever been launched by infidels against a Christian stronghold. Numerous historians hail the Christian victory of the Muslims at Constantinople as a turning point in the history of mankind. The fact that Constantinople held saved not only the Byzantine Empire, but it saved the whole of European civilization. Imagine if Europe had been invaded in the 7th century by the Muslims from south Eastern Europe. Imagine if they could have been running over Serbia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France that early in the 7th century. What could have stopped them? As another historian put it, had the Muslims captured Constantinople in the 7th century rather than the 15th century on the eve of the Reformation, all Europe and America might be Muslim today. And that is definitely so. Now, one of the modern myths is that Islamic culture was immensely superior. Islamic technology, they were the greatest scientists, inventors, the most advanced culture in Europe was backward, and Europeans were stupid and dull, and then the Dark Ages. Now again, the idea of the Dark Ages isn't a historic concept, it's something that came out of Voltaire as well. He was trying to suggest that when the Roman Empire fell, and all these humans were in love with the Roman and Greek empires, when the Roman Empire fell and Europe started to be converted to Christianity, that was the Dark Ages. And yet, it wasn't that dark at all. The Middle Ages is the term we use. But, according to modern myths, Islamic culture was so superior and Christianity so backward. But the fact is, Christians possessed superior technology and they used it to defeat the Muslim invaders on numerous occasions. For example, the walls of Constantinople were an engineering marvel, a massive outer wall, with towers and superb battlements, and behind it an even stronger inner wall, 40 feet high, 15 feet thick. And the Christians also had what was called Greek fire. The Greek engineer Kallinikos of Heliopolis had delivered an incendiary weapon which literally destroyed the Muslim fleet. Greek fire was effectively a primitive flamethrower which included a pump that discharged a stream of flaming liquid through a tube projected from the bow of a galley which normally was in the shape of a dragon's head. And they could also use the catapults to hold pottery containing Greek fire over 400 to 500 metres away and when it struck it shattered, bursting to flames, splashing its burning contents over large areas of the enemy, destroying sometimes areas as large as a football field. Here you can see some of the catapulted Greek fire and here some of the projected Greek fire. On numerous occasions the Byzantines rode out and incinerated the Muslim navy. With their fleet burned to a cinder, the Arab invaders were soon stranded and starving. They'd come in and had camped on Galata, on the north of Constantinople, from which they'd decided to start the siege, but with their entire navy destroyed, they were starving and they were stranded. And so this discouraged and demoralized Caliph had to surrender and agreed to pay an annual tribute of 300 pounds of gold to the Byzantines, after serious defeat. In 717 the Muslims once again tried to conquer Constantinople. A massive fleet of 1,800 galleys again attacked Constantinople. The Greek Christians rode out and with their Greek fire pumps destroyed virtually the entire fleet. Most of what were the Muslim attackers were either burned up or drowned. Very few could swim. The next year, 718, the Muslims tried again with a new fleet and this again was defeated by Greek fire. They didn't seem to learn. And most of the galleys that managed to flee were destroyed in a devastating storm. Only five Muslim galleys survived the attack of 718. I would say the Christians had superior technology. In 747 a huge Arab armada of a thousand galleys was annihilated by a vastly smaller fleet off the island of Cyprus. Only three Arab ships out of a thousand survived disengagement. Where's the superior Islamic technology? Now, while the Muslim ambitions of conquering Southeastern Europe were being frustrated by the apparently impregnable Constantinople, Muslim armies were attaining far greater success on the western edge of the Mediterranean by subjugating Spain. In 721, al-Samar ibn Malik al-Qawlaani, the Caliph of Aldoba of Spain, He led his forces north over Pyrenees Mountains, that which separates the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal from the rest of Europe, and he attacked Gaul, the city of Tulu. For three months the city resisted his siege. See, this is something else. The Muslims didn't have good siege engines to be able to penetrate the walled defences of these European fortress cities. Well, the Duke Odo of Aquitaine mobilized the army of Franks to lift the siege of Toulouse and the Muslims were totally taken by surprise. They were completely focused on the siege and hadn't thought of the possibility of someone coming to relieve them. And so they were slaughtered as they fled before the Christian cavalry that lifted the siege. Well, in 732, Abin al-Rahman mobilized a massive army of at least 80,000. I've seen reports of it being up to 180,000, 300,000, but let's stick to the lowest figure. Let's just stick to 80,000. 80,000 fighting men minimum invaded Gaul, what today is France. As they moved north from Spain, from Al-Andalus up towards Toulouse and Bordeaux and then up to Porteus and Taurus, they plundered cities, they laid waste to the countryside. Muslim historians record that al-Rahman burned churches and imagined he could pillage the Basilica of St. Martin of Tours which was renowned as the most magnificent church in Europe at that time. An Arab historian notes that the hearts of ibn al-Rahman and his captains and his men was filled with wrath and with pride. He was to meet his match in Charles Martel, the hammer, Martel was the son of King Phippen of the Franks and Martel was unusually tall and a very powerfully built man. He was already famous for his great military exploits and even without the Battle of Portiers he would be famous because he was a great soldier but that has eclipsed all of his previous achievements. He was perhaps the only man in Christendom at that time who could have provided a serious chance of advancing Muslim forces. He had been fighting since he was 14 years old. The Battle of Tours is considered one of the most important battles in world history. In virtually every book I've ever read on most decisive battles, they all recognise Tours, or Portiers, as pivotal. The Muslims were completely taken by surprise when they found their path of pillage to St Martins of Tours blocked by a dense line of well-armoured infantry on the crest of a hill. Now with forests on both flanks, Martel had chosen his battlefield very well. He forced the Muslims to charge uphill. That's the first advantage. And he had forests on both flanks so they couldn't outflank him. For seven days skirmishes were fought as al-Rahman tried to find a way around but the skirmishes prevented that. They couldn't get through the forest. So al-Rahman had to order his cavalry to charge the Christian flanks. Charles Martel had his men closely packed together forming what they called a shield wall, a solid wall of shields. that the long spears thrust into the ground to deter the cavalry. In a contemporary rote of the Franks, firmly they stood, one close to another, forming as it were a bulwark of ice, or glaciers, the way another put it. Six times the Muslim cavalry charged the Frankish line and each time they were repulsed with severe casualties, which had never happened to these men before. Soon the battleground was filled with vast numbers of dead and dying And the repeated furious charges of the Muslims seem to have had absolutely no effect on the steadfast Christians who stood resolute in their ranks. Now the Muslims claim it was a seven day battle. The Christians claim it was a two day battle. The Muslims are probably counting the skirmishes beforehand. But we wouldn't have called those the battle, that's just feeling out one another and seeing if you can get around one another. But then, when the Muslims showed that some Franks had broken into their camp That's where all their loot was from pillaging across the countryside. They fled from the battlefield to protect their loot. And at this point, the Franks unleashed the cavalry. And by the way, the Franks had invented not only high seats, seats that had a high back, to protect you that you could drive your hard lances easy, you wouldn't get knocked out of your saddle. They had high saddles which was unique, this was the first time, and the first time stirrups had ever been used in history, another western technology improvement. Stirrups enabled them to control their horse and stay in the saddle easier, and so they could have longer lances and charge and make far more impact against the lighter horses of the Arabs. And by the way, the Arabs' horses were a lot smaller, a lot lighter than the Christian cavalry. Much, much lighter. I mean, the horses were much smaller. At least 10,000 more Arabs died that afternoon fleeing from the field. Amongst the dead lay Caliph ibn al-Rahman. Wiped out. It was an absolute disaster. But even at this point, Charles Martel maintained the discipline of his infantry, leaving the pursuit to the cavalry. Normally at this point, the infantry would have pursued them, but you see that's, for example, what happened at the Battle of Hastings. The Normans attacked and attacked the shield wall of the Saxons, and the Saxons had moved to a certain point where they found retreat. the infantry left the shield wall in pursuit and that was a ruse for the Normans to relaunch the cavalry and then wipe out the infantry as they had broken their formation and thought they were in pursuit of a defeated enemy. So Charles Mattel had such disciplined infantry they didn't break their formations even when they saw the enemy fleeing they left the pursuit to the cavalry. They stayed in their positions and they were prepared to face a renewed onslaught the next day. They slept in their ranks on that hill. They did not budge. because they knew at any moment the Muslims could re-attack. But the next morning the scouts reported the Muslims had fled their empty tents, they left the siege engines behind and their tents behind and were fleeing back across the Pyrenees to Spain. Absolutely incredible decisive victory. Now that wasn't the end of the Islamic threat to France. When the Muslims tried to invade Gaul again in 735, Charles Martel of France gave them another severe beating. Now many historians recognise the decisive victory at the Battle of Tours, or Portiers as some call it, as one of the most important battles in world history. It was a turning point, absolutely essential to the survival of Western civilisation or Christendom. As you can see the Frankish Empire extended not only from Charles Martel, but his grandson was Charlemagne. who built up the magnificent empire of Charlemagne's empire, which is the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire, inaugurated in the year 800. So, to go back to that, 732, the Battle of Portiers, that's exactly 100 years after the death of Muhammad. 100 years later, Islam had reached its high-water mark just south of Paris, at almost the heart of Europe, and then they were knocked back across the Pyrenees Mountains into the Iberian Peninsula. In 759 the last foothold of Islam in South Eastern France was retaken and the Muslim armies never crossed the Pyrenees mountains after that. In fact, they began to be defeated, even in Spain. The Muslims never actually conquered all of Spain either. Many Spanish stalwarts stood firm on the northern coast of Spain, what today is called Basque area. The Basques want independence either today, well you can understand why, they were the one part of Spain that never gave in to the Muslims. and by the Bay of Biscay in the area known as Asturias. The Christian kingdom of Asturias began in 741 the Reconquista, or the Reconquist of Spain, and the first area to be liberated from the Muslim invaders was Galicia and you can see how Galicia Astoria and they took more this is the reconquest and finally the last to fall was Granada and Spain was free and then they could launch Christopher Columbus across the seas to discover the Americas as it happened. Well in 778 the grandson of Charles Martel Charlemagne or Charles the Great marched two armies into Spain one across the the western side of the Pyrenees, the other crossed the eastern side of the Pyrenees and they came in in the Scissors movement to begin the liberation of south-western Europe from Islam. Within a few years Charlemagne's army had forced the Muslims south of Barcelona and the fall of Toledo on the 25th of May 1085 was a strategic victory and a psychological disaster for the Muslims as Toledo, the old capital of Spain was liberated. And this is where El Cid comes in. In 1092, King Alfonso VI of Castile recalled Spain's most famous knight from exile, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, known as El Cid, liberated Valencia in 1094, and he defeated the Muslims time and again. Frequently he seized initiative and he charged the sieging forces, turning the tide and inflicting decisive defeats on the Muslim occupiers. He was never beaten in battle. In Valencia he turned nine mosques into Christian churches. He knew how to fight the Muslims on their own ground. You want to turn our church into a mosque, we're going to turn your mosques into churches. And El Cid's been most famously depicted by Charlton Heston in the film El Cid, which interestingly enough, when Charlton Heston was asked what was the favourite film of all the films he's done, he mentioned El Cid. Which is kind of surprising. Most of us probably haven't even seen the film. And yet that was Sultan Heston's favourite of the many many films he's played himself. El Cid's resounding victories, often against overwhelming odds, inspired Christians throughout Europe that the Muslim invaders could be defeated. Now remember, everything we talk about is before the Crusades began. In a sense you could say the reconquest of Spain was a Crusade. In a sense, but it was still within Europe. In 873, the Byzantine Emperor Basil defeated the Muslims throughout Dalmatia. Dalmatia is the coast on the other side of the Adriatic facing Italy. What today would be Croatia, that should be Dalmatian coast. And he defeated the Muslims throughout Dalmatia and he liberated much of southern Italy from Muslim invaders. In 1038 the Byzantines determined to put an end to Muslim piracy by liberating the island of Sicily. The invasion was well timed, because the Muslim emirs in Sicily had turned on one another and were involved in one of their many internal conflicts and betrayals, the sort that frequently erupt in the Muslim world. George Manachus employed Lombardian mercenaries and Norman knights to help liberate Sicily. Within two years over a dozen major fortresses had been taken and major battles had been won and Messina and Syracuse were in Christian hands. Now these were Viking mercenaries fighting for the Byzantines. However when the Byzantines alienated the Vikings by refusing to pay them what they had promised William of Horteville, known as Iron Arm, you can imagine why, probably wouldn't want to have an arm wrestle with him, He led the Norsemen to seize the southernmost province of Italy and although vastly outnumbered, the Normans routed the Byzantines time and again and they discovered the Muslims couldn't beat the Vikings and neither can you. You should have paid what you promised. Ironorm and his Vikings prevailed and the Byzantines never attempted to fight an open battle with him in Italy. Southern Italy was transformed into a Norman kingdom. Now in 1061 Robert Guiscard, the Duke of Southern Italy, determined to seize Sicily first by conquering Messina and then Palermo. know the story of General George Patton would recall that Patton determined his entire policy of how to invade Sicily on the basis of how these Vikings had taken Sicily back in the 11th century. And he was arguing against the whole joint chiefs of staff who were saying this is where you've got to take me. He says no, He's got to get Messina and then Palermo. He wanted to re-follow the route. And he prevailed and even went against orders in order to follow the route. He said this is the way it's got to be done. This is how the Vikings took Sicily. This is the way we're going to take Sicily. He was a student of history. In 1098, Robert Guiscard's eldest son, Bohemond, famously depicted in this picture here, led the crusader forces that retook the city of Antioch. So you can see the crusaders who went on the march against the Muslims. This wasn't the first time they were fighting the Muslims. They knew the Muslims. Bohemond became the ruler of the kingdom of Antioch. And from the time of the Norman conquest of Sicily, the Muslims never again regained control of that island. Now these are only just a few examples of Christian victories and Muslim defeats, before the crusades even began. The myth of Islamic invincibility was plainly propaganda. It was propaganda then, it's propaganda today too. Before the knights of Europe marched or sailed to the Holy Land, they already knew a lot about the Muslim enemies. And most importantly, they knew how to beat them. And that's going to be our next session when I return from this mission that we can look at the actual crusades. This is just the run up to the crusades. But I like Psalm 72 verse 9-11. The desert tribes will bow down to him and his enemies will lick the dust. All kings will bow down to him and all nations will serve him. Those people who say the crusades were unjustified are wrong. Those people who say the crusades were a failure are also wrong. As I think we will well show. Now, in our modern crusades against Islam, we've produced weapons like Slavery, Terrorism and Islam. Islam Rising DVD I think is the very best program that looks and exposes Islam from one side to the other. Four outstanding programs and with extra materials including these ex-Muslim terrorists and others speaking on what actually makes Islam tick. These are just some of the tools, of course Sudan, the hidden holocaust, terrorism, persecution, Jeremiah films, documentaries, these are things we can use to expose and oppose Islam. We've been fashioning PowerPoints, slide presentations, audio CDs, articles on the web, and of course our whole Muslim evangelism workshop, MP3, all of this is designed to help people in exposing Islam and fighting it. And recently we've just had a successful crusade, if you can look at it this way, where Christians have won freedom from Islamic colonialism in Sudan. And that's just a recent example of victory over Islam and a failure of Islam. And that's why we need to mobilize Christians to pray for the Muslim world. A lot of the battle is going to be done in prayer. We've got to know our enemies and the Trojan horses. We've got to see how God is one fighting people to Him before and understand maybe some of these principles can be applied in our present day today as well. So, the notes of tonight are here. We'll have this article on the web very soon as well, not only front line but also on the email for Reformation Society as well. Any questions at all? especially the naval battles are fascinating and how the Muslims were beaten and how cruel they were on the occasion the Christian commander was caught by subterfuge and he was skimmed alive Hideous atrocities. We will be getting in some time in the future to the Battle of Lepanto which is one of the most important naval battles in history which again was colossal Muslim defeat and monumental Christian victory. If we don't know history like this then we can absorb the propaganda and think, oh, maybe the iron beats for them. If we learn how Muslims were defeated in the past, we can learn a lot about how to defeat them in the present. But I think one of the most important lessons that our friends in America need to learn is that all the great empires of the past fell because they had Muslim mercenaries that they trusted to help defend their own borders, who turned traitor at the key time. And I just wonder how much of American defence is undermined in that way. The base is the same, but the world is slightly different now. In those days, the only way that Islam could weaken the Christian empires was through maybe trying to intimidate them or show a force or something. These days, with the flow of information like it is now, the biggest weapon that they've got is their propaganda. information can flow via internet, media, digital. That's where the battle is actually. I mean, the thing is, as long as people are always prepared, and at least give an appearance of strength, you're not going to be challenged. I think it was Roosevelt who said, speak softly and carry a big stick. And as long as people are aware, they're not going to chance their arm. They might fall, but you're still going to be prepared anyway. Another good quote is, there's nothing they respect more than strength, there's nothing they despise more than weakness. Now Winston Churchill said that about the Communists, but it's Even more true for the Muslims. There's nothing they respect more than strength. There's nothing they despise more than weakness. And that's important. There's a specific thing that irks me. That thing about the Armenian massacre I think should be highlighted. It's more than a massacre. It's a genocide. In 1915, one and a half million Christians killed in the space of a year. In Turkey. And the episode when the Ottomans drove the Greeks out of Turkey. in Smyrna. The massacre of Smyrna. 300,000 people in Smyrna. They destroyed this town. A biblical city where John, the Apostle John and Bishop Polycarp ministered. They're one of the seven cities in the book of Revelation. One of the reasons why these stories are not told, it's better to tell it from the Islamic perspective because the humanists have got the platform. They've got the platform. They're the ones propagating, they decide, they're the ones that have got the platform at the moment. Let's be honest. Yes, they do. Because Sikhs are biased against believers. Correct. Firstly, mostly against Christianity. The Muslims are coming for them afterwards anyway. But they've got the platform and they propagate what they need to propagate. Their enemy number one is Christianity. So they propagate against Christianity. Even though it's assisting Islam and it's going to slit their own throats eventually. Are they unawares of all these sort of things? That's how they think. Very much. I sometimes think one of the reasons why secular humanists like Islam is Islam, aside from being anti-Christian, it's got the same frivolous attitude towards marriage as the secular humanist pagans. They only have many wives and easy divorces. It's OK to be immoral in every which way. Islam doesn't require much ethical requirements. It's a very external religion. And there's no heart change required. There's no repentance required. There's no ethical standards or respecting the weak or anything. You know, nothing like that. So in some ways secular humanism is like, well, this is closer to our idea than the Christian idea. It's going to liberate us, isn't it? Of course, once they start having veils and Sharia law and beheadings, I think they may change their mind, but that will be a bit later from their perspective. I think that something happens every now and then. I hear bits and pieces. I don't know where it's going, but that's very foolish. I did hear the Pope apologise for the crusades some years ago, which is dumb. That's Pope John Paul. I don't think the present Pope would. He understands Islam a lot better. But Pope John Paul was foolish enough to apologise for the Crusades. If they understood the first thing about the Crusades and what preceded it and what happened afterwards and what Jihad is and what Jihad is doing to this day against millions of Christians worldwide then it's a bit foolish to apologise for something you don't even understand which is actually in self-defence when you get down to it. You mentioned the Roman Catholic story. I read a theory that the Roman Catholic Church in about the 6th century actually financed Mohammed to get his armies going. I've heard that. It's a shot in the dark. very thin theory. I know who's propagating it the most, and it's Czech publications, but I haven't noticed them very accurate in history generally. I've read some of the finest things out there on all this, the finest authorities on the Crusades and the finest authorities on Islam, and none of them mention the others, so I'm highly sceptical. Usually when you do something like I don't see that. Although, we must say, there was a serious clash between Latin Christianity and Greek Christianity. The Greeks being the Byzantine Empire and the Orthodox Church, and then the Latins being the Roman Catholic Church and all that was involved there. And there was a clash, and regularly they'd try and support one another's enemies to get a dig in on the other. So you could imagine on occasion the Catholics might have conspired on the side of the Muslims against the Greek Orthodox Christians of Byzantine Empire. Now I wouldn't be surprised if that happened occasionally but I don't think that would have been a consistent policy throughout. Also bear in mind the Crusades were theoretically Latin Christians coming to the support of Greek Christians who had been persecuted in the Byzantine Empire and to help forestall their collapse. You know, that sort of undermines a lot of that theory. So it doesn't hold together. When I read some of the work it seemed a bit thin. I think it's very thin, yeah. So I wouldn't give it much credence. I think it was more a case of neglect, that the Burndyes were begging the Romans to come and help for years and they hummed and aahed and never did anything, as if it was too late. Yes, well, it was to an extent, but They did succeed. As you will see, at the end of the 11th century Constantinople was in danger of falling. And the crusades put the Muslims on the defensive and protected Constantinople effectively for almost another 400 years. So can you call it a failure which protected Europe, probably saved Europe by buying another 4 centuries? I don't know that the Crusades were that much of a failure. When you look at them all individually, it's extraordinary what they achieved. They were so underfunded, they were so overwhelmed. Their logistic lines were huge. It was incredible David against Goliath operation of impossible logistics and impossible supply lines. And yet they achieved enormous amounts. Now, we can say they didn't achieve everything they wanted to. That's amazing what they did, considering what odds they were against. You certainly could say, as people like Professor Madden and Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, who are two of the finest authorities in the Crusades, that's all they teach and they're professors of it, and they convinced that the Crusades saved Europe. And without the Crusades, Europe would have become Muslim long before there was a reformation to revitalize it, and we wouldn't even be around. We'd be Muslims, one of the two. Yeah, we'd be slaves to the Muslims, we'd be Muslim or we'd be dead because our great-great-great-great-great-grandparents wouldn't have even been born because their answer would have been Whitesides. So when you look at it all, it's a bit foolish to apologise for our own survival. The crusades basically won survival for Europe. But we'll get to the Crusades in a month's time. I think Europe then would have been a desert as well. It seems wherever the Muslims go there's a desert. It's not impossible because they sure can... If you read about the early Roman Empire, they were harvesting grapes and wheat in the whole of North Africa. You're saying that Spain used to be a country of forests. And what the Berbers did is they moved thousands and thousands of merino sheep across the straits. to go and feed them on the hillsides of Spain and they absolutely decimated the countryside. If you know where to look for it today you can still see the erosion on the hillsides caused by the machine. Now another thing one should say is just that the Spaniards, who of course did defeat the Muslims ultimately, the Spaniards were brutal. Another very harsh, how they treated the Protestants as an enemy of Britain. But where did they learn this from? 800 years of brutality at the hands of the Muslims, and being enslaved by the Muslims. And Spain was the main European power that got into the slave trade. Of course, we condemn the slave trade in the strongest terms, and evangelicals have always been against it, but where did the Spanish Catholics learn slave trade from? from the Arabs. The Arabs enslaved them and their idea was these Africans enslaved us, we can enslave them back now. The wheel is turned. And of course they got the wrong Africans, but to them they couldn't exactly tell, you know, they all come from there. The Africans oppressed us, now we can oppress them. Something else to just bear in mind, people have been whinging and whining about colonialism for a long time. The Muslims, I'm told, and I've heard this in missions conferences dedicated to reaching Islam, that We need to apologize for Western colonialism because it really upsets the Muslims. For 130 years Western nations colonized Muslim nations. In fact it's roughly true. From 1830 France started to take over most of North Africa and then later Italy came in. But why did they do that? Because Muslim pirates raided Southern Europe and they were trying to close down these ports. So in fact most of North African colonialism was to close down these Aubrey pirates who were raiding Europe and had taken over a million Europeans as slaves. In fact just about everything in North Africa was built by white Christian slaves from Europe who had been raided by pirates coming into Europe. People would sleep at night, woken up, Muslim pirates would drag them under bed and throw them onto a ship. Can you imagine? So, okay, Europe colonised North Africa for whatever reason for 130 years. What about Muslims colonising Christian lands for 1,300 years? That's not over yet. The Muslims colonised Christian lands in the whole of the Middle East, Turkey to this day, the whole of what used to be the Byzantine Eastern Empire. They colonised Spain for 800 years. Sicily for 200 years, Southern Italy for 300 years, and you can just carry on in different places they colonized. They were up in Hungary for several hundred years too. They were trying to colonize Austria and France, of course they failed. Bulgaria was a colony of theirs for 400 years, Serbia for about 500 years. So they've colonized Christian lands for 1,300 years, in some cases. And we've got to apologize for 130 years of Western nations colonizing Muslim lands. Bear in mind, I think the biggest colonials in the history of the world are the Arabs. I think they beat the British. I don't think anyone has colonized more than Arabs. If you think of how the Arabic language, which Arab means, Arabian, it came from Saudi Arabia, the whole of North Africa, the whole of the Middle East, taken over by Arabian culture, Arabian language, Arabian everything, to the extent that the Egyptians are now minorities in what used to be their own land. It's only 10% of Egypt in our cots. The Arabs have taken over Egypt and Arabs aren't Egyptians. Copts are Egyptians. Arabs are Arabians. So to this day they're colonists and of course now they're trying to colonize America, Britain, London and all of the ongoing Islamic colonialism. When people talk colonialism don't just think European And do you know what made me start to think of this? Going to Sudan and hearing the South Sudanese, the black Christians in South Sudan, speak about the Arab Colonials. It was a way for me to break out of my thinking. The Arab Colonials? Can Arabs be Colonials? Well, as far as the South Sudanese were concerned, yes. They said, of the first 800 officials in South Sudan in 1956, only four were black Africans. 796 were Arabs. Here we are in South Sudan, amongst the black Christians, and all of our officials were Arabs. So is that not colonialism? Here in the army, all of the officers were suddenly Arabs. Here you've got black troops in Ecuador called, but all the officers are Arabs. They said, it's colonialism. We're fighting the last war of decolonization in Africa. The South Sudanese said. Now when you think of that, then your mind starts to break free and you say, it's true. Colonialism isn't just something that was done by some people in Europe. Colonialism has been done, like the Japanese were colonizing China, Korea, and so on, and Taiwan. Well, in the same way, we've seen colonialism being done by the Arabs, and it's been done to this day. Praise God, they've just suffered a retreat in South Sudan. But just, I think you can turn the tables on a few people when they come up with 130 years of European colonialism of Arab lands and you say, what about 1,300 years of Arab colonialism of Christian lands? And you've completely turned the table. Remember Syria used to be a Christian land. And Lebanon, and you can carry on. And Egypt. The Ottomans had invaded what is now Austria and Germany. of course. Yes, we'll get to that. If you ever have a chance to buy a croissant, I recommend it because the croissant was a crescent shaped pastry designed by the bakers of Vienna to celebrate the defeats of the Muslims at the Battle of Vienna, 1683. We had the Arabs for lunch, for breakfast, so they made this croissant pastry to celebrate Eating the crescent moon, so you know, hoping for better. Good, any other comments, questions? You could have made a whole series on El Cid himself. We will, one of these days we'll get to El Cid, I'll try and get the film. I realise some of these need a lot more, Charles Martel, El Cid, they need a lot more emphasis. But this is an introduction to wetter habitats.