I have a need to understand - that's why I made a podcast with almost this name.
It's about how much of what we see happening in our time reminds me of something - an echo from the past - that I can't quite grasp or put into words.
That's why I spend a bit of time each day reading history, digging into sources and seeing patterns that are rarely mentioned in the papers.
Or rather - patterns they either don't understand, don't WANT to understand - or simply omit. They have their reasons, I suppose?
Identity politics. The surveillance society. Technocracy. Bureaucracy. Ideologies like the dissolving Cultural Marxism. The new religions like the Gender and Climate Church. And the old ones like Islam - which this post is about.
All of which we - rather like under a hypnotist - are constantly asked not to take notice of.
"You're seeing things, little human, leave it safely to the experts who will tell you what to think..."
Hmm... I don't feel I've gotten much out of that in my previous 51 years - otherwise I wouldn't have so many questions about all these subjects?
Regardless.
Islam. The more I read, the clearer it becomes to me that what we face today - with sharia as law and ideology - is nothing new.
In Islamic understanding, the world is divided in two -
Dar al-Islam - 'The House of Islam' - the areas where Islamic law and Muslim rule are established.
And Dar al-Harb - 'The House of War' - meaning the rest of the world, where Islam does not yet rule, and which according to classical jurists must either be brought under Islamic rule or held in a temporary peace agreement (hudna) until the balance of power enables a takeover.
For those raised in this worldview, expansion is not 'colonisation' in the Western sense - it is a religious duty and a juridical right.
When we in the West have left our mark through history with trade, culture and power, it is seen in this optic as a violation. But when Islam expands into our territories, it is experienced as a rightful reconquest or fulfilment of a divine mission.
And it is from that way of thinking that the 1,400-year process we are now witnessing in our time must be understood. It has followed the same pattern again and again.
In 632 AD, Muhammad died. In less than a century, the Islamic caliphate exploded and conquered enormous parts of the Christian world's heart: Syria, Egypt, Armenia, Persia, North Africa, Spain.
These were not random areas - they were centres of faith, culture and learning.
Antioch. Alexandria. Carthage.
All fell beneath Islam's sword.
Under Islamic rule, Christians - that is in all likelihood you, if you are ethnically European - were faced with three choices.
Convert to Islam.
Pay the jizya tax under public humiliation.
Or die.
Those who were "allowed" to remain lived under rules designed to break their dignity. No repairing or rebuilding of churches. No public crosses. No evangelisation. No right to ride horses. Distinctive clothing. And always as second-class citizens (dhimmi).
For women, the conditions were even harsher. A Christian woman's testimony in court was worth less than a Muslim man's. She could not defend herself against a Muslim assailant. In unrest, massacres and genocide, thousands were raped, abducted and forcibly Islamised. Entire generations of Christian girls were taken from their faith. And the church stood completely powerless.
In the Ottoman Empire, Christian boys were taken from their families under the devşirme system - a "tax" in the form of children. They were forced to convert, renamed, trained as elite soldiers (Janissaries) and often set to kill their own people. It was not a choice. It was law.
History contains endless examples -
Córdoba, 850s - 48 Christians executed for refusing to renounce Christ.
Egypt, 11th century: Over 30,000 churches destroyed under Caliph al-Hakim.
Egypt, 14th century: Mamluk mobs burned Christian towns, killed families, smashed crosses.
This was not rare. It was repeated. For centuries.
From 1915–1923, the Ottoman Empire carried out one of world history's most overlooked genocides -
1.5 million Armenians
275,000 Assyrians
350,000 Greeks
Men were shot or beheaded. Women raped and sold as slaves. Children driven into the desert to die - all because they were Christian.
And this is not only history.
It is still happening.
As in Iraq & Syria where ISIS crucified Christians and sold their daughters in slave markets under sharia.
As in Nigeria. Where over 50,000 Christians have been killed by Boko Haram and Fulani militias.
As in Pakistan - where Christians are imprisoned or executed for "blasphemy."
And in Egypt - where Christian girls are abducted and forcibly Islamised to this day.
It is difficult to speak and write about - because the confused European mind has been trained to hate its own history, culture, faith and therefore itself. So it assumes guilt and confuses what we are talking about when we talk about faith and culture.
But it's important to separate it all - in order to understand.
NONE of this is about race, skin colour or ethnicity - even though your favourite politician, classically on the left - but in recent years from just about every side of Parliament - tries to tell you that you must neither speak, write nor debate all of this if you want to be "a nice respectable person" - or perhaps it's just because it risks illuminating the obvious lack of care, understanding and coherence in the last 40 years of political decisions about immigration and integration.
So let me remind you what this is about.
It's about Reality. It's about what happens when Islamic law becomes civil law, and when sharia governs a country.
Christians lose their rights. Women lose their dignity. Minorities are forbidden and punished. Dissent is punished. And yes - even Muslims who don't bend are not free. And the sword sits loose again.
But history shows us one thing that stands unshakeable.
The only force that has ever been strong enough to withstand this pressure is Europe's own faith in itself - and the foundation it was built upon. That light which arose and lit our cathedrals, shaped our laws and values, and which for 1,400 years has averted every attempt at takeover.
No ideology in history has colonised, subjugated and reshaped such large land areas and populations as Islam. From North Africa to the Balkans, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia - over 50 nations today are subject to Islamic law or majority rule, because the process has repeated itself for 1,400 years.
Yet naive European politicians imagine that "it can never happen here."
We are far too clever, technologically superior and modern.
They imagine that Islam will just somehow give up its own backbone - that Muslims will voluntarily rewrite 1,400 years of immovable theology, change the Quran and discard what they consider God's eternal word - all in order to be allowed to fit into a Western model... that anyway seems to have lost its breath and faith in itself, and is therefore in a race towards dissolution.
As if a religion that has survived crusaders, Mongols, colonial powers and two world wars would suddenly throw in the towel because it has encountered... municipal regulations, EU roundtable meetings and some temporary UN resolution or other.
You can hear how deeply illusory that sounds, can't you?
Because history shows the exact opposite. The interpretation is the same. The methods are the same. The only difference is that modern technology has made control faster, surveillance more total - and the iron grip harder to break free from once it is closed.
Yet some Western countries today accept giving this grip a hand into their own institutions.
In England, sharia has in practice been accepted as a form of parallel legal practice through a network of between 30 and 85 sharia councils in England and Wales, which each year handle tens of thousands of cases - primarily about marriage, divorce and inheritance - completely outside the British court structure.
So normalised has it become that recently a position was posted as "Sharia Law Administrator" on the British government's own job portal, administered by the Department for Work and Pensions. The position was linked to Manchester Shariah Council and included among other things organising cases according to Islamic law. After massive criticism for supporting a parallel legal system, the posting was withdrawn - but the very existence of it shows how far normalisation has already gone.
Let us remind each other of reality once more.
To allow this is not tolerance. It is cultural and national suicide one imagines is inclusion.
History need not repeat itself.
But it requires that we again stand firm on the light, the truth and the freedom upon which our civilisation is built - and refuse to bend to anything that would replace it.
That is, as Svend Brinkmann once brilliantly wrote - because it is a spiritual battle about reality - Stand firm!
Perhaps we can even get him on the team one day, if he puts his big boy pants on again. That would be nice - the more capacities, the broader pressure across the population, the more awakening - the better.
❤️🔥🪽
Good Thursday evening, friends.
Enjoy the warmth and evening sun.
